Do you feel the same about the Iraq war? Why?

Question

I had misgivings about the war from the start. I felt we should be absolutely sure..., why won't Germany & France (our allies) join us? We havent finished in Afghanistan, why the rush for Iraq?
I had served in Kuwait & Saudi & I had seen a lot of the landscape & the people. But I believed that surely there must be WMDs or a clear & present threat.
Anyway, we all know the story, many of us (at least I know I have) have been following it almost daily, I have friends there right now. What do you believe went wrong? Do you still believe this was a "just" war? What are the reprocussions of this action & how will it affect the US & the rest of the world going into the future? Look at how screwed up Vietnam Vets STILL are, w/what they went through, how do you think these Vets will be? Is this Vietnam all over? Did we learn anything? Or was this something completely different? I'm struggling w/these answers as someone who desperately still wants to believe in a country called America.

Answer 1

I have misgivings too. I'm in the national guard. I feel bad because in way I supported the war. I was caught up in the hype of it. I have conflicting perspectives. On one hand Saddam was a brutal dictator who ran a brutal regime. On the other hand, what right does any nation have to invade another nation unprovoked. I disregard the WMDs argument as many nations have them, and many of them are not friendly to the US or democratic. So in this sense I am at cognitive dissonance. I hate the concept of preemptive warfare on sovereign nations but I also hate the idea of a brutal dictator oppressing his people. Also add into this that there are people making profit off of this whole venture, and the fact that our coalition has been awarding themselves lucrative oil and security contracts and the whole democracy building goal becomes suspect. For me though the real clincher is the attitude of pro-war supporters. Sacrificing for freedom is great, but who are we to sacrifice other peoples for their freedom and act non-chalantly about it. So I guess what I'm saying is that I do support the moralistic ideals, but I decry all of the other interests involved and the desensitization of the Iraqi people's suffering. Either way when my time comes, I'll do my duty.

Answer 2

I was against the war at the beginning and now want to see the handover to the Iraqi government go smoothly.

What went wrong? The plan was falling apart from before the beginning. Never mind Germany & France, Turkey wouldn't let troops go through and there were reports Britain was backing out. There were not enough troops planned for the occupation phase. Public support at home seemed weak. I think many people had misgivings. But the war went ahead before it got too hot (weather-wise & politics-wise), assuming every one would be for it once it was won. (This still might happen, but it's not won yet) I disagree with the comment that the more Americans have voiced doubts in what we are doing, the more violent things have become. I think that the increasing violence was touched off by an attack on the golden mosque. And Americans have expressed more doubts as times when we might have begun to withdraw troops have come and gone, and the violence was so bad we couldn't do it.
Do you still believe this was a "just" war? Getting rid of Saddam and establishing a democracy sounds just. It may be technically illegal (Not self defense and not obviously approved in a second UN resolution), a fake reason (if Bush has other motives), and not worth it beyond a certain point. I'll consider it just unless Bush is totally proven to have other motives, Malaki is thrown out because he won't obey the US, or Iraq is nuked in frustration.
How will it affect the US & the rest of the world going into the future? The US has a bigger deficit. Republicans lost control of Congress for now. The US faces a choice between looking incompetent as long as it stays without winning (could be a LONG time, some like to say), or cowardly if it leaves. Iran sees the US as too busy to do anything to it now because of Iraq, so it will make use of the time to build itself up.
How do you think these Vets will be? There will be some post-traumatic stress problems but not hostility from the public.
Is this Vietnam all over? Did we learn anything? Or was this something completely different? It is different, but not completely. Each side was counting on the other side to have learned the lesson they believe in. Protesters thought politicians wouldn't go to war, if they showed a lack of support before it started. Politicians thought the public had learned not to protest when the nation was at war.

Answer 3

Keep asking why they did not join, and russia along with them. What reason did they have? They had the same info as everyone else. there had to be some reason, but it is not the obvious one.

This is not like Vietnam, this war is much different. Yes, we learned things for the most part. Do not have politicians control the war, however, PC is still very existent in the ranks today. Not all the vets are screwed up, they have just seen things they were not prepared for. The reprocussions, go back to my first question. Wonder why they did not join, it doesn't add up

Answer 4

I never believed in going back to Iraq. When 9/11 happened my first idea was we would send the 101st, 82nd, and 10th mountain divisions to Afastigian in strength with marines and special forces in back up. I still think we would have finished this war in a year if we had. With a slight modifiction in tactics. Any tribe, or villiage, that supported Osama being burned from the face of the earth. That is the way to win this type of war. Bring it home to them and let them feel and see the suffering that type of belief will entail. And Vietnam vets are not that screwed up, at this point in time they fought a war as rough that lasted a bit longer.

