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Preempt this: We told you so, invading Iraq was DUMB
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We had a bunch of retarded idealists without a contingency plan.
Also, a regular plan. They didn't really have one of those, either. Unilateralism kind of incensed the anti-western/anti-"neocolonialist" crowd, too. Also, not enough troops.
I could go on, of course.
"I want a car that is affordable, gets good gas mileage, is pretty, has a comfortable back seat, and has good luggage space."
"Man, what? That's a lot of things. That means you don't know what you want. You should just pick one."
"But... I want all those things."
"No! Pick one!"
"... Fine. I want a car that gets good gas mileage. Ooh, look, here's one. I think I'll get it."
"So, what's the gas mileage on it?
"About 25 mpg."
"25? That's it? You said you wanted good gas mileage, and there are cars that are much better."
"Well, I also said that I wanted something affordable, pretty, comfortable, and with good luggage space, and it seems to have those, so..."
"Backpedaler! You're totally backpedaling! You said you just wanted something with good gas mileage, and now you're making up lies!"
"I hope you die in a fire."
I think the evolution generally has to go in this order:
1. State Power decentralized between different groups.
2. Rule of law fixed as method of generally mediating internal disputes.
3. Power of government in general limited
4. Popular participation.
No what I'm saying is that the reasoning behind the initial strike was more then likely not due to the fact that the U.S. had intelligence on Iraq to begin with.
As for NK holding SK hostage, and then going "look we're making nukes now", don't you think that would be a good reason to negotiate with SK to move in now instead of later when a country is up in your fucking grill making claims like that?
No, instead we send the message that making nukes gets you free fuel, 1 million fucking tons worth.
Yeah so do nothing and when they up their weaponry, give them free fuel.
That's a brilliant idea.
Fucking genius even.
olol war on terror until you point guns at us or our allies.
Seems better than mushroom clouds all over South Korea.
You have a better one I take it.
Welcome to Planet Reality, where we have to consider the ramifications of our actions.
Give the artillery 4 hours and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference
Yeah, obviously, though, there's no place like that, so we had to attack Iraq.
-Delegate possible actions with South Korea
-Take satellite imagery and identify immediate threats.
-Get a bunch of MOABS
-Pulverize the fuckers.
See, that's what a preemptive strike really means. It's not attacking someone in his corner when he's no immediate threat to anyone. You hit the enemy before they hit back especially when he's boasting about nukes.
I agree that we should have stayed in Afghanistan, but I think the thought was that as Iraq already had the infrastructure, it would be easiest to install a US friendly democracy there, giving us a strategic launching point into other nations in the region. Of course we kind of fucked the infrastructure and there's doubts it would have worked anyway with the sectarian conflicts that were just waiting to boil over, but...
Would it have even been possible to install a working government in Afghan? We could have taken out major terrorists, sure, but I can't quite see how we could have scraped together an infrastructure there.
On the black screen
Evacuate Seoul and break through the DMZ, save the citizens, the buildings can be rebuilt. Quite honestly I think the second ID could take P'yongyang in three days, it's only about 100 miles from Seoul. Maybe have the 82nd do drops into Kosan and Changyon, expanding west and east respectively.
edit: man I wish I could see how the 2nd ID engineers would do it. They've probably got one hell of a master plan.
Right -- my main complaint there is that they were largely dishonest about it.
I see it thusly -- we realize that fossil fuels are going to become an increasingly critical resource. We realize that a huge amount of that resource is centered in a part of the globe where increasingly powerful coalitions are forming which are increasingly hostile to us specifically. We realized that the whole Israel thing was only so effective, and it was time we made a move to assert influence in this increasingly critical part of the globe. So we need an entry-plan, and that entry plan becomes Iraq. While I assume (and in part hope, because the alternatives are terrible to me) that this is the real reasoning behind this war, I'm more than a little put out by all the obviously bullshit rhetoric which was used to sell this to the American public.
Also, I think if they were honest about their motivations, we could have a much more frank, open, and honest discussion of our international policy, instead of all this jingoistic bullshit that is hoisted on us in its place. My other problem is that not just the rhetoric, but the strategy was garbage as well, which I'll address below.
Can you cite a precedent where a foreign invader was able to successfully "convert" another country? Shit, we had the very recent precedent of Afghanistan sitting right there for us to review, and our complete refusal to acknowledge that situation is frankly shameful. It's beyond arrogant to assume that we can invade another country and mold it in our image. This is where the precedent of Vietnam comes -- if the people don't want us there, the people don't want us there, and bombing their homes and killing their relatives doesn't really help the whole "hearts and minds" thing. It's just absolute arrogance on our part to ever think this was going to go over.
edit: and I strongly concur with Richy's first post in this thread re: what we knew.
-We won't hit all of the possible sites that have missiles.
-This will allow North Korea to fuck Seoul in the ass. You know, that city with over ten million people in it?
Or the even more likely scenario:
-North Korea sees that we are building up for an invasion.
-North Korea rapes Seoul.
We invade. We can't pacify it, we can't hold it, we're forced to pull out. In our wake, we leave a war-torn country in the midsts of civil war, with tremendous amounts of poverty. The religious fanatics manage to grab and hold power in a relatively stable government, though they're constantly being attacked by the tribes in the north.
