If you supported the Libyan war on "humanitarian principle" you supported the Iraq war also. Period.

[LadyLeigh]

There is no non-hypocritical way around this simple fact. You cannot have it both ways.

[CJCRANE]

1. We already discussed this here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2158002

[ellisonz]

62. This should have ended this thread.

But alas...

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spanone]

3. we did not invade libya. never. we invaded iraq. BIG difference.

[JoePhilly]

4. +1

[catabryna]

6. +2 nt

[Major Nikon]

12. Apparently some lack the ability to distinguish those differences

Seems like round peg, round hole kinda stuff, but perhaps not.

[doc03]

20. +3

[joeybee12]

33. -1...both were about oil, plain and simple...the difference you note makes no

difference in the grand scheme of things, and if McCain were president, you'd be singing a different tune.

[catabryna]

5. Libya asked for our help...

Iraq did not.

[xchrom]

7. not exactly

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/iraq/stories/cia091596.htm

Anti-Saddam Operation
Cost CIA $100 Million

Iraqis interested in toppling their country's president have for several years made their way to a compound of four houses on a hill in the city of Salahuddin, in Kurdish northern Iraq, where a small team of American CIA officers has been helping to implement a classified 1991 U.S. presidential order to oust Saddam Hussein.

Hands outstretched, dissident Kurds and other Iraqis there and elsewhere asked for and received tens of millions of dollars in CIA funds. They spent the money on light arms and ammunition, communications gear, publishing materials, broadcasting equipment, cars and trucks, food and medicine -- all items they said they needed to harass Saddam, foment a revolution or plot a palace coup.

Egged on by lawmakers and policy officials, the CIA's leadership found it hard to say no to anyone who asked for U.S. assistance to oppose Saddam. Dissidents set off some bombs, recruited defectors, fought a brief military battle with Iraqi troops in March 1995 and took hundreds of Iraqi army prisoners, not at the CIA's explicit direction, but with its strong encouragement and financial support.

After spending around $100 million, or an average of about $20 million a year since 1991, on the anti-Saddam campaign, however, the U.S. spy agency today has strikingly little to show for its effort, according to administration, congressional and Iraqi dissident sources.

[catabryna]

10. I was speaking to what I believe to be the PNAC inspired war...

not our previous forays into Iraq back in the 90s. If we want to talk about the Kurds, we must also talk about Turkey, etc.

[xchrom]

13. well don't say nobody was asking for our help.

because it isn't true. we covertly helped both shia and kurds for years.

and resultant price tag is obscene -- you don't get to pick and choose here.

[catabryna]

14. I'll let you have the last word... (updated) Changed my mind.

Our government helped install that Hussein fellow. We also helped install Khadafy.

Can we say "oil"?

In the end, the result is always the same; our former puppets are dead.

In one instance, we decided to enforce our will. In another, we decided to stand up for people who wanted freedom from our government's past mistakes.

Now, I'm done.

[ieoeja]

32. We didn't help install either of those.

I would rethink your source on that issue. For one thing, both of them were pro-Soviet on day one!

[catabryna]

48. My suggestion is that you do a bit of research.

Although, I will admit, that some things are not so easy to find these days.

[Major Nikon]

17. ...via the UN

Which makes all actions under the UN auspice unilateral.

[catabryna]

18. I, too, believe there is a difference between the two. nt

[chrisa]

40. What about the Iraqi people screaming for our help, ready to throw flowers

in our direction?

[PurityOfEssence]

56. Some of its citizens did, and some Iraqis did. That's no refutation.

People keep saying that "Libya" asked us for help, as if the entire nation rose up against an unsupported dictator who was sustained by nothing but dark-skinned foreigners.

It's simply not the case.

Cries come from insurgent groups in many countries; that doesn't mean that our violation of national sovereignty is fair game as we damned well please.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Where was the popular revolt in Iraq?

was Saddam about to advance on a rebel city with an armoured column when we invaded Iraq? No? Didn't think so.

[joeybee12]

34. The popular revolt was in the north after the First Iraq war, which

Bush I squashed.

