blueveinedthrobber wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Your conversation pre-supposes that a correct national policy would have the immediate effect of reducing terrorism. That is very short term thinking. When the American Founding Fathers refused to pay British taxes, which was the exact right thing to do, the effect was that Britain closed the port of Boston and sent over a large army. The idea that the minute we start fighting an enemy, the enemy will fight back less is silly. Furthermore, our efforts against Iraq were not really directed against terrorism. They were intended to address weapons proliferation.
[/b]
I thought we decided that after Bush attacked Iraq through NO FAULT OF HIS OWN because of faulty intelligence :wink: and we learned that weapons proliferation was bullshit, that we attacked them as part of the war on terrorism, and correct me if I'm wrong isn't preventing weapons proliferation by those pesky terrorists a big part of the war on terra? Now dammit which is it, I'm getting a headache.
You shouldn't be getting a headache, because this is not that complicated, you are an intelligent man, and this has been gone over ad nauseum. Weapons proliferation is most certainly not bullshit, not matter what happened or will happen in Iraq. Weapons proliferation is very likely to be the thing which ultimately destroys civilization, if not our species. You cannot have weapons getting more powerful, yet more accessible, forever without something terrible happening eventually.
Not all of the intelligence regarding Iraq was faulty. Even just what was apparent from reading the newspapers was sufficient to justify invasion, apart from anything to do with recent input from intelligence agencies. It is, after all, true that Hussein had had WMD and programs to develop them, had used them, had concealed them, and had lied about them, yet whether he had disposed of them (and oddly not obtained proof of it) or still had them and was just stalling us while he perfected them was unknown. Invasion was the right thing to do because even a moderate probability of a cataclysmic tragedy is very serious. We also have no idea even now, when it was that he destroyed the weapons, whether just before the invasion or years before. Our invasion of Iraq was primarily a weapons proliferation issue, not a terror issue. There is some degree of tie-in in the sense that of all the people we don't want to get WMD, terrorists are on the top of the list, but the invasion of Iraq was more than sufficiently justified by the necessity of keeping WMD out of the hands of homicidal madmen. Yes, it is true, that now that WMD have not been found, other aspects of the invasion are played up more, like democratization, but why we invaded originally was, or should have been, over concern about WMD.
Weapons proliferation did not begin with Iraq, and does not end with Iraq. In the future, there will be many times when Hussein-like figures have been developing WMD, but the exact status of their development is unknown. In many of those cases, depending on other factors, we will eventually have to invade, if we wish to keep breating.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace