iRAQ

[Pesmerga]

Frankly, I think all those cluster bombs would have been better spent on White Christian America than Iraq.

Hey, **** you too goram Canadians.

 

[Saturos]

Frankly, I think all those cluster bombs would have been better spent on White Christian America than Iraq.

If America was lost, then Canada and Britian would be screwed unless the militaries of all European nations forms a coalition. Regardless if your against Christians or not. :hmph: Seriously, China and Russia would consume you all so .

Sure, I don't agree with some of our leaders decisions, but there's still a place for loyalty for the troops of our respective countries. They are still defenders of freedom even if current politicians abuse this power for the benefit of themselves or if a single soldier/marine missrepresents the military in some immoral way.

If any terrorist state(s) with the reasoning of Saddam Hussein actually ever becomes a superpower, then most of Europe would in fact be screwed, so show some respect for our (and Britain's) military bitches.

I think it's fair to say that civil war is a completely different set of circumstances with many more shades of grey.
Certainly not comparable to committing openly violent treason on behalf of a dictatorship thousands of miles away.

No war is civil. That's why they call it war. However, many politicians abuse the powers our military stands for (like Bush for instance). The troops don't make the decisions, the politicians do. It's un-fair to blame the men and women in uniform for being ordered to do something unjust when in fact it's our leaders that abuse it's power. I think of the military as a single gun. I don't blame the gun for killing someone, but the person who pulled the trigger.

The military is there for when we are in great distress and frankly, something had to be done about those maniacs that killed over 2,000 civilians during 9/11. That's more civilian casualties than during Pearl Harbor FYI. Any American who says the war in Iraq is not justified are not only apathetic but an idiot as well.

Things could have been strategically different to lessen collateral damage during the war in Iraq I admit, (like Donald Rumsfeld not being qualified for Secretary of Defense for starters) but there's no such thing as a war without death. I think it was a necessary cause and for those who say it was all about the oil are also idiots. Oil was a side benefit imo and will help solve the oil crisis for the time being. It's not all about the rich. I for one would rather drive a car then to ride a horse to work thank you very much.

 

[15357]

What if I were in Nazi germany and wanted to leave to fight for the allies?

Clearly that reasoning is false.

That'd make you a traitor.


The reasoning isn't false. Your goverment isn't Nazist.

 

[CptStern]

supporting the troops? the bush admin doesnt support the troops why should anyone else? ok granted I support them in as far as I dont want them to die over a war started under false pretenses however with the overwhelming majority of american troops thinking saddam had something to do with 9/11 I cant help but think that some of them made their own bed and must now lie in it

funny thing is that no one thinks about supporting iraqis ..over 5 million iraqis have been displaced by the war ...2.4 million fled to jordan, upwards of a million iraqis have been killed during the war yet you dont see bumper stickers saying "support iraqis". No one seems to care about their fate

 

[Glirk Dient]

I am not sure what most people mean by support the troops but I agree to a certain extent. I believe that you should at least thank them for putting their life on the line and joining up despite all the shit Bush is doing. Not every soldier agrees with the war but they all have to go, they don't have a choice so if you don't agree with the war don't take it out on them. If I ever see some anti war person spit on a soldier I swear I will lose it and kill them on the spot.

Oh and stern my guess no one supports the Iraqis because we can't really relate as well as we can our soldiers. I know many soldiers and families affected by their son being in Iraq whereas none of us know an Iraqi so it's harder for us to support them as they aren't gonna see our bumper stickers. I think all sensible people feel bad for them and their suffering.

 

[Sulkdodds]

repiV, less emotive language and personal attacks and fisher-price psychology. Samon warned you but you continued; you get an infraction because that kind of behaviour is absolutely unnecessary. Nobody else in the thread is doing it, not even Solaris. Criticising someone's ideology, even as venemously as you do, does not necessitate casting aspertions on their personal lives.

Besides, your Nazi Germany analogy is deeply flawed. In Nazi Germany, you would certainly be killed for opposing the war.

I really don't think so. But the argument wasn't about 'opposing' war with words; it was about going abroad and defecting to the enemy power. It's irrelevant that Nazi Germany was a far worse country than modern Britain because the analogy was about loyalty to your country in war. repiV said: support your troops no matter what. solaris said: that would mean supporting the wehrmacht if you were in nazi germany.

