MERGED--> all discussion of Israel/Lebanon conflict

[Earnie Shavers]

I´m sure Cheney and his friends are happy that the oil price is expected to go over $80/ barrel.

Not as much as Putin.

 

[Rono]

There is a huge difference between what Palestinian terrorist do and what the Israely Defense Force does. The IDF attempts to target terrorist engaged or supporting acts of terrorism. The Palestinian terrorist often do not target the IDF, they target innocent civilians. The Bus the Israely's hit was a mistake. The Bus a Palestinian terrorist hit was the target. That is the key difference.

Its shocking to see so many Europeans refuse to support Israel to the degree that the United States does considering what Europeans did to Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Israel is a small state surrounded by enemies that have fought several wars to wipe the country from the map. No European country in Israel's situation would stand for what Israel has to put up with. Yet, their policies toward Israel are borderline hostile. Israel understands the cost of not insuring its security, to many Europeans have forgotten the cost of what it means to fail to insure ones security.

What Europeans did to the Jews ? Now we are al Nazi`s ? I thought the states was the first country that refused jew refugies from nazi germany,....


BTW, knowing that you will killing innocent people while you bomb is ( for me ) the same as putting people into gaschambers. You know that they a gonna die and i don`t wanna accept that. I guess palestines are second range people because i see not much anger when they get killed ect,..just like your beloved jews in the 30 and 40,...

 

[u2fan628]

Why won't Hezbollah,the Taliban,Hamas and Al-Qaida fly under one flag?Countries who allow these elements to thrive within their borders must be held accountable.If America had a faction of people who terrorized It's neighboring countries,They would be weeded out by the American Military and delt with. Am I wrong?

 

[Danospano]

When you move into a neighborhood, and all the other residents told you before hand that they didn't want you there, how can you respond?

If you said, get support from the most powerful nation in the world (The U.S.), and screw everyone else's opinions, you are correct.

From what I've read, yes...the Jewish race had settled this area over 2,500 years ago. So what? They were gone for practically the entire following 2,000 years, and thought they could just walk back in?

This conflict will not end until millions are dead, everything they're fighting for is in atomic rumble, and hell freezes over.

I'm glad I'm not living there. Damn.

 

[yolland]

When you get run out of your old neighborhood, where else are you supposed to go?

The bulk of the Jews who emigrated to Palestine/Israel after the Holocaust (as STING mentioned, there were certainly Jews already there, but obviously not nearly as many) were Central and East European Jews who could not be safely repatriated (most Western European survivors actually returned to their home countries). The Allies could have settled these survivors in their own lands, by force if necessary (as often has to be done in refugee crises, and they certainly had the power to do so), but they did not want to. This has notoriously become one of Ahmadinajad's favorite whipping posts.

Of course this has nothing to do with the justifiability of the current conflict one way or the other. But you make it sound as if those Jews just blithely decided to up and move to Palestine. The majority of Jews were not supporters of Zionism at all before the Holocaust.

 

[STING2]

When you move into a neighborhood, and all the other residents told you before hand that they didn't want you there, how can you respond?

If you said, get support from the most powerful nation in the world (The U.S.), and screw everyone else's opinions, you are correct.

From what I've read, yes...the Jewish race had settled this area over 2,500 years ago. So what? They were gone for practically the entire following 2,000 years, and thought they could just walk back in?

This conflict will not end until millions are dead, everything they're fighting for is in atomic rumble, and hell freezes over.

I'm glad I'm not living there. Damn.

The Jews NEVER completely left the area. There was always a population there, although a very small one through the centuries. In the late 1800s, the Ottoman Empire let Jews emigrate to the land that would become Israel/Palestine. This was Ottoman land and had been for four hundred years. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918, every nationality within those borders had the right to form their own state if they so desired and that is what the Jews did. How could you deny them that right, yet extend it to others? The Jews did not all of a sudden arrive back in the area at the end of World War II. They had always been there, and were there in significant numbers when the Ottoman Empire collapsed which allowed many of these area's to become independent states.

Of course, there was nearly a 30 year period between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of Israel, but the Jews had the right to form their state and they finally succeeded in doing so in 1948, after which they were brutally attacked by their neighbors.

 

[STING2]

When you get run out of your old neighborhood, where else are you supposed to go?

The bulk of the Jews who emigrated to Palestine/Israel after the Holocaust (as STING mentioned, there were certainly Jews already there, but obviously not nearly as many) were Central and East European Jews who could not be safely repatriated (most Western European survivors actually returned to their home countries). The Allies could have settled these survivors in their own lands, by force if necessary (as often has to be done in refugee crises, and they certainly had the power to do so), but they did not want to. This has notoriously become one of Ahmadinajad's favorite whipping posts.

Of course this has nothing to do with the justifiability of the current conflict one way or the other. But you make it sound as if those Jews just blithely decided to up and move to Palestine. The majority of Jews were not supporters of Zionism at all before the Holocaust.

When the majority of Jews came to Israel is not relevant to the right of Jews living in the area at the time of the end of the Ottoman Empire to form their own state. The rejection by the Palestinians and Arabs of the UN partition plan for the area in 1948 is the start of the long conflict we have today. Palestinians scream about their right for and independent State which they were offered in 1948 and rejected. They then brutally attacked Israel with 5 other Arab countries and were defeated. What has followed is 58 years of war and terrorism against Israel which has only reduced the amount of land the Palestinians live on and made their general situation worse.

 

[STING2]

What Europeans did to the Jews ? Now we are al Nazi`s ? I thought the states was the first country that refused jew refugies from nazi germany,....


BTW, knowing that you will killing innocent people while you bomb is ( for me ) the same as putting people into gaschambers. You know that they a gonna die and i don`t wanna accept that. I guess palestines are second range people because i see not much anger when they get killed ect,..just like your beloved jews in the 30 and 40,...

If the Europeans had enforced the treaty that ended World War I, Nazi Germany would never have existed. Europeans bare the brunt of the responsibility for what happened on their continent in the 1930s.

There is a massive difference between actually trying to target and kill people and the accidental killing of someone. I don't hear to many people in France claiming that they were in a gaschamber during the Normandy invasion of France, although Allied bombs killed about 20,000 French civilians during the invasion on accident.

