I'm continuing the dialog with my Republican friend. The prior diary entries can be found
here and
here. This diary is my response to his response.
Thank you for your detailed response. It is encouraging that you are willing to discuss this topic in detail and to put your thoughts down in an e-mail. I believe there may be a part of your brain that has not been completely pickled by kool-aid that is still trying desperately to think on it's own.
The reason I wanted to move to a more reasoned dialog from our normal rah-rah banter is that the lies have stacked up so high and the death and injury are so great that this is no longer the topic for the friendly competitive shoving match that we both enjoy. I went to Crawford and saw the crosses lined up on the side of the road. I stood silently with a few hundred people at sunset while taps was played. It's different when our people are being killed for no reason at all. Had we been fighting for our freedom or to stop tyranny from overtaking the world, it would be an honor for our servicemen and women to defend our country and the world, and I would be there fighting alongside them. But in this case it's just such a waste. There is no good reason for this war.
I hope you can listen to reason because all of the reasons you list in your response are lies. You start out attempting to justify this war with reason, but as one must do when defending lies with deceit, you degenerate into name-calling and attempting to make the lies true by spouting out more lies and false blame. I would like to address your lies, misunderstandings and propaganda put forth by the party you support first, because that is the first wall that must fall before you can listen to reason.
On a side note, all of these major attacks were during Clinton's presidency. What major retaliation or action (something PC for you liberals) did we take to show these terrorists that the United States meant business? The answer is nothing!
This is a lie.
Clinton attacked Sudan and Afghanistan in response to the Embassy bombings. I make no defense of the attacks and I do not wish to debate the merits of these attacks at this time. We are talking about Iraq and while it is complicated and of course all of the middle east issues with the United States are related, it is typical of Republican response to attempt to change the subject. I am happy to discuss Clinton, his problems and policies, Hillary and whatever else you want, but the need to stop the killing in Iraq is real and must be addressed now. Clinton can wait. When we have that discussion you surely must keep in mind that here you are mis-informed and condemn Clinton as "PC" for not responding, but now that you realize that he did respond you will surely bring up more pathetic propaganda that Clinton only launched cruise missles so that he could "wag the dog" and deflect from the Lewinsky affair and how
Republicans condemned the cruise missle attacks. Pathetic. Also,
remember that these attacks on the Embassies had absolutely not connection to Iraq.
Furthermore, what retaliation would you recommend for the 1993
WTC bombings? The people who did the deed were arrested and convicted, what more do you want? These men are followers of radical islamic clerics and were from Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Afghanistan, Pakistan... do you propose that we should have bombed these countries because of the actions of a handful of crazed lunatics acting independently?
Remember, no link to Iraq, and they were all captured and convicted.
The Khobar Tower bomb was performed by
Saudi's... you know, the fellows that hold hands with our President. Are you proposing that Clinton should have bombed Saudi Arabia? In fact, I would welcome some sort of sever of our intimate relationship to the
islamic kingdom ruled by Shari'a law. I'm not sure exactly what you would propose Clinton's response would be to the
Khobar Towers bombing. We issued indictments of the perpetrators and unless we invade Saudi Arabia, it is up to that monarchy to turn him over on their own. What do you propose? Yet again,
this had no relationship to Iraq.
Regarding the
USS Cole, again... what would you propose? The bombing happened right before the 2000 elections and it took until January 2001 for the Navy to complete it's investigation. The CIA finally killed one of these guys in 2002 and Yemen put two of them to death in 2004. And still,
the USS Cole bombing had no relationship to Iraq and the perpetrators were dealt "justice."
The moral of all these stories is - please do some research before you argue, because you will find that you are simply spouting off Republican propaganda and lies and it makes you look the fool. You mention
"using the peace pipes which were so effective during the 8 years of Clinton's terms in office" and I have just informed you with the truth. George Bush walks hand-in-hand on the White House lawn with the leader of Saudi Arabia, an
islamic kingdom ruled by Shari'a law, and you condemn Clinton for appeasing the radical islamic terrorists? That's the Kool-aide talking, my friend.
We had over 10 Islamic nations to pick from and use as as example
This is wrong on so many levels it's hard to respond appropriately. First of all, the most important fact is, we invaded Afghanistan in response to the attacks on 9/11. The perpetrator of that disgusting act was being protected by that country's ruling Taliban and they refused to turn him over. So we bombed the crap out of them. I supported that war. In fact, many on the Left supported that war and the ousting of the Taliban. Yes, it's true, there are also many in Crawford today who speak out against all war and all killing. I support them mostly, and I am not thrilled about having to invade another country and kill people, but that is the case here and while my support may not be 100% for the invasion of Afghanistan I did support it and continue to think it was the only way we could get the bad guys and finally destroy the radical terrorist training ground that was Afghanistan.
