Benghazi: What's the Charge Again?

[DeistPaladin]

A)We had a moral obligation to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

No, we didn't. Sweet Reason, I don't know where to begin with this. A list is in order.

• First and foremost, we were at war with Al Qaeda. That should have been our top priority. We had an opportunity to crush Al Qaeda and squandered it because Bush placed Saddam as a higher priority. Saddam and Bin Laden, by the way, hated each other. Our enemy's enemy may not be our friend, and he certainly wasn't, but our enemy's enemy should at most be a secondary target. This is why I am glad Bush wasn't president during World War II. The Japanese would have bombed Pearl Harbor and we would have attacked Stalin in response.
  
• Second of all, we do not have the right to invade countries because they're run by dictators. That's called "aggression".
  
• Third, why just him? Why not every dictator on the planet? And why now? The key figures in the Bush administration had allied with him in the past when they knew what a monster he was.
  
• Fourth, nobody appointed us the world policeman. It's a role we have neither the authority, nor the financial resources, nor the manpower to continue. We're too broke to fund education but still want to pour money into our war machine.
  
• Fifth, what did we replace him with? What could we possibly have replaced him with? Only the most naive could have expected a Jeffersonian democracy. Best case scenario was a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Worst case scenario is a bloody civil war complete with ethnic cleansing.
  
• Sixth, you can't export democracy at the point of a gun. When are we going to learn this lesson? People have to fight for it if they want it. Right now, the government people seem to want to fight for over there is a theocracy.
  
• More Iraqis have died since the war and occupation than did under Saddam. We've displaced millions. The economy has been demolished. The government is corrupt. If our goal was to rescue the Iraqi people, mission failed.
  

B)An endless quasi-war and endless sanctions against the Iraqi people needed to stop.

Non sequitur. You want to stop a quasi-war by escalating it to a full blown war? Positively Orwellian thinking.

I was hoping an occupation of Iraq would turn out like Germany or Japan.

Sure, and the democracy elves would ride in on unicorns down across a rainbow and then they would sprinkle their pixie dust on the Iraqi people and suddenly all the long-brewing sectarian feuds barely held back by Saddam's brutality would disappear and the Jesus would lead everyone into the sunset singing "hosanna".

Those who aren't so naive were expecting the majority to vote in a Shiite leader. The Sunnis, who had long oppressed the Shiites under Saddam, would rightly fear payback and rebel. Bin Laden would inevitably gain supporters among his fellow Sunnis. Iran would finally be able to gain influence among their fellow Shiites and eventually form Iraq as a client state, something they've dreamed of for a long time. Tit for tats would always threaten to spiral out of control into full blown ethnic cleansing. Mutual terror that resulted from the unleashing of long brewing sectarian hatreds would, at best, displace many Iraqis turning them into refugees. And all this was the best case realistic scenario.

I also thought it would be a good idea to surround Iran.

With a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Got it. By getting rid of Saddam, we helped Iran get one step closer to being the dominant power in the region.

Why was Iran a priority again? We should have been concentrating on Bin Laden.

During the many times I was called a "traitor" for daring to question a sitting president, the right wingnuts would ask "have you forgotten 9/11?" No, I hadn't. I wanted our military efforts to be concentrated on fighting Bin Laden. I didn't forget. You people did. You took your eye off the ball and ran off on a completely unrelated quest. We played into Bin Laden's hands creating the very playground in Iraq he wanted to create. We couldn't have botched our response to 9/11 any worse and the world is much worse off because of it.

[Heywood]

A)We had a moral obligation to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

No, we didn't. Sweet Reason, I don't know where to begin with this. A list is in order.

• First and foremost, we were at war with Al Qaeda. That should have been our top priority. We had an opportunity to crush Al Qaeda and squandered it because Bush placed Saddam as a higher priority. Saddam and Bin Laden, by the way, hated each other. Our enemy's enemy may not be our friend, and he certainly wasn't, but our enemy's enemy should at most be a secondary target. This is why I am glad Bush wasn't president during World War II. The Japanese would have bombed Pearl Harbor and we would have attacked Stalin in response.
  
• Second of all, we do not have the right to invade countries because they're run by dictators. That's called "aggression".
  
• Third, why just him? Why not every dictator on the planet? And why now? The key figures in the Bush administration had allied with him in the past when they knew what a monster he was.
  
• Fourth, nobody appointed us the world policeman. It's a role we have neither the authority, nor the financial resources, nor the manpower to continue. We're too broke to fund education but still want to pour money into our war machine.
  
• Fifth, what did we replace him with? What could we possibly have replaced him with? Only the most naive could have expected a Jeffersonian democracy. Best case scenario was a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Worst case scenario is a bloody civil war complete with ethnic cleansing.
  
• Sixth, you can't export democracy at the point of a gun. When are we going to learn this lesson? People have to fight for it if they want it. Right now, the government people seem to want to fight for over there is a theocracy.
  
• More Iraqis have died since the war and occupation than did under Saddam. We've displaced millions. The economy has been demolished. The government is corrupt. If our goal was to rescue the Iraqi people, mission failed.
  

B)An endless quasi-war and endless sanctions against the Iraqi people needed to stop.

Non sequitur. You want to stop a quasi-war by escalating it to a full blown war? Positively Orwellian thinking.

I was hoping an occupation of Iraq would turn out like Germany or Japan.

Sure, and the democracy elves would ride in on unicorns down across a rainbow and then they would sprinkle their pixie dust on the Iraqi people and suddenly all the long-brewing sectarian feuds barely held back by Saddam's brutality would disappear and the Jesus would lead everyone into the sunset singing "hosanna".