Answer 5

Many of these countries did not want to join us because they knew that their abuses of the Oil for Food program would be uncovered. While nukes have not been found, some WMDs that were supposedly disposed of have been found, and who knows what the caravans leaving Iraq as the war began were carrying? Several figures in the Iraq government provided intel about weapons being transported out of the country. The only real problem I've noticed is that the more Americans have voiced doubts in what we are doing, the more violent things have become. If terrorists think we will leave as a result of what they are doing, they will keep doing it. And considering recent changes in the political scene, we are likely to give them what they will consider a great defeat of America.

Answer 6

A war is either just from the beginning or it is not. It does not change due to circumstances of the war. In other words; you can't believe that the war was just in the beginning, but then because of consistently bad news, you end up thinking it is no longer just; at a point it may no longer be "worth it" so to speak, but wars justness cannot change.

I've argued that the war was, and still is just, and necessary. There is a difference between the two. Now, in the broader context, if you want an inquiry into the Iraq war, then it must begin in 1991 with the question of were right or wrong to allow Saddam Hussein to stay in power after he invaded a sovereign nation and annexed them into a territorial province of Iraq; effectively abolishing a group of people and their national identity.

There are four conditions under which a nation can be said to have sacrificed its sovereignty according to international law, they are as followed; continued aggression against neighboring states or occupations of their territory, violating the terms and conditions of the non-proliferation treaty, harboring known gangsters or internationally wanted terrorists, and genocide, which if you're a signatory of the U.N. Genocide convention you're mandated to act either to prevent genocide, or punish it.

Iraq met all four of those conditions, and thus its sovereignty was finished. It was under U.N. sanctions and had armed forces from the international community patrolling most of its air space. It was a ward of the international community and costing the US tax payer about two trillion dollars to keep Saddam in power. Furthermore, Saddam's divide and rule policy led to terrible ethnic and confessional hatred, and their economy was ruined by the mismanagement of government and the gross misallocation of financial resources, U.N. sanctions were starving the Iraqi people, and an imploded Iraq was coming quickly. Had that happened Iraq would not have remained a UN invaded country; Iran would have invaded to support their clerical proxy groups, Saudi Arabia would have done the same, and Turkey would have invaded to take Kurdistan and secure the oil rich area in the north. But we, as the Iraqi people are lucking that American forces are their to insure that doesn't happen, because if it did; Iraq would become another Rwanda, a vortex of violence and lawlessness where innocent children would have suffered the most.

Saddam Hussein draped himself in extreme clerical regard, and every radio and television broadcast coming out of Baghdad was all about Jihad, he paid 25,000 dollars to the families of each suicide bomber attacking the PLO, because they were too secular, he changed the Iraqi flag to read "God is great", and built the largest Mosque in the region with the Quaran written in, he says, his own blood. He was sheltering many known terrorists throughout the 1990's including the man responsible for the WTC attack in 1993. He WAS trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger and that has been vindicated by THREE independent British inquiries, and when the coalition was preparing for war Saddams envoys were in Syria negotiating with envoys from N. Korea to buy their missiles right off the shelf, and people have the nerve to say Iraq and WMD'S can't be mentioned in the same breath.

After 9/11 Saddam opened his country to terrorists, including Abu Musab Al-Zarquwi, who was waging his Islamic Jihad against Saddam's Kurdish enemies. Bush clearly stated that Iraq was going to be the NEXT front of terrorism because of the facts. There was a lot of evidences of stockpiles of WMD's and some that supported the notion that they were destroyed, but because Saddam WOULD NOT COMPLY, we couldn't know for sure, and no one can ask the President of the United States to give a man like Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

You should be extremely proud of the men and women of the armed forces of this country, and in conclusion; thank you for your service.