However,
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, Osama and the radical clerics were
sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, Iraq was
absolutely secular and was mostly despised by the other Islamic nations in the area for this very reason. To use your distrubing metaphor with speeding tickets in Texas, the equivilent would be: Some guy from Tennesse goes speeding through Houston, Texas. The police from Houston
completely destroy Dallas. First of all, Osama and the radical islamic people he supports were sworn enemies of Iraq. Second of all, since Osama bin Laden, hiding in Afghanistan (he's a Saudi, originally) bombs the USA, we go and destroy Iraq, his sworn enemy? This only makes sense in the kool-aid-addled brains of the true-believers in the Republican Party. Isn't this also the reason why Al-Queda attacked the USA? To pick a Christian nation and bomb it's citizens, just like you are saying we did by randomly picking a nation because it happens to contain moslems?
Not only did we wrongly invade Iraq, but we did it based on
lies. What is the reason? WMD's? Not only did Iraq not have WMD's, but the UN inspectors on the ground told us there weren't any. In fact, there is increasing evidence such as the
Downing Street Memorandum and the
Plame affair that indicate that not only did the President and his advisors know there weren't any WMD's, but that they actively discredited and personally destroyed anyone who dared to speak the truth. This is not the actions that I want my government to perform. I want the truth and you should too.
The whole basis of your opinion that we should invade any old country to
"use as as example, to show the Islamic dictators and the rest of the world that we are serious about terrorism" is lunacy. We have the rule of law that we've strived to develop throughout the world, which keeps us above the fray and makes us civilized. Deciding to invade a country and
kill 20,000 of it's citizens and at the expense of 1,800 of our military personel should have absolute resolution and defined reasons. We currently do not have any reasons as to why we invaded Iraq and why these people are dead.
The only reason you come up with has to do with
terrorism. This is a lie. We invaded Afghanistan because of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and for their support of those terrorists. Iraq had absolutely
nothing to do with those attacks. Why did we invade Iraq? Was Saddam a horrible man? Yes, but we put him there. He remains alive while our military personel and innocent Iraqi civilians are dead. They're dead and we are helping to install another Islamic Shari'a regime in the Middle East undoubtably much to the delight of Osama bin Laden and the radical islamic clerics.
The biggest falacy that you and the rest of the people who support this war do not understand is that
you cannot defeat terrorism and radical islamic thought by invading a country. These are radicals, they do not have allegence to a specific country. They move around throughout the middle east wherever they can find individual support. We have these same type of people
here in this country. Which country should we destroy because of the
Oklahoma City Bombings? It's an important question because you are advocating the destruction of civilian lives, deaths of our military personel, and invasion of a soverign nation based on the actions of one of it's citizens (and in the case of Iraq, the actions of a citizen of
another country). Since Timothy McVeigh was from New York state, should we arrest all of the citizens of that state?
We
created terrorists by invading Iraq, we did not destroy them. Every day more and more radicals are created because of our invasion of Iraq and there is no end in sight. What is the exit strategy? What are the real reasons for this invasion? When can we
declare victory? Do you know?
then we should have just turned that desert (Iraq) into glass and came back to the US
It should be mentioned that the desire to just destroy a country and kill all of it's citizens is
genocide. It's disturbing that a man who considers himself a Christian, and I assume moral and just, would advocate such a radical idea. Do you truly feel this way?
I agree it is not worth rebuilding, spending our dollars, and putting our fine young women and men on the line to rebuild Iraq, if this is the case. But..... regardless of the outcome, I still support the war for reasons in my above paragraphs.
And finally, I think it's a little too late for second-guessing. This outcome, that Iraq would turn to civil war, and the radical islamic fundamentalists would assume power was predicted.
It is extremely telling that that you did not mention WMD's in your response. Why did we go to war? I was told that Iraq was a threat and that the evidence would be "a mushroom cloud." I was lied to. The lies were covered up. Aren't you offended by that?
Remember, we were told the threat of WMD's is why we invaded. What happended to that reasoning? Why didn't you mention that in your response? Why do you believe that we can make up lies to justify our invasion after the fact?
The fact of the matter is, we're there and we've destroyed Iraq and our President is royally screwing things up with his failed policies. What are we going to do? Well, the President says we must have "resolve." The Left has a plan. Rely on
reality-based Democrats to pull us through the Republican's folly:
If the administration won't adopt a winning strategy, then the American people will be justified in demanding that it bring our troops home.
I agree, let's meet face-to-face because that's probably the only way I can knock the kool-aide glass out of your hands.
Randy