In 2003 the American people supported the Iraq invasion

[mdmc]

in 2007 the American people support leaving Iraq.

By 2008, isolationism will be in vogue with the American people.

Popularity makes shitty policy. I opposed this war because if we invaded, we would be making a three decade commitment to be in Iraq, not a three week or month wet dream that the neo-cons were pushing.

All those that supported this war (by saying that we have to support the troops, yadda yadda) must know understand that once you broke it, you bought it. If the Iraqis toppled their own government, they would be able to take responsibility for rebuilding it. We broke it, we bought it.

[Jacobin]

1. Yes. We should utterly ignore what Iraqis think

Even though 80 percent want us to get out, we have the white man's burden to fix their problems. After all, they are brown people and need our help because they have no history of being an advanced civilization. Anything that they have or become in the future, they will all owe to the West, and they will be eternally grateful for it>

Kinda like that? :-)

[mdmc]

4. we should do what is in the best interest of world peace

We should do what is best for our security, and for the security of the freedom loving world (or whole world).

My point was that just because cuttin and runnin is popular right now, does not make it a valid policy.

Where did you hear 80% of Iraqis want us out of Iraq? Is there a link?

Peace

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Actually, the majority did NOT support the war. We had it forced on us.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2798767 MKJ

[mdmc]

7. NYS Gov. Eliot Spitzer stated that Howard Dean was unelectable

because he "did not support the war" (Spitzer was a Lieberman guy, of course).

I know that most people I know thought that it would be easy. I always opposed it, with a minority of anti war protesters.

[dogday]

3. When you act on a lie, and continue to propagate that

lie, and everyone else involved wants to discontinue your actions and end that lie, what do you call that again? Wrong is wrong, no matter how you say it or spell it or define it....

[mdmc]

18. who lied?

:shrug:

[Dhalgren]

5. We do not OWN Iraq. We never have and we never will. By your

logic, the Nazis should never have withdrawn from France, Belgium, Holland, etc until such a time as the Nazis had "fixed" everything that they "broke". That is complete bullshit. The US acted criminally and we must stop the ongoing crime. I think that the US is obligated to pay for all of Iraq's reconstruction, but only after we get the fuck out of THEIR country. The US did not "break" Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi People, the US "broke" Iraq for US profit and gain. The US is the 21st century Huns...

[mdmc]

21. we either take responsibility for what we caused or we don't

[mwb970]

6. *This* American person never supported Bush's War.

I was against it from the very beginning. It was easy to see through the WMD lies. If you wanted to.

[sweetheart]

8. No, the moron nation just did more stupid

Its entirely out of control, the american people have nothing to do with it.

The biggest tragic illusion of american life is believing that the government is 'yours'.
It is 'theirs', and you are only invited to pay for the meal, not to eat it.

The propaganda effort to convince everyone that 'america' is 'theirs', 'for the people'
and all that blather has been pervasive from birth for most persons; such deep brainwashing
that few can distance themselves from the identity complex. But life experience shows
repeatedly that it is a corporate plutocracy for global exploitation of all people and
resources for the profit of a few... and it could not achieve its objectives without convincing
the masses that it is 'their' government.

Then 'their' government started a war that they have to clean up... no, not true.
A bunch of corporate criminals started a mass murder in asia to scam a buck
and want 'uz' to bail them out by making their problem 'our' problem.
Fuck them, those skanky criminals can go die there, lynn cheney and her baby's baby can
all go over there and fuck people, but leave the american people out of it.

[motocicleta]

9. I tried to make this argument a month or so ago.

And I was roundly pilloried for it. Public opinion works at DU as well. There are some smart folks out there saying that if we get out now, the chances of having a better outcome for the US, Iraq, and the world are less than if we pull our heads out and do what we should have done in the first place: an overwhelming troop presence and serious counter-insurgency tactics, which includes
a) less military action, even though the force levels are higher
b) providing for the needs of the Iraqi public, as in safety and services such as, oh, I don't know, water and electricity
c) actually talking to and working with Iraqis on a gritty local level to find out from them what they need
and d) probably a bunch of other things that I don't recall right now. I'm not a military/political expert. So sue me.
Chief among these smart folks in my mind is Thomas Ricks, the author of Fiasco.

Unfortunately, the tide of public opinion has so turned against the war that people are unable to contemplate the real outcomes of specific actions. People just want it over, and think that pulling out will accomplish that. What we will probably get is either war with Iran resulting in a region wide conflagration, or a pull out that results in an enormous bloodletting in Iraq resulting in a region wide conflagration, including Sunnis v. Shias in a number of countries, Turkey invading Kurdish Iraq, etc, until there is some kind of consolidation of power under an even worse Saddam type strongman. Either way, the neocons win.

Very likely, pulling out now will end up with the USA needing to legitimately go to war again in the region within our lifetime, after an actual threat has developed, not the straw threat that Saddam posed. But we will get our short moment in the sun where the troops come home. Perhaps that is worth it.

One thing I can say for public opinion on DU: I'd rather be with the doves who just want out, even if it screws us later, than with the hawks who want a small escalation which will accomplish nothing. I mean: public opinion in America doesn't allow anyone, ANYONE, to voice the thought that we need to send as many troops as Shinseki recommended in the first place, so if my choice is between *s plan and DUs plan, I'll take DUs any day. In the last month, even though I think it is a terribly unwise and dangerous way to end our involvement right now in Iraq, I have come to believe that the only option is to simply get out and do so as soon as possible, because the really smart option isn't even on the table.

This is all to say, far too wordily, don't expect too many positive responses to your thread, mdmc. And I wholeheartedly agree that popularity makes shitty policy.

[mdmc]

22. I have solutions

so does Dennis Kucinich and Kofi Annan.

Thanks for the post!:kick:

[WinkyDink]

10. I opposed it based on International Law, not a time-table.

[Peace Patriot]

11. WRONG! The American people did NOT support the war on Iraq. The

subject line of this OP is FACTUALLY wrong. 56% of the American people OPPOSED the Iraq War in Feb. '03, before the invasion. That number only declined for a brief period, during the weeks of the invasion, with U.S. troops at max risk, then it went right back up to 55% or so, where it stayed throughout the 2004 election. It's up to 70% now, with a whopping 84% opposing any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war (in a poll posted at DU last summer).

It is very important to understand this. It is EVERYTHING to understand this. The American people have RESISTED the biggest load of shit propaganda they have ever been subjected to, ALL ALONG. And this is also the great puzzle of the 2004 election, and one of the reasons that it is so suspect--the other one being that, between 2002 and 2004, rightwing Bushite corporations took over our election system with electronic voting machines run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. A corporation--Diebold--whose CEO was a Bush/Cheney campaign chair! A corporation--ES&S--whose initial funder also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals). These are the people who "counted" 80% of our votes in 2004 under a veil of corporate secrecy.

And in my opinion, that WAS the fascist coup. You can't conduct an illegal, unjustified war, in a democracy, without fixing the elections. And that's what they did.

I've followed the war polls, and other issue and approval polls. I am also familiar with all of the evidence of a fraudulent 2004 election. And I tell you, they FIXED the election, to keep Bush in power and to FABRICATE an endorsement of the war.

And this presents us with an entirely different problem that if most Americans had been gullible. That's why it's so important to understand this. If most Americans had been gullible, we would have mostly a problem of educating the public. But if--on the other hand--most Americans were reading between the lines, and coming to their own conclusions about Bush and the war, and the will of the majority was THWARTED, we have a very different problem--a problem not so much of educating the public, as of EMPOWERING the public, and RE-enfranchising them. I'll admit that that was my prejudice from the beginning. I believed in the American people--in their common sense, and in their largely progressive views. But I was willing to admit I might be wrong, and that their brains had been fried by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. And I was absolutely delighted to discover that I was right. A wide range of polls over a long period of time continually contradict what vote totals were saying--for president and for Congress and other posts, starting in 2002, when the first all-Diebold elections were occurring in some places (Georgia, for instance, where Max Cleland had a 15% advantage going in, in the Senate race, and the machines 'disappeared' his advantage on election day). I believe that Diebold/ES&S have been putting a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists through 2006, when the voters began outvoting the machines, in their rage at Bush. (One key to that phenomenon is the huge increase in absentee ballot voting in '06--indicating that many individual voters were trying to find a way around the rigged electronics. In other words, there was high interest in "sending a message" to Bush, as well a high level of awareness of the problem with the machines.)

Several other factors helped the public overcome the Diebold/ES&S disadvantage and resulted in the Democratic win in '06. A much higher scrutiny of the elections, brought about by a much higher level of understanding of the riggability of the machines (and other forms of disenfranchisement). Dean's "50 state" strategy--activation of the grass roots. And ever worsening conditions in Iraq and in the country. We still, however, do NOT have a fully representative Congress, for the very reason that Diebold/ES&S can still fiddle the elections. (See www.truthisall.net - TIA estimates we should have won 50 seats in the House, not just 30.)

Look at FL-13, for instance. The ES&S voting machines 'disappeared' EIGHTEEN THOUSAND mostly Democratic votes for Congress, in an election that Republican Buchanan "won" by only a few hundred votes. Democrat Jennings took it to court, and in the first court ruling, the court said that ES&S's "right" to its "trade secret," proprietary code trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted (or rather discounted). Unbelievable! ES&S is defending its TRADE SECRETS, and refusing to disclose them, even in a red flag election.

Well, multiply that times nearly 50 states. We DON'T NOW how they are "counting" our votes. And, according to them, we have no right to know!

Jennings just got a favorable ruling from the appeals court. And Pelosi & Co. I believe are waiting to see if the Florida courts do the right thing, before Congress steps in. But remedying FL-13 does not solve our overall problem--that vote counting has been made non-transparent, and is controlled by Bushite corporations.

I find this mind-boggling.

There are some tepid overall remedies proposed in Congress--remedies that leave the Bushite corporations in control, and reward them with billions of more dollars for voting machine "upgrades," printers, servicing contracts, and the like. The bills add a "paper trail" and a 2% audit (meaning that 98% of the votes never get counted). Very inadequate. These dreadful electronic voting corporations have our representatives by the balls, I think. And that is the problem. That is why we cannot get Congress to stop the war and impeach Bush/Cheney for all their crimes.

Now we have 70% of the people against the war, and just over 50% (last I heard) for impeachment, and still all we can get is a non-binding resolution on the war.

I think we need to address the election fraud problem at the state/local level, where the power over election systems still resides, and where ordinary people have more potential influence. New Yorkers are putting up an heroic fight under pressure from the Bush Junta to convert to Bushite-controlled electronic voting. FL-13 threatens to bust the whole scam wide open. In California, we managed to get rid of a Schwarzenegger appointed Diebold shill for Sec of State, and got Debra Bowen elected (but I'm sure she got elected by far more votes than the vote totals reflect). Bowen will help. California tends to set the pace of reform. (But, in this case, NY is way ahead of us--they never agreed to this shitscam in the first place.)

Anyway, I just wanted to give THREE CHEERS to the American people, for their early MAJORITY opposition to the war, and to stop this slander against them. 56% is a big majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election. The Junta knew this, and designed the "Help America Vote for Bush" Act of 2002, to thwart that majority of peace-minded citizens.

[BuyingThyme]

14. You are correct. The way the polls were being framed

repeatedly gave Americans a choice between allowing the UN to handle the situation responsibly, or letting the Chimp be the decider.

The American people ALWAYS sided with the UN over the Chimp, and the UN ALWAYS rejected invasion.

[mdmc]

19. Revisionism

[JackRiddler]

12. Yes, there is a three decade commitment to Iraq

Here is the moral commitment:

1) Get out of their house.

2) Arrest and prosecute those responsible for breaking, entering and lighting fire to their house.

3) Pay several hundred billion dollars in reparations.

I'll echo the others and say that a majority of US citizens did not support the invasion!

[Peace Patriot]

13. I want to respond, also, to Motocicleta's very thoughtful post, and to the

gist of Mdmc's OP.

