Cindy Sheehan

[legion]

Originally Posted by Mazer

As far as I'm concerned, if you've got a keyboard and something to say, say it.

Now, I don't believe any one reason justifies war, it takes a combination of things to come to that decision. I listed a few in a previous post. Iraq's former state of repression by itself was not the only reason to invade, nor was it the best reason. Whether invading a country that hasn't harassed its neighbors for a little while is illegal under international law is something I don't really know. I do know the only international law that the United States is obligated to obey is international treaty, the second highest law of our land as mandated by our highest law, the Constitution.

I couldn’t agree more with the first part of your first sentence. However since the U.S. is a member of the U.N. and since the U.S. signed those security charters along with the Geneva en Vienna convention I think it is fair to say that one might expect the U.S. to obey them.
Since I am not a lawyer I copied and pasted article 51 here which states:

‘it is the State which has been the subject of an armed
attack which must form and declare the view that it
has been attacked. There is no rule of customary
international law permitting another State to exercise
the right of (collective) self-defense on the basis of its
own assessment of the situation. Where (collective) self-defense
is invoked, it is to be expected that the State
for whose benefit this right is used will have declared
itself to be the victim of an armed attack.’

I think it is fair to say that neither the U.S., the U.K. or The Netherlands for that matter of fact have shown us any form of proof that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks (directly of indirectly)nor that Iraq posed a serious danger/threat to the safety of the U.S. or to the middle east region. Not to mention the fact whether it was an armed attack or not.
Based on this article I think those who are against this war have a valid point.

[quote=mazer]Well the citizins of Madrid might, but Londoners are tough bastards, and they proved it after they were attacked. Tragic as it was, they weren't going to let the terrorists rule their fears. The Spaniards on the other hand played right into thier attacker's hands by electing an anti-war prime minister. The terrorists won in Spain and they lost in England, and the important difference wasn't the body count.

Hehehehe good one. I already applauded the British for their attitude towards the London bombings in another thread. I wasn’t questioning the behavior of the two countries involved, I was questioning your statement:

Originally Posted by mazer

It may be a scarier place (that's why we call them terrorists), but by and large the world is no more dangerous than it was before.

Specially the last part of your statement. I seriously doubt the London and Madrid bombings would have occurred if both countries weren’t involved with the war in the first place.

Originally Posted by mazer

Had those police remained in place then here would be order, just as there was before, but very little law. I'm willing to bet that Iraqis prefer martial law American style to their former government.

There is not a doubt on my mind that the vast majority of the Iraqi population does indeed prefer American martial law but by keeping the armed forces and the police in place and under close supervision of the U.S. military to monitor they uphold those martial laws, it would have effectively doubled the amount of security forces to keep American soldiers and Iraqi police men safe alike

Originally Posted by mazer

theknife claimed that the war was a military failure. By citing the number of dead civilians compared to past wars I was giving one example of how our invasion was a military success.

from a military point of view it was a huge success even.

Originally Posted by mazer

You can try to prove anything you want to with statistics, but these statistics really are relevant. When the news reports the troop body count they should also report the percent of the total number of troops. In both world wars the mortality rate of American soldiers was greater than 2%, but in this war it is less than .2%. Interpret these stats any way you like, I choose to believe that soldiers in Iraq are fairly safe.

perhaps they are relevant. But given the fact that as soon as U.S. forces start to pull out of Iraq the attacks probably will go up. Now, decreasing numbers of soldiers in Iraq and attacks on the rise will give you a higher rate of mortality virtually overnight. admitted this is not the case right now.

Originally Posted by mazer

It is true that American soldiers haven't had to deal with a suicidal insurgency in past wars. They're generally not prepared for the special situations Iraq presents with its road-side bombs, its hidden arms cache, its leaky borders, etc. Should we give up just because this kind of conflict is unprecidented?

I think they did experience the same thing when u.s. armed forces were in Vietnam.
The V.C. did recruit people and even kids to blow themselves up and take a few U.S. soldiers with them. (or have I been watching too many movies?) Not only did they do just that, the V.C. did make use of the ho chi minh trail which lead them through Cambodian territory. Which in my opinion is not all that far off when you compare it to Iraqi insurgents

Of course you people shouldn’t call it quits because something is unprecedented. To be honest, presidencies (did I spell that right?) are there to be set!

Originally Posted by mazer

I look to the progression of warfare over the past two centuries as an example of how resiliant and adaptive American forces tend to be. When rifles became accurate, semi-automatic, and easy to reload, our army stopped digging trenches and charging in straight lines to make themselves easy targets. When Japanese soldiers and civilians proved they weren't afraid to die, we nuked them to make their deaths pointless.

f*cking ouch. Come on Mazer, the nuking of the Japanese was in a completely different time set and in a completely different situation. Besides that I don’t think their deaths were pointless for it showed us the horrors of nuclear warfare. I know, I know I pulled this one out of its context but I needed to work the horror of nuclear warfare in there one way or the other

Originally Posted by mazer

There is as yet some military innovation to be discovered that will bring a quick end to American deaths in Iraq. Until that comes to pass we're trying diplomacy, and hopefully by building up the people themselves we'll make our military tactics obsolete.

Lets hope next time all diplomatic means will be tried until fully exhausted and based on fact instead of shitty intelligence.


For the oh so sudden insight of international law I went here

@multi

The difference between the numbers you showed and the numbers I came up with can hardly be called splitting hairs mate

You are absolutely right that the number of all people killed during the second world war was indeed 55 million. Trust me if they teach us one thing in history class here in Europe it is just that. Considering we were dead smack in the middle of it righteously so I guess.

The numbers I gave you were American casualties and wounded only and I should have been more clear on that one.
linky

@TheKnive

actually i wasn't looking at you. I am a true insomniac and this place gets mighty boring after midnight and there is only a little bit of internet porn i can take

Originally Posted by theknive

some comments obviously are worth no reply at all but i'll go one round of quotes with most people - maybe two if valid points are being made. after that, i'm done. it's an act of mercy - watching people struggle to defend the indefensible gets painful after a while.

true but to be fair we haven't come up with a good alternative for the war either.

anyways we are a zillion miles of topic so there for ... Mike out