Benjamin, your post doesn't make much sense.

You said:

"Why is it totally unacceptable for the west to invade a brutal dictator..?"

I thought nations could be invaded, but not individuals. Did Nazi Germany invade the USSR or did it invade Joseph Stalin?

Chris,

Please provide sources for your "guestimates" on casualties in Iraq. BTW, international socialist is not an unbiased source.
Also, by your logic the west's biggest failure was the second world war.


Bushbred,

You seem to be confused about who we went to fight in Iraq. The “Sunni enemy”. Are you on drugs? The Sunni aren’t the enemy any more than any other sect in Iraq.

The idea that we are joining forces with former militants is surely “realpolitik” in action. Our enemies in Iraq are those who are behind the violence and destabilization of the country. That the Sunnis have now had enough of the despicable tactics of Al Qaeda and joined forces with us is to be commended. We are surely winning in Iraq at this moment in time. You would do well to limit your criticism to the facts because your history is also fairly weak and your composition is appalling. Your “Pollyanna’ "fair go" nonsense clearly outs you as a fantasist.

JohnJ

You have chosen the wrong parallels. Iraq now has similarities to post-Tet Vietnam. The Tet offensive of 1968 was an epic body blow to the COSVN. After 1968 it was four years before the communists could regroup for a major offensive. The fighting was taken up by Northerners after the annihilation of the Viet Cong and their infrastructure. Had the offensive been seen as the massive victory for free world forces that it was, we would have defeated the communist north and Vietnam would have prospered like the rest of the Asian economies. The sad fact is that while we may not have been winning the war before Tet, we most certainly were after Tet, yet this was reversed in the mind of the public. Poor leadership by Johnson and especially Macnamara were fatal.

Iraq is now at that point, we are winning and we need to decide whether we have the fortitude to see it through. The left has a vested interest in seeing us fail in this endeavour as it did during the Vietnam war.

The war in Iraq was barely mentioned, and certainly not debated, because Labor fundamentally agrees with the Coalition on the war. That is, they are not opposed to an illegal agressive war - an imperialist war.

Given that the majority in Australia are opposed to the war, any debate would have exposed the fact that there is no mainstream political party in Australia which opposes the war, and therefore no mainstream political party which acts in the interests of ordinary people. The Greens also do not oppose the war, they just say our troops should be withdrawn to be deployed in colonial conquests in our own region, and that the US should use its own troops in Iraq.

Most ominously, preparations for an attack on Iran are well underway, world war III is openly being discussed, and it was barely mentioned in the election campaign. Both Howard and Rudd met with Bush at APEC and undoubtedly an attack on Iran was discussed - talks were amicable we hear. A few months ago Seymour Hirsh reported that Australia had expressed interest in participating in an attack on Iran.

You will note in Rudd's election night speech he specifically mentioned "our" great ally the US. Meaning - all the way with Bush, Clinton & Co.

Be prepared for Australian participation in an attack on Iran.

Also be prepared for conscription.

Paul.L
"Iraq is now at that point, we are winning and we need to decide whether we have the fortitude to see it through. The left has a vested interest in seeing us fail in this endeavour as it did during the Vietnam war."

What do you mean by "winning"?

1,000,000 dead, 4,000,000 displaced and 8,000,0000 suffering from malnutrition - most of whom are children?

Why did we go to war with Iraq?

Tao,

>> Be prepared for conscription?

You're clearly living in a fantasy land.

Where is your proof that most Australians are opposed to the war? It is such a woolly statement that it is irrelevant anyway. It would be far more instructive to ask who supports the continuing efforts in Iraq to support a stable, democratic gov’t and provide for its reconstruction.

Who declared the war to be illegal? Where is your proof for this? There are plenty of lawyers who will tell you that the dozen or so UN resolutions concerning Iraq allowed for the military intervention which occurred.

The problem with Seymour Hersh is that he is not an objective observer, he is a polemicist of the far left. His work isn’t straight reporting of the facts, it is thoroughly intertwined with his political objectives. Many of his facts are also extremely unreliable.

Hersh>> "Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people... I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say." Of course what he writes is only ever backed up by anonymous sources.

At this point there is no evidence that the US intends to attack Iran in the near future. You’ll have to do better than Seymour Hersh to convince me otherwise.

K£vin

>> What do you mean by "winning"?

What I mean by winning is that we are getting closer to our goal of a peaceful, stable, democratic Iraq and that our enemies are weaker than they have ever been. There is no doubt it has come at great cost, however I reject your figures which are grossly inflated. 1 million dead amounts to over 700 people a day, every day, for the four years we have been in Iraq. This type of deliberate falsification does your cause no good at all.

If you have any understanding of the conflict at all you will remember that sanctions, which was the preferred method of the anti war activists, actually killed hundreds of thousands due to malnutrition, most of whom were children. The regime hardly suffered.

Dr Livingstone,

I am continually amazed at the ridiculous comparisons people make in order to show the US in the worst possible light.

You seem to be suggesting they are as bad, or worse, than the Taliban, one of the most brutal and oppressive regimes of modern times. Yet the comparison is SO POOR as to almost be laughable.

How can you compare the deliberate destruction of the Buddhist statues and monuments by the Taliban, with the looting by Iraqi people of their own national museum? The similarity in the vandalism may be valid; however there is NO VALIDITY at all in the suggestion that the US are cultural vandals because the US are not to blame for the Iraqi people looting their own country. This is so obvious that I am astounded you could bring yourself to suggest it. The responsibility rightly belongs with those who vandalized the museum.

Unfortunately there is a lot of this kind of NON-SENSE floating about on OLO. Posters like Kevin who wish to blame the Americans for the large number of casualties during this conflict seem intent on ignoring the significant role the Iraqis have played in the unfortunate outcome.

For the last three years the overwhelming majority of casualties have been caused by sectarian violence. That is, Iraqis killing other Iraqis. The naïve among the anti-Iraq coalition seem to believe that
1) the Iraqis themselves are not responsible for this
2) That it will all go away if the coalition just left.

The really rabid leftists are actually hoping/working for the defeat of our forces in Iraq to strike a blow against American prestige and influence globally. What they seem blissfully unaware of is that the powers which move into the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the US will, assuredly, be far worse.

The main beneficiaries of a loss in Iraq will be Iran, Russia and China. The biggest losers will obviously be the Iraqi people as their nation will splinter into its constituent parts creating far greater conflict than now exists.