Disagreement on the Iraq War

w/a close relative...she parroted the 'fight them there so we don't have to fight them here' mantra. I challenged her to read & become more educated from a variety of reliable sources & then consider the value of the war in Iraq.

I don't like the aggressive neighbor to the north of me, so to keep him from coming over and punching me, I beat up the neighbor to the south.

</sarcasm>

for some, all it takes is a catch phrase.

although I liked 1984 more. Until it started happening here, that is.

Bush just keeps repeating it in a nice one-sentence soundbite and it's like teaching a parrot to speak.

and I, who believe otherwise, am ostracized, marginalized, and disparaged.

Peace & justice.

I guess I am a cynic in many ways, yet also optimistic in many ways. In other words, they may beat the sh*t out of us, but the can't kill our spirit. I honestly believe that the good side of human nature will always respond to injustice and oppression.

Unfortunately, the cynic in me says it may take some time. Ohio is probably not as bad as OK, but it's probably close, especially as soon as you get more than 20 minutes outside of a city. And unfortunately, the city I am in - Cincinnati - is not so great either.


Good luck and keep strong.

You are right and they are idiots. That's enough.

first, and most importantly, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 ... what we've done by getting rid of Saddam, who ran a secular (i.e. not religious fundamentalism) government, was destabilize the Middle East and encourage more, not less, extremism ...

secondly, only around 2% of fighters in Iraq are foreign jihadists ... the rest of them are native Iraqi Sunnis fighting an internal civil war ...

third, the "fighting them over there" makes no sense at all ... terrorist bombings have continued all over the world ... perhaps your relative even knows of the recent London bombing ... the idea that "they're all so busy over there" that they can launch an attack here is absurd ...

fourth, recruitment for Al Qaeda has increased tremendously since we invaded Iraq ... we are teaching new generations to hate America and Americans ...

fifth, we are not succeeding in Iraq ... the country is totally unstable ... we can't even secure Baghdad as witnessed by the recent hotel bombings and rocket attacks directly across from the "Green Zone" which is an area the US controls with a heavy military presence ...

sixth, even with election and a new Constitution, the new government is heavily comprised of Shia with very close ties to Iran ... we are helping build a nation that will align itself with a nation we keep accusing of supporting terrorism ...

seventh, we've lost more than 2,000 soldiers and another 15,000 or more have come home with very serious injuries ... and there's no end in sight and no plan to succeed ...

eighth, after more than 2.5 years, the two top American Generals in the Middle East testified before the Congress a few weeks ago that there is only one Iraqi battalion sufficiently trained to handle combat operations without US support ...

ninth, a poll conducted a couple of weeks ago for the British Ministry of Defense revealed that 45% of the Iraqi people support the fight against American troops and another 82% of them (from a poll this past August) want the US to get out of their country ...

ten, a November CBS poll taken between 10/30 and 11/01, showed that 59% of the American people want withdrawal from Iraq ASAP even if that means leaving behind an unstable situation ...