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Originally Posted by Stark
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Originally Posted by conus
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I think that one country did... starts with an a or sumping.
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No, that was just the stated reason.
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So what do you guys suppose was the general logic behind peoples' support for the war? I want to believe people agreed to war based on wmd threats because if that's not so then my country is full of a bunch of idiotic slaughter monkeys. I have this faint glimmer of hope that a majority of americans truly understand that we've crossed a line. We, the land I hold dear, have attacked another country who posed no threat to us. I don't care how bad Saddam was this is a new precedent and it could lead us down a horrible path. Even if you support Bush what if some crazy liberal emperialist gets into office? He'll be able to attack whoever he wants if he can convince the people that they're threatened.
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Honestly, I shudder to think of how little the average American would have needed for an excuse to pound another country into the sand at that point in time. I believe the glimmer of hope that you're looking for is somewhere in the falling public approval numbers on the subject of war in Iraq, which is just another emotional response. See, at first we were mad as Hell, and the "case for war" could really have been just a bunch of words spewing from official mouths... well, I suppose that's what we got, huh?
Anyhoo, the American public has moved on to other issues, having largely dealt with the pain and anger of 9/11/1, and generally regrets it's outrage of a couple years back because the retribution it asked for so angrily turned into a much bigger deal than it had thought it would. Yeah, we were told a larger war on terrorism would potentially last a long time, but, like an enraged parent that beats their child only to regret it later, we didn't stop to consider the repercussions of our angry actions.
Now, with all the death in the papers, we've largely begun to feel a bit guilty for unleashing our (already ready and willing) Neo-con attack dogs on Iraq, which is reflected in the polls. Long story short, every American that supported the war in Iraq did so for their own reason, be it anything from WMD threats to just general principles. "Yep, that sounds good enough..." We just aren't very complicated folks for the most part. We are generally one issue voters on political subjects, and this is just one more of those. Just as the majority of voters will vote Dubya in November based on nothing more than he SEEMS to be better for us than Kerry, we largely Ok'd the war because it felt right. There was not a lot of proof needed. There was a lot of debate, and the general consensus was favorable, so we went with it thinking it would all work out for the best whatever happened.
I mean, Saddam was definitely bad, right? The common belief that we'd be greeted by flower throwing, smiling brown folk and be back out of Iraq in a week or two was so easily bought en masse, and the idea of finally DOING something about those damn terrorists for once so attractive, that most of us didn't need a whole lot of convincing. It was the Middle East we blamed for 9/11, and any target in that general area, especially one we'd actually heard of, would do.
Yes, the Neo-con element in American government was Johnny on the Spot with ready-made plans for Democratizing the Middle East, just as the Patriot Act was already written, waiting on a tragedy to get it through Congress. Dubya wanted to appear on the ball and decisive on 9/12, and ready-made plans were pretty attractive. All the administration had to do was make sure the plans drawn up under Clinton, Bush41 and Reagan were still relevant to the present situation and press the Go button. Rumsfeld wasted some time in the run-up reorganizing and second-guessing the military plans, which Bush and Powell utilized "making the case for war" to the UN and the rest of the world.
Before noon on 9/11/1 there were already Special Forces troops in planes headed to Afghanistan and files containing the details on a possible invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and probably a few other places were being pulled from archives in the Pentagon. Secure phone calls were being made to those in the know in Israel and Saudi Arabia because we'd already learned how little we actually knew for sure about the folks that had just attacked us. Because all we had in the way of information at that moment was completely couched in "probablies," the only "known known" right then was that someone was going to pay dearly for the lives and property destroyed on that day.
We can try to assign deeper motivations and levels of complexity to what has happened since the first plane hit the WTC, but all of it is really not much simple than this. Hopefully, everything will still work out for the greater good. Hell, we've made it through three years making major decisions based in nothing more than hope, so why stop now? Has any war ever been fought with prior knowledge of it's outcome? Every life ever taken has been taken with hope that doing so somehow turns out to be the right thing to have done. The decision was only to do something or nothing, and it was an easy one to make. Once we started down the path of doing something, we eventually did the most hopefully effective thing we felt we could hopefully get away with in hopes that whatever we did would discourage future attacks.