Obama sows seeds of demise

coalkirk wrote:In the end, it was all about the oil. If Saddam was allowed to take and hold Kuwait, he could control the flow of oil in the gulf. Like it or not oil is the life blood of our country right now and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.
I'm done trying to reason with liberals. I've spent way too much time this weekend dualing with stockingfull. Libs are looking at life through some kind of filter or prism that must warp time and space. There is no connect with reality. If I said 1+1=2, he says lima beans. It's like arguing with someone who speaks a foreign langauge. I quit.

ErikLaurence wrote:

mikeandgerry wrote:
We were right as rain to take out Saddam. We had the moral authority as a result of Gulf I.

The moral authority of Gulf War I? The first Gulf War had the legal authority of the UN. It had no moral authority.

Gulf War I was not a war about freedom. It was a war we fought at the behest of a tyranny (the Saudis) to put a king back on his throne in Kuwait. We were a hired gun for the Saudis.

Our founding fathers would be sickened that American soldiers died in support of a monarchy (both the one in Kuwait and the one in Saudi Arabia).



We won't even go into the fact that Kuwait was an invention of the British during the break up of the Ottoman empire after WW1 to control the deep water port at the mouth of the Euphrates river.

mikeandgerry wrote:
Wrong. In Gulf I the US maintained the freedom of all nations to trade and remain sovereign should they behave like civilized nations as established by the moral authority of the UN (the UN has no legal authority). Subsequently, Saddam broke his surrender treaty. The US was enforcing the terms of that treaty after ample warnings to him to correct deficiencies. That you interpret it as illegitimate as a result of 9/11 timing and other historical events is your mistake.

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. - George Washington

mikeandgerry wrote:That a monarch was "put back on his/her throne" is immaterial because we were defending our economic interests and sovreignty in general as it pertains to international law.

Our foreign policy doesn't require our alliances to be democracies or republics.

ErikLaurence wrote:

mikeandgerry wrote:That a monarch was "put back on his/her throne" is immaterial because we were defending our economic interests and sovreignty in general as it pertains to international law.

Our foreign policy doesn't require our alliances to be democracies or republics.

"Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities." - George Washington

Replace "Europe" with the "Middle East".