Virgil61
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Posts posted by Virgil61
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lol saddam did bad things but do we have a right to invade a country and occupy a nation just b/c he was a bad leader?It seems to me the war was a lie and all the things they said about WMD'S was false and lies to lure the usa people in a war that did not benefit its people and you can say the iraq people also.We must ask this,who did this war benefit?
Fine. The post is about Saddam's execution not about the legitimacy of the invasion, WMDs and occupation.
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Well it's a done deal. I'm not a fan of the death penalty in general but I can't help thinking 'good riddance' to a man responsible for so many of his own people's deaths.
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Onasander,
PM me with your mailing address. I'll spring for a decent dictionary. I've been there, done that in Iraq and it's the least I can do.
V
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Outstanding review Ursus. Very enjoyable.
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Oh dear... who might 'that lot' be, my dear Octavius? Coming as I do from the North of England, I see rather a lot of them, and count some among my friends - but they are not the Veil - wearing, gun-toting turban-wearing fanatics one sees on nasty news reports on Fox news. Far from it...
That's nice, they've become more secular and westernized due to time spent in the UK I'd wager. Spend some time in the Middle East and you'll see a different story.
I've always been respectful and intrigued by other cultures having spent part of my youth and my adult life in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. After seeing the thousandth young woman in an Islamic country treated like chattel, local minority Christians afraid to reveal their religion and forced to veil-up, seeing groups of young Islamic men who'd slit your throat in a minute if they could get away with it, etc., etc., I 'lost that lovin' feeling'.
The Spaniards fought the reconquista for centuries on their way back through their own country to re-coup their own lands. Fine with me if they didn't want them in a Catholic church.
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On the way to the family from Seattle I stopped in Portland (Oregon) at Powell's bookstore. Powell's may be the single largest bookstore in the US covering one whole city block and a couple of floors with new and used books interspersed with each other. I got my son a $500 gift certificate and picked up excellent quality used copies of JFC Fuller's Caesar, Kahn's Education of Julius Caesar, Niall Ferguson's Collapse, WT Sherman's Memoirs, and Cavalla-Sforza's The Great Human Diasporas all for under $30.
My Italian mother of course is more sensible. She got me socks, underwear and a Columbia fleece jacket.
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What a gorgeous thread! And just what we need after all our Christmas hangovers.....
Well, Number One for me is Hendrix. But then, you see, I have this thing for Richie Blackmore - especially his solo on Sweet Child in Time. As far as I'm concerned, that solo is better than sex.
My real soft spot though - due to my age - is Mick Ronson...
I just put Rainbow's Live in Germany '76 on my MP3 player a week or two ago. Very much worth a listen if you're a fan. You remind me though, I need to put Hunky Dory and/or Ziggy Stardust on as well, absolute classics.
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There are so many good ones but here are some of my favorites:
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(Black Sabbath)- Hendrix
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Does anyone know what has happened to this project, by the way? (Ye gods - do we care?)...
Of course we care! I hear there's a dramatic chariot chase down the Via Appia between Hannibal and Varro.
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I'd say pretty much most anything off of this Beatles compilation. Does anyone under 35 listen to the Beatles anymore?
1. Yesterday
2. I'll Follow the Sun
3. I Need You
4. Girl
5. In My Life
6. Words of Love
7. Here, There and Everywhere
8. Something
9. And I Love Her
10. If I Fell
11. I'll Be Back
12. Tell Me What You See
13. Yes It Is
14. Michelle
15. It's Only Love
16. You're Gonna Lose That Girl
17. Every Little Thing
18. For No One
19. She's Leaving Home
20. Long and Winding Road
21. This Boy
22. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
23. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
24. I Will
25. P.S. I Love You
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The whole Puget Sound area was hit hard Thursday night/Friday morning. Over 1.5 million without power at it's worst, including my place. About half of Seattle and Tacoma were out. Last night I drove for thirty blocks or so in west Seattle and not a kilowatt of power on.
My power just came back on an hour ago.
I hope it doesn't mess with the pending arrival of the jolly fat fellow.
It'll be cutting it close on some of the islands. Many aren't projected to have power back up for severaL more days, possibly into late next week.