Palestinian people are victims of their leaders and militant groups that have engaged in unjustified violence for over half a century which has only made their situation worse.

There is no comparison between the TARGETED execution of 6 million Jews, and the accidental deaths of Palestinian civilians, of course the president of Iran wants everyone to think differently.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

 

[Justin24]

Israel Setting Conditions for Cease Fire with Lebanon.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/17/D8ITQGSGB.html

 

[Irvine511]

Joe Klein has an interesting take on things:

[q]Here's my conspiracy theory: It starts with the fact that no one really does know who runs Iran. There are all sorts of competing institutions—governmental and religious and bazaari. There is a secular President, mouthy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a supreme leader, the Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. There is a constitutional tension between those two offices, a tension that may have been heightened in the past year by Ahmadinejad's close relationship with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Corps is a strange institution. It is an extremist religious militia that exists outside the Iranian state apparatus. It is funded by semiprivate charitable institutions, called bonyads, that manage the Shah's confiscated assets, which are enormous. The bonyads aren't part of the government, either. They—and the Revolutionary Guards—are the patrons of Iran's external terrorist organization, Hizballah. In fact, there are Iranian Revolutionary Guard trainers currently stationed in Lebanon. Complicated enough for you? I haven't even begun to conspire yet.

So let's speculate that there's a difference of opinion between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei about how to proceed on nuclear negotiations with the West. Let's say Ahmadinejad doesn't want to negotiate. Let's say he wants to send a message to the West, to the Israelis and also to Khamenei: I'm not a powerless figurehead like my predecessor, Mohammed Khatami. My friends in the Revolutionary Guards give me veto power over any deal. It would not be difficult for Ahmadinejad to send the message, via the Guards, to both Hizballah and the military wing of Hamas, which is based in Damascus and funded in part by Iran: Let's rile up the Israelis and start a crisis. Let's change the subject from the Iranian nuclear negotiations. At the very least, let's lay down an opening marker in the negotiations: If you mess with Iran, we have a multitude of ways to mess with you. Just a theory, of course. "We really don't have any real idea about what goes on inside that government," a senior U.S. diplomat told me recently. But it's not implausible, either. "My sense was that Khamenei didn't want to start trouble anywhere else in the world because it might hurt the nuclear negotiations," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, author of a recent book about Iran. "But I don't think Hizballah would have crossed the border into Israel without approval from a much higher—Iranian—authority, either."

If this was an Ahmadinejad ploy, it might well backfire. The Israeli response has seriously damaged Lebanon economically. The Lebanese patchwork of constituencies that governs the country may now conclude that it can no longer tolerate a heavily armed Hizballah substate in the south. And if it can be proved that Iran instigated the mess, the members of the U.N. Security Council might be nudged toward a tougher stance on the nuclear issue—and the threat of international sanctions, which could have terrible consequences for Iran's oily economy. But it is also clear now that a major consequence of George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy has been an emboldened Iran. The U.S. "has been Iran's very best friend," a diplomat from a predominantly Sunni nation told me recently. "You have eliminated its enemies, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. You have even reduced yourselves as a threat to Iran because you have spent so much blood and treasure in Iraq."

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1214918,00.html

[/q]


among so many foregn policy failures, perhaps one of the biggest -- in light of recent events -- was Bush's disinterest in the need to broker a real Middle East settlement. it takes time and patience to speak to Yasser Arafat and then assert that Israel will have to make certain concessions in order to move the process along. further, we see that the Bush Administrations panacea for all of the ills of the world, everywhere, ever, in history -- DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS! -- don't always make for good policy or good governance, as see in the election of Hamass from the Palestinian elections last January.

while it's clear that engagement in the region is the best thing for it, the presence of 130,000 troops in Iraq has made it more difficult for us to be as fully engaged in the peace process as we (quite obviously) need to be. we are overstretched in terms of troops and our relationships with governments and populations in the Middle East have never been worse. there have been so many unintended consequences of the Iraq disaster -- which even Colin Powell now describes as a Civil War! -- and just one of which is that Iran is able to be vastly more helpful to Hizbollah in a way that it wasn't able to do before.

what we might be seeing is a nascent regional war between the Sunni and the Shi'a, which has teen totally triggered by Iraq and augmented by an increasingly belligerant Iran. the new closeness between the Iraqi Sunnis and the U.S. (and by assocation and assumption, Israel) might do much to increase Shiite radicalism and pit one against the other, the Shia might be the new infidel.

 

[STING2]

Joe Klein has an interesting take on things:

[q]Here's my conspiracy theory: It starts with the fact that no one really does know who runs Iran. There are all sorts of competing institutions—governmental and religious and bazaari. There is a secular President, mouthy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a supreme leader, the Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. There is a constitutional tension between those two offices, a tension that may have been heightened in the past year by Ahmadinejad's close relationship with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Corps is a strange institution. It is an extremist religious militia that exists outside the Iranian state apparatus. It is funded by semiprivate charitable institutions, called bonyads, that manage the Shah's confiscated assets, which are enormous. The bonyads aren't part of the government, either. They—and the Revolutionary Guards—are the patrons of Iran's external terrorist organization, Hizballah. In fact, there are Iranian Revolutionary Guard trainers currently stationed in Lebanon. Complicated enough for you? I haven't even begun to conspire yet.

So let's speculate that there's a difference of opinion between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei about how to proceed on nuclear negotiations with the West. Let's say Ahmadinejad doesn't want to negotiate. Let's say he wants to send a message to the West, to the Israelis and also to Khamenei: I'm not a powerless figurehead like my predecessor, Mohammed Khatami. My friends in the Revolutionary Guards give me veto power over any deal. It would not be difficult for Ahmadinejad to send the message, via the Guards, to both Hizballah and the military wing of Hamas, which is based in Damascus and funded in part by Iran: Let's rile up the Israelis and start a crisis. Let's change the subject from the Iranian nuclear negotiations. At the very least, let's lay down an opening marker in the negotiations: If you mess with Iran, we have a multitude of ways to mess with you. Just a theory, of course. "We really don't have any real idea about what goes on inside that government," a senior U.S. diplomat told me recently. But it's not implausible, either. "My sense was that Khamenei didn't want to start trouble anywhere else in the world because it might hurt the nuclear negotiations," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, author of a recent book about Iran. "But I don't think Hizballah would have crossed the border into Israel without approval from a much higher—Iranian—authority, either."

