4 ms·

Hey, majority of US wanted Hilary to be the president after she voted to invade Iraq based on a lie, and also destroyed Libya.

arcticbull 5y ago
So what if it was based on a lie? History is full of such political machinations. The man was a tin-pot despot who used chemical weapons against his own people. Do you disagree with that assessment? btw, I was and remain anti-Iraq war but your equivocation is clearly wrong.
- parthdesai 5y ago
  I mean you yourself said that Russian people should be punished because they support Putin. So shouldn't the American population be punished as well because they voted for Hillary Clinton who was pro war based on a lie. > So what if it was based on a lie? Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > I mean you yourself said that Russian people should be punished because they support Putin. So shouldn't the American population be punished as well because they voted for Hillary Clinton who was pro war based on a lie. You could make the argument that the world could have stood up and sanctioned the US - but likely they did not because they probably agreed with the action, whether they could say so directly or not. 'Should' is not the bar. The fact it took a lie to convince folks to go in is neither here nor there, IMO. Again, I was against the war. > Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion. Say that to someone in Kurdistan who suffered life-long debilitating injuries due to the sarin and VX gas attacks that were then followed by a Napalm run. [1] Saddam launched some of the worst chemical attacks in history against his own citizens. We can go back and forth on this all day. It was life frozen. Life had stopped, like watching a film and suddenly it hangs on one frame. It was a new kind of death to me. (…) The aftermath was worse. Victims were still being brought in. Some villagers came to our chopper. They had 15 or 16 beautiful children, begging us to take them to hospital. So all the press sat there and we were each handed a child to carry. As we took off, fluid came out of my little girl's mouth and she died in my arms. If your argument is "ah but Saddam wasn't that bad" my guy, you've already lost. He really wasn't great. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_atta...
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      > If your argument is "ah but Saddam wasn't that bad" my guy, you've already lost. He really wasn't great. We supported him when he did that. And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. If the question is would you rather be a modern country ruled by the iron will of a belligerent despot, or bombed into medieval times with every cultural institution shattered and orders of magnitude more body count than your dictator ever generated, spawning ISIS... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-children-dying-in-iraq.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-ch...
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        > We supported him when he did that. And that's irrelevant to whether taking him down was a good decision. Either before or after. Once again, I didn't support the war at the time, and I think the casualties are horrifying. However, it's not even close to the same thing. > And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. You don't really weigh moral wars this way. For instance, the Nazis killed 6 million in the concentration camps. However, an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War 2, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. However, nobody frames World War 2 as "costing 10 lives for everyone who died in the camps" and therefore a bad idea.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        likeclockwork 5y ago
        Russia is as morally entitled to invade Ukraine as the US was to invade Afghanistan. It's really that simple. You can say moan about Saddam being bad but where from where does the US derive the moral authority to impose its will onto sovereign nations? Your framework allows for invasions over fake WMDs and fake Nazis alike. Russia didn't sanction the US over Iraq, in the spirit of peace and cooperation between nuclear states the US could afford them the same courtesy. If you can justify Iraq you can justify Ukraine. Personally I don't agree with invasions anywhere for any reason not do I believe in the concept of "world police". That's just forcing one people's will upon another and denying them the right to destroy their own tyrants and seize their own destiny.
- tangent-man 5y ago
  So take out Saddam Hussein don't kill a million innocent people in the process. I did hear a rumor that it was all about the oil anyway LoLz.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > So take out Saddam Hussein don't kill a million innocent people in the process. Do you really think you were the first person to come up with the idea of assassinating a head of state as a means to end a war? It doesn't really work that way. It wasn't 1M, it was about 1/5 of that. I'm not of course justifying the loss of life, however it behooves us to speak precisely instead of hyperbolically. [1] > I did hear a rumor that it was all about the oil anyway LoLz. That rumor makes no sense if you actually dig in. 72% of America's foreign oil imports come from Canada and Mexico. Only about 3% from Iraq. And Iraq was exporting oil before the war, too. [2] 2T was spent in the Middle East. That buys you a heck of a lot of market-rate oil. [1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Direct%20War%20Deaths%20COW%20Estimate%20November%2013%202019%20FINAL.pdf https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20... [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      If you dig in a little more you realize control of the oil and contracts went to US and British firms after the war where previously other nations had those contracts. Oil is sold at a global price. The US has an incentive to keeping prices low so Americans have cheap gas. Plus it strips away power from oil financed nations which is in the US interest.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        They just don't have that much oil. You know who does? Venezuela. If increasing the supply of oil was the real goal, then they could have taken Venezuela. It has the most proven oil reserves in the entire world and a tin-pot despot. > If you dig in a little more you realize control of the oil and contracts went to US and British firms after the war where previously other nations had those contracts. And that return is pennies on the dollar compared to the two trillion spent on the war. $2T buys you a whole whack of oil you can subsidize for your people. The economic arguments just don't hold up.

