30th March 2003, 3:10 PM
I'd think that being anti-war and wanting anyone hurt is hypocritical... I very much doubt that lots of antiwar people would support that...
Oh, and in Kosovo the government was actively killing its own citizens in massacres at the time we went in... while Sadaam has definitely done that, he has been more careful (about his image) in recent years because of international pressure... the main reason Iraqis have been dying over the past decade is lack of food and medicine... we shouldn't just stand while people get slaughtered, like we did in Rwanda or Yugoslavia for 8 years before we finally went in... But this case just doesn't meet those criteria.
Also, there were antiwar protests to Kosovo. There are for every war. But they were definitely less pronounced... but not because of a Democratic president. Left wing activists wouldn't care as much about that... Clinton was so centrist in so many ways he almost could have been a moderate Republican...
Oh yeah, and he actually had strong international support. You cannot underrate the importance of that... international support was vital. We do not have that now...
Now you say "Cooalition of the Willing". You know what that is code for? "A short list of nations that aren't against war". Not "A list of nations who will help us in war", but "A list of nations who won't try to stop the war". And its just 30 nations... (with supposedly 15 more who don't want to admit it because of how unpopular it is) of 193 in the world...
And the war has achieved exactly what I said several times: It has just hardened resistance against war in almost every nation in the world... Look at Spain. I bet that that government doesn't make it past the next election... not with 90% of the public opposing their pro-war policy...
Oh, and in Kosovo the government was actively killing its own citizens in massacres at the time we went in... while Sadaam has definitely done that, he has been more careful (about his image) in recent years because of international pressure... the main reason Iraqis have been dying over the past decade is lack of food and medicine... we shouldn't just stand while people get slaughtered, like we did in Rwanda or Yugoslavia for 8 years before we finally went in... But this case just doesn't meet those criteria.
Also, there were antiwar protests to Kosovo. There are for every war. But they were definitely less pronounced... but not because of a Democratic president. Left wing activists wouldn't care as much about that... Clinton was so centrist in so many ways he almost could have been a moderate Republican...
Oh yeah, and he actually had strong international support. You cannot underrate the importance of that... international support was vital. We do not have that now...
Now you say "Cooalition of the Willing". You know what that is code for? "A short list of nations that aren't against war". Not "A list of nations who will help us in war", but "A list of nations who won't try to stop the war". And its just 30 nations... (with supposedly 15 more who don't want to admit it because of how unpopular it is) of 193 in the world...
And the war has achieved exactly what I said several times: It has just hardened resistance against war in almost every nation in the world... Look at Spain. I bet that that government doesn't make it past the next election... not with 90% of the public opposing their pro-war policy...