Those who aren't so naive were expecting the majority to vote in a Shiite leader. The Sunnis, who had long oppressed the Shiites under Saddam, would rightly fear payback and rebel. Bin Laden would inevitably gain supporters among his fellow Sunnis. Iran would finally be able to gain influence among their fellow Shiites and eventually form Iraq as a client state, something they've dreamed of for a long time. Tit for tats would always threaten to spiral out of control into full blown ethnic cleansing. Mutual terror that resulted from the unleashing of long brewing sectarian hatreds would, at best, displace many Iraqis turning them into refugees. And all this was the best case realistic scenario.

I also thought it would be a good idea to surround Iran.

With a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Got it. By getting rid of Saddam, we helped Iran get one step closer to being the dominant power in the region.

Why was Iran a priority again? We should have been concentrating on Bin Laden.

During the many times I was called a "traitor" for daring to question a sitting president, the right wingnuts would ask "have you forgotten 9/11?" No, I hadn't. I wanted our military efforts to be concentrated on fighting Bin Laden. I didn't forget. You people did. You took your eye off the ball and ran off on a completely unrelated quest. We played into Bin Laden's hands creating the very playground in Iraq he wanted to create. We couldn't have botched our response to 9/11 any worse and the world is much worse off because of it.

You are conflating our desire to destroy Al Queda with our obligation under the moral contract to rid Iraq of an evil man we helped put in power...and keep in power.

They are two separate issues.

[Ryantology]

Negative Ryantology....if you were paying full attention you would have seen that in this thread I have already expressed my disdain for our past support of Hussien and listed that fact as why we had a moral obligation to remove him even if it meant shedding some of our own blood.

And a shit ton of theirs, right. At least the survivors have the freedom to live under whatever wealthy warlord has the most guns in their region, and the freedom to be blown up by car bombs with no warning.

Apparently, moral obligations for freedom do not extend to all those freedom-starved people living under tyrants who don't control the world's fifth-largest petroleum reserves, or even to the other pair which made up Bush's Axis of Evil.

After screwing the Iraqi people over by supporting Hussein, we had an obligation to at least give them a chance for peace and freedom. You would have us just walk away without any attempt to remedy the situation....which is reprehensible.

Yeah, so reprehensible that there would be hundreds of thousands of them still alive today to do something about the problem on their own. So reprehensible even though it was obviously the right thing to do because our intervention was a catastrophic failure on every level, starting with the premise and ending with trillions in national debt due to us borrowing to pay for it. Note, of course, that I'm just going along with the idea that the true premise that this war was anything but an excuse to line some pockets with black gold that happened to come with a convenient excuse, because it's been eleven years and most of us figured it out quite a long time ago.

[DeistPaladin]

You are conflating our desire to destroy Al Queda with our obligation under the moral contract to rid Iraq of an evil man we helped put in power...and keep in power.

They are two separate issues.

Um, no. Since we don't have infinite resources and power, we have to prioritize what we wish to accomplish. A decision was made to put Al Qaeda on the back-burner and make Saddam the top priority. We effectively traded catching Bin Laden for removing Saddam. That was part of the decision to go to war when we did.

Hope you can answer some of my other objections.

[Whateverist]

To the OP: Being black while being the president?

[KUSA]

It's strange that liberals always bring up race even when it doesn't apply to a damn thing.

[Ryantology]

Damn tootin'. Conservatives can be ridiculously hypocritical without being racist about it.

But, if they can be both at once, they tend towards the efficient method.

[DeistPaladin]

It's strange that liberals always bring up race even when it doesn't apply to a damn thing.

It's hard to avoid concluding that race is an issue with these people.

No president ever before in American history has been heckled in the middle of a State of the Union address by a sitting member of Congress. Instead of being forced to resign in disgrace, that congressman was celebrated as some kind of hero.

No president ever before in American history has had to provide proof that he is actually an American citizen and "one of us".

And it's been a long time since a president has faced a thread of armed insurrection.

[A Theist]

It's strange that liberals always bring up race even when it doesn't apply to a damn thing.

It's hard to avoid concluding that race is an issue with these people.

No president ever before in American history has been heckled in the middle of a State of the Union address by a sitting member of Congress. Instead of being forced to resign in disgrace, that congressman was celebrated as some kind of hero.

No president ever before in American history has had to provide proof that he is actually an American citizen and "one of us".

And it's been a long time since a president has faced a thread of armed insurrection.

None of which has to do with Barack Obama being Black....The accusation of racism is just a favorite tactic used by a lot on the left everytime a Conservative questions Barack's policies....You want to talk racism, look what conservative Blacks have to put up with. They're Uncle Tommed to death and called Race Traitors by other Blacks, and a lot of those racist terms are coming from Black members of Congress.

I never did agree with that group of conspiracy theorists which demanded proof of Barack's birth certificate. I just think Barack is a rotten lying president. The real crazy conspiracy theorist nut jobs are the 9-11 truthers.

[DeistPaladin]

I never did agree with that group of conspiracy theorists which demanded proof of Barack's birth certificate. I just think Barack is a rotten lying president. The real crazy conspiracy theorist nut jobs are the 9-11 truthers.

You know, A Theist, I'm always ready to acknowledge where we have common ground and THIS is one area where the "both sides" argument is actually valid. Specifically, both sides have their embarrassing conspiracy theorists nuts. I'm glad to hear you're not a birther any more than I'm a truther.