Iraq War

[guardsman]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='May 5 2005, 10:32 PM'] He didn't.... the Ba'ath party was elected in. Then they forced everyone who worked in government jobs to become part of the party. That year my grandmother quit teaching to avoid that.

People were happy to vote, but voting is a toy. It is like sugar on your lemon. Oh it is nice, but the lemon is still sour. The situation remains, there is very little safety. My cousin has missed at least a year of school over this. My uncle died because there was lack of hospital space during the invasion. The war is over, in the sense that the government is deposed. That is traditionally when a war ends.

Aside from that, the currect top two positions in the government do not reflect the two majority groups in the country, Shi'ite and Sunni muslims. That means that there is not proper representation, and so when the US leaves, it will be a frail peace.

Please, explain to me the just grounds for the invasion. If it was for the people, then why are the worse off than before? If it was for the weapons, where did they dissapear. If it was against terrorism, then it is just. Iraq funded palastinian terrorists. Of course, the US funded Israel, which killed Palastinians, but that is fine, I suppose.

God bless,
Mikey [/quote]
Seriously, I don't know all those things. I know Saddaam killed people. To me, that's good enough. I don't care if they were his political enemies, he doesn't get to kill them. He should have debated them and ran against them in elections. If your family was doing good with Saddaam in office, I think they were probably very lucky. Everyone thought we were going there to steal their oil. I don't see that happening. I don't know where the weapons disappeared to. Probably Syria, who knows? But he had them. I personally hope we went there to help the future generations of Iraqis. The sanctions in place during Saddaam's reign were hurting people. Now they are over, because they didn't work. I spent six months in the Middle East recently (Egypt) and really liked the people. I assume (maybe wrongly) that the Iraqi people are similar. I only want them to have the same chances we have here,and I think eventually that will happen. This war was going to happen eventually.

[musturde]

[quote name='guardsman' date='May 5 2005, 10:46 PM'] Seriously, I don't know all those things. I know Saddaam killed people. To me, that's good enough. I don't care if they were his political enemies, he doesn't get to kill them. He should have debated them and ran against them in elections. If your family was doing good with Saddaam in office, I think they were probably very lucky. Everyone thought we were going there to steal their oil. I don't see that happening. [/quote]
Michael has a point. There's not going to be much peace after this and the government isn't really going to work. Sure everything seemed great at first but what now?

[quote] I don't know where the weapons disappeared to. Probably Syria, who knows? But he had them. I personally hope we went there to help the future generations of Iraqis.[/quote]
Yeah I'm going to have to agree on this one. Syria definitely should get checked out but I guess I'm biased hahaha.

[quote]The sanctions in place during Saddaam's reign were hurting people. Now they are over, because they didn't work. I spent six months in the Middle East recently (Egypt) and really liked the people. I assume (maybe wrongly) that the Iraqi people are similar. I only want them to have the same chances we have here,and I think eventually that will happen. This war was going to happen eventually.[/quote]

Yeah Middle Easterns Rock. The people are the same.

[philothea]

...Mikey...

Wow, that must be tough. I don't know what to say. Prayers that all your family stays safe.

[megamattman1]

Think about if you saw someone on the street getting beat up, you had the ability to stop it, but you did not. That's the situation the US was arguably in with Iraq. Only diff is the scale of the conflict. A war with Iraq was pretty much necessary.


[quote]That being said, the war against Saddam Hussein is perfectly moral and justified, because the man was a tyrant who tortured and killed countless thousands of his own people, and in fact it could be argued that it would have been a sin of omission to have allowed him to stay in power any longer.[/quote]

I agree that the war was needed to stop Saddam, and is moral in that sense. If in the end it turns out that the Iraqis are not better off due to the terrorists, we had no way of knowing, and it was moral to try. Perhaps we could have planned more, yes. For that we may have made a mistake.

Which brings me to the next point. The reason we went in hastily is because Bush said there was a connection between Iraq and Al Quida/ 9/11. Ask Clark (is it Richard Clark or another I don't know offhand) who was on the inside with Bush how Bush responded when 9/11 occurred. Soon after Bush told them all to basically create a connection. So some may say we went to war under false pretenses, and for this reason immorally. Perhaps Bush had to act quick while sentiment was still angry. Perhaps the one mistake we had in not planning well was because of Bush's lie.

This is all what I used to think until I found this.

[quote]Moore declares that George Bush fabricated an Iraq/al Qaeda connection in order to deflect attention from his Saudi masters. But consider the facts presented in Stephen F. Hayes's book, The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2004). The first paragraph of the last chapter (pp. 177-78) sums up some of the evidence:

Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset. Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. Al Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda "weapons development" in 1998. A senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly in Baghdad and received medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam's regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack...

Hayes is a writer for The Weekly Standard and much of his writing on the Saddam/Osama connection is available there for free; simply use the search engine and look for articles by Hayes.



