War on Terror is Unwinnable

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Salome said:
hey, I was in favour of the war against Iraq back then
and I still am
so if you want to label my ignorance then at least pick something that I can agree with

the war in Iraq itself was partly a result of backing Iraq against Iran
so don't act as if we haven't replaced evil by evil before

I have good hopes for Iraq
but I don't think terrorism was dealt too heavy a blow when Sadam was removed

Iraq was a client state of the SOVIET UNION during the Iran/Iraq war. The United States did not want to see Iraq overrun by Iran because of the potential threat it would pose to the Persian Gulf region. But the amount of aid it sent to Iraq was tiny, and would not even rank in the top 10. The United States did not send or sell any weapons to Iraq during the war although it did send 2,000 TOW I missiles to Iraq's enemy Iran in the arms for hostages deal.

Saddam's military capability, both in equipment, training and doctrine was almost completely the result of the Soviet Union. I have the statistics, weapon systems and transfers to prove it and it is a long list.
 
Klaus said:
Salome

And don't forget that we created the Iran monster too in our fight against communism (and this wasn't even the most dangerous monster we created when we thought we fought for good)

The United States did not create Saddam or his military capability. Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union pure and simple. One does not need to look further than the Soviet Union to find where Iraq received the majority of its military capability. It is true that Iran was a client state of the United States, but it was far weaker in raw military strenth and capability than the Soviet Union's Iraq. What turned Iran into a monster were the radical muslims in the country.
 
cydewaze said:

Interesting. So it's now the US's job to invade every country with a leader it deems evil, and replace it's leader with a government we install? Not mentioning, of course, that the original reason for the invasion wasn't even about freeing the people.



That's assuming we ever allow them to elect their own leaders, and chance that they might elect someone we don't like.



It's already failed, so the question is moot.

Its the US job to help protect national and global security from those that would harm it.

The United States military already follows the many of the orders of the interim Iraqi government. Elections are going to be in January. Economic and political development takes time. In regards to elections, Iraq is moving at a much faster pace than Germany or Japan ever did.

Already failed? Most people in Iraq according to the latest polls say their life now is better than it was under Saddam. Billions of dollars have been spent rebuilding much of the country. US military personal including my friends always discuss the great progress they are making.

If you think its failed, I'm afraid you misunderstand the scale of the task involved and what actually constitutes success or failure based on that.
 
Originally posted by STING2 Its the US job to help protect national and global security from those that would harm it.
My point was, based on the precedent we've set in Iraq, the US can now invade just about any country in the middle east, or whoever else it decides it doesn't like.



Originally posted by STING2 Already failed? Most people in Iraq according to the latest polls say their life now is better than it was under Saddam. Billions of dollars have been spent rebuilding much of the country. US military personal including my friends always discuss the great progress they are making.
But that wasn't the question. My answer was (and always will be) based on the original reasons for the invasion - the WMD and the ties to Al Queda. We've not found either, so the original mission is a failure.



Originally posted by STING2 If you think its failed, I'm afraid you misunderstand the scale of the task involved and what actually constitutes success or failure based on that.
Not at all. I simple won't be duped. If I set out to build a boat, and I come back with a piece of lawn furniture, my mission to build a boat has failed, no matter how nice the piece of lawn furniture turns out.
 
STING2 said:


The US military and coalition forces are absolutely necessary in the war on terrorism


Right, but they are not the key to success.
For example:
military is necessary for foreign policy but the diplomats are the key to success.

Japan wanted to fight to the last man for their dictator. It was not a country that was on the verge of democracy at the start of the World War II. It was a very different culture and the United States enforced a change. The constitution Japan uses today was written by the United States.

Even before the Worldwar they had a different mindset than the arab people today.
They were willing to learn from others just to become the best. Foreign wasn't a synonyme for evil anymore.
This made it possible to go that step to democracy and also to modern industry. With this in mind it's just logical that they copy the good things (and make them even better).

But how much more difficult is it to convince people in the arab world that our system (democracy) is the better one when large parts of the population look at the western world and see "the big satan"? It's not like in the former days that they don't know us.
Look at the 9/11 hijackers, they lived for a long time in our world and they still were convinced that destroying this system is worth dying for!

STING2 said:


The United States did not create Saddam or his military capability. Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union pure and simple. One does not need to look further than the

The US supported Saddam because their puppet the Iraq was out of control, the US also inspired Bin Laden in the idea of a holy war against russia and because of that set the roots for al-quaida.

What turned the arab world into a monster? The US, the USSR or religous fanatics?
The dangerous combination of all of them.
While fighting for good we didn't recognize that we are not trustworthy if we win the games with "dirt".
 
