Iraq War

[ImitationSanen]

I cant say anything other than in 15 years under the freedom of information act, certain things may come to light that will give a more definte answer to your last sentence. I can't say anymore for obvious reasons.

Let me put an analogy here.

Which is better? Letting someone know there is a weapon around and where it is hiding or convincing everyone that theres nothing there, make yourself look like a fool. Distracting the entire world from your real objective. Giving you more time to find and destory what you know is there?

With that in mind, when most of us are in our late 30s we can talk more about this situation =)



I would like to note, that I have been to Abu Gharib prison. While I do endorse any method used in order to save the lives of my soldiers and my countrymen, I do not condone torture of the barbaric nature unless it is a case of absolute life and death. Would I hang a guy by his feet for 3 days if he had the location of the next 9/11? You bet your ass I would, but don't be fooled by the Anti American media that would have you think we randomly arrest innocent people that appear arabic in order to torture and abuse them for our pleasure. There is nothing pleasurable about any of this. Were not perfect, but when I go to sleep every night, I know I dont use women and children as human sheilds, I dont sell drugs laced with deadly chemicals to college students, and I dont condone and endorse the slaughter of Innocent civilians. I don't respect, or admire my enemy. I respect the people of iraq who have had the endurance to stick with us during this invasion, to bring us water and food while we patrol and who support us, even when our supposed allies don't.

I hope that the United States demands reparations from France for violating the Weapons ban with iraq. Having our Air Assets fired upon by french AA missles (Which are worthless like most french weapons, we lost more Helos to power lines and sand in the turbines than those things =p) that are less than 3 years old signals in my mind the real reason behind Frances strong dissent towards an American invasion, and the issue has been kept relatively quiet for now. When this is all said and done, I hope the French are big enough to apologize, or the next time they over extend themselves we may not be willing to risk our lives to save them as we did in WW1,WW2, and Vietnam.



Oh btw Kraco I love your sig, I wanna crawl in the blanket next to her!

[Xollence]

Well we were forced into WWII. Like he stated in his other book, Hitler would've eventually targetted America after conquering all of Europe. So we really had no choice once the Battle of France was over and the Battle of Britain began.

The AEF joined WWI pretty late in the war and didn't have as much of an impact as they did in WWII. And besides us joining that war made us the leader in the world's economy since all of Europe relied on our farmers, so it's not like we risked our lives for nothing.

[KitKat]

A few days ago I went to a talk given by Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the UN forces in Rwanda. More specifically, he wrote the book 'Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda' which has won numerous international awards. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Rwandan situation, it was a genocide where over 800,000 people were killed in 100 days, and according to Dallaire although the warning signs were clear and the UN could have stopped it, they instead ordered Dallaire to do nothing). But anyways, this has recently led me to rethink my position on the role of the military. In question period, one of the people there asked Dallaire about his thoughts on Canada's opposition of the war in Iraq. His comment was that he absolutely supported Canada's decision not to ally with the US because the US didn't have UN sanction to go in. However, he said that Canada is equally at fault for washing their hands of the whole situation, since after the war started Canadian troops could have been more useful and effective since they are seen as being more impartial and not having a hidden agenda. I don't know if I completely agree with him (I'm still processing a lot of what he said and thinking it through), but he's been a military general for years and I suppose he has much better knowledge of the situation than I.

All of that is sort of an aside though. What I really want to say is this: If the US government is really serious about waging a 'War on Terror' why is their spending on foreign aid and international development so low? It seems to me that it would be far less expensive to deal with the primary root cause: poverty. By getting rid of poverty, you get rid of the conditions that breed terrorists and don't have to spend billions of dollars on military initiatives later on. I'm not saying that getting rid of poverty would get rid of all terrorists, but it would eliminate a lot of the desperation that drives people to terrorism. Granted, the US spends the most on aid in hard dollar amounts, but a lot of that is tied aid which isn't really that helpful at all. In the 70's, most of the developed countries agreed to raise their aid to 0.7% of GNP by 2015. Both Canada and the US are woefully behind, with Canada at 0.33% and the US at 0.16%. Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have already reached and even exceeded this goal.

We also have the issue of debt payments. Currently, both the US and Canada are still collecting debts from some of the most impoverished countries in the world. Some of these countries have already paid back more than their entire original debt in interest payments, but still their total debt increases. Very often, their loans came with strings attached such as structural adjustment programs where things like education and health care suffered in order to artificially boost their economies. We allowed this to happen, and we become richer as they become poorer.

Now, none of us are exactly influential government officials, but that doesn't mean we can't make our voice heard. Raise these issues. Hassle your elected representatives. Write letters to the editor. Know the facts, and make your government listen. If they want to fight a war on terror, they must also be prepared to fight a war on poverty. Just as you can't fight a half-assed war with your troops when their lives are on the line, neither should you fight a half-assed war on poverty when millions more lives are on the line.