*** Official Politics Shitposting Thread ***

[BananaStand]

Who was the US defending itself from in Iraq II?

Saddam Hussein

What % of Americans supported the idea of Iraq II when it was decided to go ahead with it?

Very high.

What was the justification for killing > 100k civilians

You say that like it was the US, or US actions that directly lead to their killing. Concrete statistics on that are difficult to nail down. But look at this:



The green bars are us. The red/gray bars are not us. It looks like not-us was doing plenty of civilian killing on their own. Fighting against an enemy like that certainly will result in collateral damage. What's you're point??

How is that any different from what these people are arguing is ok to DEFEND their religious beliefs?

Are their religious beliefs under attack? Israel just wants to be left alone.

Also please make note of the importance of the word DEFEND here and how it contrasts with an "attack without provocation."

Fine. Defend against what though? You need to define the attacker.

Now go tell me who is a bigger threat to my world's peace: A religion where people think it's ok to defend themselves, or an entire country where it's so easy to hoodwink people into supporting an unjust war that killed >100k innocent people that it was never in doubt whether they could go ahead with it or not?

That's no contest. You say "defend themselves". But really what the poll was asking was about the use of terroristic intimidation to influence policies. It doesn't ask "is it ok to bomb the enemies of Islam". It asks if it's ok to bomb civilians as a means to defend Islam. That's completely different than a nation conducting a preemptive military strike, with support from other nations, abiding by international laws, and subject to UN sanctions.

If you're equating the two, it's because you huff too much paint.

Why is it a concern for a religion to be violent but not a country?

I just told you....because consequences

Islam is not subject to that same scrutiny. They can do whatever they want, and if anyone complains, they're racist.

[Poopadoop]

Saddam Hussein

And that he was any threat at all to the US was debunked shortly after the war started when they found no WMD. Did the US then say 'whoopsie' and immediately vacate the country they'd just bombed back into the stone age? No? Why not?

You say that like it was the US, or US actions that directly lead to their killing. Concrete statistics on that are difficult to nail down. But look at this:

That's like saying the Axis weren't responsible for all 60 million deaths in WWII because some of those people were killed by other countries, or starved to death or whatever. So they weren't killed by Axis bombs and bullets. Another, more reasonable way of looking at it is if they hadn't started the war, there wouldn't have been a war.

Are their religious beliefs under attack? Israel just wants to be left alone.

lol, Israel has not been acting like a country that just wants to be left alone. You'd have to go back more than a couple of decades to find a time when they've been behaving like that.

Fine. Defend against what though? You need to define the attacker.

Well I don't cause I didn't write the poll. I sijmply pointed out the word 'defend' is something that goes right past a lot of people. And I agree it's ambiguous and can be taken in different ways. But the numbers who are willing to 'defend' their creed by killing civvies is pretty consistent if you exchange the word 'Islam' with 'USA', and ask a different group of people. But no-one is talking about 'radical American terrorists' posing a huge threat to the world.

But really what the poll was asking was about the use of terroristic intimidation to influence policies.

Reductio ad bananum at its finest. Maybe read the actual words in the poll question itself and don't make up your own meaning for them.

It doesn't ask "is it ok to bomb the enemies of Islam". It asks if it's ok to bomb civilians as a means to defend Islam. That's completely different than a nation conducting a preemptive military strike, with support from other nations, abiding by international laws, and subject to UN sanctions.

The argument wasn't whether they got it past the UN or not. The UN wasn't exactly cheering them on iirc. But anyways, who was going to stop the US from doing w/e the fuck it wanted to in 2004?

Point is they did it without provocation or rationale. The 'evidence' of a threat was fabricated at worst, and at best incorrect (probably the former). What superpower country is so paranoid it goes halfway around the world to attack a third world country on the basis of imaginary threats?

I just told you....because consequences

Islam is not subject to that same scrutiny. They can do whatever they want, and if anyone complains, they're racist.

Lol, no 'racist' (or to keep Ong happy, 'theophobe') is the word reserved for people who hold an entire religious group responsible for the actions of a tiny minority. It's akin to holding all Americans responsible for Iraq II. It's not fair and that's why people object to it.