[NeedleCast]

9. No.

Unrec.

[denverbill]

11. If you supported World War II, you supported the Vietnam War too. Period.

There are absolutely no differences between World War II and Vietnam.

Saddam was actively slaughtering citizens who had rebelled against his regime and the Arab League urged NATO action. Obama claimed Khadafi had WMD and was planning to launch a sneak attack against the US so we had to invade. Obama even used known false information about yellow-cake uranium sales to Libya to justify his war. Thousands of Americans died in Libya but none died in Iraq. Obama built the biggest US embassy in the world in Libya and installed politically-motivated ideologues to run the country after our invasion. The Libya war has cost us nearly $1 trillion to date, whereas Iraq has cost somewhere in the $1 billion range. Khadafi had international sanctions against him limiting his sales of oil and those sanctions were about to be dropped and US corporations would have been given NO access to his oilfields. Saddam already had agreements with American oil companies and there were no international sanctions against him. Saddam was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. Khadafi had no known connections to any attacks on Americans.

There. Those are the facts as clear as any Republican can make them.

[LoZoccolo]

15. No, not really.

You could hold principles regarding the ability to win, or the cost of winning a war, that would differentiate the two, as well as regarding the preservation of our national integrity (recall that the original premise of the Iraq war were dubious charges about weapons of mass destruction).

[Permanut]

16. And an apple is EXACTLY like an orange..

okay, except that they're not.

[Whisp]

19. Herm, is that you? :)

[Upton]

21. Hey, haven't you gotten it yet?

Some folks have a belief system which can be basically summed as:

Democratic wars-GOOD

Republican wars-BAD

[quinnox]

22. Nailed it

That is it in a nutshell.

[leftstreet]

29. +1

[JoePhilly]

23. If you are against removing this evil dictator, then you love all evil dictators.

I did my best to make a claim that was just as silly as that of the OP.

[TBMASE]

24. Well, if our policy is to remove evil dictators

there's a long list of them that Obama needs to get to work on.
When do we start bombing Syria for Humanitarian reasons?

I thought this was supposed to end when the Bush Klan left office

[JoePhilly]

25. Right over your head I guess.

And apparently, your point is that if we can't remove all evil dictators at once, then we shouldn't support the removal of any?

[TBMASE]

26. I'm saying we have no coherent policy and certainly not one that's consistant

with what we were promised when electing Obama.
Libya posed no threat to the US, Ghadafi was contained and yet President Hellfire, with his Nobel Peace Prize decides to get in the middle of a Civil war.

What happens now?

[JoePhilly]

31. I think he's been very consistent.

What is see is that some on the left make the same mistake that the right wing did with Iraq. Lots of people supported that invasion because they incorrectly believed that all Arabs and Muslim countries are exactly the same. And so, it was very easy to make the claim Osama = Saddam, and right wingers believed it.

Now ... we have folks on the left basically making the same mistake, assuming that all Arab and Muslim countries, or all countries with dictators, are the same. Each country and each dictator is very different. The size of the country, the make up of the population, the current level of oppression, and then potential for a successful outcome varies greatly.

It is naive to think that how, and when, we engage one, will be the same as how, and when, we engage others.

As for what's next ... I believe I just heard that NATO is going to leave now and the new governing council will begin trying to create a stable government. And the Libyan people should drive that.

[TBMASE]

35. They had a stable government. When this thing goes bad, as they usually do

who will be responsible for cleaning up the mess we helped create.

[JoePhilly]

43. "They had a stable government" . ...That's really the best you could come up with?

[Romulox]

27. What are you, a Saddam lover?

:hi:

[dameocrat67]

28. I suspect many centrist including Obama did support the Iraq war

that is why we still have troops there, though they have been declared nocombat.

[JoePhilly]

44. You see today's announcement?

Na .....

[dameocrat67]

61. even the neocons talked about leaving by this time

so it is not a big deal.

[ikri]

30. The closest parallels

To the Libya revolt is the 1991 uprising following the first Gulf War where Shi'a rebels and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein. Thousands, perhaps up to 100,000, died in the reprisals.

