Iraq War has Fuelled Terror

a_unique_person

Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
a_unique_person
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What just about everyone has come to realise, I think. The Iraq invasion has only made the threat of terror worse, it has just added fuel to the fire. The danger of Osama and Al Qada has always been there, but surely a smarter approach was needed.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/24/iraq.main/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A classified intelligence report concludes that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat to the United States, U.S. officials told CNN Sunday.
Some intelligence officials have said as much in the past, but the newly revealed document is the first formal report on global trends in terrorism by the National Intelligence Estimate, which is put out by the National Intelligence Council.
As Democrats seized on the report to support their position on the war, violence Sunday left at least nine Iraqis and two U.S. Marines dead at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. (Watch what Republicans and Democrats think of the leaked report -- 1:31)
And raising doubts whether the Iraqis can maintain order once a security operation in Baghdad concludes, The Associated Press reported Sunday that some U.S. soldiers working in Shiite neighborhoods say the Iraqi troops are among the worst they've ever seen. (Full story)
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Yeah. This did not seem real surprising.

Touches on some side issues I wonder about sometimes in relation to skeptical thinking and politics. These concerns about Iraq becoming an inspiration for more terrorism were raised before the war, but there was no 'proof'; no evidence that Iraq could become a cause of more terrorism.

So in hindsight what seemed to replace evidence and critical thinking was an unhealthy reliance on authority. We trusted and went to war but this is politics. I don't really know if there was an escape from it.

Here we are three years later. Wars not going well, but we apparently have the first documentation that what we thought might happen before the war could, and has happened. Was following authority our only option in the absence of evidence? With more openness we could have anticipated more scenarios, both positive and negative. Openness helps make better decisions.
 
Kopji said:
Here we are three years later. Wars not going well, but we apparently have the first documentation that what we thought might happen before the war could, and has happened. Was following authority our only option in the absence of evidence? With more openness we could have anticipated more scenarios, both positive and negative. Openness helps make better decisions.
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But, Kopji openess is unpatriotic. Once we use an open mind to approach the problem . . . the terrorists win. ;)
 
Why are we in this war, and what good has it served so far?

To my knowledge there has been no connection made between pre-war Iraq and 9/11 or any other terrorist act against the USA.

To my knowledge there has been no evidence of a pre-war Iraq tie to Al Quada. Although, since the war Al Quada has certainly come to Iraq!

We've lost about 3000 US lives, and maimed thousands more.

We (the coalition) have killed how many Iraqi civilians? Over 100000? That's been estimated. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stm (note that was in 2004, just shy of 2 years ago) While that number was disputed when released, I think it's likely that between the coalition and the "insurgents" many thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives. Many more than would have been expected to die had we not gone there.

Is the life of the average Iraqi better since the war? They weren't being blown up by car bombs before we went there.

We've increased the national debt.

We've got the Arab world more upset at us than they were, thus, IMHO making terrorist attacks in the US more likely than before. It appears that the National Intelligence Council agrees.

So, in balance, what good has been achieved by the war in Iraq? What positives are there to balance out the negatives?

And, exactly why are we there? What reason did we truly have to go into the sovereign state of Iraq, and remove it's leader?
 
This Guy said:
Why are we in this war, and what good has it served so far?

To my knowledge there has been no connection made between pre-war Iraq and 9/11 or any other terrorist act against the USA.

To my knowledge there has been no evidence of a pre-war Iraq tie to Al Quada. Although, since the war Al Quada has certainly come to Iraq!

We've lost about 3000 US lives, and maimed thousands more.

We (the coalition) have killed how many Iraqi civilians? Over 100000? That's been estimated. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stm (note that was in 2004, just shy of 2 years ago) While that number was disputed when released, I think it's likely that between the coalition and the "insurgents" many thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives. Many more than would have been expected to die had we not gone there.

Is the life of the average Iraqi better since the war? They weren't being blown up by car bombs before we went there.

We've increased the national debt.

We've got the Arab world more upset at us than they were, thus, IMHO making terrorist attacks in the US more likely than before. It appears that the National Intelligence Council agrees.

So, in balance, what good has been achieved by the war in Iraq? What positives are there to balance out the negatives?

And, exactly why are we there? What reason did we truly have to go into the sovereign state of Iraq, and remove it's leader?
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I read that paper. It was disappointingly sloppy in the assumptions it made about the objectivity of interviewees and areas where sampling was done. I am glad it was published, however, as it forces the discussion into the open, and exposes the agendas of a lot of the reports one reads about the human cost of this "adventure" in Iraq. The UN endorsed sanctions of 10-12 years have been blamed for about 500,000 dead Iraqis, even though the sanctions explicitly allowed and allegedly administered oil for food, and medicine, into Iraq. (How one ties or does not tie that "cause and effect," or even correlation, to the blythe indifference of Saddam's regime to its own people while Palaces were being erected is an interesting bit of spin.)

At around the same time, an official "US estimate" was that 35,000 casualties were tied to the war at that point. That sort of estimate now becomes hard to extricate from the various Iraqi on Iraqi attacks that put a thousand a month, at least, into the grave.

What does this body count harangue achieve? Body counts orders of magnitude lower made a difference in Bosnia. Why? The half a million dead in Rwanda, in a civil war, died in less than a year. Interesting number. Rwadna is also hard to get to. International aid is logistics intensive. With poor infrastructure, not to mention political decision making, there is a tighter limit on what can be done to alleviate the malaise of tribal warfare -- be it in Iraq, Bosnia, or Rwanda. I'll argue that US presence mitigates, in a positive sense, the butcher's bill in Iraq by keeping a lid on it.

But what siginficance has the body count other than to note how effective people are at killing? The ISraelis seem to be going nuts over one soldier kidnapped in Gaza and two near Lebanon. That's two orders of magnitude lower than the number slaughtered in Iraq, internecine conflict, on a monthly basis.

Remarkable, in a very grisly way, but I find the perspectives rather skewed.

DR
 
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Darth Rotor said:
I read that paper. It was disappointingly sloppy in the assumptions it made about the objectivity of interviewees and areas where sampling was done.

That said, I think that at about the same time, an official estimate was that 35,000 casualties were tied to the war at that point, an estimate that, by now, starts to become hard to extricate from the various Iraqi on Iraqi attacks that put a thousand a month, at least, into the coffin.

I am still curious as to what the body count achieves, other than a talking point. The half a million dead in Rwanda, in a civil war, died in less than a year. Interesting number.

Of what siginficance is it other than to note how effective people are at killing? Given the generally low leverl of tech -- small arms, MG's and machetes -- used in that conflict, I have to tip my cap at the sheer gift for slaughter. Likewise those fighting in Congo. At best estimate, about 4 million have perished in roughly 4 years.

Remarkable, in a very grisly way.

DR
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Yes, our ability to kill each other is remarkable :(
 
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