"George Bush our hero!"

Although Regans total defeat of Communism was glorious, it's not constituting a golden age.


Total defeat of communism! So your version of history would be American tanks rolling into Moscow, right? I think the actual events were a bit different. A lot of Eastern European countries "switched" using peaceful means and were not "liberated" by anyone but themselves. Reagan certainly reactivated the "red scare" phobia that's part of the American version of repression of political dissent, something which has yet another renaissance going on since 9/11.
 
Actually Reagan didn't defeat Communism...unless of course China has been erased and nobody has bothered to change the maps. I think the Gulf War 1 was more responsible for the fall than anything Reagan ever did. Gulf War 1 was our weapons against thier weapons. The two super powers got to have a war without firing a single shot at each other. That was the first time Iraq took the fall.
 
Gulf War 1 was our weapons against thier weapons.

Actually it was more "our" (speaking from the American point of view) against all sorts of weapons: Russian, American, European... The same applies to the "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan. Just another aspect of globalization :rolleyes:
 
Actually it was your (if you're American) weapons against your (if you're American again) weapons since you supplied the weapons in the first place. As a defense against Iran if I'm not mistaken. GW were again you're weapons since you supplied them just because they were money. You sold them to whichever country and you knew they were going to sell them to Iraq. Not that it matters of course, money is money, right?

And the former USSR fell because of three reasons in my point of view:

1) The people had just about enough, the former DDR revolted as did so many other countries. Enough is enough, they had it with communism.

2) If they kept their communism they weakened it, made it less radical, like what happened during the revolution in Prague, that was just the USSR invading because the leader of the Tsjechs wasn't a hardcore communist like in Moscow. In the end, nobody except Moscow had an interest in fundamentalistical communism.

3) Russia self fell because it couldn't support the weapons. In the cold war they were buying and producing as much weapons as the US, only for them it was 80% or more of the total budget and in the US it was only 30% ... Why did the US have more money? Because they 'helped' Europe get their economy back on track, which was a good thing for everyone, but especially for the US, because the economy is the US wasn't all that great (ever heard of Keynes?) but after WW2, they had a whole new market to exploit and export to!
 
Originally posted by habilis
I never said or meant that France and Germany would become useless. What I was talking about is that the U.N. was created with one of the main purposes being to stop tyranny and genocide on the Hitler-scale from ever happening again, as in it was meant to UNITE NATIONS againt this kind of tyranny. The UN is morally bankrupt. It needs to be gutted and rebuilt and renamed the Global Actions Front. The UN did nothing of consequence to prevent the oppression and genocide commited by the former Saddam regime.
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but it was the united states who was funding iraq's war with iran that lead to the mass murder of the kurds. it was united states' apache helicopters which were used to deliver the chemical weapons. many believe that the chemical and biological weapons programs in iraq were started with help from the united states, although no hard proof i don't think.

the united nations is a democratic body, so it's actions aren't independant of it's members. so, the members are responsible for the action or inaction of the united nations.
 
Originally posted by anerki
Actually it was your (if you're American) weapons against your (if you're American again) weapons since you supplied the weapons in the first place. As a defense against Iran if I'm not mistaken. GW were again you're weapons since you supplied them just because they were money. You sold them to whichever country and you knew they were going to sell them to Iraq. Not that it matters of course, money is money, right?
...
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The Iraqis have/used Migs (Soviet), T54/T62/T72 tanks (Soviet), Scud missiles (Soviet), Katyusha missle launchers (Soviet), hmm I detect a pattern here. Which US made weapons played a reasonably sized role for the Iraqi's?
 
Originally posted by anerki
Yes, but who funded them? I don't know exactly what weapons were used, I'm no war-expert ...
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You're no war expert and you don't know which weapons but yet you still said:

Actually it was your (if you're American) weapons against your (if you're American again) weapons since you supplied the weapons in the first place.
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There is no doubt that the US actively helped Iraq during the Iraq v Iran wars. What isn't completely known however is to what extent. If you have links that can show how this pro-Iraqi involvement somehow has lead to Iraq's pre first Gulf War ability to amass it's army, then please provide them. It's not like Iraq is some poor backwoods African nation, they have long had the financial and political means to support themselves post Iraq/Iran war.
 
