Arglax Moderated Message: |
[Citation needed] |
we deposed and ultimately lead to the hanging of a violent, genocidal, theocratic dictator
> violent
> genocidal
> theocratic
But at least he was elected democratically.
The lesser of two evils.
And since we're on the subject, I'll elaborate on the importance of intervention in Iraq.
Suppose, for a second, that the US was isolationist - that we keep our troops and our politics out of the middle east.
Saddam and his family, who owned the entirety of Iraq's treasury, who killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds, up to 10,000 of which with poison gas, and who committed several other crimes against humanity...They would still be in power. They would own Kuwait just like they owned Iraq. And countless more Kurds and Shia would have been killed.
And this is just Iraq. In the last 20 years, the US conducted military operations in over 15 different countries, including intervention which ended the genocide of Albanians living in Kosovo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...0.E2.80.932009
It's easy to watch the media and exclaim that the US has some convoluted agenda, whether it be religious or a bid to gain more power or wealth, but the reality is that those elements are secondary to what are actually justifiable causes, such as ending genocide.
I don't agree with how our government and military have behaved since 9/11, many things should have been done differently, but the criticisms that have been leveled against them are ridiculous.
I would like this to be true, but I struggle with this since
1) There are different, cheaper, non-violent ways to deal with the world's problems such as simple food and ration distribution or long-term infrastructure improvement
2) Other places around the world suffer terrible wars/poverty/natural disasters too, but the US government doesn't intervene in the same scale as in the Middle East (The continent of Africa, Asia)
3) There are always these side-effects which, for some reason, happen to benefit the US(D)
4) There is still poverty in the USA itself, why not spend the 600billion dollars annually used on the military to solve those problems first?
2) The US still sends aid, and you're losing context. Military operations are expensive.
3) No one is saying the US doesn't look out for its interests. The question is whether those interests are the only motivating factor.
what overshadowing benefit was there to enter Afghanistan, to further rebut your previous points?
Actually, the reason for the invasion of Iraq was not ending mass genocide. Bush fabricated a lie regarding weapons of mass destruction, which got never discovered after the invasion.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7634313/ns.../#.TyIEBVyiF5Y
Sure, you can argue that it was the humane thing to do, however, that was nowhere near the administration's intentions.