The US did not inspire Bin Laden to Jihad, that was done by Bin Laden himself using the substantial ammount of money a young man of his position had access too. Bin Laden was one of the arab afghans who went there in the 80's to fight the Soviet Union, he used Saudi money. He was not a creation of the US, he would have continued the fight with or without and support and he did so. The US backed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan broadly, but the operational support was not directed to these groups that already had access to funding.

Saddam Hussein was most certainly not a US puppet. He was a Soviet backed dictator whom was given very minor support during the Iraq/Iran war after it had started, he did not do bidding for the US in the region, he was only taken off the list of terror sponsering states for a relatively brief period in the 1980's so as to allow

The Arab world was turned into a monster by two things. Oil and Religion - if it were not for the various schools of thought about Islam being the one true faith and having to be spread all across the globe, violently if neccisary combined with the oil wealth created in the 20th Century it would not be an issue. As a rule of thumb during the Cold War the Arab world was backed by the Soviet Union while it was Israel that recieved US support. Europeans however were in bed with the Arabs especially the French who sold Saddam fighter planes, weapon systems and nuclear power plants (Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam its a "shocking" thing but Chirac walking Saddam through a nuclear plant is alright!), German companies sold him chemical and biological weapon synthesising equipment and the Soviet Union sold him tanks, guns, rockets, biological and chemical weapons and pretty much everything else in his arsenel.

Democracy is only one side of the coin, without liberty nobody rights are guaranteed.
 
Last edited:
cydewaze said:

My point was, based on the precedent we've set in Iraq, the US can now invade just about any country in the middle east, or whoever else it decides it doesn't like.




But that wasn't the question. My answer was (and always will be) based on the original reasons for the invasion - the WMD and the ties to Al Queda. We've not found either, so the original mission is a failure.




Not at all. I simple won't be duped. If I set out to build a boat, and I come back with a piece of lawn furniture, my mission to build a boat has failed, no matter how nice the piece of lawn furniture turns out.

The United States went to war to remove Saddam because he failed to VERIFIABLY DISARM of all WMD per the 1991 UN Gulf War Ceacefire and multiple UN resolutions. Saddam failed to account for, over 1,000 liters of Anthrax, hundreds of pounds of mustard gas, hundreds of pounds of sarin gas, over 20,000 bio/chem capable shells just to name a few things. Saddam was in violation of 17 UN RESOLUTIONS passed under Chapter VII rules of the United Nations.

Saddam's failure to verifiably disarm of all WMD made the invasion to remove him a necessity. The goal of the war was to insure that SADDAM's regime was disarmed of all WMD and in that goal the war has been a 100% success!

It is not surprising that the WMD has not been found yet or will ever be found as the ability to conceal and hide such material far exceeds the ability to detect it. No matter though, because the regime as been destroyed and disarmed, regardless of where the WMD is and what condition it is in.

The United States and other coalition countries are still helping Iraqi's build a new country. How long did it take to build democracy and society in Germany and Japan after World War II? Your analogy fails because no one has come back saying their done yet. It does appreciate the scale of the task involved. Its a bit like if you were changing a tire and I came up to you after 10 seconds and told you, you failed to accomplish the job of changing the tire.
 
Flying FuManchu said:
STING2... what polls say people think life is better? I know someone who will be stationed in Samarra and someone in Falluja. From what I understand, life there is scary as hell as a marine or US soldier...

ABC news along with other organization conducted the largest nationwide survey in Iraq of Iraqi citizens back in the spring of 2004. The results are somewhere in the WAR forum. A Majority of Iraqi's say life is better now than it was before the war.

Falluja and Samarra are definitely sore spots, but they are far from being representive of the entire country. The Sunni Triangle represents a small percentage of the country. I have friends there in the Marines, currently on the ground.

There is indeed a lot of unfinished work in Falluja. With the Iraqi military and police force growing quickly now, it is hoped they will go in to finally flush out the terrorist there. It is felt this would be more acceptable to the Iraqi population because the fighting is likely to be much more intense than anything seen in Najaf.
 
Klaus said:


Right, but they are not the key to success.
For example:
military is necessary for foreign policy but the diplomats are the key to success.



Even before the Worldwar they had a different mindset than the arab people today.
They were willing to learn from others just to become the best. Foreign wasn't a synonyme for evil anymore.
This made it possible to go that step to democracy and also to modern industry. With this in mind it's just logical that they copy the good things (and make them even better).