Originally posted by binaryDigit
It's not like Iraq is some poor backwoods African nation, they have long had the financial and political means to support themselves post Iraq/Iran war.
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1) Some African nations are richer than the backwoods cliché given here.

2) How do you finance yourself when your very sole resource, oil, is integrally controlled by an embargo which terms are fixed by another country (that is, the American "oil against food" program) ?

The fact that Saddam's army is using Soviet weapons to fight shows that the country has been and nowadays is ruined and that even the army (which is the first source of investment in dictatures and *hum* some democracies :rolleyes:) did not modernize.
 
Originally posted by toast
1) Some African nations are richer than the backwoods cliché given here.
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Really, and the US isn't evil;) I was refering to nations that aren't rich, hence the use of the term "poor backwoods". If I said that something along the lines of "It's not like he's some Mac zealot", does that imply that all Mac users are zealots, no, it would refer to a specific type of Mac user. Had I been making a generalzation of African nations in general, then you'd have a point.


2) How do you finance yourself when your very sole resource, oil, is integrally controlled by an embargo which terms are fixed by another country (that is, the American "oil against food" program) ?
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Easy, it's called illegal export. Ask the Syrians about it. Or is the Saddam regime so frugal that they've been able to sustain themselves on the, apparently, massive amounts of cash that they didn't spend during the Iraq/Iran war. Or land and facilities rentals to terrorist orgs must be much more profitable than originally thought.


The fact that Saddam's army is using Soviet weapons to fight shows that the country has been and nowadays is ruined and that even the army (which is the first source of investment in dictatures and *hum* some democracies :rolleyes:) did not modernize.
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No, they used soviet weapons for economic reasons. The soviet stuff is cheap (relatively), easy to get, and you already know who to use it. Given the countries that you're likely to get aggresive against, why would you spend significantly more for the fancy US stuff? Plus, that would be missing the point right? The Pakistani military isn't exactly the most modern, but yet even they are capable of producing nuclear weapons. So it doesn't really show or prove anything.
 
Originally posted by binaryDigit
...
Easy, it's called illegal export. Ask the Syrians about it. Or is the Saddam regime so frugal that they've been able to sustain themselves on the, apparently, massive amounts of cash that they didn't spend during the Iraq/Iran war. Or land and facilities rentals to terrorist orgs must be much more profitable than originally thought.

...
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Aha, Syria, you're the next target...

Basically the proof that Saddam didn't have any cash during the last 10 years, is that he had no army anymore (he had a strong army before the first gulf war), he had no mass destruction weapons (the only illegal weapons were missiles with 190 km range, nothing chemical of biological, and they were found by the UN inspectors), the bunkers were all quite old, and the population was starving. The only terrorist found in Iraq was a guy who was active in the mid 80's... this terrorist was as old and harmfull as Saddam's weapons.

It's now time to rebuild Iraq (or give it another name). It's one of the oldest world's civilization. One of the richest (nothing to do with oil) civilization.
 
Indeed, the war is, almost, over. The US didn't win, since they were never threatened, but they did help free Iraq of its regime, which any way you turn it, was bad.

It's a terrible shame all of it's history was destroyed ... They should've guessed they'd plunder the musea ...
 
Originally posted by binaryDigit
I was refering to nations that aren't rich, hence the use of the term "poor backwoods"
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OK, I had misunderstood that bit.

illegal export cannot finance (the term you used in the first place was 'support') a whole country such as Iraq.

Originally posted by binaryDigit
they used soviet weapons for economic reasons. The soviet stuff is cheap (relatively), easy to get, and you already know who to use it. Given the countries that you're likely to get aggresive against, why would you spend significantly more for the fancy US stuff? Plus, that would be missing the point right? The Pakistani military isn't exactly the most modern, but yet even they are capable of producing nuclear weapons. So it doesn't really show or prove anything.
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- The 'cheap' argument backs up the fact that Iraq did not have the means to support itself after the Iran/Iraq war (see first post of yours).
- The last country Iraq was susceptible to get aggressive against was the US. If Iraq had important financial means and efficient illegal export networks, it would have bought some new weaponry for its army. But the point is, the Iraqi state is ruined, and the black trade networks aren't that powerful.
- The Pakistani military is capable to buy nukes, not to produce them. Important difference.