Now, the only thing that matters there is whether the country's a democracy or not - not that it being a democracy ensures the consent of the people, or it not being a democracy denies it.

As for the matter of hand (the war), you're being ridiculous.
- a war begun on entirely and knowingly false pretences
- a humanitarian mission that has killed more than it saved
- gross mismanagement and little effectivev planning, amounting to criminal negligence
- engendering multiple incidents of brutality, murder, crimes against humanity, etc
- largely a failure

On what grounds exactly do you regard this as "a venture of heroes"?
I'd be interested to read exactly what motivated you.

 

[Saturos]

repiV, less emotive language and personal attacks and fisher-price psychology. Samon warned you but you continued; you get an infraction because that kind of behaviour is absolutely unnecessary. Nobody else in the thread is doing it, not even Solaris. Criticising someone's ideology, even as venemously as you do, does not necessitate casting aspertions on their personal lives.

Sometimes it's impossible for some not to be venomous, as such topics are extremely hot water that sparks the deepest emotions. Especially when they are directly being called an idiot or something, but that's a different story. Being able to control one's own emotions in discussions like these is a very difficult trait among the best debaters.

 

[Mr Stabby]

repiV, less emotive language and personal attacks and fisher-price psychology. Samon warned you but you continued; you get an infraction because that kind of behaviour is absolutely unnecessary. Nobody else in the thread is doing it, not even Solaris. Criticising someone's ideology, even as venemously as you do, does not necessitate casting aspertions on their personal lives.

I really don't think so. But the argument wasn't about 'opposing' war with words; it was about going abroad and defecting to the enemy power. It's irrelevant that Nazi Germany was a far worse country than modern Britain because the analogy was about loyalty to your country in war. repiV said: support your troops no matter what. solaris said: that would mean supporting the wehrmacht if you were in nazi germany.

It's perfectly acceptable to dislike the government, and it would be perfectly acceptable for a German to oppose the Nazis and even try to kill Hitler. However if you were a German and lived during that time, fighting against the German army (conscripts), would be no different to fighting against the British army today for us, if you opposed what the government was using them for. My point is, that the army is created from the ordinary people from that country, they do just follow orders, so it is IMO morally dubious for someone to fight against the army of his own country. Hate the government not the troops.

 

[Sulkdodds]

It's perfectly acceptable to dislike the government, and it would be perfectly acceptable for a German to oppose the Nazis and even try to kill Hitler. However if you were a German and lived during that time, fighting against the German army (conscripts), would be no different to fighting against the British army today for us, if you opposed what the government was using them for.

Exactly so.

My point is, that the army is created from the ordinary people from that country, they do just follow orders, so it is IMO morally dubious for someone to fight against the army of his own country. Hate the government not the troops.

I don't know, though - what relevance does a concept like 'hate' have to the matter, if you are killing and fighting nontheless? What does it matter that you love or hate a stranger when you kill him? If he is the instrument of injustice, he cannot be divorced from that purpose unless he renounces it. At the same time, yes, they're ordinary people, and yes, they are all good men, in their way - isn't everyone? - and yes, they are as trembling and palpitating a ghost as anyone else. Us / and them / and after all we're all just / ordinary men etc.

And yet is it tenable to hate the game not the players? Can you punish a crime but not a criminal (who may be compelled by circmstances not his own volition to comit - but one must draw a line somewhere)? "Hate the government, love the troop" seems like a useless piece of sentimentalism that may not help you stop that government. The medium's the message, the scissors are the barber, the kitchen is the cook.

But "morally dubious", I suppose, is the accurate description. It is quite impossible to come to a reasonable solid conclusion in this matter. The options and the dimensions are multiplex; how culpable is the soldier for what he's doing, how possible to stop what he's doing without killing him...? Somewhere between the absurd and rigid fealty of repiV, and what I take to be the simplistic dichotomising of Solaris, I do not think there's a single/simple answer lurking.

 

[Eejit]

I also believe there's a moral difference between fighting against your own army if their conscripts rather than regular soldiers who signed up voluntarily.
The conscripts had no choice at all in the matter, whereas volunteer soldiers must accept when they join the army that they may end up fighting for a cause they do not personally support.

 

[Nemesis6]

upwards of a million iraqis have been killed during the war

A million? Iraq Body Count says 81,510 - 88,976 thousand.

 

[Eejit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

 

[Solaris]

Well first a thank you to Sulkdodds for bringing an intelligent and clear take on the topic to the discussion as always.

