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Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
You're absolutely right, Danzig; the fact that it happened a long time ago doesn't make it okay-- my stepmom survived the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia (her husband, the father of my stepbrothers, did not- he was Muslim, so he was executed. My stepmom was in a labor camp for four years until she fled the country) and while it was a quarter century ago, she still remembers.
That said-- Hussein was a madman, but a secular madman. Which infuriated the religious madmen in the middle East, and, since he was closer to them than we are, he took a fair amount of their focus, which is now longer devoted to him. The horrible part of the question is, did toppelling Hussein make us, here in the US, safer? And my feeling is no; if anything it destablized that region even further and the mess in Iraq is now fertile breeding ground for terrorists who see the US as occupiers. Maybe it will pan out in the future, but I think a different Administration will have to do the panning out-- this one underfunded and botched and didn't plan and frankly, I don't think they're capable of fixing what they started.
So was it worth it? I guess A) the final chapter is not written; time will tell and B) it depends on whether your concern is for people in the US only or people of the world, even at the US's expense. I don't know. I just don't know.
But I tell you what, I prefer my madmen secular. How do you argue with someone whose response is "But God said so."????
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you don't....there is nothing you can say that would sink in, they have a 'mandate from heaven'...part of our problem here is that we have leaders who feel the same way.
absolutely it's a huge mess, as i said above, iran is now rearing its ugly head, something that was considered as a threat in '91, but not four years ago. but some only see what they want to see, including this administration, who felt they could handle any eventuality.
but part of the problem is that as willing as the u.s. seems to be to jump in--we are not willing to stay in when we find we can't touch the bottom. rather than fighting the tide, too many are ready to proclaim the victim has drowned. we don't seem to have that same will as we've had in the past to fight til the finish, and to do things the right way, to see things thru. seems as soon as things start to get at all difficult, too many want to quit.
i'm not a quitter, i never thought this country would be thought as such, or as weak. but that belief is out there.