The West was wrong not to help then and would have been wrong not to aid the Libyan rebels.

[ellisonz]

63. Agreed.

As George Clooney famously put it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC4edw3n3h4 and another one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9acYlZC9RLI&feature=relmfu and more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL6oromerXE&feature=relmfu

Damn, that was a good movie.

[fishwax]

36. that's silly n/t

[Zorra]

37. It is a shame that there are such an enormous number of unrecs

for a very true OP.

Many seem to be in denial of what is undeniable.

It is what it is.

Face it.

[Ikonoklast]

38. Your logic is flawed.

You assume the variables associated with both actions are exactly the same, whereas they are strikingly dissimilar.

[pampango]

39. No one was going to intervene in Libya until the UN authorized it. That's as it should be.

Bush couldn't have cared less what the rest of the world thought when he invented reasons to invade Iraq.

If there's going to be a global "policeman", it shouldn't be the US, NATO, Russia or China. It should be the UN.

[War Horse]

41. I doubt you can read people's minds

I'm sorry, but this line of reasoning is really no different from the "so, you opposed the intervention in Libya? You must be pro Khadaffi" one. It's a pretty dishonest tactic either way.

[GSLevel9]

42. I wish I could REC this 100000x

[JI7]

45. if you opposed any involvement in Libya you opposed involvement in WWII

and therefore support Hitler, Nazis etc. no way about it.

[PurityOfEssence]

52. We were attacked in World War 2, and then Hitler declared war, saving us the decision

We did not initiate hostilities. We also had a declaration of war.

This is a ludicrous argument.

[Lyric]

54. We were attacked by Japan, and Hitler "declaring war" didn't actually DO anything to us.

He didn't have the capability to wage an overseas war and still fight in Europe. We went in for ideological reasons--not because we were attacked, and not because Hitler said some words across the ocean.

YOURS is a ludicrous argument.

[PurityOfEssence]

58. No, you're completely wrong: Japan attacked us, Hitler declared war on us, and we WERE vulnerable.

Read up a bit on the U-boat war off the Atlantic Coast. It was very effective at first.

Hitler's declaration of war made it much easier for us to team up with Churchill and Stalin and come up with a common plan: Europe first. We were actually in a bit of a pickle and STILL hadn't declared war on Hitler or Mussolini.

The point here is that we didn't go to war out of altruism in either case: in one ocean, we were attacked, and in the other side of the world, the decision was made for us. If we had been such extreme moralists, we would have declared war on Germany on December 8th, yet we didn't.

Roosevelt had a devil of a time trying to rope the isolationists into war, and even the Greer incident and others wouldn't sway them.

Here, in plain English, is my contention: we did NOT go to war of our own volition for altruistic or any other reasons. We were attacked by the Japanese, and our President asked for a Declaration of War, which he got. He did NOT deal with initiating hostilities against the Germans, and the decision was conveniently made for him on December 11th.

Please address these FACTS, since you seem to claim the highground to ridicule my post. Also, intimating that I somehow don't know that Japan attacked us is just cheap rhetorical crap to play to the cheap seats.

"The new moon sky is black as ink
Off Hatteras, the tankers sink.
While sadly Roosevelt counts the score,
some fifty thousand tons by Mohr."

[BlueCheese]

46. Well...

The OP seems to ask the question:

If you support the removal of one evil dictator (Qaddafi), then how can you claim to oppose the previous removal of another one (Saddam)? If it's a moral policy, shouldn't we support both or neither?

So far, the answer seem to be:

(1) It was a lot easier to get rid of Qaddafi. We didn't have to invade. To which I say, that's fine, but that means you objected to the Iraq War for logistical reasons, not moral ones. Further, this isn't something that can always be determined in advance. If Bush hadn't so badly bungled the aftermath, perhaps we could have left Iraq much earlier and with far fewer casualties.

(2) The Libyan people were already in rebellion. The Iraqi people weren't. To me, this sounds like a distinction drawn up after the fact. It's really not clear how much the Libyan rebels spoke for the people as a whole. I also don't think there's any doubt that the great majority of the Iraqi people hated Saddam and were overjoyed at his removal. Just because Saddam was more effective at keeping them squashed and disorganized shouldn't remove our moral case for intervention. This proposed reason smacks of rationalization.