Mr. Stabby claims that it would still be morally dubious to fight the Wehrmacht were you a citizen of Nazi Germany. Surely you cannot believe this. You only need to look at the holocaust and crimes of the Nazis to realise that the reasoning being put forward here is false.

The idea of supporting your troops, no matter what, because they are your troops and don't get to decide what they do is fallacious - on two counts.

The first, as I just described is that it allows people to support the Wehrmacht and do nothing to stop the holocaust, if anything it allows them to take part in it and be responsible for it. Loyalty to your country should mean nothing when your country takes part in genocide, in that case the only moral action to take would be to do everything you can to stop your country: if that means killing your fellow country men conscripts, then you must.

Secondly, the idea that troops have no say in what they do is wrong. Right now, they all willingly signed up to fight, knowing their countries military histories. Many refused to fight in Iraq and are now in jail, in my opinion, a soldier who held the Iraq war to be immoral and fought anyway is a coward. Also, even soldiers in conscript armies are responsible for what they do, during the 1917 Russian revolution, soldiers were ordered to fire on civilian demonstrates or suppress the revolution, please allow me, in order to demonstrate a point, that they were ordered to do an amoral thing. Whether it really was or was not, is not the point.

Mr.Stabby and RepIV here would say, had they done the amoral thing, they would not be responsible for it, they were only following orders, they had no choice, they were conscripts. However they did have a choice, and exercised it. They executed their officers and elected their own and took part in the revolution.

To illustrate the point with another analogy I remember reading about a Serbian soldier during the balkan wars of the early 1990's. Up until this one day, he had only done normal military missions had no idea genocide was happening. Then one day him and his squadron were told to execute a group of Bosnian women and children. The soldier describes how afraid he felt and sick and did not want to do it, he pleaded with his officer not to make him kill them but the officer said he'd shoot him if he did not. So he did and describes how he was sick afterwards and utterly ashamed. Later at the end of the war this soldier, who was only following orders under penalty of death, was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for war crimes for what he did in those executions.

And so he should, when you are faced with your own execution or having to execute civilians in the name of genocide, the most moral action you can take is to turn your weapons on your fellow soldiers to try and stop the executions taking place.

I know these are extreme examples, but I think they demonstrate how fallacious the idea of supporting your troops because they are yours is, when I can clearly demonstrate scenarios when you must only not support them, but kill them.

Now, with regards to Sulkdodds points on the Iraq war:

- a war begun on entirely and knowingly false pretences
- a humanitarian mission that has killed more than it saved
- gross mismanagement and little effectivev planning, amounting to criminal negligence
- engendering multiple incidents of brutality, murder, crimes against humanity, etc
- largely a failure

The first: a war begun on entirely and knowingly false pretences
That is perhaps true, I do not however support the reasoning Bush gave us for invading Iraq, freeing the Iraqi people is all the justification I need. Ian McEwan wrote in one of his books about the anti-Iraq war protests:

"?Not in My Name? goes past a dozen times. Its cloying self-regard suggests a bright new world of protest, with the fussy consumers of shampoos and soft drinks demanding to feel good, or nice. Henry prefers the languid ?Down with This Sort of Thing.? A placard of one of the organizing groups goes by?the British Association of Muslims. Henry remembers that outfit well. It explained recently in its newspaper that apostasy from Islam was an offense punishable by death. All this happiness on display is suspect. Everyone is thrilled to be together on the streets ? people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other. If they think ? and they could be right ? that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view."


I quote that, because it's a nice passage, and does well to illustrate the horrors of the Saddam regime which we did well to stop.

Next: - a humanitarian mission that has killed more than it saved
I think you'll have to provide some sources for this one.

Thirdly: - gross mismanagement and little effectivev planning, amounting to criminal negligence
I can agree with this to a limited extent, but I guess we just didn't know how crazy some of the bastards coming into Iraq after the war would be.



Next:- - engendering multiple incidents of brutality, murder, crimes against humanity, etc
Sadly, that's part of any war.

 

[repiV]

repiV, less emotive language and personal attacks and fisher-price psychology. Samon warned you but you continued; you get an infraction because that kind of behaviour is absolutely unnecessary. Nobody else in the thread is doing it, not even Solaris. Criticising someone's ideology, even as venemously as you do, does not necessitate casting aspertions on their personal lives.

