Cost of "Barack's War"

There are not different just because you say they are...

Neither country posed a threat to us when we went in...

So why go?

Like I said, that letter in the WH is all that matters to some folks...

 

Libya attacked our allied nations in the region? Libya was under sanctions? Its nothing alike. Sorry.

Simply because you believe strongly in your opinion doesn't make it fact.

In an effort to make it partisan, and avoid the discussion of the issues, you are forcing a parallel comparison. Come on.

 

LOL THey are different because the FACTS say they are different.

BS. Iraq's defiance of inacted sanctions imposed to protect our allies in the region was a direct and intentional threat to the UN & US.

And like I said, you are coping out on discussing the actual differences and wish to simply minimize it than discuss the facts.

 

It's true that we got some help for sure during the revolution. But with our current level of technology we have the ability to supply weapons, help with logistics, and help with intelligence without ever being directly involved in the fighting. We can do all of this at a fraction of the cost of actually running military operations there.

 

But the Similarities are:


- Our goal is to depose a dictator with no plan for what the next government will look like.

- The main reason we are there is to protect global oil supplies...

- We claim to want our style of democracy there, but it probably doesn't match at all with the kind of government the populace would create of their own free will.

- To avoid direct assassination, we have deployed a large contingent of our armed forces.

-The commitment was open ended and lasted much longer than expected.

- We had no exit strategy when we went in and we still have no exit strategy.



Other main differences:


- Our actual force and equipment involvement is much less in Libya.

- We are not occupying and have no intention to occupy Libya.

- We will not be responsible for nation building in Libya.

- We will not capture or kill Khadafi ourselves if we can help it.

 

I think our ability to use ops to assassinate depends on the moral clarity of our justification.

We were completely within moral bounds to shoot Bin Laden on sight. With elected leaders, we should never do so......which becomes tricky with dictators who have had sham elections.

 

The Iraq War was all about WMD's that did not exist...

Iraq hadn't attacked anybody leading up to that conflict...

As such, Iraq did not pose a threat to us...

That is not my opinion...

And I specifically made a comment about partisan hackery regarding this, and the flip-flopping that ensued as a result...

Just because you disagree w/ me doesn't mean that I'm making the argument partisan...

You keep on toeing that party line...

What facts!?

There are no facts in existence that make them different...

There were investigations leading up to the Iraq conflict that found nothing...

And how is discussing the specificities of both conflicts a copout...

That makes no sense...

I'm telling you that we had no reason to go into either country...

Was Saddam Hussein a bad guy?

Sure...

Should he have been in power?

Nope...

Now, is it our job to overthrow everybody we don't like?

That is an important question, because that was the end result in Iraq, and that is the goal in Libya...

So, like I said, no difference...

 

We need to perfect some kind of Shielding, or impregnible air/undersea interceptor systems first though or those awesome railguns will be sitting at the bottom of the sea.

Air power changed everything for the Battleship.

 

Why the lack of concern now?

 

Understanding is informed by experience.

 

How the doves have gone silent since Obama became president! It happened all of a sudden didn't it?

 

You are correct that the same people that were opposed to Iraq because we had no reason to go in, should be opposed to Libya for the same reason...

However, you'll never get rid of the party line steppers...

 

So I suppose you oppose this Libyan war just like Iraq?

 

Clinton was going to do just that, After the Cole he a a plan and everything all set up for building several bases in Uzbekistan that would hunt down OBL, problem was, the FBI and CIA refused to certify that OBL was responsible and so Clinton was unable to build his bases there. The only other option would have been to fly in supplies and several hundred special forces into Afghanistan and refuel at night (refuel supply was the main problem), something EVERY SINGLE ONE of his advisers told him not to do.
Clinton Gave Richard Clark the plan and told him to meet with Bush (this was right before Bush came into office) and give him the plans.
Bush Refused to meet with Clark though, and so did every one of his subordinates. They even demoted him. Then of course 9 months later 9/11 happened...

Clinton did a huge amount of stuff in his presidency to fight terrorism and he came closer to getting OBL than Bush ever did.

 

Hindsight is always 20/20

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

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

Yeah... sorry, but it is.

Bull(*)(*)(*)(*). You are too. This thread was created for the expressed OP purposes of showing the blatent hypocrisy and partisanship of the left. How can they so vocally protest Iraq and then look the other way at this? The level of hypocrisy is astounding. How much you continue to try and turn that around doesn't change the fact that the majority of the anti-war left is nothing more than partisan hacks who used Bush's war in Iraq and falsely cared about our troops coming home FOR NOTHING MORE THAN POLITICAL GAIN.

As to you.

So aren't you just a bit curious why the left suddenly seems to approve of this war. That after all was the point of the thread.

 

Some say bin Laden was a genius who destroyed two empires. I suppose a case could be made to that effect.

America is in the process of losing the Afghanistan War. Elements of the Taliban will return to power. America should have deposed the Taliban and then left. Repeated destruction of an enemy is easier than trying to build a nation.

America won the Second Iraq War militarily, but Iraq is now becoming an Iranian client state. Thus, America lost the war.

Libya is such a complete fool's errand that there really isn't much to say other than to observe that the USA is now allied with elements of Al Qaeda.

America is like the Roman Empire in the West around the year 409 CE.

 

Yep.

10char

 

So I suppose the question is... where is this?











Here is the libyan war protest.





See any difference?

 

That's not alot of money, this isn't even a war you just want something to complain about.

 

Oh how quickly the left change positions.

I wonder what caused such a flip flop.

Hmmm....

 

No I agree with that. Iraq and Libya involve/d political figures and heads of state. We can't just go around assassinating foreign political officials and I know that. But the leaders of terrorist organizations are not heads of state. Thus in my opinion, a full scale invasion of Afghanistan was completely unnecessary. Iraq is debatable, and I don't think we have any intention of occupying Libya.

 

I agree they're completely different situations.

Iraq was never a threat - a fact that both Powell and Rice clearly stated to the world a mere 9 months before we invaded. It was an invasion of opportunity. A full fledged war of choice that created as many or more problems than it solved. And it was poorly executed on many levels. The cost - well over a trillion dollars and counting.

Libya is no threat either. There we have a resistance that wants and needs our assistance in overthrowing the government and we're giving that to them. No boots on the ground. No invasion.

We have a long history of supporting resistance efforts in countries of this type. This is more open and overt than most. I would say that these efforts have a mixed bag of support among liberals and conservatives although its safe to say that conservatives are more supportive than not.

"Liberals" supported Afghanistan. Now that Osama is dead that support is split and waning.

Liberals were and are against Iraq and I wouldn't say they are overwhelmingly supportive of Libya in numbers or level of commitment.

"Conservatives" overwhelmingly supported Afghanistan and Iraq, regardless of cost. Their support for Afghanistan has waned since OBL's death. I'm not sure of their position on our continued Iraqi presence.

For conservatives to be vehemently against our Libyan involvement is inconsistent in the extreme.

 

How many American soldiers have died in Libya?

How many American soldiers have died in Iraq?

 

This is something that your side is coming up with in an effort to avoid discussing the fact that the level of opposition by the left has significantly decreased. Why is that?

 

We don't care about civilian deaths anymore?

I remember during Iraq people screaming about the "millions" of deaths of civilians in Iraq.

That doesn't matter anymore? Just drop bombs?