Answer 7

You need to stop fooling yourself, you lost faith a while ago.
France is too weak to be anyone's ally these days. They whine & complain but offer no solutions. Germany does not have much of an army. They have roughly 255,000 - that includes 123,000
who were drafted. Not the strongest army or ally.
We "screwed up" in Viet Nam because of others like you who show no support. It was the 1st war that no uniforms were used making it harder to fight against an unseen enemy. Iraq is the same way, if everyone including the terrorist wore uniforms it would be over already. We will come home when our job is finished or they develop into a full civil war ( it does not count that gangs & foreign soldiers fight - it must be Iraqi against Iraqi).

Answer 8

From the very beginning, I believed this was an unconstitutional and illegal war, started for all the wrong reasons.
1) The 9-11 tragedy was still fresh in people's minds, giving the nameless, faceless sub-humans who actually control our government an 'excuse' for invading Iraq;
2) The Bush family has had a vendetta against Hussein ever since the days of Desert Storm, when George H.W. Bush was criticized and humiliated for not 'finishing the job' and ousting Hussein at that time;
3) The giant U.S. military-industrial complex needed another new 'war' to boost sagging corporate profits;
4) Dick Cheney and his Exxon-Mobil buddies want all that OIL swimming underneath Iraq's sands so that they can get richer and richer and richer feeding America's dependency on cheap, easily-accessible foreign OIL.
I believe soldiers returning from Iraq will suffer emotional consequences for years, being unable to talk about the horrors they witnessed in Iraq. I do NOT believe we 'learned' anything from this insipid war. I do NOT believe the U.S. has any intention or interest in bringing democracy to Iraq. I do NOT believe troops will be withdrawn anytime soon (Bush has said by 2009, but I think U.S. troops will be there for decades to come).
If it's not the intent to dominate Iraq for the next generation, WHY is the United States building the largest embassy in the world on a 104-acre site in downtown Baghdad overlooking the 'new' Iraqi puppet government installed by the Bush administration?? We will be there until we've sucked every drop of OIL out of Iraq's sands. OIL and OIL profits are the only reason America is occupying Iraq.
And OIL profits, to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, are far more important than the lives of 655,000 Iraqis and 2,800 U.S. soldiers.
I believe in a country called America, and I fully support our courageous troops. The problem lies within in a greedy, evil, corrupt and incompetent administration. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and all 535 members of the most arrogant, incompetent, contemptible, incorrigible, evil, greedy, corrupt Congress in U.S. history should all be tried in an international tribunal for crimes against humanity, and - if convicted - should all hang right alongside Saddam Hussein.
Thank you for your loyal service to the United States of America. You and all the decent young men and women who sacrifice so much for so little will surely earn a special place in Heaven. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and our Congressional gluttons deserve only a special oil-soaked corner in Hell. -RKO-

Answer 9

Yes I do.
Because it isn't over yet.
And if you fought over there, the best thing to remember is that you went there and did your duty. Whether it is just or unjust is not your responsibility.
It might be "a Vietnam" in that we may have to withdraw because our government won't support it any more. But it isn't Vietnam in that because of our efforts there, women can vote, girls can go to school, Al Queda doesn't dominate by fear... and there are numerous other freedoms that have been restored in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Answer 10

You will get two types of answers.

Those supporting your background and unique viewpoints...

...and those that sit at their computers and judge you as being unpatriotic, and telling you to go to hell.

I had a suspicion from the start that we were going to Iraq. Daddy's unfinished business. I assumed...like many of us did, that WMD's were in existence, as Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and party claimed. They put Powell up to a lie at the U.N. while making the case. That whole thing burns me up. Then Kerry lost the election in '04. One thing he said on record that really turned against him was his vote for the war in Iraq. And Bush had the audacity to use that against him. Well, if I had been told that Iraq had WMD's (slam dunk case) and were planning on spreading them to terrorists, I would have voted for the war as well. Fifty percent of Americans have their heads in the sand, not being able to see truth for fiction. Or spending too much time on Fox, and not getting a balanced viewpoint. It's quite a shame when a BJ becomes such a political motivator, even against the backdrop of something so drastic as 911 and Iraq, that the voting public refuses to see both sides of the story.

I think now that the chickenhawks are essentially out of power, this war will end a little more sensibly than Vietnam. For that, keep your faith in America, at least for now. However, we have so many problems here, we may no longer be leaders of the free world anyways within 20 years or so.

EDIT:

CASE IN POINT - I Vote, Do You?

She may vote alright, but does she serve in the military? Does her husband? She sits on her almighty couch and spews out hate, singling you out as unpatriotic, when you were on the ground, seeing the results firsthand, not as Fox reports it.