(3) The UN and (initially) the Arab League approved intervention in Libya. To me, this is the strongest argument. The Iraq war had no such backing. Though Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions, there was none authorizing force. The UN did in fact authorize protection of civilians. However, NATO greatly exceeded that mandate, to the point that it was acting on its own as much as the US/Britain were in Iraq. After being told that we weren't in favor of regime change, NATO policy over the last several months was clearly nothing but that.

In the end, I feel like if one thinks deposing Qaddafi was a good idea for purely moral reasons, then one has to think that removing Saddam was also a worthwhile thing to try to do, or at the very least, it was something that should have been tried under the proper circumstances. In the end, the Iraq adventure turned into a debacle, but that speaks more against its execution than the idea itself.

[phleshdef]

47. If we had been able to stop Saddam Hussein IN THE ACT, I would have always supported that.

The problem with the Iraq war was that Saddam was not "in the act" of much of anything at that moment, he wasn't piling up WMDs, he had nothing to do with 9/11, he wasn't about to go armageddon on Israel.

And even had Saddam been in the act of doing something and we went in and stopped him, that didn't mean we had to spend the next decade fighting insurgents and nation building.

I have no problem with taking military action to stop a mass killing. But thats not at all what Iraq was about.

[JuniperLea]

49. I like apples and oranages...

But I know the difference between the two.

Sorry, you're flat wrong. The red things are apples... you are mixing them with the orange things, which are oranges.

[karynnj]

50. Who made you the ruler of all things? The fact is that anyone can agree with anything they want

- even if - in your eyes, it is inconsistent.

The two situations are extremely different - starting with the number of troops involved. Not to mention, this started to avoid an impending massacre - not so Iraq, where it started after Hussein had allowed several months of intrusive inspections that were NOT finding WMD. While it was possible to think that there was some likelihood that he had WMD BEFORE the inspectors were there, by March that was much diminished - to zero IMO.

[PurityOfEssence]

51. IOKIODI: It's okay if Obama does it.

Are there many interventionists who aren't also strident Obama partisans?

I know of one, who took me to task on the subject, but that's it.

In all fairness, though, there are many differences. The selling of the Iraq War was done with accusations of his danger to us and his culpability in attacks on the United States. The selling of the war here was done with claims that he was going to definitely slaughter tens of thousands of civilians--even though he never threatened to do so and hadn't in towns he'd recaptured. These are rather different.

Still, you have a point...

[thucythucy]

53. Don't you think it's a tad arrogant

to tell people you don't even know what they did and did not support?

I for one opposed the Iraq invasion as a completely unjustified war of aggression and occupation, foisted on us by a lying cabal interested in its own enrichment and self-aggrandizement. But I supported imposition of the no-fly zone over Libya to make it more difficult for its tyrannical regime to massacre its own people.

I see nothing hypocritical about it.

Believe it or not, circumstances do differ depending on time, place, history. And so yes, I can indeed have it both ways.

As another poster on this thread so brilliantly put it, your argument is tantamount to saying, "If you supported WWII, you supported the Vietnam War also, period."

[thucythucy]

55. If you opposed the no fly zone in Libya, you opposed bombing the tracks to Auschwitz also. Period.

There is no non-hypocritical way around this simple fact. You cannot have it both ways.

See: I can be arrogant and self-righteous too.

[AngkorWot]

57. Is it even possible to make less sense?

[Number23]

60. ...

[11 Bravo]

59. Hit-and-run newbie bullshit.

[MrSlayer]

64. Disagree. Iraq was not in the middle of a revolution.

Nor was Saddam poised to massacre a ton of his citizens with foreign mercs. We had no business going to Iraq, the Iraqis did not want our "Help". There is a difference between causing a civil war and nudging a revolution over the edge.

[JCMach1]

65. Meh!

[sendero]

66. Keep spinning false equivalencies..

... I'm sure a few morons will buy it.