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The whole Puget Sound area was hit hard Thursday night/Friday morning. Over 1.5 million without power at it's worst, including my place. About half of Seattle and Tacoma were out. Last night I drove for thirty blocks or so in west Seattle and not a kilowatt of power on.
My power just came back on an hour ago.
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Seems they are selling it in stores as well. Here the online version if anyone is interested:
Here's the report link (my 'insert link' above isn't working):
http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_r...1206/index.html
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This post simply in remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day (December 7, 1941). An event too often forgotten/ignored in American lore.
They are saying that today's survivors meeting may be the last held since the vets are getting up there in age.
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When it all comes out in the wash his influence on the Republic is a great big minus.
Is that a bad thing? But was it a minus? The republic was dying - he saw the direction it would go, before others did.
It depends on your view of the Republic as a good thing I suppose.
His war with Marius was conducted in such a politically scorched earth manner that the compromises or reconciliations of past internal conflicts were now fought in a civil war.Sometimes wars have to be fought to be WON. Compromise suggests that you may be wrong, or that you don't care about the outcome. Sulla did. Compromise almost never provides a full loaf either - why settle for anything less than all, if you believe you are right.
Compromise from a position of strength isn't the same as compromise from a position of weakness--see Machiavelli's "The Prince".
A man with more political prescience could have worked to diffuse the Republic's internal conflicts with an eye towards future stability once in power.As octavian later did you mean - hardly ANY bloodshed
no political changes of consequence 
everything done by concensus and compromise.... Come off it, Sulla only failed because there wass no one of the same mettle to follow him. The same old Republican half-wits started devouring themselves again. That was why Caesar and Augustus had no alternative but to return to a form of monarchy.Reaching compromise--often ugly in form--between plebes/patricians was part of Roman politics. Much has been written on how this breakdown led to the end of the Republic. Perhaps you've missed this.
The correct answer by you, rather than emoticon mocking, might have been; By this time the internal dynamics of Roman politics had degraded so much they weren't able to make the compromises of previoius generations.
Thank you, anyway, for making my point. The way for Octavian's proscriptions were paved by Sulla. Sulla's reforms failed because they rolled back to a time before the Gracchi, sometimes you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Because no institutional reforms were made that may have stuck and the roll-back wasn't tenable the half-wits began anew.
Instead he proscribed on a level greater than ever seen before and rejected past reforms.Boldness, not half-measures is sometimes what is required. If you understand that the Augean stables need to be cleansed, with a simple wash-down do? And if he felt past reforms were wrong - why continue them.
I think you mistake parochial Roman political vengeance with some sort of far-sightedness of counter-reforms.
Sulla did not know what was to come, or how things would turn out.I'm sure the word 'precedence' and the concept of an "educated guess" existed in the latin of 1st century BC.
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While I admit Sulla is a fascinating figure I can't be but against him.
When it all comes out in the wash his influence on the Republic is a great big minus. His war with Marius was conducted in such a politically scorched earth manner that the compromises or reconciliations of past internal conflicts were now fought in a civil war. In checking reforms he tried to put the genie back in the bottle but whatever skills he showed as a military man (and they were great) he lacked when trying to stabilize Rome politically.
A man with more political prescience could have worked to diffuse the Republic's internal conflicts with an eye towards future stability once in power. Instead he proscribed on a level greater than ever seen before and rejected past reforms.
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Very funny!
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Perhaps the more relevant and louder "now" comes from another group polled earlier this year in February--US troops.
"An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows."
Click here for the Zogby/Le Moyne College results:
http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
I don't have a wife. My boyfriend and I don't have any problems scheduling our kisses.
I didn't support the invasion though I took part in it, but I support military action by polling privates, corporals and Reservist/Guardsman even less. Rather stupid way to run a military.
It still doesn't answer the challenge to your original statement, which was incorrect, stating Iraqis want us out now. What of previous polls that show Iraqis wanted us to stay? What if, when we leave and the country goes even further into sh*t--which it will--and the polls change again--do we re-enter?
Polls are nice, fine and all. They're a poor substitute as the sole rationale for foreign or military policy.
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Based on Michael Richard's latest 'troubles' here in the US. Simply hilarious.
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Never read Shelby Foote as much as I'd like to.
Oh you must. It's brilliant. (though the 3 volume narrative can be quite the time consumer)
I too loved Grant's memoirs.
Though not necessarily a Civil War history, "Lincoln" by David Herbert Donald is simply one of the finest examples of single volume biography there is. For me, the politics of the era is as interesting as war itself.
I agree, it's outstanding, perhaps the best biography I've ever read.
I remember after watching Ken Burn's excellent Civil War documentary deciding to read the personal memoirs that were so integral to that film for myself. The Mary Chestnut diary (confederate) and the diary/letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes (Union) are fantastic for personal insight. (I can't quite recall the exact edition I read, it has been some time.)I'd forgotten all about those sources--Chestnut and Rhodes.
I was living in the barracks at Ft Bragg when the Ken Burns documentary came out in late '90. Being more like college dorms than what you see in the movies, there were always about 7 or 8 of us gathered around the TV in my room on the Sunday night in complete silence as each episode was played on PBS. Shelby Foote and Ed Bearss were real stand out characters.
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The Civil War was mentioned on another thread as being one of the favorite areas of history buffs in the US (and the UK it seems). Which got me wondering, what books of the thousands written on that era, have stood out as favorites?
For me it was the old stand-by Bruce Catton's 'Stillness at Appomattox" which I still remember fondly from my high school years (Mr. Lincoln's Army isn't bad itself). The best all-in-one is "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson, very intelligent and well written volume. Lee's Lieutenants by Douglas Freeman is excellent and U.S. Grant's Memoirs is among the best military memoirs ever written, yes up there with JC's Commentaries.
Never read Shelby Foote as much as I'd like to.
Your choices?
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What political ideology was behind Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi Army and fire former Baathists? It seems to me that this decision was simply following the example of de-Nazification that Truman followed to much success. Are Truman and Bremer ideological bed-mates? Not that I can tell.
Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi army wasn't so much ideologically driven as much as an example of his ineptness. Time and lack of focus kept me from a play-by-play in identifying what was ideological and what was incompetence--my error. I think the situation in Germany was dramatically different; many of the old guard Nazis were kept in positions of power for years after the occupation--an occurrence which has been subjected to a lot of criticism. Also, in the first year after the war, 45-46, there are many examples of Wehrmacht and US troops conducting traffic stops and patrols together--forgive me for not having the sources readily available but I've read first-person and official accounts of it happening. While not kept at massive troop levels the Wehrmacht for at least a time was used for population control.
On the other hand there are dozens of examples of the nitwits at CPA arbitrarily making decisions on purely ideological basis. While the Iraqi Army decision might be discounted, the fact that tens or hundreds of thousands of bread winners were put out of work because cement-heads like Michael Fliescher decided government subsidies were counter to free market reforms. A nice way to create both a dislike of the occupation and a pool of recruits for the insurgency.
I saw Baghdad descend into anarchy because we didn't have enough troops to occupy and secure the city contrary to the advice of Gen Shinseki who insisted the force package be three times what was on the ground and paid for it with his career courtesy of Rumsfeld.Clearly Shinseki was right, and Rumsfeld was wrong. But I don't see how this disagreement has a basis in political ideology. As I understood it, Rumsfeld was a champion of the apolitical notion that low numbers of high-tech forces were more effective than high numbers of low-tech forces. This is surely a debatable issue, but isn't this a purely military debate? I don't see why Wilsonian idealists or Kissingerian realists would necessarily have opposing views on this matter.
Again you're correct it is a military debate not an ideological one or more precisely as I noted, a civilian insistence on operational norms with little input from the military command. I suppose there's an argument if you cherry-pick commanders who either agree with you or are compliant with your whims there's military input.
The point of Fiasco is that political ideology, ignoring regional expertise and the dismissal of military leadership's POV is a recipe for disaster no matter what the justification for the invasion in the first place.Again, I don't see the relevance of political ideology here. I completely agree that ignoring regional expertise and dismissing military advice is a recipe for disaster, but given these two ingredients in the recipe for disaster, the political ideology was just for garnishing the dish!
I think I gave short-shrift to the counter-arguments and warnings given of post-occupation difficulties that were discounted by Wolfowitz, Cheney and co. The discounting was certainly ideologically driven I believe.
FWIW, I do think that a wrongheaded political ideology--namely, the notion that democracy cures all ills--is responsible for some the mess that's going on in Iraq. In my opinion, popular support for Sadr should not have prevented the US from trying the firebrad cleric for his murdering political rivals, and his ability to act unchecked and with legitimacy has been the source of remarkable instability to this day. To my mind, letting popular criminals go unpunished is a clear example of political ideology getting in the way of reconstruction. Much of the rest of the disaster can also be explained by bad ideas (like our needing only 130k troops), but those bad ideas are no more consistent with one political ideology than another. Simply put, incompetence always enjoys widespread bipartisan support.I've not read Fiasco, but from your review, it sounds like the author dislikes Wolfowitz and Pipes, and he wants to discredit them on the basis of what Bremer and Franks did. That's not fair. Pipes, for example, isn't anywhere in the chain of command.
It should've been Feith not Pipes (got my Middle East Daniels mixed up). Wolfowitz and Feith were both integral to committing for war on mainly ideological grounds. Both were largely responsible for post-war Iraq planning and discounted much of whatever countered their own view that democracy and free markets would be welcomed with open arms. In the best quote of the book one Army officer calls Wolfowitz dangerously idealistic and 'crack-smoking' stupid when it came to Iraq. This is of course separate to Bremer and Franks on the ground in Iraq.
I'm not sure the author really had an axe to grind w/Wolfowitz, he compliments his abilities often. Ricks has been a veteran commentator on the Pentagon and most of Fiasco is sourced from mid to high level military and civilian members of DoD. Perhaps he may have become co-opted by their opinions, but then again much of what he writes I have some knowledge of as being truth.
Read it if you get a chance sometime, I'd like to get your take on it.
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Not only a fiasco, but a tragedy any way you look at it. There are some lessons here. One being that you can't export democracy at the point of a gun, especially when the victim country never asked you to invade it for that purpose.
I'm not sure that's the lesson of Fiasco. I agree the invasion was an idiotic decision in my opinion but having said that the occupation had a healthy shot at some measure of success in the first year ruined by ideological incompetence and the ignoring of Army and Marine advice which was suppressed in favor of political ideology and civilian insistence on operational norms.
I saw Baghdad descend into anarchy because we didn't have enough troops to occupy and secure the city contrary to the advice of Gen Shinseki who insisted the force package be three times what was on the ground and paid for it with his career courtesy of Rumsfeld. I saw the window of opportunity being steadily eroded while I was there by Paul Bremer and his incompetent CPA staff who ignored military advice not to disband the army or put thousands out of work.
With this defeat, maybe the US will get back to being a republic.'Defeat' isn't a healthy option here on several levels and certainly not something I think will be beneficial or have anything to do with our existence as a republic. We leave and the present nascent civil war erupts in a bloodbath of huge proportions. We created this mess and we've an obligation to try and fix it. Perhaps now that ideological idiots like Wolfowitz and arrogant sh*ts like Rummy are gone we may have a small chance to save it although I fear it's to little to late.
The point of Fiasco is that political ideology, ignoring regional expertise and the dismissal of military leadership's POV is a recipe for disaster no matter what the justification for the invasion in the first place.
Saddam's execution
in Arena
Posted
I completely agree with the part above. Why execute him for those murders only? There is a long list of atrocities he's responsible for. In 2003 I personally witnessed a mini-killing fields of sorts where several thousand Shia remains were dumped over a period of years from the prisons. I saw families walking to pick through uprooted remains trying to identify loved ones.
In late '91 my unit went into Northern Iraq to protect the Kurdish refugees including survivors of the gas attacks. Gruesome stories and a lot of deaths from exposure in the mountains as well.
Remember the Nuremburg trials and Ceacescu's execution didn't produce martyrs. I understand the fears of making a martyr are well founded, yet I'm not sure that the abject stupidity of a non-victimized part of the Iraqi and Arab population willing to make Saddam one should really matter. Saddam was no Che, he was a lot closer to Stalin or Hitler.
Everyone's made some good points I think, yet his death leaves me still with a feeling of 'good riddance'.