The preliminary staff report of the September 11 Commission states, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Some critics, including the chief prosecutor of the World Trade Center bombers, have argued that the staff report inexplicably ignores substantial evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks. The final Commission Report finds that there were "friendly contacts" between Al Qaeda and the Saddam regime. The Commission does not find that there was a "collaborative operational relationship" for "carrying out attacks against the United States." Whether you agree with the preliminary staff report, the staff's critics, or the final commission report, there is no dispute that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al Qaeda, an organization whose only activity was terrorism. Fahrenheit dishonestly pretends that there was no relationship at all.
[/quote]

It seems that there are some connections after all. But not direct to the attacks. Bush made it out to be direct, and for that it was immoral.

I wonder why all this info was so obscure for me to find on google. It's the best argument against the war yet most people don't use it for some odd reason, so maybe the counter reasons of why the connection existed never surfaced as much. That's just weird! Is that what that movie in retaliation to Moore was all about? Both Bush and Moore were being deceitful unless they didn't know any better.

Edited May 6, 2005 by megamattman1

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='May 5 2005, 09:03 PM'] I'll be frank (ahahaha the pun), I don't like this war. At first, when the prospects of the war seemed to show that more could be done for the Iraqi people, I was in some support. Saddam was not a good man by any means. However, while never supporting or speaking against the war, I know have come to a conclusion. The Iraqi people are not better off for it. Now, the reign of tyranny has passed from one figure (and as my family would claim, he was not such a tyrant) to many who walk the streets. At least he had principals and laws, the insurgents from other countries have none. I could go on speaking about how my family (who lives there) has had to flee, the losses incurred, the reign of Saddam and his kindness shown to Christians. I could, but it'd be repetition. I simply say this, prove he is/was a tyrant, and not just a dictator who had laws about his political enemies. If you can prove it, that is good. I doubt you will. The sad part is, he was legally entered into office...

God bless,
Mikey [/quote]
This was my issue with this war from the beginning, he was a tyrant but he treated Christians with more generosity than any other ruler in that area, better a friendly tyrant than a hostile one, so what that they will now have democracy, democracy is the most tyrannical of systems. Still I think the war met the critera for a Just War, but of Course I believe a revolution here would equally meet such criteria.

[Timothy]

Is it just me or does it seem as if some people put state ahead of Church?

[Don John of Austria]

It must just be you because I don't see anyone on this thread who is dioing that.

[Timothy]

Doesn't the Church disagree with the war?

[Jaime]

I don't know if anyone intentionally puts country in front of church in these arguments. But one thing seems pretty clear to me, the pro just war argument has more western logic to it.

Being (for a lot of us) in the US, there is a lot of stuff that is undercurrent to our opinions and conclusions. A lot of it comes from living in the most powerful nation in the world. However as a nation US Catholics represent 6% of all Catholics.

6%

And we're not the most important 6% ( I doubt that there is a "most important" but you get my drift.

Western thinking has its disadvantages. Especially when we are trying to be in union with 94% of the world.

But we have Tivo so that's something.

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='Timothy' date='May 6 2005, 11:02 AM'] Doesn't the Church disagree with the war? [/quote]
No it doesn't.

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='hot stuff' date='May 6 2005, 11:49 AM'] I don't know if anyone intentionally puts country in front of church in these arguments. But one thing seems pretty clear to me, the pro just war argument has more western logic to it.

Being (for a lot of us) in the US, there is a lot of stuff that is undercurrent to our opinions and conclusions. A lot of it comes from living in the most powerful nation in the world. However as a nation US Catholics represent 6% of all Catholics.

6%

And we're not the most important 6% ( I doubt that there is a "most important" but you get my drift.

Western thinking has its disadvantages. Especially when we are trying to be in union with 94% of the world.

But we have Tivo so that's something. [/quote]
The Catholic Church is a Church steeped in Western thought, Latin america is " western" Irland is "western" and so on, I don't really understand your post.

[philothea]

What I would like clarified is what is wrong with my analysis of the catechism's teaching in this matter.

[Timothy]

[quote name='Don John of Austria' date='May 6 2005, 12:11 PM'] No it doesn't. [/quote]
Please explain these Don. I posted them in the other thread "Is Bush more Catholic Than JP2" but it seemed to be ignored.

[quote]
CANTON, Mar 18, 03 (CWNews.com) -- An American Catholic bishop has forbidden his flock from participating or cooperating in military action against Iraq, under pain of mortal sin.

Bishop John Michael Botean, the head of the Romanian Catholic eparchy (diocese) of St. George in Canton, Ohio-- which has jurisdiction over all Byzantine-rite Romanian Catholics living in the US-- invoked the full measure of his authority in a Lenten Letter to his people. The bishop declared with "moral certainty" that the proposed attack on Iraq "does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just-war theory." [/quote]






[quote]
US President George W. Bush has assumed a heavy moral burden by saying his intention to go to war against Iraq, the Vatican has warned.  [/quote]



[quote]
In his Sunday Angelus audience on March 16, Pope John Paul II issued his most urgent call to date for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Iraq.