But how much more difficult is it to convince people in the arab world that our system (democracy) is the better one when large parts of the population look at the western world and see "the big satan"? It's not like in the former days that they don't know us.
Look at the 9/11 hijackers, they lived for a long time in our world and they still were convinced that destroying this system is worth dying for!



The US supported Saddam because their puppet the Iraq was out of control, the US also inspired Bin Laden in the idea of a holy war against russia and because of that set the roots for al-quaida.

What turned the arab world into a monster? The US, the USSR or religous fanatics?
The dangerous combination of all of them.
While fighting for good we didn't recognize that we are not trustworthy if we win the games with "dirt".

I question that the mindset in Japan was really significantly different than in much of the Arab world today. Japanese people were far more fierce and willing to take certain measures as a people to fight for their dictatorship. They were willing to committ suicide on a mass scale, even down at the civilian level. Just look at what happened in Okinawa. Over the past 20 years, Japanese military personal have been found in the Jungles of South East Asia and the Pacific still holding out for the Emporer. I don't see that level of committment in the Arab world to a one single cause. Japan had this though and the United States changed it. I would say the Arab world of 2002 has had far greater exposure to the west than the Japan of the 1940s.

The United States sent minor support to Saddam because they did not want to see the Iranians overrun Iraq and then push into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The support though was so minor that its questionable whether it actually had any impact on the war at all. The Soviet Union was doing all the arming and supplying.

Bin Ladin was inspired to go to Afghanistan by his own beliefs and play a minor role if any during the war there.

The Arab world is not a monster. Certain people in the Arab world are monsters and they have benefited from the heavy supply of weapons from the Soviet Union. Name the conflict and just look at what types of weapons the arab military's are armed with.

If you want a clear example of the United States arming and supplying a monster, look no further than the largest single aid program in the history of the human race, the lend-lease supply program of World War II for Stalins Soviet Union. But the fact is, that program helped save the Soviet Union and the world from the Axis powers. Dispite the distaste in helping someone like Stalin, it was necessary to win the war.
 
Klaus said:
A_Wanderer

just a few buzzwords: 1980, US secret services, Prince Turki al-Faisal, 285.000.000 $ per year from the US, Mudschahidin "freedom fighters" against the soviets

285 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Most of the Mujahdeen freedom fighters went on to form the Northern Alliance who were are allies against the Taliban in 2001.
 
STING2 said:


I question that the mindset in Japan was really significantly different than in much of the Arab world today.

The connecting logic i can see in japan is their will to be superior and they were also willing in the times of their dictator to get western knowhow.
Since they found out that democracy works better it was their will to become a democracy to improve, when they compared their economy to the us and the russian economy they could see that free market was the superior thing.

But you're right, Japanese people loved their country much more and because of that also their leader than anything we can see in the arab world.
We can see that logic in europe and the US too - if our country is attacked we rally behind our leaders no matter if we supported them before.

The United States sent minor support to Saddam because they did not want to see the Iranians overrun Iraq and then push into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The support though was so minor that its questionable whether it actually had any impact on the war at all.

Well i wouldn't call this minor also the USSR sent more conventional weapons to Iraq there was strong support of the western world (not only US) to stop the evil commis from their march to the oilfields.
Saddam played his West vs. East game pretty good and got support from all sides.

Bin Ladin was inspired to go to Afghanistan by his own beliefs and play a minor role if any during the war there.

It is reported that Bin Ladin wasn't verry religious when he was young. Later he became religious but not political. We (the western world) thought we could instrumentalize this man and use him as a weapon against communism.

The Arab world is not a monster. Certain people in the Arab world are monsters

Yes, i agree with you here, sorry for that sentence

and they have benefited from the heavy supply of weapons from the Soviet Union.

let's say they benefited from the cold war.

Name the conflict and just look at what types of weapons the arab military's are armed with.
Following that logic Stalin was never supported by the US.

There are tons of documents which show us that there was support of these men but:
I don't think that the US government supported any of the men we mentioned because they love to support dictators but because of rational reasons.
And you're not able to see how it ends.
There were hundreds of dictators supported either by USSR or the US in the cold war just for strategic reasons.
After the fall of the communist block there's some of this mess left, some of them are gladly history.
 
STING2 said:
Your analogy fails because no one has come back saying their done yet.
As does yours because one cannot prove a negative.


STING2 said:
It does appreciate the scale of the task involved. Its a bit like if you were changing a tire and I came up to you after 10 seconds and told you, you failed to accomplish the job of changing the tire.
But what happened to the "Saddam is 45 minutes away from hitting the US with a WMD" ?

A closer analogy would be for someone to say, "You have to be at the bus station in 10 minutes, otherwise you'll miss the bus!" and when you get to the bus station you find out the bus stopped running 10 years ago.

You call the people who rushed you to the bus station, and they say, "Just wait. One might still come along".
 
Last edited:
Sting, I hesitate to trust a poll that was taken in the spring of this year. It's months old. I don't know how they polled people in Iraq in the first place, but public opinion is a very fickle thing. This poll, at the very least, needs to be updated. If the poll shows that the Iraqi people are happy *now*, OK, but this poll is obsolete.
 
verte76 said:
Sting, I hesitate to trust a poll that was taken in the spring of this year. It's months old. I don't know how they polled people in Iraq in the first place, but public opinion is a very fickle thing. This poll, at the very least, needs to be updated. If the poll shows that the Iraqi people are happy *now*, OK, but this poll is obsolete.


The most recent poll of the Iraqi Soccer heros, (who were tortured by Uday) btw.



"We will go home and fight the occupiers.'

or to borrow a line from the classy "Honorable Dick Cheney"

Go **** yourself.
 
Last edited:
I think you do more harm than good if you keep changing course based on polls, focus groups and the like. You end up leading to stay in office.
 
cydewaze said:

As does yours because one cannot prove a negative.



But what happened to the "Saddam is 45 minutes away from hitting the US with a WMD" ?

A closer analogy would be for someone to say, "You have to be at the bus station in 10 minutes, otherwise you'll miss the bus!" and when you get to the bus station you find out the bus stopped running 10 years ago.

You call the people who rushed you to the bus station, and they say, "Just wait. One might still come along".

Instead of coming up with some vague analogy to explain failure in the case of Iraq, come up with a factual historical example to demonstrate how Iraq is a failure. As I have said before, in terms of certain political and economic development criteria, Iraq is ahead of where Germany and Japan were at this particular point.

No one ever stated Saddam was 45 minutes away from hitting the US mainland with WMD. It is a fact that though that within 45 minutes, any Iraqi division could fire multiple artillery shells and ballistic missiles potentially filled with WMD across the border into neighboring countries causing heavy damage.
 
Bush doesn't have any arguments left. Every domestic number coming out of this admin f:censored:g sucks, except home building.

My husband & I are a Home Construction Co, so this little run to low interest rates have been profitable, except that our investments of any profit are also in the LOOOOWWWSS/
 
Scarletwine said:
Bush doesn't have any arguments left. Every domestic number coming out of this admin f:censored:g sucks, except home building.

My husband & I are a Home Construction Co, so this little run to low interest rates have been profitable, except that our investments of any profit are also in the LOOOOWWWSS/

How about 5.4% unemployment rate and a 4.8% GDP growth rate. These numbers are better than when Clinton got re-elected in 1996. These are the numbers the economist use to determine the strength of the economy.
 
Klaus said:


The connecting logic i can see in japan is their will to be superior and they were also willing in the times of their dictator to get western knowhow.
Since they found out that democracy works better it was their will to become a democracy to improve, when they compared their economy to the us and the russian economy they could see that free market was the superior thing.

But you're right, Japanese people loved their country much more and because of that also their leader than anything we can see in the arab world.
We can see that logic in europe and the US too - if our country is attacked we rally behind our leaders no matter if we supported them before.



Well i wouldn't call this minor also the USSR sent more conventional weapons to Iraq there was strong support of the western world (not only US) to stop the evil commis from their march to the oilfields.
Saddam played his West vs. East game pretty good and got support from all sides.



It is reported that Bin Ladin wasn't verry religious when he was young. Later he became religious but not political. We (the western world) thought we could instrumentalize this man and use him as a weapon against communism.



Yes, i agree with you here, sorry for that sentence



let's say they benefited from the cold war.


Following that logic Stalin was never supported by the US.

There are tons of documents which show us that there was support of these men but:
I don't think that the US government supported any of the men we mentioned because they love to support dictators but because of rational reasons.
And you're not able to see how it ends.
There were hundreds of dictators supported either by USSR or the US in the cold war just for strategic reasons.
After the fall of the communist block there's some of this mess left, some of them are gladly history.


The United States military wrote Japan's constitution which they still use today. It rebuilt Japan. These facts alone speak for themselves. The fact is, political systems can be brought in and set up by foreigners whether its democracy or something else and be enormously successful with or without the initial support of the population.

By the way, Russia did not have a free market economy until the 1990s, so Japan would not be looking at Russia for that example. Japan's level of intensity in fighting for their dictatorship has almost no parallel in the 20th century.

SADDAM got virtually all of his support from the SOVIET UNION. I can post the weapon's tables as I have before in hear on all the weapon systems that Iraq had from the Soviet Union versus the limited number of weapon systems from other countries. In addition, the amount of money that was sent to Iraq during that time was in excess of 100 BILLION. The United States portion of that figure is only 5 Billion. A tiny fraction of the total amount. The United States never sent any weapon systems to Iraq. It did how ever send TOW I missiles to Iran for the arms for hostages deal. Saddam did not have to play an east or west game. His supporter was the Soviet Union. There were over 1,000 Soviet troops in the country during the entire war training the Iraqi military!

Bin Ladin's role in Afghanistan as well as his connections with the west have been overblown. The United States funded the Mujahadeen who were led by the former Northern Alliance leader Masood. Even then, the amount of support was small amounting to only a few Billion dollars over the entire war.



During World War II, the United States sent thousands of tanks and airplanes to the Soviet Union. More importantly, it provided virtually all the RAW MATERIALS for the construction of Russian made planes and tanks. It also fed the Soviet military as well as the Soviet population. Most of the Soviet Union's prime industrial producing and agricultural producing area's were overrun by the Germans.

The Soviets had the largest military in the war. Infantry back then either walked or of the army was mechanized were in trucks. The United States help turn the Soviet military into a fully mechanized force by providing nearly ALL the trucks for every Soviet Division created and put into the field after 1941!

So no, your analogy making a comparison between the United States support of the Soviet Union and any support the United States may have given to Iraq or another middle east country does not work.
 
STING2 said:


The United States military wrote Japan's constitution which they still use today. It rebuilt Japan. These facts alone speak for themselves.

My point is that they were ready for democracy before that beause their mindest is "We want to be the best" and it's not shamefull for them to copy others nations inventions and ideas.


By the way, Russia did not have a free market economy until the 1990s, so Japan would not be looking at Russia for that example.

That was exactly my point, they were able to look how successful different economic systems work free market vs. planned market.

SADDAM got virtually all of his support from the SOVIET UNION. I can post the weapon's tables as I have before in hear on all the weapon systems that Iraq had from the Soviet Union versus the limited

Everyone who's interested in that can look at our pre-iraq-war threads in the war forum ;)
The only critic i had about this list was the missing dual-use goods (like antrax spores) and the inteligence support.

The Soviets had the largest military in the war. Infantry back then either walked or of the army was mechanized were in trucks. The United States help turn the Soviet military into a fully mechanized force by providing nearly ALL the trucks for every Soviet Division created and put into the field after 1941!

This last one was new to me, thanks!

So no, your analogy making a comparison between the United States support of the Soviet Union and any support the United States may have given to Iraq or another middle east country does not work.
[/B][/QUOTE]

I didn't try to make any analogy, it's just a simple fact that sometimes governments to support other governments because of their enemy.
Sometimes it works out great, other times a huge problem of the future is created.
 
I don't know if terrorism is winnable or not - you can kill a man, but not an idea. What were Che Guevara's last words "Shoot, coward, you're only killing a man." Goes to show you what the legacy can be, even if you chop off the head.

That said, you do need a concerted effort to go and root out terrorists wherever they are and develop a strategy to root out terrorism as a whole, even if it takes 500 years. The problem, as I see it, is that we are barking up the wrong tree in Iraq entirely. The war on terror will not be won here at all, it needs to be won in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two states which breed terrorists by the dozens and yet we ally themselves with them. It's seriously a demented policy. Truth be told, I don't think Iran is any better than these two, and yet where are we? Iraq. There were considerably larger fish to fry, and we sit now negotiating with a lunatic cleric, watching people getting heads chopped off, a soccer team that sees us as oppressors while those peace-loving madrassas in Saudi, Pakistan and Iran are churning out baby Osamas and brainwashing those children into a future of murder and destruction.

We're fighting the wrong war here.
 
anitram said:


That said, you do need a concerted effort to go and root out terrorists wherever they are and develop a strategy to root out terrorism as a whole, even if it takes 500 years. The problem, as I see it, is that we are barking up the wrong tree in Iraq entirely. The war on terror will not be won here at all, it needs to be won in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two states which breed terrorists by the dozens and yet we ally themselves with them. It's seriously a demented policy. Truth be told, I don't think Iran is any better than these two, and yet where are we? Iraq. There were considerably larger fish to fry, and we sit now negotiating with a lunatic cleric, watching people getting heads chopped off, a soccer team that sees us as oppressors while those peace-loving madrassas in Saudi, Pakistan and Iran are churning out baby Osamas and brainwashing those children into a future of murder and destruction.

We're fighting the wrong war here.


well written anitram !!! :applaud:
 
Back
Top Bottom