Now that's ridiculous. It's not about his ideology, it's about the fact that he would turn on each and every one of us at the drop of a hat. He's basically saying, you guys mean nothing to me, my stupid teenage fantasies are more important than the lives of my fellow Brits. That's deeply personal, and it completely warrants a personal response. I don't really give a shit about what you think on the matter, you're way out of line to give me four ****ing infraction points. Must be pick on repiV week.

Edit: hell, I just looked back at the post you gave me an infraction for. I didn't say anything insulting or use any bad language - what the hell is this?

 

[CptStern]

A million? Iraq Body Count says 81,510 - 88,976 thousand.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080130/wl_nm/iraq_deaths_survey_dc

 

[Escaep]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080130/wl_nm/iraq_deaths_survey_dc

I have already proved this to be waaaaay to high. The daily average would have been 700 deaths a day. It is somewhere on this forum.

 

[Solaris]

I have already proved this to be waaaaay to high. The daily average would have been 700 deaths a day. It is somewhere on this forum.

No you haven't.

 

[Saturos]

Your all wrong. There. Now everyone's happy.

 

[Mr Stabby]

Mr. Stabby claims that it would still be morally dubious to fight the Wehrmacht were you a citizen of Nazi Germany. Surely you cannot believe this. You only need to look at the holocaust and crimes of the Nazis to realise that the reasoning being put forward here is false.

I never said they should support the Nazi regime, they just shouldn't fight against their own army. Claus von Stauffenburg, a colonel in the German army attempted to kill Hitler, it is possible to resist the government without fighting your own army.

The idea of supporting your troops, no matter what, because they are your troops and don't get to decide what they do is fallacious - on two counts.

You should still be capable of distinguishing the governemt form the soldiers.

The first, as I just described is that it allows people to support the Wehrmacht and do nothing to stop the holocaust, if anything it allows them to take part in it and be responsible for it. Loyalty to your country should mean nothing when your country takes part in genocide, in that case the only moral action to take would be to do everything you can to stop your country: if that means killing your fellow country men conscripts, then you must.

It's not that simple, firstly fighting against the wehrmacht is doing little to stop the holocaust, while effectiveness is irrelevant, domestic anti-government resistance would be 100 times more productive than joining an opposing army. There isn't really a morally correct stance here, and anti-nazi german was between a rock and a hard place. Also the holocaust was not the action of the country as a whole, the extermination camps were in fact kept secret from the German public, it was the actions a minority who controlled the country, not the common soldier. Killing soldiers from your own country, is still wrong in my opinion.

Secondly, the idea that troops have no say in what they do is wrong. Right now, they all willingly signed up to fight, knowing their countries military histories. Many refused to fight in Iraq and are now in jail, in my opinion, a soldier who held the Iraq war to be immoral and fought anyway is a coward. Also, even soldiers in conscript armies are responsible for what they do, during the 1917 Russian revolution, soldiers were ordered to fire on civilian demonstrates or suppress the revolution, please allow me, in order to demonstrate a point, that they were ordered to do an amoral thing. Whether it really was or was not, is not the point.

Again oversimplification, you do realize the going to jail is a serious matter, it will ruin their career, it's not any easy decision to take, I can't see how you can blame them for continuing their obligations. In regards to cossack putting down civilians, thats got nothing to do with national duty. I don't see how it's relevant.

Mr.Stabby and RepIV here would say, had they done the amoral thing, they would not be responsible for it, they were only following orders, they had no choice, they were conscripts. However they did have a choice, and exercised it. They executed their officers and elected their own and took part in the revolution.

They would be responsible for their own actions not the actions of the government as a whole. If a soldier doesn't break the law, but the campaign or operation the government has sent them on is illegal, then those soldiers haven't done anything wrong. British soldiers are not responsible for being in Iraq, neither were German soldiers responsible for being sent to Stalingrad.

 

[Laivasse]

This topic is a waste of time. It can be explained away by the fact that Christopher Hitchens, the outspoken and slimy socialist-turned-superneocon, is now Solaris' flavour of the month, just as Galloway was at one time. Next week, Pol Pot!

Supporting the war = supporting the brokenness of the democracy which led us there, and excusing the horrific civilian death toll.
Supporting our troops = a wish to see our servicemen return safely home, based on the very simple realisation that they do not have the authority to pick the wars they fight.