If this was an Ahmadinejad ploy, it might well backfire. The Israeli response has seriously damaged Lebanon economically. The Lebanese patchwork of constituencies that governs the country may now conclude that it can no longer tolerate a heavily armed Hizballah substate in the south. And if it can be proved that Iran instigated the mess, the members of the U.N. Security Council might be nudged toward a tougher stance on the nuclear issue—and the threat of international sanctions, which could have terrible consequences for Iran's oily economy. But it is also clear now that a major consequence of George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy has been an emboldened Iran. The U.S. "has been Iran's very best friend," a diplomat from a predominantly Sunni nation told me recently. "You have eliminated its enemies, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. You have even reduced yourselves as a threat to Iran because you have spent so much blood and treasure in Iraq."

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1214918,00.html

[/q]


among so many foregn policy failures, perhaps one of the biggest -- in light of recent events -- was Bush's disinterest in the need to broker a real Middle East settlement. it takes time and patience to speak to Yasser Arafat and then assert that Israel will have to make certain concessions in order to move the process along. further, we see that the Bush Administrations panacea for all of the ills of the world, everywhere, ever, in history -- DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS! -- don't always make for good policy or good governance, as see in the election of Hamass from the Palestinian elections last January.

while it's clear that engagement in the region is the best thing for it, the presence of 130,000 troops in Iraq has made it more difficult for us to be as fully engaged in the peace process as we (quite obviously) need to be. we are overstretched in terms of troops and our relationships with governments and populations in the Middle East have never been worse. there have been so many unintended consequences of the Iraq disaster -- which even Colin Powell now describes as a Civil War! -- and just one of which is that Iran is able to be vastly more helpful to Hizbollah in a way that it wasn't able to do before.

what we might be seeing is a nascent regional war between the Sunni and the Shi'a, which has teen totally triggered by Iraq and augmented by an increasingly belligerant Iran. the new closeness between the Iraqi Sunnis and the U.S. (and by assocation and assumption, Israel) might do much to increase Shiite radicalism and pit one against the other, the Shia might be the new infidel.

Removing the only leader who has invaded an attacked four different countries over the past 20 years and used WMD more times than any leader in history is not a foreign policy disaster or mistake, but a foreign policy success. So is the replacement of the regime with a democratic government as well as the building of a new Iraqi military and police force, all in the space of less than 3 years.

The Palestinians had every opportunity to negotiate in the 1990s and they failed too. Its a mistake to automatically assume that a rapid round of negotiations following Bush's entry into office would have solved any problems. The obvious fact is that there has not been a Palestinian leadership that could negotiate a deal that would hold up.


The United States has 130,000 troops in Iraq, but this is a FRACTION of its total ground combat strength. The United States Army, Army National Guard, and US Marine Corp have a total of 88 combat brigades. Of that number, 17 are deployed to Iraq at any one time.


There is nothing that suggest that Iran is somehow able to be more helpful to Hizbollah now simply because Saddam has been removed from power, or that Saddam's removal issomehow causing all of this. If you take some time to study the history of this particular conflict you''ll see that. Iran created Hizbollah when it was locked into the bloodiest war in its history with Saddam back in 1982. If anything, Iranian activity was greater in southern Lebanon back then, than it is now. You had Israely military forces marching all the way to Beirut and fought heavy engagements with the Syrian military. No one called it World War III though, despite the fact that the fighting and level of involvement by Syria and Iran was much heavier then, than it is now in this current conflict.

Once again, just because Huffington claims that Colin Powell says that Iraq is in a Civil War does not mean that is what he actually said or meant. I'd be a very rich man if a had just a dime from everytime someone mistated what Colin Powell said over the past 20 years. Colin Powell went on the Barbara Walters show and set the record on many of those issues including the bogus claim that he was against the Iraq War.

There is NO Sunni vs. Shia war in the region. Syria is a Sunni country and their strongest ally is Shia Iran. Despite all the reports of sectarian violence in Iraq, there is no civil war according to the military who are the experts on the ground and are present in the largest numbers throughout the country. Sunni and Shia's are working together in Iraq and have formed a government and are working to improve the situation there. The Iraqi military has been well integrated with all the major ethnic groups in Iraq.

To claim that sectarian violence, primarily in and around Baghdad is a Civil War throughout Iraq is one thing, to say that it is indeed a major regional war is an extremely inaccurate extrapolation.

 

[anitram]

STING why do you continually insist on referring to "Europeans" when criticizing them for various responses during world crises?

I'm sorry but Europe is made up of dozens of nations, different people following different religions and cultural customs.

You tell me what a peasant in Kosovo or Bulgaria could have done to "prevent" the various infractions you have mentioned, in the 1930s?

Eastern Europe, apart from Russia, had little to no organization or infrastructure at that time, they were poor, sometimes starving, under colonial occupation from various western European nations (Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary come to mind) and so on. Why lump all of them in together?

 

[Irvine511]

setting aside the massive US foreign policy failure in Iraq that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War and that numerous republicans such as Chuck Hegel have compared to a Vietnam-like quagmire and the fact that Iraq is ensconced in a low-level civil war filled with sectarian strife and ethnic cleansing that the current, tenuous Iraqi government and their 50,000 troops deployed to Baghdad alone are powerless to stop all due to the reckless, unilateral invasion combined with the hubris of the Bush regime, it appears as if the U.S. Failure in Iraq is causing a resuffling in the region that even the far right wing editorial pages of the WSJ are noticing:

[q]
Critics of the Bush Administration will surely find a way to blame it for the current crisis, on the theory that this is what happens when you push for change in the Middle East. But the real problem is the growing perception among Arab regimes and terrorist frontmen that the U.S. is so bogged down in Iraq, and so suddenly deferential to the wishes of the “international community,” that it has lost its appetite for serious reform. This has created openings for the kind of terror assaults on American allies we are now witnessing.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008658

[/q]

it's very interesting how the position that the WSJ editors take today is one that “critics” have been arguing for some time. it's also readily apparent that being "bogged down" has nothing to do with troops and everything to do with the ability to effectively deploy those troops so that they can be effective (goodness, if it were numbers alone, China would be the world's dominant military power) and so long as the United States is bogged down in Iraq and refuses to admit the thousands of mistakes it has made, it will not have the moral, political, and military power to deal effectively with the threats it faces. it is quite correct to understand the fact that muslim nations in the middle east believe they have an opportunity to make gains in their respective conflicts, since the US is bogged-down in an ethnic conflict in Iraq that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War.

 

[STING2]

STING why do you continually insist on referring to "Europeans" when criticizing them for various responses during world crises?

I'm sorry but Europe is made up of dozens of nations, different people following different religions and cultural customs.

You tell me what a peasant in Kosovo or Bulgaria could have done to "prevent" the various infractions you have mentioned, in the 1930s?

Eastern Europe, apart from Russia, had little to no organization or infrastructure at that time, they were poor, sometimes starving, under colonial occupation from various western European nations (Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary come to mind) and so on. Why lump all of them in together?

Well, can you think of a single word to refer to multiple countries in that region without it being the word "European". Its a general reference to the major powers in Europe. In addition, every country that was occupied by Germany and even some that were not like Switzerland, have people that were indeed guilty of some form of crime against the Jewish population in Europe, whether it was not protecting them or telling German authorities where they were, or stealing their money. The fact is, the way Jews were treated throughout Europe, even before World War II was appalling, and the response to aid them was often unsatisfactory.

 

[Westport]

among so many foregn policy failures, perhaps one of the biggest -- in light of recent events -- was Bush's disinterest in the need to broker a real Middle East settlement.

Foreign policy failures are defined in decades not years. These groups don't want peace or a settlement... they really want every Israeli OUT or DEAD. And in the meantime, they'll throw out someone like Syrian Ambassador Imad Mustafa who'll appear on every news channel pleading with Isreal and the world to exchange hostages for prisoners ("This is what we've always done in the past....let's do it again"). Cycle and repeat. That is the definition of terrorism. What good has come from this appeasement policy of the past? Exchange hostages for prisoners and then we'll just go back to tormenting and terrorizing you some more?

Hey, and in between, let's all get together for a couple stanzas of Kum Ba Ya.


Bush and Israel have come to realize that time teamed with technology works against them (it works against all of us) and that calling for further negotiations with a now very dead Yasir Arafat would have been nothing short of another big joke...kind of like the peace and settlement Clinton achieved by having him to the White House 13 times. Maybe they just shared a love of cheeseburgers.






Seth Swirsky has some interesting takes on things:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/why_i_left_the_left.html


I used to be a liberal. I was in one of the first "open" classrooms growing up in very progressive Great Neck, New York, in the 1960s. In 1971, when I was 11, I wrote vitriolic letters to President Nixon demanding an end to the Vietnam War. My first vote, in 1980, was for Independent John Anderson, followed by Mondale, Dukakis, and Clinton-Gore. I read Thomas Friedman in the NY Times and tried to "understand" the "root causes" of the "despair" he said the Palestinians felt that drove them to blow up innocent Israelis. I wasn't an overtly political person - I just never veered from the liberal zeitgeist of the community in which I was raised.

But when I was about 27, in the late 1980s, cracks in my liberal worldview began to appear. It started with an uproar from the Left when Tipper Gore had the audacity to suggest a label on certain CDs to warn parents of lyrics that were clearly inappropriate for young people. Her suggestion was simple common sense and I was surprised by the furor it caused from the likes of Frank Zappa (and others) who felt their freedoms were being encroached upon. It was my first introduction into the entitled, selfish and irresponsible thinking I now associate with the Left.

In 1989, I remember questioning whether Democrat David Dinkins was the best choice for Mayor of New York City (where I lived) over Rudy Giuliani. After all, Dinkins' biggest claim to fame was as a city clerk in the Marriage License Bureau while Giuliani, as a United States District Attorney, had just de-fanged the mob. But, racial "healing" was the issue of the day, Dinkins won, and the city went straight downhill. When Giuliani beat Dinkins in a rematch four years later - Surprise! - the crime rate plummeted, tourism boomed, Times Square came alive not with pimps but with commerce. Since 1993, the overwhelmingly liberal electorate in New York City has voted for Republicans for Mayor. Yet, to this day, many of my liberal friends refer to the decisive and effective Giuliani as a Nazi, even as they stroll their children through neighborhoods he cleaned up.

After moving to Los Angeles in the early 90s, I watched from the roof of my apartment building as the city burned after the Rodney King verdicts were handed down. I thought what those four cops did to King was shameful. But I didn't hear an uproar from my friends on the Left when rioters rampaged through the city's streets, stealing, looting, and destroying property in the name of "no justice, no peace." And it was impossible not to notice the hypocrisy when prominent Hollywood liberals, who had hosted anti-NRA fundraisers at their homes a week before the riots were standing in line at shooting ranges the week after it.

I watched carefully as Anita Hill testified during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination hearing, claiming Thomas - once head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - sexually harassed her after she rebuffed his invitations to date him. At the time, I rooted, as did all my friends, for Miss Hill, hoping that her testimony would result in Thomas not getting confirmed. In retrospect, I'm ashamed that I was ever on the "side" of people who so viciously demonized a decent, qualified person like Judge Thomas, whether you agree with his judicial philosophy or not. Condoleezza Rice, during eligibility hearings for both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, also had to deal with rude people like Barbara Boxer, who seemed not to be able to fathom that a black American could embrace conservatism.

I voted for Al Gore in 2000. When he lost, I was disappointed, mostly in my fellow Democrats for thinking that the election had been "stolen" and in having forgotten their American history. The Electoral College has elected three other Presidents in our history: John Quincy Adams in1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in1888. The rush to judgment by the now conspiracy consumed Left put me off. Where, I asked, were all the "disenfranchised" black voters who would have given Gore a victory in Florida? No one could produce a single name. And how exactly were the voting machines in Ohio "rigged" in 2004? I now refer to the Democrats as the Grassy Knoll party.