I'll repeat last argument from last post: military regimes are obsessed with having the most powerful army they can get. Saddam's army, in terms of men and weapons on the quantitative side and its technology on the qualitative side, show that Iraq was ruined[/ï] in the 'Third World' sense (ie. all money is in the hands of a microscopic minoritarain aristocracy of businessmen).
 
Originally posted by kermit64
but it was the united states who was funding iraq's war with iran that lead to the mass murder of the kurds.
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In that case, the Boeing Aviation Company is responsible for deaths of the 3,000 New Yorkers who died in the WTC, after all, they provided the planes which Boeing knew damn well are nothing more then terrorist weapons which just so happen to have people on board them. And Exxon has blood on their hands for providing the jet fuel that started the fire that melted the steel that caused the structural failure that caused the eventual collapse that caused----insert your conspiracy theory here.

And I suppose when you spill hot coffee in you lap at McDonalds, it was the restaurants fault. And I suppose when someone kills someone else with a gun, it was the gun maker who's reponsible, or better yet, the gun itself was responsible?

That kind of thinking is what keeps grudges alive and burning in the mid-east today. It's why the Palestinians hate the Israelis and vise-versa.

Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
VX Nerve gas rockets don't kill people. Saddam kills people.
Accountability - Responibility.
 
Originally posted by habilis
In that case, the Boeing Aviation Company is responsible for deaths of the 3,000 New Yorkers who died in the WTC, after all, they provided the planes which Boeing knew damn well are nothing more then terrorist weapons which just so happen to have people on board them. And
That kind of thinking is what keeps grudges alive and burning in the mid-east today. It's why the Palestinians hate the Israelis and vise-versa.
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That is the most simplistic and naive argument I've ever heard. Passenger planes as weapons, come on! Compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Weapons are built to kill, civilian aircraft don't fit that definition.

The US has a long history of supporting regimes that are likely to use the weapons given them by the US against segments of its own population. South America, Africa and Asia are littered with the skeletons of people killed with American weapons.

Of course it's not the weapons themselves that is the cause for worry, it is the fact that the US continues to support regimes that are repressive and divisive. The US has only been interested in short term economic benefits, not long term stability. Look at the continued US support for Israel, that support only fuels the fire of Jewish/Muslim hatred in the Middle East.

Until the US realizes that it is not the world's policeman and that the only way for true world peace is through the democratic methods of the UN, the US will continue to suffer at the hands of terrorism.
 
Hmm...I think it's more of as long as radical groups (so to speak) conceive that the US is sticking their nose where it doesn't belong, the US will continue to suffer at the hands of terrorism. Though it boils down to about the same thing.
 
i think that until most americans stop thinking that america is the only country and people that matter, terrorism will only grow and the number of people from outside the middle east that will join in is going to grow. it is has always happened that extremes spawn equal opposite extremes. extreme american nationalism will only breed extreme american resentment. but who knows, history could suddenly not repeat itself as it always has. :confused:
 
Originally posted by Ugg

Until the US realizes that it is not the world's policeman and that the only way for true world peace is through the democratic methods of the UN, the US will continue to suffer at the hands of terrorism.
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Allow me to interject;
The radical fundamentalists hate us for allowing our women to work. They hate us because we believe in ANYTHING other than Allah. They hate us because we are Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Athiests. They hate us because we charge interest on loans. They hate us for being liberal. They hate us for allowing our women equality. They hate us because we are free. They hate us because we are tolerant. They hate us for supporting countries that uphold these values(Israel).

These poeple are drivin by hate and envy and jealousy and consequently act only in purview of evil. They care nothing for human values, and until they do, we will continue to rid the world of this cancer, this virus called terrorism.
 
so habilis, you're supposing that the majority of iraqis - the shiites, aren't going to oppose those things in their new democratic govt.?
 
I guess I'm just a narrow-minded war-monger then. I believe that so far the war has been a success. War, like pruning, is unfortunately sometimes necessary. Just as you must prune a rose bush for it to grow beautifully, sometimes so too must our world be. war is also somewhat like forging a quality sword. Only through the fire is it purified, and only between the hammer and the anvil is it shaped.

Let the venom flow.......
 
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