Any other postulation is usually based on the shitty fallacious logic of the most vocal people in the pro-war lobby, who wanted to garner more support for the government from simple-minded people who can't tell when they're being guilted out by spurious doublespeak.

 

[Escaep]

No you haven't.

I have. But, i will do it again.

To do this:

Find the total number of days the war has gone on, and the highest count of Iraqi deaths. We will use an even number of 1,000,000 for number of deaths.

To date, the Iraq War has gone on for, lets say, an even 6 years, which is 2,190 days.

Now, divide 1,000,000 by 2,190, and you get: 456 as an average number of daily deaths. Alternatively, you could divide 1,000,000 by 72 (number of months) and you get: 13,888, which represents the average monthly death toll.

So far, the highest monthly toll stands at about 3600-3700. Equal also to about 120 deaths per day.

456 average deaths per day for 1,000,000 casualties is almost 4 times higher than the actual average. The monthly average per 1,000,000 casualties (13,888) is almost 4 times higher than the actual high of 3600.

If you stand back and look at it, there is no way 456 people on average are killed everyday in Iraq.

 

[CptStern]

the reasoning behind the 1 million figure, from the source I linked to

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.

it's an approximation, there is no counting of bodies ..however this is in keeping with the Lancets report back in 2006 ...up to 600,000 iraqis dead ..the growth projected was up to 1 million by late 2007

The Lancet study's figure of 654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006 is based on household survey data. The estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths. That also includes those due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were estimated to be due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), unknown (2%). A copy of a death certificate was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92 per cent of those households asked to produce one).

it's by no means perfect but we've accepted the Lancets mythodology without question before (deaths by disease, conflict etc in africa and other parts of the world) ..the only reason why it's ever questioned is because the figures no matter how high or low makes the coalition look bad and the invasion of iraq look like a massive humanitarian disaster ..people dont want to accept their country is responsible for so much misery


incidentily bagdhad morgue is reporting between 80-100 death daily ..in baghdad alone ..it's not inconcievable that the rest of iraqi has a similiar figure in total ..and then there's those bodies that dont make it to the morgue for whatever reason. Is the figure 1 million? I dont know ..but it's certainly between 81,525 and 1 million deaths since the invasion of iraq



anyways, is 100,000 less of a tragedy than 1 million deaths? the distinction is certainly lost on the victems

 

[Eejit]

I have. But, i will do it again.

To do this:

Find the total number of days the war has gone on, and the highest count of Iraqi deaths. We will use an even number of 1,000,000 for number of deaths.

To date, the Iraq War has gone on for, lets say, an even 6 years, which is 2,190 days.

Now, divide 1,000,000 by 2,190, and you get: 456 as an average number of daily deaths. Alternatively, you could divide 1,000,000 by 72 (number of months) and you get: 13,888, which represents the average monthly death toll.

So far, the highest monthly toll stands at about 3600-3700. Equal also to about 120 deaths per day.

456 average deaths per day for 1,000,000 casualties is almost 4 times higher than the actual average. The monthly average per 1,000,000 casualties (13,888) is almost 4 times higher than the actual high of 3600.

If you stand back and look at it, there is no way 456 people on average are killed everyday in Iraq.

That proves absolutely nothing, you realise that?

All you've done is break down the ORB numbers down by day or month and compared them to the "actual" numbers coming from a completely different souce, IBC I presume.

 

[Escaep]

That proves absolutely nothing, you realise that?

All you've done is break down the ORB numbers down by day or month and compared them to the "actual" numbers coming from a completely different souce, IBC I presume.

But if you look at how i broke it down, you have to realize the sheer high number of deaths that would be the average per 1,000,000 deaths. It doesnt matter how i got my calculations, it is based on the assumption that there are in fact 1,000,000 deaths.

 

[Eejit]

How do you think that "proves" anything?

Basically you're saying "if you break the numbers down to an average per day they, I dunno, seem kinda higher than I expected"?
By the way, when you compare it to an "actual average" you're implying that you already consider the ORB results to be incorrect, and the other ones to be true.

 

[Solaris]

But if you look at how i broke it down, you have to realize the sheer high number of deaths that would be the average per 1,000,000 deaths. It doesnt matter how i got my calculations, it is based on the assumption that there are in fact 1,000,000 deaths.

So?

It isn't an unreasonable amount of daily deaths in a warzone with no healthcare and poor nutrition and water.