Still, I approached the 2004 primaries with an open mind. I was still a Democrat, still hoping that leaders like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would emerge, still fantasizing that Democrats could constitute a party of truly progressive social thinkers with tough backbones who would reappear after 9/11.

I was wrong. The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush - and it drove me further away. What Democrat could support Al Gore's '04 choice for President, Howard Dean, when Dean didn't dismiss the suggestion that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks? Or when the second most powerful Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, thought our behavior at the detention center in Guantanamo was equivalent to Bergen Belsen and the Soviet gulags? Or when Senator Kennedy equated the unfortunate but small incident at Abu Ghraib with Saddam's 40-year record of mass murder, rape rooms, and mass graves saying, "Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management"? What Democrat could not applaud the fact that President had, in fact, kept us safe for what's going on 5 years? What Democrat - even those who opposed the decision to go into Iraq - wouldn't applaud the fact that tens of millions of previously brutalized people had the hope of freedom before them?

What made me leave the Left for good and embrace the Right were their respective reactions to 9/11. While The New York Times doubted that we could succeed in Afghanistan because the Soviets in the '80s hadn't, George W. Bush went directly after the Taliban and Al Qaeda and crushed them in short order. Although many on the Left claim to have backed the President's actions, the self-doubt leading up to it, crystallized my view of the Left as weak and terminally lacking in confidence.

I supported President Bush's hard line against the father of modern terrorism, Yasir Arafat, remembering that Bush's predecessor hosted Arafat at the White House 13 times, more often than any other world leader. I applauded Bush's unequivocal support for Israel, which every day faced (and faces) suicide attacks against its people. But I was most disappointed with liberal Jews who don't understand that their very existence is rooted in Israel's existence and that George W. Bush has been the best friend that Israel has ever had. But because they are less Jewish than they are liberal, they didn't reward Bush with their vote in 2004.

Finally, I supported President Bush's decision to oust Saddam and make possible the only democracy (other than Israel) in this crucial region of the Middle East. Post 9/11, we had to figure out a way to lessen the chances of more 9/11s. Democracy is a weapon in that war. If people are free to build businesses, buy homes, send their children to schools, pursue upward mobility, live their lives without fear, read newspapers of every opinion, vote for their leaders, resolve differences with debate and not bombs, they will have no reason to want to harm us.

In response, the Left offered bumper-sticker-type arguments like, Bush lied and thousands died. But Bush never lied. He, like Clinton and Gore and Kerry and the U.N. and the British and French and Israeli intelligence services affirmed that Saddam's WMD were a vital threat - a threat, that post- 9/11, could not stand. An overwhelming number of Democrats voted for the war - but now the Left says they were "scared" into their votes by Bush. What does it say about Democrats if the "dummy" they think Bush is can scare them so easily?

Iraq is the "Normandy" of the War on Terror. The hope, once Iraq and Afghanistan are more stable, is that the nearly 70 million people in Iran will look at those countires (on it's left and right borders) and say: "Why do these people get to vote, send their women to school, and buy Nikes and we don't?" - and then topple their Mullah's dictatorial regime. The President understands the big picture -- that if the U.S. doesn't help to remake that volatile region, we will face a nuclear version of 9/11 within the next two or five or 10 years. He is simply being realistic in his outlook and responsible in his actions. Iraq is succeeding, slowly but surely, but that's not a sexy enough story to lead the news with: the relatively small amount of casualities are. Don't forget, we occupied Germany and Japan for seven years and we still have troops there, more than 60 years after World War II ended.

And what have the Democrats contributed to the war effort since 9/11? Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold has suggested censuring our president; Former President and Vice President Bill Clinton and Al Gore, while visiting foreign countries, have blasted President Bush - acts of unconscionable irresponsibility; Democrat Rep. John Murtha, has invoked a cut-and-run policy in Iraq, supported by Democrat Senate Minority leader Harry Reid and Democrat House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Do they think the Middle East and the World would be safer if we had cut and run, as Murtha's plan wanted us to do? Under that plan, our troops would have been out of Iraq by May 18th and al-Zarqawi wouldn't be dead, but pulling the strings in an Iraqi civil war. With these kinds of ideas and behaviors, I just don't trust Democrats when it comes to our national security.

And so, as any reader of this article can well understand, it became impossible for me to relate to the modern Democrat Party which has tacked way too far to the left and is dominated by elites that don't like or trust the real people that make up most of the country.

Although I haven't always agreed with President Bush, I proudly voted for him in 2004 (the only one of the 4-winning Electoral College - elected Presidents to win re-election). And I now fully understand Ronald Reagan's statement, when he described why he switched from being a liberal to a conservative: "I didn't leave the party - It left me!"

 

[silja]

STING why do you continually insist on referring to "Europeans" when criticizing them for various responses during world crises?

I'm sorry but Europe is made up of dozens of nations, different people following different religions and cultural customs.

You tell me what a peasant in Kosovo or Bulgaria could have done to "prevent" the various infractions you have mentioned, in the 1930s?

Eastern Europe, apart from Russia, had little to no organization or infrastructure at that time, they were poor, sometimes starving, under colonial occupation from various western European nations (Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary come to mind) and so on. Why lump all of them in together?

Not to mention a peasant from Norway, a carpenter from Lichtenstein, or a registered accountant from Ireland. The idea of Europe acting in unison was completely unthinkable 60 years ago and the response to the rise of Nazi-Germany was predictably not coordinated in the least. STING2, lay the blame where it belongs rather than tossing out ‘European’ as the root of all evil.

