Has the invasion of Iraq made the world a safer place?

I honestly don't know Au. I don't know whether that left insufficient resources in Afghanistan. I do know that many believe we should have committed more troops/resources in Iraq instead of going the 'surgical strike' route; others think that would have too much alarmed other Arab nations and would have been counterproductive in turning Iraq into a Democracy.

I'm an overwhelming force person--make it fast, bloody, and decisive--but I don't always know all the factors that go into the decision either. It will be interesting reading the history written after we have achieved an objective distance from all this.

Foxy

True, however, tomorrows history is being written today let's hope people can look back and say we did the right thing. Rather than look back and say what have we done.

9/11 was the wakeup call for me and convinced me that we could no longer just mind our own business and try to 'be nice' and terrorists would leave us alone. (Of course many think the U.S. is the world's worst busybody and maybe we are, but we did not deserve that.) So I am behind whatever national leader(s) advocate using overwhelming force and resources against terrorism.

As far as what we did in Afghanistan and are doing in Iraq, by my standards, both are morally defensible. We can't correct all the horrible atrocities that people do to people all over the world, but we can do what we can to stop it it there and hopefully we are. If the new Iraqi government stands firm, they will become an independent, free, and people-friendly place. If they do not, the effort will very well fail and that will be unfortunate.

But I see the situation before we invaded. And I talk to military people who have been there. And nobody will ever convince me that what we are doing there is morally wrong.

Foxy
There have been and are worse crimes against humanity committed in Africa for some years. Crimes that far surpass those committed by Saddam. We did nothing in that regard how than can we now use the self righteous excuse in Iraq.

Safer? Not by a long shot.

Troops, money and resources needed for Afghanistan/Taliban has gone to Iraq

Iraq's borders are not secure, allowing all sorts of terrorists to come in

The search for Osama seems to have been severely compromised (and he's the one we WANT)

Taliban is regrouping and gaining strength because of the Iraq diversion

Unless we get our sh*t together, the power vacuum in Iraq is going to just allow some ultra religious dictator to take over

Our military is straining to keep up with the needs of this war

There's more, but we all get the point. I have a feeling that history is going to demonstrate that this war was one of the biggest f*ckups ever.

Oh, and Fox's comment on dropping the bombs on Japan:
There was no need to kill civilians to demonstrate our atomic strength. Also, Japan was crippled by that time. ONE bomb would have sufficed. The second was overkill (no pun intended). As for the "trickling" deaths over time had we not done it, do you really think that justifies the decision to purposefully and intentionally demonstrate the killing power of 2 atomic bombs on an innocent civilian population?
What if we went to war with North Korea, they develop some new technology that could kill millions, and decided to show its killing power by hitting two of our cities? We'd go ballistic.

Well, there's not much point in discussing it, is there?

In an earlier post you stated:



But, that isn't the problem in Iraq. We kicked the crap out of their armies easily enough, who thought we would have a problem with that one, even with HALF the troops we sent?

But we were completely unprepared to use those same troops as a governing force afterwards. We didn't have enough of them. Our soldiers are trained to be fighters, and deadly ones at that, NOT policemen, especially when they don't speak the language.

There appears to have been no real planning by the Admin. on what to do AFTER we had control of Iraq. Except in one area - the new military bases we're building, which you don't hear much about, were planned out years ago, by the pnac - www.pnac.org .

It's a little scary just how according to plan (a plan that was written by top neocons in '99) the Iraq war was. It accomplished ALL of their tier-one strategic objectives in the middle east, and remember, this is BEFORE sept. 11.

Is it a coincidence that we decided to go to war in Iraq, and it just so happened to be culmination of the planned strategy of the ruling Admin?

Remember Clarke saying, "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

I for one am not safer because of this war. Sadaam Hussein was no threat to me. I say this with complete confidence, as over a year of study has failed to provide me with convincing evidence that he was. True, he was a butcher; there are lots of butchers in the world. That doesn't mean that the ends justify the means in taking them out.

I for one feel that the new U.S. policy of pre-emption is going to really bite us in the ass.

Cycloptichorn

1. Oil
2. He trahed to killy my daddy
3.Oil
4.Haliburtons bonus checks keep Cheney in fresh hearts
5.Oil

Bear, you forgat to list the bullying "king of the hill" ego. The "we an do what we damn well please" attitude.

What a surprise that a certain someone would rather pin the blame on the UN than on Bush's mistakes, hmm?

The bad guys are honing their skills on how to take out oil pipelines. Anyone care to venture a guess on how long it will be before pipelines outside of Iraq begin to be hit?