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Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
I mentioned thousands of children dying each month and suggested that I favored the use of force in Iraq to put a stop to the killing fields and the horrific sanctions which were not, in my mind, working based on my definition of “working.” You chose to respond and said “our tactics in Iraq -- aimed at force protection -- have resulted in more "collateral damage." I do not believe civilian war casualties have exceeded the number of dead children I mentioned. So I fail to see your point.
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I was going back to the conversation we were having last week. I am not going to tell you that civilian casualties in Iraq are higher recently than they were before the war. I don't know whether that's true or not. But since you were lamenting civilian casualties as a general matter, I made the related point that our tactics in Iraq are causing more civilian casualties than other tactics would. I take it you don't disagree, but don't want to talk about it either.
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Whatever. Shit or get off the pot, Ty. If our administration had said they were going in based on humanitarian reasons would you support it? Or will you take the weasel-ly approach and whine how the administration DIDN’T use this as the reason for going in and therefore it doesn’t matter. It matters to me. Would you or would you not have supported the war to end human rights abuses and the devastating effects of the sanctions?
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No, I don't think I would have. Not because I didn't see a problem, but because it's not clear to me that in the long run we're going to have done much to make things better. In that respect, it's another Somalia. I suspect that -- for various reasons -- it will take a relatively brutal regime to exercise power in Iraq, with all that entails. The alternative is a failed state, with all that entails. Maybe, if things go well, we'll end up with an authoritarian regime that is less repressive than Hussein was. For the same reason, I don't favor invading Zimbabwe -- I don't see good odds of making a bad situation better.