Oh, hey, wait a minute, that's exactly how it was before we got there.
I think we would have had a lot better chance with Afghanistan, if only because right now in Iraq, 58% of the people are remembering the "good ol' days" under Saddam, whereas in Afghanistan, we can at least say that things aren't any worse than they were before. If we had really moved into there like we did with Iraq, we could have brought people electricity, running water, cell phone services, etc., and probably would have been fairly popular with the people for doing it. Iraq already had most of those things, up until we invaded, and they're having more problems getting those things now than they ever had under Saddam.
North Korea would notice there is an evacuation because Seoul is right next to the border. North Korea would probably be able to reduce Seoul to ashes before a full evacuation could happen. Even if they were able to evacuate successfully, homes for millions of people and businesses would be destroyed. This would create millions of people without a home.
man I wish I could see how the 2nd ID engineers would do it. They've probably got one hell of a master plan.
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People in the 2nd ID have been working on the invasion for years upon years; I'd really just like to see their plan.
Especially for a war that most Koreans I know (I'm Korean-American, btw) think is completely unnecessary. Reunification isn't really a matter of "if," it's a matter of "when and under what conditions."
How can you advocate the initial actions against Iraq and state that a preemptive strike against NK is a bad idea is beyond me.
Iraq wasn't making any claims or pounding its chest when the US decided to lay into them with extreme prejudice.
Yet here we have someone, who's making actual WMDs and you're saying "Welcome to planet reality" and we should think twice before making any rash decisions?
I'm having a hard time understanding how you could think this way if you have any logic whatsoever. If it's the fact that NK's pointing artillery towards SK is the reason why we should appeal to their threats, that will just lead to more threats being made and more compromises down the road.
Iraq did not have artillery units poised to kill a million people more or less instantly omg are you even reading what we're writing here
The situation is completely different. Iraq didn't have the capability of destroying the main city of one of our closest allies before lunchtime. Also, SK has leverage in negotiations with NK. We gain absolutely nothing by invading NK (a nation that will never use WMDs because their regime is, despite all of its quirks, intently fixed on holding onto power) since we'll probably achieve our goals through peaceful means once NK's economy collapses and SK comes to the rescue.
Invading North Korea will cause them to enact a definite and immediate destructive course of action.
Can't really put it plainer, Meiz. How are you not understanding this?
I don't think that it's completely too far of a mental leap to assume that while our military is spread a little thin it would be advantageous to placate a country like N.Korea.
read: I wasn't saying "war for oil, ololol"
I doubt NK's intelligence could get a whiff of a preemptive strike and if it's carefully executed, I don't see what the problem is. Honestly, have you seen pictures of that place? Most of it looks like Chernobyl after the meltdown. They're not even close to having the means to defend against a preemptive air strike let alone fathom a counter attack when they're the ones being reduced to ashes.
1. Delegate does not mean what you think it means.
2. South Korea would not agree to this plan.
So your suggestion isn't really a "preemptive strike" at North Korea but rather "preemptive genocide." Just throw a fuckload of nukes at them before they can blink, huh?
Oh yeah, kill them all....
What are you fucking stupid?
Granted there will be civilian casualties but you can still, with proper intelligence, find out where these weapons they're planing to use on Seoul are and neutralize them.
Hell, I'm going to hate stepping into this...
A precedent for remolding former totalitarian states into modern democracies: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperialist Japan? Followed by the Marshall plan for Europe, and MacArthur's occupation for the Japanes home islands. Massive war. Lots and lots and lots of casualties, but ultimately backed up by a total commitment to rebuilding -- both by the government and the people. It's the commitment thing that's lacking here.
Edit: To clarify - It's the commitment of the occupying power I'm referring to, not the occupied power.
No, that would be you.
"Pulverize the fuckers" and your general tone and disposition to this issue doesn't exactly communicate that you give a fuck about North Korea at all. They are a target to be eliminated. Maybe you should calm your language down a bit if that's not what you're saying here.
And that is why South Korea would never agree... those "civilian casualties" you care so little about are their fucking relatives.
I'm done entertaining this line of thought. It is uninteresting and stupid.
Back to the subject of Iraq... I would really like to hear about a time that a despot was overthrown and a non-puppet government installed that actually worked. For the life of me I cannot think of a single time in history that this has been accomplished.
I mean, if prior to the Revolutionary War, France had come over here, killed all the British and said "We're just going to leave these troops here until you guys have a stable democracy" I can believe we would still be attacking the French from the trees... it seems to me that Democracy has proven to be the one political ideology that has to evolve in order for it to be effective.
I'd also like to clear up that part of the big reason this remains an issue for me is because I'm wondering when we will learn from previous occupiers like Britain, France, Holland, the US, etc. that these type of arrogant, imperialistic plans are not the way to do international business. The Iraq plan failed because it was flawed from the beginning, and I don't want people to start re-telling the story as "well, in hindsight we could have done better."
NO! In hindsight we never should have done it to begin with!
Anyway that's my point for this thread. I would most like history to reflect that this plan sucked from the beginning, and as such we should be cautious of similarly sucky plans in the future.
Their regime is inherently unstable. If we attack them now, they definitely vaporize Seoul. If we wait, there's a chance that their leadership will change to the point where they no longer see destruction of SK as a reasonable option.