Falluja

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Wow, that's a nasty scene. Beating charred bodies with metal pipes, dragging them behind cars, hanging them from bridges. Not going so well in the sunni "hearts and minds" department...

 

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/31/iraq.main/index.html

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

 

It demonstrates a serious amount of hatred. In this case toward americans, but I can't imagine that it would end there. I file this incident as yet one more indicator of the high possibility of an eventual sunni-shiite civil war...

 

Is there a way to stop all these Americans from dying? Yes. LEAVE THE F*@#ING COUNTRY.

The blood of those killed is on the hands of the American military higher-ups. Especially George W. Bush.

 

I won't even comment on this, as all my colorful words would no doubt get me banned

 

I saw some terrible pictures. Sick, sad world.

 

Now wait just a damn minute, Jaguar.

It's no big secret I'm as against the war as anyone. But these were civilians. Not soldiers, not diplomats, civilians. Unarmed and hired by the coalition to help rebuild the damn country. They were on route to do their honest, non-political, non-violent work when a group of masked cowards threw grenades into their car, watched it explode, and sprayed the bodies with machine gun fire. Then the gathering crowd of local men, women and even children ravaged the already-dead bodies like a bunch of f*cking animals. Hanging them from the bridge and dragging them through the street.

I don't care WHAT my military or government has done over there, nothing excuses what those people did. NOTHING. There needs to be some responsibility taken by the people who are giddy and overjoyed at the senseless death of innocent people.

 

Hey now, I didn't say that those masked loonies were innocent. They are just as guilty But you said it yourself:

Right there, hired by the coalition. Not by the people who actually live there. Yes, they were wrong in killing and brutalizing those unarmedpeople, but they still still shouldn't have been there.

They had no right, and it wouldn't have happened if they didn't go.

 

@jaguar- I think a certain distinction has to be made on the statement "they shouldn't have been there." Maybe in a global sense this is true; i.e. that the war shouldn't have happened at all. But the fact is, as much as we might regret it, and as much as we should hold the people who got us into the war responsible for that war, that it *did* happen. Given that the war did happen, and that the current alternative to the occupation of Iraq by the US or the UN is a nasty civil war that would have a really good chance of spreading to neighboring countries, those contractors *should* have been there, in that the occupation now has a responsibility to pave the way to as peaceful a transition as possible.

We just saw Bosnia flare up again. Memories run deep, and ethnic tensions probably can only be managed or diffused rather than done away with entirely. The Kurds and Shiites have been mostly restrained with regard to the Sunnis, but without some kind of stabilizing element, along with some kind of hopes for a democratic future, it's easy to imagine things getting very ugly, yes even uglier than now, in Iraq.

 

Yes it is time to leave Jaguar, or at least let the British soldiers leave the Americans to it. What bothers me is that soon income tax will go up in the UK because someone has to pay for it right and I don’t fancy paying half my wages in tax for this ****. Screw rebuilding Iraq, let them rebuild it themselves, maybe all of the asylum seekers in the UK living off the country can go back to Iraq where they came from and rebuild it.

 

Yeah it's sad allright, a few days ago two businessmen from Finland were coldbloodedly murdered in Iraq (it is suspected that they were mistaken for Americans). This once again proves that Iraq in it's current state isn't safe for anyone and won't be for a very long time either the way I see it.

 

@Bion

I agree with Sarevok. Everybody should just pull out and let them deal with it. After all, it is their country.

And who says that they should be forced to have a democratic system. What if they want to be a dictatorship? It is their country and their right to choose their fate.

A little thing called 'The Self-Determination Theory'.

 

War is hell.

 

But the war is over. Dubya said so himself.

 

At least Saddam had his country under control.

 

It wasn't all that long ago there was a thread on this site blasting the US under Bush 41 for just watching the rebellion that occurred after we pushed Iraq back out of Kuwait during Desert Storm. There was widespread sentiment that we should have helped the rebels out. However the UN decreed that we pull back out of Iraq, and our aircraft flew racetracks above the fighting in Basra, watching the rebellion rise and be crushed without firing a shot. Those rebels paid with not only their lives, but also the lives of their families.

Now we should just pull out and let the radical Islam take the country over, again making the peaceful people of the Middle East distrust us, see us as weak, and worst of all, as betraying them again?

Iraq presents an opportunity to establish a Middle Eastern nation based upon representation and freedom for its citizens. If we give in to the easy way out, either abandonment or setting up another brutal dictatorship as we did with the Shaw (sp?)in Iran (though we did that one covertly), we will only embolden the terrorists further, and lose more face with the moderates.

I have talked with soldiers coming back from Iraq, and most of them have stated that they believe most of the people in Iraq are happy we came in a pulled down Saddam. No doubt Iraqis want us gone, nobody wants an occupying military in their nation.

However, don't you thing that if we leave prior to getting a stable government in power we will just lose more trust from the moderates in the Middle East, and embolden the terrorists even further?

 

It is truly sick. Whatever their reason for being there, there is no justification for this.

Way to turn this thread into a game of "blame the victim". Or blame Bush. Or claim that Iraq was better off with Saddam.

Classy! Really classy!

 

Jack,

Was that aimed at me?

I guess it must have been because I don't see any other mention of Bush.

If so, that was not my intent. My intent was to state that we are commited, regardless of whether it was right/wrong or good/bad that we went. I don't think that pulling out of Iraq at this point will have favorable ramifications for anyone in the world.

 

Least of all the Iraqis. Regardless of whether you are pro-war or anti-war, unless you want to see additional suffering of the Iraqi people, there is no reason why you should want to see the U.S. pull out now. There was no middle ground here that was acceptable to anyone. You either didn't go in at all, or you went in and stayed until it was completely done.

 

Wow - I agree 100% with both Jack and Darkwolf.

In other news, the moon is blue...