Iraq war, the worst foreign policy mistake un US History

Last Exodus wrote:

Now were all responsible for the War? If memory serves me, Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000, and Kerry was close in 04. So did we all really vote for the war? How bout half of us. How bout the people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 like people on this board and probably Pearl Jam themselves? Coudln't a more informed vote for Gore have been useful? Lets also remember, the vast majority of Democrats in congress at the time also voted for the Iraq War. So Im not buyin that a vote for Bush was tantamount to a vote for war. That war had support on both sides. It's really easy to monday morning quarterback all of this now...

Hence my use of the words 'The only mistake that was made was made by the American people who voted these neo-con greed heads into power in the first place.'

Cosmo wrote:

It was immoral for U.S. foriegn policy to allow the Viet Nam War to continue to rage for years, after military planners said there was not chance of a declared victory.

So you agree that the U.S invasion of South Vietnam was in essence, a just cause?
Are you saying that if the U.S had won then that would have justified U.S terror in the region, including the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and the deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese and 56 thousand Americans?

Cosmo wrote:

...
I think to be fair... we should take those comment in the context from which they were spoken.
Full Transcript:
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/121798iraq-clinton-speech.html
...
Most came from debates about the U.S. sponsored U.N. Ecomomic Sanctions set against Hussein's Iraq as a result of the first Gulf War. There were parties who believed the sanctions should be lifted and Iraq allowed to trade freely in the market. Other comments were made after Hussein continued to interrupt U.N. Weapons Inspections by limiting access to weapons insprctors, a clear violation of the agreed upon cease fire that ended the war.
When placed in those contexts, they make case for the continuing sanctions and military No-Fly Zones established by the George H.W. Bush administration.

Nice hypothesis, although severly lacking in any factual information. You shoud try reading about what actually happened regarding the weapons inspections in Iraq. Whislt you're at it, try and justify the deaths by malnutrition and disease of approx 2 million Iraqi children as a direct result of the U.S enforced sanctions.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0721-02.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/ritter.html
'Ritter has extensive knowledge of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and Europe. He served in the Office of Special Commission at the United Nations (UN), where he coordinated international efforts to implement United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions mandating the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Prior to serving in this capacity, Ritter provided expertise concerning information collection, management and assessment issues in support of UN inspection activities inside Iraq.

He began his military career as an intelligence office for the United States Marine Corps, where he served as the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq War.

The author of several publications concerning the Middle Eastern relations, Ritter graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA with departmental honors.

Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter is no stranger to controversy :

- In September 2002 he told officials in Baghdad that military action against Iraq was unjustified.
- Since he resigned from the UN weapons inspection team four years ago, Mr Ritter has been the most outspoken critic of US policy towards Baghdad.
- He has argued that the inspection team, Unscom, was a nest of US spies and that Iraq was disarmed long ago.
- But he first made the headlines in 1997, when as a senior Unscom member he was accused by Iraq of being an American spy himself.

Scott Ritter was born in 1960 to a military family. He joined the armed forces after university and worked as a military intelligence officer in the 1980s.
During the Gulf War he served as a ballistic missile expert under General Norman Schwarzkopf, and joined Unscom in late 1991.
He took part in more than 30 inspection missions and 14 as team leader.

Initially, his relationship with Iraq was bad. His unannounced visits were said to have surprised Iraqi officials, who in 1997 accused him of being a US spy.
In early 1998 an inspection by Mr Ritter's team led to the most serious confrontation between Baghdad and the UN since the Gulf War, and eventually to Unscom leaving Iraq. In August 1998, Mr Ritter resigned from his job, accusing the Security Council and the United States of caving in to the Iraqis.

To compel Iraq into compliance, he told the BBC that year: "Iraq should be subjected to a major campaign that seeks to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Soon after his high-profile resignation, Mr Ritter was back in the headlines with further criticism of Washington and the UN. Only this time he accused Western powers of being too tough, rather than too soft, on the Iraqis.
In late 1998, Mr Ritter called US and British military strikes against Iraq a "horrible mistake". He forced UN chief inspector Richard Butler to apologise to him after Mr Butler accused Mr Ritter of breaking the law by speaking publicly about his work in Iraq.
In 1999 he published a book, Endgame, where he argued that Unscom's mission had been compromised by Washington's use of inspections to spy on the Iraqis.

Last year he produced a documentary entitled Shifting Sands: The Truth about Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq. He said that his team was satisfied that Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995.

Mr Ritter accused the US Government of deliberately setting new standards of disarmament criteria to maintain UN sanctions and justify continued bombing raids. He also said Iraq "did co-operate to a very significant degree with the UN inspection process" and blamed the US and the UK for the breakdown. Mr Ritter essentially repeated those views during his trip to Baghdad last year.

He said the US seemed "on the verge of an historic mistake".

"My government is making a case for war against Iraq that is built upon fear and ignorance," he added. "The truth of the matter is that Iraq today is not a threat to its neighbours and is not acting in a manner which threatens anyone outside of its own borders."

angelica wrote:

It looks like you are talking about the power mongers and their accountability. I am talking about the average American who supported the war, and there were many.

Whether the world's populations did or didn't recognize a mistake in the making, we're talking about the US in this case. Good people far and wide believed it was the "right' thing to do and supported doing it. Whether they should have known better is irrelevent in my eyes because I am talking about what they actually did know and how they did feel.

So what did the American people know that accounted for their support?
And is this a defence on their behalf? The average German in the 1930's supported Hitler. But are they to be absolved of guilt because they didn't know any better? We are all responsible.

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

He was saying that those people were lied to, thus made their desicion based on blatent lies from our government (and the british government as well). And he would be correct..

'Blatant' being the operative word.

angelica wrote:

You may have missed the numerous posts throughout this thread where in conversing with ThumbingMyWay32, I clearly pointed to the accountability of each individual who at any point has supported the war. That accountability stands at all times.

I am saying if people were not aware, they were not aware. If people thought the war was a good idea or the 'right' thing, they thought that, too. They may have been ignorant, uninformed etc. It was what it was. Any mistakes that come from that perspective fall on those made them. Plain and simple.

O.k fair enough. Although I think the bottom line is that what the general public believed to be right or wrong, and whether the population of either Britain or the U.S supported the war or not, was pretty irrelevant. The figures show that there was overwhelming oppostion to an invasion in both countries. The protests that preceeded the invasion all accross the world were unprecedented. But what difference did public opinion make at the end of the day? None.
So much for democracy! :rolleyes: