1) Bill Clinton has stated numerous times that he would have acted to throw Saddam out of power. One of the biggest supporters of the war in Iraq was actually Hillary Clinton - her only gripe is with the aftermath which she considers bungled. Numerous Democratic leaders and presidential nominees supported the war and 52% of Democrats supported this pre-emptive war in the Pew survey.
2) It doesn't matter if Bush is the laughingstock of most of the world as you say. Why? Because most of the world is a bunch of losers. A bunch of loser countries that are against America and its people no matter what. The EU countries and other countries they bully with membership or trade benefits have sadly all lost out. China being one of the only other countries in the world left with potential, and also "the girl on the side for the US", chose not to push to stop this war.
3) Your attempt to talk about numbers is a losing one. Let's talk about what proportion of troops have died first. Then lets talk about what proportion of Iraqis would have died had Saddam been in power. War is war and talking about grieving families as a reason to not go into this is ridiculous - those families with dead ones would grieve in any war and not just this one.
4) The guys in the UN are incompetent. They seem to have no intelligence on Iran. When Iran clearly violated their treaty, they didn't follow up - hence one of many reasons they are incompetent.
5) The majority of the people in Iraq are happy that Saddam is not in power. They might not be happy with the US still being there, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.
6) Some recent middle east changes: Afghani warlords came together to create a constitution, Libya drops weapons development after seeing prior goals as losing ones and is even pursuing peace with Israel, Iran allows in UN weapons inspectors after shyting their pants, Assad at Syria is so scared of what happened that he's trying to follow US demands to drop terror support and also wants peace with Israel as well (since there wouldn't be any reason not to have peace one that support is gone), etc. Now at least give it a couple years and you will see the improvements slightly at least. Rome wasn't built in a day.
7) Nobody protested Saddam as being a murderer in mass rallies but everyone protested that Bush was. Why?
8) Oneill is an idiot. It would be one thing if someone else made the criticism but it was O'Neill who is pretty much washed up now.
-Rudey
Quote:
Originally posted by sugar and spice
First of all, Bush has been the laughingstock of most of the world since he got elected. It's only been in the past year that their laughter turned into anger. I'm not arguing that the whole Clinton situation didn't make the rest of the world laugh for a while, but for some of these countries (many of the European ones), they were laughing at the fact that anybody CARED. Many of those countries had leaders who are well-known for having affairs, and they thought it was absolutely hilarious that we were going to impeach our president for doing so.
I'm sure there were some countries were most people thought we were stupid for electing a president who got bjs under the Oval Office desk, but I'm also pretty sure that they are far outnumbered by the countries where most people think GWB is an idiot.
Furthermore, as I've said before, Clinton's lie hurt a limited number of people: it hurt his marriage, his family, Monica's reputation, made some naive people (who for some reason thought that presidents don't have affairs, despite much publicized previous presidential affairs) lose faith in the president. Bush's lie lead to the death of an estimated 9000 innocent people, including many of our troops, it tore apart families, it alienated our allies, it made many people around the world hate us, it made many Americans lose faith in our own government, many are predicting it will spawn an entirely new generation of terrorists, it spread our army too thin to the point where we have to ignore legitimate threats from other countries . . . And maybe all of that is worth it since Hussein is now out of power. I'm not going to pretend to know that because I really don't know if it's worth it or not. But to me it seems like a hell of a lot of sacrifice for something that ultimately benefits the United States not very much at all.
I think one of the things that Russell mentioned deserves to be brought up here: that it's undeniable that Clinton probably had a plan to take Saddam out of office. I agree with this. The difference is that Bush acted on his plan, where Clinton didn't -- and chances are that he wouldn't have if he had been in Bush's place now. I think that the major problem Bush had with this war is how it was handled. Like I said in another thread, I think that a lot more self-described liberals would have been in favor of it if they thought there was a legitimate threat. But the guys at the UN said there was no threat, that the WMDs were gone. So Bush says they're incompetent and sends his guys in there. Apparently they're incompetent too. 
Anyway I think there were two major problems that a lot of anti-war liberals had with this war was handled: 1) the fact that they felt that there was little justification for it, and 2) the overuse of the bait-and-switch.
1) Basically what O'Neill is telling us happened: a lot of liberals thought that GWB had a plan from the beginning to take down Saddam since even before 9/11. A lot of people dismissed the war from its conception because of this viewpoint, and if it's proven true then it will be just one more "I told you so."
I know a number of liberals who supported the war on the basis that we helped put Saddam into power, so the whole Iraq situation was partially our fault and it was our responsibility to get the guy out of power. I think Bush could have used this justification to win more people over to the pro-war side, but he was on that whole America-can-do-no-wrong kick -- and also didn't really seem to care what anybody else thought about whether or not we should go to war.
I think Bush could have waited for a much better time to attack Iraq, and that his timing is why so many people opposed it. If Saddam is as crazy as is claimed, it would only be a matter of time before he did something to make people scared enough that most Americans and probably at least a sizeable portion of the rest of the world would support going to war. As it was the decision to go to war appeared to come out of nowhere and only reinforced Bush's image as a warmonger.
2) The bait-and-switch -- this is probably one of the things that annoyed me most about the whole ordeal. When the UN was searching Iraq for the WMD, it was pushed upon us that Iraq was sooo dangerous because it was stockpiles, tons and tons of chemical and biological weapons and that any minute Saddam could use them against us. Once we went to Iraq and weapons were nowhere in sight, the justification changed -- now it wasn't about making America safe from mass destruction, it was about catching Saddam and making sure he couldn't hurt either us or those poor Iraqis ever again. When we couldn't find Saddam once again the justification for war changed: this whole time, the war had REALLY been about introducing the poor Iraqis to democracy. Shame on you for being so selfish and thinking this war was all about us. And when that didn't seem to be working out, well, at least we had gotten Saddam out of power. THAT was the important thing.
It ensured that no matter what, the Bush admin's incompetence would be hidden under the facade of "What do you mean we haven't found the WMD yet? That was never the point in the first place!"
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