arcticbull 5y ago

So what if it was based on a lie? History is full of such political machinations. The man was a tin-pot despot who used chemical weapons against his own people. Do you disagree with that assessment? btw, I was and remain anti-Iraq war but your equivocation is clearly wrong.

parthdesai 5y ago
I mean you yourself said that Russian people should be punished because they support Putin. So shouldn't the American population be punished as well because they voted for Hillary Clinton who was pro war based on a lie. > So what if it was based on a lie? Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > I mean you yourself said that Russian people should be punished because they support Putin. So shouldn't the American population be punished as well because they voted for Hillary Clinton who was pro war based on a lie. You could make the argument that the world could have stood up and sanctioned the US - but likely they did not because they probably agreed with the action, whether they could say so directly or not. 'Should' is not the bar. The fact it took a lie to convince folks to go in is neither here nor there, IMO. Again, I was against the war. > Jeez, it's that easy for you to say that eh. Say that to a person who lost his family in that invasion. Say that to someone in Kurdistan who suffered life-long debilitating injuries due to the sarin and VX gas attacks that were then followed by a Napalm run. [1] Saddam launched some of the worst chemical attacks in history against his own citizens. We can go back and forth on this all day. It was life frozen. Life had stopped, like watching a film and suddenly it hangs on one frame. It was a new kind of death to me. (…) The aftermath was worse. Victims were still being brought in. Some villagers came to our chopper. They had 15 or 16 beautiful children, begging us to take them to hospital. So all the press sat there and we were each handed a child to carry. As we took off, fluid came out of my little girl's mouth and she died in my arms. If your argument is "ah but Saddam wasn't that bad" my guy, you've already lost. He really wasn't great. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre#Chemical_atta...
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > If your argument is "ah but Saddam wasn't that bad" my guy, you've already lost. He really wasn't great. We supported him when he did that. And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. If the question is would you rather be a modern country ruled by the iron will of a belligerent despot, or bombed into medieval times with every cultural institution shattered and orders of magnitude more body count than your dictator ever generated, spawning ISIS... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-children-dying-in-iraq.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/10/are-1-million-ch...
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      > We supported him when he did that. And that's irrelevant to whether taking him down was a good decision. Either before or after. Once again, I didn't support the war at the time, and I think the casualties are horrifying. However, it's not even close to the same thing. > And during the 90s, we instituted sanctions that killed half a million Iraqi children. That's 100 children for every single person who died in Halabja. You don't really weigh moral wars this way. For instance, the Nazis killed 6 million in the concentration camps. However, an estimated total of 70–85 million people perished in World War 2, or about 3% of the 1940 world population. However, nobody frames World War 2 as "costing 10 lives for everyone who died in the camps" and therefore a bad idea.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - likeclockwork 5y ago
        Russia is as morally entitled to invade Ukraine as the US was to invade Afghanistan. It's really that simple. You can say moan about Saddam being bad but where from where does the US derive the moral authority to impose its will onto sovereign nations? Your framework allows for invasions over fake WMDs and fake Nazis alike. Russia didn't sanction the US over Iraq, in the spirit of peace and cooperation between nuclear states the US could afford them the same courtesy. If you can justify Iraq you can justify Ukraine. Personally I don't agree with invasions anywhere for any reason not do I believe in the concept of "world police". That's just forcing one people's will upon another and denying them the right to destroy their own tyrants and seize their own destiny.
tangent-man 5y ago
So take out Saddam Hussein don't kill a million innocent people in the process. I did hear a rumor that it was all about the oil anyway LoLz.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > So take out Saddam Hussein don't kill a million innocent people in the process. Do you really think you were the first person to come up with the idea of assassinating a head of state as a means to end a war? It doesn't really work that way. It wasn't 1M, it was about 1/5 of that. I'm not of course justifying the loss of life, however it behooves us to speak precisely instead of hyperbolically. [1] > I did hear a rumor that it was all about the oil anyway LoLz. That rumor makes no sense if you actually dig in. 72% of America's foreign oil imports come from Canada and Mexico. Only about 3% from Iraq. And Iraq was exporting oil before the war, too. [2] 2T was spent in the Middle East. That buys you a heck of a lot of market-rate oil. [1] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Direct%20War%20Deaths%20COW%20Estimate%20November%2013%202019%20FINAL.pdf https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20... [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    If you dig in a little more you realize control of the oil and contracts went to US and British firms after the war where previously other nations had those contracts. Oil is sold at a global price. The US has an incentive to keeping prices low so Americans have cheap gas. Plus it strips away power from oil financed nations which is in the US interest.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      They just don't have that much oil. You know who does? Venezuela. If increasing the supply of oil was the real goal, then they could have taken Venezuela. It has the most proven oil reserves in the entire world and a tin-pot despot. > If you dig in a little more you realize control of the oil and contracts went to US and British firms after the war where previously other nations had those contracts. And that return is pennies on the dollar compared to the two trillion spent on the war. $2T buys you a whole whack of oil you can subsidize for your people. The economic arguments just don't hold up.