[Jack Sawyer]

The green bars are us. The red/gray bars are not us. It looks like not-us was doing plenty of civilian killing on their own. Fighting against an enemy like that certainly will result in collateral damage. What's you're point??

Do you have a graph like this with numbers from "us" and "not-us" that starts before 2003?

[Poopadoop]

Do you have a graph like this with numbers from "us" and "not-us" that starts before 2003?

Does it matter? The total number of civilian deaths are estimated as 182k-204k. Since it was 'us' who started the war, it's 'us' who is primarily responsible for the resulting deaths.

[BananaStand]

Does it matter? The total number of civilian deaths are estimated as 182k-204k. Since it was 'us' who started the war, it's 'us' who is primarily responsible for the resulting deaths.

I really hope we aren't going to spend a day in 2018 talking about the Iraq war. You say it was "us" who started the war. Fuck you.

We made a pre-emptive strike against a hostile regime. It doesn't matter necessarily that they didn't have WMD's. The intelligence suggesting that Hussein was TRYING to procure such things, has never been disproved. He also had a relatively powerful army with plenty of chemical and biological weapons, and had no problem using them. That's not "our" fault.

Pro Tip for you dictators out there. When you start getting 95% of the vote....the world is gonna get a little suspicious of what the fuck you're up to.

And don't start with the "Iraqi people didn't want us there". That's bullshit too. There were plenty of slaves that weren't thrilled about the emancipation proclamation either. Just because Saddam kept the Iraqi trains running on time, doesn't mean he should not have been removed.

The western world, led by the US decided that it was going to war against Islamism. Where is that coming from? Is there a country in that region that A) Borders all the others B) Is home to the two largest rivers in the region C) has prime access to major seaports and D) has enough natural resources to sustain wealth.

^That's the kind of ally we need if we're going to run a successful campaign against terrorism. Obviously we don't want to go around conquering countries for this purpose, but if said country is occupied by someone we can reasonable remove...so be it.

You see, at this point we were working under the progressive assumption that "not all muslims are bad". So we assumed that most muslims would embrace democracy, and be glad to be free. As it turns out, most muslims are bad. And huge numbers of them carried out an armed insurgency to try and seize power after Saddam was deposed. And even though they were dying by the thousands, the muslim civillians didn't really do much to help us. They were just like..."yeah, fuck the west, we want Islam, kill the infidels"

There's no fucking way the world would be a safe place, if we allowed a violent insurgency of Islamists to take over a country like Iraq.

So sorry if it got messy.

In 08, Obama was elected, and he pulled us out fast. ISIS came. That pretty much proves that staying in Iraq was the right thing to do, even after we learned that Saddam had no WMD's.

[Poopadoop]

You say it was "us" who started the war. Fuck you.

We made a pre-emptive strike against a hostile regime.

Lol.

So, it was 'them' who fired the first shot?

If your whole justification for Iraq is that 'they' were somehow a threat to 'us' and so we had to start a war (but we didn't *really* start it in any sense except the sense of who invaded who), and so the blame lays entirely with them, then you're an even bigger moron than I thought.

Only the dumbest, most jingoistic brainwashed flag-humping American thinks that war was justified. Sadly that's probably about the same % who want to bomb Aladdin.

Not even going the read the rest of your diatribe. I'll assume it's just more bullshit to try to support the basic contradiction you started the argument with. But hey, go ahead and answer this post with another essay lol.

[BananaStand]

If your whole justification for Iraq is that 'they' were somehow a threat to 'us' and so we had to start a war (but we didn't *really* start it in any sense except the sense of who invaded who), and so the blame lays entirely with them, then you're an even bigger moron than I thought.

You seem to be blurring the sequence of events.

Hussein was a threat.

We took him out.

Easy game.

THEN.......

Armed Islamic insurgents started a war. Not us.

[Poopadoop]

You seem to be blurring the sequence of events.

Hussein was not a threat.

We took him out, and devastated the country.

THEN.......

Ungrateful armed Islamic insurgents started a war.

fyp