In a break from his prepared text, the Pope reminded his listeners that he had personal experience with the horrors of war. He insisted that believers must unite in rejecting war as an option, saying "Never again war!" However, the Pontiff also acknowledged the need for Iraqi compliance with international disarmament demands. In a "pressing appeal" addressed to Baghdad, he reminded the Iraqi government leadership of its "urgent duty fully to cooperate with the international community, to eliminate every motive for armed intervention."

The Pope continued to insist that diplomatic efforts could bear fruit. "There is still time to negotiate," he said. "There is still room for peace."

Cardinal Laghi, in an interview published by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, had summarized the concerns of the Holy See by pointing to four negative consequences of military action: "the suffering people will face, the future for the Middle East, the dialogue with Islam, and the consequences for the United Nations."

The suffering of civilians would be the saddest consequence of war, the cardinal said. But he also predicted that military action would undermine the cause of peace in the volatile Middle East as a whole, and he questioned whether an attack led by the US would decrease the influence and authority of the UN.

However, Cardinal Laghi said that "the most delicate factor" involved in the crisis is the reaction of the Muslim world. Referring to this weekend's meeting among the leaders of the US, Britain, and Spain, the cardinal observed: "If the three countries that met in the Azores go to war, that will appear to the Islamic world as a war by Christian countries against a Muslim country. Tensions will be heightened, and that could lead to an increase in terrorism." [/quote]




These were quoted from CWNEWS

Edited May 6, 2005 by Timothy

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='Timothy' date='May 6 2005, 01:51 PM'] Please explain these Don. I posted them in the other thread "Is Bush more Catholic Than JP2" but it seemed to be ignored.

















These were quoted from CWNEWS [/quote]
There is no explination needed, The late Popes pacfist tendencies where well noted, that he personally opposed the war did not make " The Church " opposed to it. All the Pope had to do to make it so was order Catholics not to fight in this war, to declare it sinful to do so, Yet he did not do so, because in declaring [i]his[/i] opposition it was [i]his[/i] not the Church's or his as the Vicar of Christ. THat Bush excepted a moral burden upon himself when he went to war is obvious, and certianly is no condemnation.
As for the view that Christian countries where going to war agians Muslim countries... If only it where so, unfortunatly none of those three qualify as Christian countries any more, Not even Spain.

As to the UN losing authority, nothing could be better, the UN is EVIL. Oh accept that the UN has no Authority to lose, that is a problem there so I guess his Eminence was wrong on that score. His Eminence can be wrong you now, and he does not speak for "The Church."

[Timothy]

And if you support this war, is it safe to assume that you assume the same moral burden that Bush assumes?

[ardillacid]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='May 5 2005, 10:02 PM'] He was not a good leader, and he was cruel, but he was elected (lawfully). [/quote]
[QUOTE]



So was Hitler. Therefore WWII must not have been justified, right?

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='Timothy' date='May 6 2005, 03:05 PM'] And if you support this war, is it safe to assume that you assume the same moral burden that Bush assumes? [/quote]
No. Bush is the leader, he desides whether to go o war or not, the moral burden for that decision is only his. I support the desicion of men to use lethal force agianst those who threaten their family, however, the moral burden for that decisionis on them, not on me. Some years ago I stood with a rifle and defended a robbery and assualt victem from the men who where going to kill him in the road, I would have shot them, one literally came only a hairs breth from getting shot( I was already putting preasure on the trigger), he decided to withdraw and I did not shoot him. In every respect the moral responsability was on me, I chose to intervene, I chose to use lethal force to defend the injured man( I didn't know at the time what had happened only that he was helpless and bleeding and that the other man was going to kill him.) though I only ended up using the threat of lethal force morally I used it because I was going to use it, and I chose not let him withdraw, anyone that that man hurt after that was my fault I LET HIM GO, it all is my moral burden because I was the one making the decisions. Simularly Bush alone is responsable for the decisions he makes.

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='ardillacid' date='May 6 2005, 03:25 PM'] [QUOTE]



So was Hitler. Therefore WWII must not have been justified, right? [/quote]
If you use the standards that this war is being held too WWII was not justified.

[Curt F.]

I find it odd that most people who are for the war were against the murders of Saddam. What do you think the US is over there doing right now? Talking? No. I don't think a war is the answer. It's like pouring gasoline over a fire. I'd enjoy if someone could explain this logic to me.

[MichaelFilo]

The logic goes so far. Hitler also invaded other countries. So did Saddam, yes. However, he got his "just deserts". Hitler was dead before he could be sentenced. Saddam was alive even after the war and was allowed to stay in power. Think about this please.... is that analogy at all good?


Curtis, most soldiers don't kill people for any reason. More people died in the time span of this war that are Iraqi than those who died under the Saddam government in a similiar time span... supposedly in a "just" sense, if this war is just. I think the premise it was justified under failed, and so it is unjust.

God bless,
Mikey

Edited May 6, 2005 by MichaelFilo