Iraqi blogger Ali gives Howard Dean a thorough Fisking for his comments that the standard of living was better for Iraq under Saddam. He also has a stern message for the anti-war Democrats:
By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.
And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?
And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing.
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Please consider this for a moment, does winning the elections and getting rid of GWB and the republicans worth the damage you’re inflicting on your men and women’s morale?
My heart goes with those brave people and the widows, orphans and mothers of the American soldiers who died while doing this great service for their country, ours and humanity. I can’t imagine what their response would be to such thoughtless words motivated with nothing more than selfish ambitions.
Ali gets it: the talk about Iraq being an unnecessary war, and arguing that our troops haven’t been able to make Iraq better is deeply hurtful to the troops. The vast majority of our fighting forces believe in this mission. They’ve seen the mass graves first hand, and they’ve seen the destruction of Saddam. They’ve also seen their friends and colleagues killed in order to see this through.
And now they not only have to contend with the enemy, but the friendly fire of the political opportunists who constantly degrade their mission and lower their morale. The same man who hurt his comrades in Vietnam with thoughtless lies is now doing the same to our troops today. The careless accusations like the one made by Howard Dean about Iraq place ambitious and partisan acrimony above our troops, which only serves to lower their morale and sap their strength. It’s reasons like these why the Democrats not only will lose in November, but deserve to.
When Ali is suffering under the oppression of a Muslim religious theocracy, we’ll see how happy he is that America destablized his government and society.
Me, I don’t give a damn. Ali’s an asshole if he thinks that people who oppose the arbitrary and unjustified use of force don’t support their troops. Maybe he should care a little less about licking America’s boots and care a little more about all his countrymen and -women we killed.
Our soldiers are great men and women. All the more reason to be incensed as they give their lives for a mission that was poorly concieved and poorly justified.
I’m sure he was so fucking happy to be living under Saddam. He spent most of his life living under one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth. We didn’t “destabilize” Iraq, we liberated it. Unless you would prefer the “stabilty” of Hussein’s regime.
How about the 600,000 killed by Saddam? The number of civilian casualties in the war was far less than what would have happened if Saddam had a bad weekend. Unless you’d like to seriously argue that our troops are worse than Saddam Hussein.
This is why the Democrats might as well be the Ba’ath Party. Ali is right, you’ve no regard for anything other than your own pissing partisanship and beating Bush. 600,000 Iraqi dead? – fuck ’em! It’s only the ones that we might have killed that really count. After all, we “destabilized” Iraq by removing a man and his sons who got their jollies by randomly raping women on the street. Why us evil imperalistic Americans should have just let the effete and incompetent UN sit and steal more oil-for-palaces money while Uday and Qusay raped their way across the fucking country rather than upset the apple cart.
We found a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq – his name was Saddam Hussein. Our troops mission is just, and thank god at least one Democrat, Joe Lieberman has the balls to say it.
Our troops mission is just, and thank god at least one Democrat, Joe Lieberman has the balls to say it.
And I’ll be the first to agree if it turns out that the Iraqi democracy doesn’t turn into a religious state almost immediately. I don’t know if that’ll be worse than Saddam. But it certainly won’t be as good as what we promised them.
See, Jay, this is what I’m talking about when I say that you’re obviously not really clued in to what a democracy is. When a sizeable chunk of our citizenry, currently serving our country as soldiers and sailors, are committed to millitary action in another part of the world, it does THEM no good to stifle discussion about the effectiveness and necessity of their mission. Your strategy seems to be to employ the military to overthrow potentially threatening regimes (actually, no. It was to overthrow a regime WRONGLY considered to be an immediate threat to our national security. If Kay had found a nuke or two, I’d agree that the war was a good idea.) whereas mine would be to not risk the lives of our soldiers unless absolutely necessary for the defense of the US and our interests and citizens abroad. Afghanistan was a good use for our forces, since we had been attacked by terrorists operating from a rogue state that was supplying them with assistance. Iraq didn’t. Saddam Hussein was a ruthless and CONTAINED dictator weakened by a decade of sanctions, inspections and several months of being surrounded by about 300,000 US forces. He wasn’t a threat. We screwed up in our analysis of the Iraqi regime. How do you think those soldiers feel about being sent to another part of the world for a mission based on faulty intelligence? Do you think that’s doing their morale a world of good? Plus, how would you like to see someone campaign for Commander-in-Chief? If a candidate for President is unwilling to discuss the issues that will face him in the event that he wins, what possible reason would there be to vote for him? Moreover, how can Americans see the differences between the candidates if they’re unwilling to discuss a major area of disagreement.
Call Howard Dean wrong for his analysis if you’d like, and justify that claim with supporting evidence if you can, but don’t bitch about a candidate discussing “Iraq being an unnecessary war, and arguing that our troops haven’t been able to make Iraq better” when that will be a major issue facing him as President. It’s stupid, it’s counterproductive, it’s not something you heard Tom DeLay griping about when he was degrading the mission in the Balkans, and you should really know better. Quit being a partisan hack for five minutes, and start thinking like a political scientist.
Snyder and Mansfield, “Democratization and the Dangers of War,” International Security, vol. 20 (summer 1995) should have been on your reading list at some point. Give it a look and tell me that there’s no legitimate points for debate. Ask yourself why these issues weren’t discussed in the run-up to the war.