 

[STING2]

setting aside the massive US foreign policy failure in Iraq that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War and that numerous republicans such as Chuck Hegel have compared to a Vietnam-like quagmire and the fact that Iraq is ensconced in a low-level civil war filled with sectarian strife and ethnic cleansing that the current, tenuous Iraqi government and their 50,000 troops deployed to Baghdad alone are powerless to stop all due to the reckless, unilateral invasion combined with the hubris of the Bush regime, it appears as if the U.S. Failure in Iraq is causing a resuffling in the region that even the far right wing editorial pages of the WSJ are noticing:

[q]
Critics of the Bush Administration will surely find a way to blame it for the current crisis, on the theory that this is what happens when you push for change in the Middle East. But the real problem is the growing perception among Arab regimes and terrorist frontmen that the U.S. is so bogged down in Iraq, and so suddenly deferential to the wishes of the “international community,” that it has lost its appetite for serious reform. This has created openings for the kind of terror assaults on American allies we are now witnessing.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008658

[/q]

it's very interesting how the position that the WSJ editors take today is one that “critics” have been arguing for some time. it's also readily apparent that being "bogged down" has nothing to do with troops and everything to do with the ability to effectively deploy those troops so that they can be effective (goodness, if it were numbers alone, China would be the world's dominant military power) and so long as the United States is bogged down in Iraq and refuses to admit the thousands of mistakes it has made, it will not have the moral, political, and military power to deal effectively with the threats it faces. it is quite correct to understand the fact that muslim nations in the middle east believe they have an opportunity to make gains in their respective conflicts, since the US is bogged-down in an ethnic conflict in Iraq that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War.

Do you have any other sources that actually quote Colin Powell as saying that the situation throughout Iraq is a Civil War besides a posting on a Huffington website? Chuck Hagal by the way is not your average Republican and typically always a critic of any military action. Similar to your declarations of gloom and doom, he predicted the United States should stop its military action in Kosovo because the Russians were ready and capable of starting World War III over it. Chuck Hagel is not exactly the person you look to find objective and rational commentary on a foreign policy crises.

Multiple countries participated in the invasion of Iraq which was approved by UN Security Council Resolution 1441 after which UN Security Council REsolution 1483 approved the occupation. There was nothing unilateral about the invasion and here are the countries that are currently on the ground in Iraq with troops:


1 United Kingdom
2 South Korea
3 Italy
4 Poland
5 Ukraine
6 Georgia
7 Romania
8 Japan
9 Australia
10 Denmark
11 Bulgaria
12 El Salvador
13 Azerbaijan
14 Latvia
15 Mongolia
16 Lithuania
17 Albania
18 Slovakia
19 Czech Republic
20 Armenia
21 Bosnia & Herzegovina
22 Macedonia
23 Estonia
24 Kazakhstan
25 Norway
26 Netherlands


How many coalitions with troops on the ground in a single country can you name that had as many countries involved as the current one in Iraq does?


If the US "failed" in Iraq, why is Saddam's regime, the most threatening and destructive in the regions history, no longer in power? If the US "failed" in Iraq, how was it able to remove the regime and successfully replace it with a democratic grovernment despite the fact that liberals claimed the elections would not even be possible?

The mere presense of sectarian violence in Iraq does not make this or any policy a failure. This is a situation that takes time, and its absurd to be running around declaring failure when serious work towards stabilizing and developing Iraq continues after the recent success's of regime removal and political development.



The United States can effectively deploy ALL of its 88 brigades to any region of the planet! Its had the capability to do this since World War II. Of the total 88 ground combat Brigades that the United States has, 17 are deployed in Iraq.

The idea that the United States can't do anything else but be engaged in Iraq is false, and anyone who caculates that is the case does so at their own peril. The comments that the United States military is overstretched are not new. There were similar comments made in the late 1990s when the United States only had 4 brigades deployed in the Balkans. This talk is total rubbish and has no basis in fact.

Explain to everyone what Iran, Syria, Hizbellah, Humas, are currently doing that they have NEVER done before in regards to the current crises in Israel and South Lebanon. You might as well claim that the conflict in Iraq and the Bush administration is the cause of every problem the world currently experiences today.


Any serious study of conflict in the middle east over the past three decades will help to dispel all of this alarmist rhetoric as well as this wild linkage between events and players.

 

[STING2]

Not to mention a peasant from Norway, a carpenter from Lichtenstein, or a registered accountant from Ireland. The idea of Europe acting in unison was completely unthinkable 60 years ago and the response to the rise of Nazi-Germany was predictably not coordinated in the least. STING2, lay the blame where it belongs rather than tossing out ‘European’ as the root to all evil.

Virtually every country in Europe had elements that were mistreating their Jewish populations even before the 1930s. I don't find those countries attempts, if there were any, to prevent the abuse of their Jewish populations before the 1930s to have been satisfactory. Their failure to enforce the treaty that ended World War I helped to create Nazi Germany which launched the mass slaughter of the Jewish population in Europe. There were 10 million Jews in Europe at the time. 6 million died in a conflict that did not have to happen. Europe failed in its response to Germany as well as protecting one of its major ethnic groups. In light of what happened, their policies toward the state of Israel are surprising.

 

[Irvine511]

[q]“I…y’know…I think I would answer that by telling you I don’t think we’re losing.” ~ Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/07/17/i-dont-think-were-losing/

[/q]



i'm glad you're far more confident than the Army Chief of Staff.

 

[Irvine511]

Multiple countries participated in the invasion of Iraq which was approved by UN Security Council Resolution 1441 after which UN Security Council REsolution 1483 approved the occupation. There was nothing unilateral about the invasion and here are the countries that are currently on the ground in Iraq with troops:


1 United Kingdom
2 South Korea
3 Italy
4 Poland
5 Ukraine
6 Georgia
7 Romania
8 Japan
9 Australia
10 Denmark
11 Bulgaria
12 El Salvador
13 Azerbaijan
14 Latvia
15 Mongolia
16 Lithuania
17 Albania
18 Slovakia
19 Czech Republic
20 Armenia
21 Bosnia & Herzegovina
22 Macedonia
23 Estonia
24 Kazakhstan
25 Norway
26 Netherlands

How many coalitions with troops on the ground in a single country can you name that had as many countries involved as the current one in Iraq does?

it sounds nice until you look at how many troops are actually there (4 from the Netherlands, for example).

