American wars and the first Gulf War -- ExUBF's Parlor

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 22:01:20 10/08/04 Fri
Author: Joe
Subject: American wars and the first Gulf War
In reply to: Mike K. 's message, "Biased media?" on 11:37:17 10/07/04 Thu

>Plus, war never happened in your home. You haven't
>lost your lifetime's accomplishment (your house, your
>property, your family) due to a single bomb.

This may not be totally applicable, but there was the American Civil War, a bloody and costly war.

>Okay, 9/11 was was an incident where people lost
>relatives, I admit. But rarely an entire family line
>got wiped out.
>In wars, this is everyday business. It happens all the
>time and is usually handled as "collateral damage".

9/11 wasn't just an incident. Nothing like 9/11 had ever happened, anywhere.

>I have one question for you: if Saddam Hussein really
>was the problem, why did America not support the
>revolution in Iraq right after the Kuwait incident? At
>that time, many thousand people thought that America
>would help them get rid of Saddam, so they seized
>their opportunity and demonstrated against Hussein.
>America refused to aid these people in any way. They
>were all killed.

It is almost universally accepted in America, except among the pacifists, that the decision not to "finish the job" after the first Gulf War was a grave mistake. The fear was that going after Saddam in Baghdad would result in too many American troop losses. There was also the fear of Saddam using chemical weapons. The pullout from Iraq was due to political pressures (again, the pacifists) and stupid. Really stupid in that the American General in charge (Schwartzkopf; a German no less!) agreed to let Saddam keep his helicopter gun ships. Those same helicopter gun ships slaughtered the people who were ready to overthrow Saddam.

>And not to say that I consider Saddam as an acceptible
>leader for a country, there is one philosophical
>question: "If you use the methods of your enemies,
>what differentiates you from them?"
>Abu Ghraib should ring a bell.

What differentiates "us from them" is that the abuses in Abu Ghraib were exposed (by the American media that is not quite so censored) and the responsible parties dealt with.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Re: American wars and the first Gulf War -- Chris, 02:27:34 10/09/04 Sat