OT - Pro vs. Con, serious replies without the bashing

[EagleFan]

Since it has been brought up more times than we can count and both sides have their own platforms how about an actual serious debate about the issue of the war, without the personal attacks and such.

I'm not for war, but I see the need for this one. It is obvious that what has been done for the past 12 years hasn't been the right solution but the fact is that we can't just go back and change that path so we must deal with the hand we are dealt.

My simplified version is this. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. That was a known fact after the Gulf War. He was mandated to destroy them and disarm. He has not provided the proof of doing just that. It has been 12 years worth of playing cat and mouse with him. If we just continue to push back the deadline and do nothing more than we are just as guilty as him by letting him get away with it and the UN becomes worhtless. At that point any tyrant who wants to can stockpile WMD and point to the Iraq situation as their precidence.

If we keep sanctions in place more innocent civilians would die than in any war, more have already died than will die in the war. Saddam will continue to skim the money to build his palaces and his might.

If we lift sanctions than we may help the civilians slightly but Saddam will still be skimming the money, even more now, to really build up his might. It's not like there will suddenly be outside businesses opening up and helping the citizens. Saddam still will have the final say on that and he won't allow it, just to maintain his power. As was said before, the less his people have the better his power.

Do we wait for Saddam to die? That will cost many thousands of innocent lives and all that is waiting in that event is for his son to take over. His son may be even worse than he is.

The arguement that said that lifting sanctions might eventually lead to a free society, like the USSR, is a valid arguement. The only problem is that the USSR lasted for about 50 years like that. The body count will be beyond believable by that time.

As for the radicals hating us more, that's just not possible. They already hate us as much as possible and the only thing that would change that is if we abandon our western culture and convert.

Do we need to look at some of our policies and change them? Yes. Pointing to past mistakes here may sound like a great arguement but there is nothing that can be done about the past mistakes except hopefully learning from them. Just what would be said if in 2 years from now if there was no war a chemical weapons was set off in New York killing thousands and that weapon can be traced to Iraq? There would be an outcry of how our past policy cost us lives by not going after Saddam when we had the chance.

Again, I am not a war monger. I would have liked to avoid the war as much as possible. It's just a reality now and one that we all have to deal with, like it or not. Now we need to support our troops and let them know that we are behind them.


I'll be happy to address any questions about the comments. I might not have all the answers but I'll answer them to the best of my ability. Now I have to go add a few more new coaches to the simNCAA league.