[q]Iraq Coalition Troops
Non-US Forces in Iraq - 16 August 2005
The size and capabilities of the Coalition forces involved in operations in Iraq has been a subject of much debate, confusion, and at times exageration. As of July 1, 2005, there were 26 non-U.S. military forces participating in the coalition and contributing to the ongoing stability operations throughout Iraq. These countries were: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

Countries taking part in the training of Iraqi Security Forces as part of the NATO Training Mission are not being counted as part of the Coalition

The Kingdom of Tonga's contingent of 40+ troops returned home on December 17, 2004. Hungary completely pulled its troops out of Iraq by December 22, 2004. Portugal withdrew its contingent of policemen after having been in Iraq for 15 months in February 2005. Moldova withdrew its contingent of 12 in February 2005. Fiji initially deployed 150 troops to Iraq, and later an additioanl 90, but they are there under UN banner (UNAMI) and are therefore not be counted in the coalition. Singapore deployed a ship to the Persian Gulf on Nov. 27, which returned home in March 2005 but since the country does not actually contribute troops on the ground in Iraq, it was not included in the coalition count. Armenia deployed 46 troops to Iraq in mid-January 2005. A new arrival to the list is Bosnia and Herzegovina which deployed an EOD platoon to Iraq in June 2005.

Countries which had troops in or supported operations in Iraq at one point but have pulled out since: Nicaragua (Feb. 2004); Spain (late-Apr. 2004); Dominican Republic (early-May 2004); Honduras (late-May 2004); Philippines (~Jul. 19, 2004); Thailand (late-Aug. 2004); New Zealand (late Sep. 2004); Tonga (mid-Dec. 2004) Hungary (end Dec. 2004); Portugal (mid-Feb. 2005); Moldova (Feb. 2005);

Countries planning to withdraw from Iraq: Poland (starting Jan.05 and completed by end.05(?)); Bulgaria (end of 2005, depending on circumstances); Ukraine (entire contingent, in stages until ~ Oct. 2005)

Countries which have reduced or are planning to reduce their troop commitment: Ukraine (-200 during Fall04 rotation); Moldova (reduced contingent to 12 around mid-2004); Norway (reduced from ~150 to 10 late-Jun.04, early Jul.04); Bulgaria (-50, Dec.04); Poland (-700, Feb.05); Italy (-300 expeted in Sept. 05(decrease appearently began in mid-Aug. 05)); Netherlands (reduced from ~1,345 to 4; ~Mar. 2005)

[/q]



the only accurate comparison would be 1991, and these are the fact there:

[q]The Allied coalition consisted of 34 countries, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, The United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The U.S. had more than 500,000 troops in the Persian Gulf War, while the non-U.S. coalition forces equaled roughly 160,000, or 24 percent, of all forces. Here are some details about the forces in the Gulf:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/facts/gulfwar/

[/q]


as for percentage of forces, that's also more helpful than number of countries:

d[q]ata for mid-June 2005 show that the US accounted for 85.4 percent of coalition troops. The United Kingdom was second, with 5.1 percent. South Korea, Italy and Poland rounded out the top five coalition countries.
The remaining 22 coalition countries account for 4.24 percent of coalition forces.

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/wariniraq/a/troops_june05.htm

[/q]



overthrowing Hussein and installing a democratic government that is now ensconced in a low-level sectarian conflict that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War was always going to be more difficult than simply removing Saddam from Kuwait. why would we actually decrease the number of coalition partners and why are there no Muslim or Arab troops involved in the occupation of an Arab country?

 

[STING2]

it sounds nice until you look at how many troops are actually there (4 from the Netherlands, for example).




the only accurate comparison would be 1991, and these are the fact there:




overthrowing Hussein and installing a democratic government that is now ensconced in a low-level sectarian conflict that even Colin Powell describes as a Civil War was always going to be more difficult than simply removing Saddam from Kuwait. why would we actually decrease the number of coalition partners and why are there no Muslim or Arab troops involved in the occupation of an Arab country?

Do you any sources besides a post on a Huffington board that actually qoute Colin Powell as saying that Iraq is in a full scale Civil War?

The reason I posted the countries was to show that this operation is far from being a unilateral one as you so often claim.


Saddam had over 1 million troops back in 1991 as well as 6,000 main battle tanks, 6,000 armored vehicles, 5,000 artillery pieces, and over 800 combat aircraft. The size of Saddam's forces at the time required a large force to insure it was defeated as quickly as possible. Whats more, the comparison between numbers of troops in the total force between 1991 and 2003 is inaccurate because greater numbers of support personal were required back in 1991 do to differences in the technology and structure of the forces back then. Todays forces are able to operate with smaller man power totals in their logistical and support area's do to changes in technology and the structure of those area's of the force.

In terms of actual numbers of combat brigades, the 1991 force is only about twice the size of the current force in Iraq. The nature of the threat is very different from fighting a large military force like what Saddam had. Mass numbers of troops in any particular area does not in of itself kill an insurgency. Defeating any insurgency involves many other non-military approaches and takes a considerable amount of time.

The United States never decreased or increased the number of coalition partners for each operation. Those who wanted to actively participate volunteered. If you include the number of countries participating in operation Iraqi freedom at its peak, its actually larger in terms of numbers of countries than the 1991 Gulf War coalition was.


In any event, the non-US military element is FAR MORE ACTIVE in the conflict in Iraq than the non-US element was in the 1991 Gulf War despite the fact that the non-US element was slightly larger as a percentage of the total force in 1991.

The bulk of non-US troops during the 1991 Gulf War were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. These forces did very little at all in the conflict. They did not enter Iraq at all and went into Kuwait a few miles after the US Marine Corp had already cleared Iraqi defense positions. The Syrian division that was deployed actually had so many of its tanks and other armored personal carries break down that it had to stop after 8 kilometers, it saw no fighting either. Some Saudi forces saw fighting at Kafji before the ground offensive, but that was it. The Kuwaiti force led the way into Kuwait City after it was insured the the Iraqi military had completely withdrawn from the city. The French troops that were deployed did little fighting and covered part of the flank of the US VII Corp which did the end around on Saddam's forces in Kuwait.

The point is that the Arab forces were there for political reasons but were not necessary for the actual military operation and did not really contribute to it. The US and British military like in so many other conflicts did nearly all the fighting. Coalition forces deployed to Iraq have seen far more fighting and have played a much more important role than non-US forces participating in the first Gulf War.

It would be a HUGE mistake to have Iraq's neighbors deploy troops inside the country. This would create stress and conflict among the ethnic groups in Iraq as opposed to decreasing it. Iraqi's would be far more distrussful of the deployment of a neighboring countries troops on its territory for obvious reasons. The only potential Arab State with forces that could be sent, without that problem, would be Egypt and they declined to participate. Whats more, the only way Egypt could deploy to the region is through transport from the US military.


