TychoCelchuuu

I think it's pretty likely that the hostages themselves are extremely grateful and they know they owe the soldiers their lives. We're not talking to the hostages though, we're just seeing what the media chooses to report.

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|TG-Irr|TychoCelchuuu

leejo

You are correct. CPT's website has offered up this addendum:

Addenda
A pretty limp handshake. I'm looking forward to hearing from the freed hostages themselves, although I imagine that after 5 months of captivity they have some psychological issues to work out, a la Patty Hearst.

Interesting that it took hard men with guns to deliver their friends from danger. Where's a good activist when you really need one?

Trooper

They are "advocating for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system".

They would rather help those that captured them, then help and thank those that put their lives on the line for the freedoms that these people take for granted.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

leejo

Hey, I advocate human rights for Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system. We just have different ideas, I suspect, about what that means where the rubber meets the road.

And yes their addendum would ring less hollow had they not first called the same people occupiers and referred to their mission as "unjust".

But they've recognized that they should have said thank you and they're saying it now, so...

Trooper

I completely agree, what these people dont see is that the troops are doing the exact same thing they are trying to do. Just using different means to get to the same end

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

Usarion

Well I am glad that they sis manage some gratitude.

I was curious about that. I never did hear if it was a violent rescue, or what.

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

TychoCelchuuu

Keep in mind a lot of the Iraqi detainees aren't actually terrorists; they're just picked up because they looked suspicious and are released a few hours/days later when they're cleared. There have been cases where these detainees, who are 100% innocent, have been abused by United States soldiers. This sort of stuff turns normal people who would never attack us into terrorists. So you could argue that by advocating for the rights of Iraqi detainees, these people ARE helping our soldiers, by preventing more terrorists from existing.

You can't win a war on terror just by shooting all the terrorists. That's how we got here in the first place. People aren't just fighting us because they're crazy; they're fighting us because they think the United States is responsible for the death of their family, or because they were abused in a prison when they had done nothing wrong, or because a squad of marines swept through their village and accidentally killed civilians. If we didn't have people like these activists, the terror would go on forever.

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|TG-Irr|TychoCelchuuu

Usarion

You base this on what?.


Please elaborate.

Really? Most of these people are from other contries, not Iraq. They are fighting because they have a messed up view of their religion. They are fighting because they think our way of life is sacrilege. You are talking about a group of people who are aiming to execute a man because during his travels abroad, converted to Christianity. (This is happening now in Afganistan, BTW) You make alot of sweeping statements here ,but I am not sure on what fact you base them on.

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

leejo

We had terrorists killing americans decades before marines were anywhere near their families, and you are accepting as truth on its face these insurgents' word while dismissing the story our very own give. This has been going on for a long, long time and we are only now beginning to respond to fire with fire.

TychoCelchuuu

We have had people attacking us ever since we put ourselves behind Israel when it cut large swathes through the Middle East. Since then the violence has been self-propogating. We are not "only now beginning to respond to fire with fire," we've been firing cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden for years before September 11th.

Usarion: You can't win by shooting all the terrorists because more will just rise up. There are reasons behind why they hate us, and these reasons aren't going anywhere. In fact, we're making them faster than we're getting rid of them.

I realize most of the fighters are from outside Iraq. That has nothing to do with it, really. It doesn't matter where they're from, only that they feel wronged by the United States and Western society in general.

You make just as many, and I don't know where those are coming from either. Keep in mind that the people who want to execute that man in Afghanistan are NOT terrorists. They are there with our blessing. We went in, took out the Taliban, and set up a democratically elected government. Obviously it didn't work too well, because they're still completely braindead. Just goes to show that invading a country and killing all the terrorists you can find doesn't mean it will turn into a great place.

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|TG-Irr|TychoCelchuuu

Steeler

Actually, the Iraqi government is now saying that they think only a few hundred Al Qaeda fighters are still operating in Iraq. Most of the violence, including the kidnappings and guerilla actions now stem from old sectarian conflicts, military manuevers as adjuncts to the political process, and nationalists against the coalition forces.

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leejo

What large swaths? And who is "we"? The UN General Assembly? Or are "we" the United States et al for supporting that general assembly vote?

Please throw one or two supporting facts in with your various assertions, 'cause so far....hoo boy!

At least for the dudes responsible for the kidnappings discussed in this thread, turns out they are, by their admission, out for the money.

The higher ups in the org were the terrorist types, but there is also a lot of good old crime going on in Iraq.

Usarion

?? Please explain.


What would you have done?


I wonder why?


You may be right, but IMO these people are the enemy, and should be removed of their responsibility as a person.

Agreed, I have outlined the main reason earlier.

Please explain.

Please be consistant.

I make only one, and that is the motive of the likes of Osama Bin laden. This I get right from the horses mouth.

Sounds like a fight to me.

I am aware of that, but this partially speaks to my point. This group of people have no regard for religious or personal freedom. by these people, I mean the population as a whole. This group of people have been corupted by many years of the Taliban corrupting there Religion. I think that in the end the powers that be, will not allow this man to be executed.


I'll ask you the question that I have asked many people with your point of view. What do you suggest be done??? Should the U.S bring every military unit from around the world home?Should the U.S, and all democratic countries just concern themselves with domstic affairs? Should it become like it was pre-WW2? A isolationist country? What do you suggest?

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.

Coridon

That's really the million dollar question, isn't it? In fact, this isolationism is what people voted for when Bush won in 2000. What had Clinton's "humanitarian" missions (Somalia, Haiti, former Yugoslavia) in the 1990's done to help bolster the security of the U.S.? After 50 years of Cold War, what was the last Superpower standing left to do with all its military might? Bush was all for isolationism....until September 11th.

I think it's apparent the President of the United States had absolutely no idea how to react the the attack on the nation that day. He looked to his neo-con aides, and in particular the three top men in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith) urged a war in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell was opposed to the war behind closed doors, and in fact told Bush "If you break it [Iraq], you own it.".

The neo-cons won and anyone who didn't toe the official line was ostrasized or fired (Powell, Larry Lindsay, General Eric Shinseki, and General Anthony Zinni, anybody?). Realistic plans had been made for Iraq, but they were dismissed as "pessimistic". The official plan was to overthrow Saddam, toss control of the country to the Iraqis immediately and get out.

How'd that work out for everybody, anyway??

Honestly, what did you expect to go through a moderate Shia's mind when he hasn't eaten in three days, he's standing ankle deep in raw sewage in the middle of the street in Basra, and a coalition soldier on the march to Baghdad tells him "You're free now!!". This poor guy's been oppressed for his whole life, he's been beaten down and has never been allowed to act or think freely. So he wants to know...who's in charge? "You are!" the coalition soldier answers. That shia is going to look for someone to tell him what to do and how to think. Fundamentalists and zealots have a tendency to fill the power vacuum whenever there's a tremendous political upheaval, whether you're talking about Julius Caesar, Napolean, Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, or Ayatollah Khomeni. If the U.S. and her allies can't offer order and protection, someone like Muqtada al Sadr and his militia might sound appealing to a shia who's afraid to leave his house.

Those shia resent us for having overthrown Saddam in a matter of weeks and then not being able to restore order or keep the power on. Sunnis resent us because they see themselves as the heirs to the Ottoman empire and therefore the rightful rulers of Iraq. Since they're the minority in Iraq, they'll obviously get hosed when it comes to democratic elections, especially now that they're urged to boycott the new democracy. Kurds resent us because they've always been helpful in assisting the US and feel they should therefore receive preferential treatment, but instead the allies are obviously trying to make everyone happy.

Not to mention there's a lot of hostility between those three main populations living in modern Iraq. The Sunni and Shia conflict began in 680 AD with the martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali. That's 1326 years of friction, which the current administration somehow chose to ignore and hope it would go away.

The Kurds were pushed North into the fringes of the country under Saddam in a period known as "arabization". Now they want to reclaim all the lost land, most notably in the city of Kirkuk.

The shi'ite extremists like Muqtada al Sadr then view the Kurds as apostates and doesn't wish the best for them, to say the least.

In the middle of this mess are our troops. I think if we had, in fact, followed the advice of Generals Shinseki and Zinni, had the proper troop numbers and restored order and helped the general population after the fall of Saddam things would be going a lot better for the Iraqis, for our allies and for us. Our administration let down our Armed Forces by understaffing them and giving them vehicles and body armor that were inadequate for the conditions they found themselves in. Why does no one hear about this?

We cannot equate Islam with terrorism. Islam, like Christianity, was originally founded on the concept of taking care of the poor, the dispossesed, widows and orphans. Like Christianity, things have gone awry somewhere for groups that wave the banner of each religion. There are a few fundamental fringe groups that want to destroy the West, and more often than not, each other. Take the Wahabis, for instance. This small sect would have largely gone unnoticed if it hadn't taken control of Mecca in 1924. Since one of the five pillars of Islam is to visit Mecca during the Hajj, this particularly fundamentalist movement was able to spread throughout the Muslim world.

The best case scenario is that a continued strong[er] presence in Iraq will help establish order in the country and the eventual spread of democracy in the region.

Yet how many democracies have formed in bloodless revolutions? Can you count them? And when religion plays such a key role in government, how can different sects coexist in the same region? Christianity had it's Thirty Years War, but Islam has yet to have such an all-out slugfest.

The worst case scenario is unfathomable. Iranian shias intigating their shia brethren in southern Iraq to take over the country, thus driving the Kurds into Turkey? Wahabis in Saudi Arabia coming to their fellow Iraqi Sunni's aid and propelling them into absolute power, perhaps overthrowing the monarchy in Saudi Arabia in the process?

For better or for worse, we are there now, and must remain in force. We must remain resolute yet have the ability to compromise. We must be both tolerant and compassionate. Above all we cannot be disinterested, nor cruel, nor prejudiced.

Al-qaeda's greatest genius is not to attack and kill us themselves; their genius lies in causing fear and hatred among us, allowing us to die by suicide.

Usarion

Agreed.

Agreed.

As for the rest, it is all well known history, and I am not sure how it relates to points of what is being discussed here, other than to provide a background of the region, and it's people.

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A good man stands up for himself. A great man stands up for others.