mskfisher's Journal: Email fracas

We have a reasonably active "Unofficial Political Mailing List" here at work. A few conservative viewpoints, a few liberal viewpoints, and the fun begins.
Anwyay, Coworker A sent this out yesterday:

The media has not covered the Bin Laden tape much. Some interesting stuff
here, especially what the Iraq citizen had to say.
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/archives/2004/11/01/bin_laden_or_alaa.php#001542

This is one of the responses from Coworker B:

<rant>
I think it will be interesting what people will say about liberal cowardice if Kerry manages to undo the unilateral actions of the current administration and gets a bunch of larger countries (one's with real armies) to toss their troops into Iraq with us and we can get Iraqis to work.

I have a general question that I put to a friend the other day.
Everyone seems to think that the people shooting at our troops in Iraq are 'terrorists'. Why?
Consider what we're doing...
1) We are driving around their cities in armour, with guns, having whipped their army twice now.
2) We are acting nearly alone.
3) We're protecting and rebuilding the oil-fields to the near exclusion of the things that make life normal to the average citizen, so it sure looks like we're there for our own gain.
4) We claim that we're going to give them the best government (Democracy) that exists.

Now, just think about it. If France or someone invaded northern Minnesota with the 'intention' of saving us from our insane form of government, just how long would it take before you had a gun in your hand? Me (a liberal)?... 'bout 10 seconds.
So if I'm willing to kill people trying to change my country/give me something I didn't ask for/ruling me, why would I think the average Iraqi would not do the same.
I agree that the world is a better place without Saddam, but we could have isolated him for the rest of time at almost no cost or just tiny military injunctions. We don't belong there and have only our own interests driving us.
</rant>

Well, after my period of relative silence over the past few weeks, I deemed it suitable to respond:

The main difference is that the US has not violated militarily-enforcable U.N. resolutions. Iraq agreed to all of this by joining the UN. Saddam's government schemed to deceive weapons inspectors and fired on coalition (not just US) planes for the last 12 years. The war was never over. Until Saddam would have fulfilled the terms of the resolutions ending the '91 war, it wasn't a done deal. He just reopened the can of worms.
        http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/01fs/14906.htm
It wasn't just the US that thought measures were necessary - the entire UN Security Council passed resolution 1441 - even though that wasn't needed, he'd never fulfilled the terms of the others, primarily Resolution 715.
Regardless, what would you do if a "bunch of larger countries" invaded Minnesota? Would you specifically attack other Americans in the process? Is there a scenario in which you would accept and welcome "invaders"?

I take exception to point #3. All services are increasing - but that's not exciting, Fallujah is. So guess what gets reported? It's not the additional ~1 GW of capacity the Iraqi power grid has. It's not the rebuilt wastewater treatment center that now serves Baghdad. It's not the improvements in healthcare. Very little good gets reported. "No news is good news"? Apparently the converse is true, at least. Good news is no news.
Here's some info about the Iraqi reconstruction:
        http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/updates/oct04/iraq_fs04_102804.pdf
with a table of contents at
        http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/updates/
Also, as I understand it, the US isn't seeing any proceeds from the oil - the Iraqis are.
        http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/01/content_335435.htm
Besides, from the conspiracy-theory point of view, wouldn't Bush want to isolate the Iraqi oil fields to ensure that his Texas oil buddies got higher prices?
But anyway. Even if the media was reporting good things and humanitarian progress with as much fervor as they were reporting the MDKs, it's still apparently a bad bad thing because the US has too much of the burden.
Our GDP is 10-11 trillion, compared to Russia's 1.2 and France's 1.5, and Germany's 2 trillion. So would it be fair when we share an equal monetary share, or only when we have a share equal to our relative GDP? Or maybe as a percentage of our total foreign aid? Who knows.
China (6 trillion), Japan (3-4 trillion), and India (2-3 trillion) have the highest GDPs after the US (then follows Germany and France) - but I can't see China footing a third of the bill at the moment.

Point #4, as I understand it, is something that the Iraqis agree with. No one is clamoring for a new sadistic dictatorship - nor are they being denied that, if they want to elect officials that will reenact a despotic leadership via legislation as opposed to civil war or a coup.
Of course, feel free to postulate about the likelihood of the US going back in if Mr. Unpopular gets elected. We don't have anywhere near enough cynicism going on yet.

Isolating Saddam was impossible. It was not possible to seal his borders - we can't even seal the US-Mexican border or the US-Canada border. That's not a sign of incompetence, it's a reality. The biggest thing controlling large-scale support of terrorist groups are a terrorist-friendly governments providing shelter and funding.
If we hadn't fulfilled the obligations of the Security Council, Saddam would've not only gone on unilaterally killing anyone he pleased, he would be able to continue sheltering, training, and funding terrorist groups.

I was going to send this in a seperate email, but it seems appropriate here:
        http://www.voicesofiraq.com/
I heard about this on NPR - I'm kinda interested to see it.

No responses yet. I don't know if it needs any, or if it'd get to be a wild, sprawling debate that no one has time for. In any case, I was pleased with most of it, and I wanted it preserved here.

Thanks for sharing. [nt]

[eugene ts wong]