In terms of percentages of force and number of countries, there is not much difference between the 1991 Gulf War force and the coalition in Iraq. You can't use neighboring Arab or other countries in Iraq because that could threaten and complicate the delicate political process in the country following the removal of Saddam's regime. These countries did not enter Iraq in 1991 either.

 

[STING2]

[q]“I…y’know…I think I would answer that by telling you I don’t think we’re losing.” ~ Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/07/17/i-dont-think-were-losing/

[/q]



i'm glad you're far more confident than the Army Chief of Staff.

I'm happy you continue to read so much into a single statement taken out of its context. I look forward to the next comment claiming that x city has collapsed. Cato institute should be renamed the institute of isolationism.

 

[anitram]

I don't find those countries attempts, if there were any, to prevent the abuse of their Jewish populations before the 1930s to have been satisfactory.

Yeah, well I don't think they find your various states attempts to prevent the abuse of African slaves to be satisfactory either. Or the abuse inflicted on the Native American populations either, for that matter.

 

[Irvine511]

I'm happy you continue to read so much into a single statement taken out of its context. I look forward to the next comment claiming that x city has collapsed. Cato institute should be renamed the institute of isolationism.

if that's the best the Army Chief of Staff can do, then we are actually worse off than i thought.

 

[Irvine511]

Do you any sources besides a post on a Huffington board that actually qoute Colin Powell as saying that Iraq is in a full scale Civil War?

why do i need any more? he said it, it must be true -- this is the principle you operate under.

but if you must know, he's warned many, many times that Iraq has the potential to become a Civil War, like when he was on Leno in late February -- he believed it would be premature, at the moment, to say that a civil war has already erupted in Iraq, but that it could easily break out into civil war if the fractions don't calm down. i think we can safely assume that Maliki's government has been so ineffectual, that 50,000 Iraqi troops were unable to make any sort of dent in the sectarian violence that's eating through Baghdad, that the various factions have not calmed down and we are now in the midst of a Civil War, which isn't determined by sheer numbers of dead but by a conflict having the characteristics of an internal war between two factions within a country. interem prime minister Iyad Allawi and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, have called the situation an Iraqi civil war. and if it's not civil war, then it must be described, at best, as anarchy.

his confidence, swaggar, and braggadoccio is nowhere near yours.

The reason I posted the countries was to show that this operation is far from being a unilateral one as you so often claim.

and i continue to be correct (just as everyone on this board is correct regarding 1441, and 1486, and you are incorrect) -- over 85% of this has been done by the United States, and if we take out the UK, South Korea, Italy and Poland, the only meaningful coalition partners, everyone else on your list comprises less than 4.5% of the coalition.

this is not meaningful in any sense of the word.

Saddam had over 1 million troops back in 1991 as well as 6,000 main battle tanks, 6,000 armored vehicles, 5,000 artillery pieces, and over 800 combat aircraft. The size of Saddam's forces at the time required a large force to insure it was defeated as quickly as possible. Whats more, the comparison between numbers of troops in the total force between 1991 and 2003 is inaccurate because greater numbers of support personal were required back in 1991 do to differences in the technology and structure of the forces back then. Todays forces are able to operate with smaller man power totals in their logistical and support area's do to changes in technology and the structure of those area's of the force.

In terms of actual numbers of combat brigades, the 1991 force is only about twice the size of the current force in Iraq. The nature of the threat is very different from fighting a large military force like what Saddam had. Mass numbers of troops in any particular area does not in of itself kill an insurgency. Defeating any insurgency involves many other non-military approaches and takes a considerable amount of time.

The United States never decreased or increased the number of coalition partners for each operation. Those who wanted to actively participate volunteered. If you include the number of countries participating in operation Iraqi freedom at its peak, its actually larger in terms of numbers of countries than the 1991 Gulf War coalition was.


In any event, the non-US military element is FAR MORE ACTIVE in the conflict in Iraq than the non-US element was in the 1991 Gulf War despite the fact that the non-US element was slightly larger as a percentage of the total force in 1991.

The bulk of non-US troops during the 1991 Gulf War were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. These forces did very little at all in the conflict. They did not enter Iraq at all and went into Kuwait a few miles after the US Marine Corp had already cleared Iraqi defense positions. The Syrian division that was deployed actually had so many of its tanks and other armored personal carries break down that it had to stop after 8 kilometers, it saw no fighting either. Some Saudi forces saw fighting at Kafji before the ground offensive, but that was it. The Kuwaiti force led the way into Kuwait City after it was insured the the Iraqi military had completely withdrawn from the city. The French troops that were deployed did little fighting and covered part of the flank of the US VII Corp which did the end around on Saddam's forces in Kuwait.

The point is that the Arab forces were there for political reasons but were not necessary for the actual military operation and did not really contribute to it. The US and British military like in so many other conflicts did nearly all the fighting. Coalition forces deployed to Iraq have seen far more fighting and have played a much more important role than non-US forces participating in the first Gulf War.

It would be a HUGE mistake to have Iraq's neighbors deploy troops inside the country. This would create stress and conflict among the ethnic groups in Iraq as opposed to decreasing it. Iraqi's would be far more distrussful of the deployment of a neighboring countries troops on its territory for obvious reasons. The only potential Arab State with forces that could be sent, without that problem, would be Egypt and they declined to participate. Whats more, the only way Egypt could deploy to the region is through transport from the US military.


In terms of percentages of force and number of countries, there is not much difference between the 1991 Gulf War force and the coalition in Iraq. You can't use neighboring Arab or other countries in Iraq because that could threaten and complicate the delicate political process in the country following the removal of Saddam's regime. These countries did not enter Iraq in 1991 either.

and this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we were 100% unprepared to occupy an Arab nation.

 

[deep]

This man's actions are killing hundreds of innocent people.

Can he be stopped?

 

[Justin24]

Can The man behind Hezobollah be stopped. His group has killed many. So has Hamas. Don't pick sides.

 

[Westport]

Can Iran be stopped?

 

[Justin24]

Yes. With a revolution by the people and help from wester and Arab countries if they threaten others with there "Nuclear Weapons."