I agree with Motocicleta that a quick US withdrawal can result in further chaos in Iraq, and potentially in the region, if it is done with the Bush Junta's typical ill intentions and disregard for diplomacy. Even just a half-way decent president could do it properly, however. Clearly, there needs to be a region-wide conference with UN involvement, tasked with stabilizing the Middle East--and including entities like Turkey, Greece, Russia, Italy and other EU countries (anyone in proximity), and possibly also China (big use of Iran oil). This problem MUST be turned over to the international community. The US owes reparations and full support to efforts to stabilize, but should butt out, as to troops, domination of the region, and theft of the region's oil wealth. And this of course should be combined with a domestic program to entirely convert to alternative energy in five years. (We can do it!)

The drain on the American people, on our armed forces, and on our treasury, of either a short term heightened conflict, or a future Mideast War (due to the chaos), is simply too much. We can't do EITHER, even if we wanted to. Bush has inflicted us with a TEN TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT! He has crippled our military--very nearly destroyed it. He's using our NATIONAL GUARD as combat troops, for godssakes! He has crippled U.S. intelligence agencies, almost beyond repair. He has crippled the economy. The MIDDLE CLASS can't pay its medical and education bills. Millions and millions of jobs have been outsourced. Our manufacturing capability is nearly gone. And that isn't even the half it. FEMA, destroyed. The EPA, destroyed. Government pensions and Social Security, looted (borrowed against). We are looking at DISASTER--at a crash bigger than '29. But this time, it may only hit us--the American people. The rest of the world is getting smart, and disengaging from the U.S. dollar, and U.S. domination.

The extent of the damage to the U.S. that the Bush Junta has done is incalculable--because we literally don't know yet how much of our treasury has been looted, and all the secret shit that they may have done, besides the obvious things. NOT TO MENTION, the torture, the secret prisons, etc., which has made our name mud throughout the world, so that we don't even have moral authority any more. People laugh ruefully when Bush touts freedom and democracy. It is A JOKE!

Further, the tyranny of the Bush Junta needs to be dealt with, and giving Bush and Cheney another $100 billion dollars to slaughter people in the Middle East, is not the right thing or the wise thing to do, in this circumstance. These criminals have spit on the U.S. Constitution. They have, indeed, ripped it to shreds--all in the name of a phony "war on terror" that should never have been anything other than a police matter, but which they TURNED INTO a real war UNNECESSARILY. And we're going to let them FINISH it, for their own nefarious purposes? That is not only nuts, it is a prescription for fascism and nazism. We MUST curtail them. The survival of our democracy depends upon it.

I'm rather sure that the war profiteers have a backup plan. We more than likely WILL have a Draft, and a widened Mideast War--under a Democrat (most likely Hillary). And we can fight that one out in '08, and, if we lose, fight it out for eight more years. Diebold/ES&S still control our elections including our primaries, never forget. And they will use their "trade secret" code to try to head off any truly peace-minded candidate from making it to the White House. Take from the poor and give to the war profiteers. That is the philosophy of both the Republican Party and the DLC, which is trying to reassert itself, through the sheer power of rich people's money, against the insurgent grass roots of the Democratic Party, who represent the majority of Americans. The outline of this struggle is very visible. And YOU might think that it is wise to have a Hillary in the White House, running a war in the Middle East, and draining an exhausted, fed up American people for that purpose, but I do not. I think it will destroy us--financially and in every other way. The country will come apart.

The Middle East is not our affair. It has been WRONGFUL policy all along to become dependent on Mideast oil. If Israel's existence and survival can be separated from that issue--and I think it can--then I would be in favor of supporting Israel's survival, because I think Israel has a very important cultural role to play in the Middle East (involving democratic ideas, and the equality of women, among other things). But this rightwing militaristic policy--which presumes that Israel cannot survive without the entire US military occupying the Middle East--must be abandoned. It is not viable. It threatens the entire planet.* Israel must learn to be at peace with its neighbors and to adhere to international law. And the US needs to return to a peacemaking role. It will be a long time before we recover our status as an "honest broker" in the Middle East, if ever. But, at the very least, we should be advocating peaceful solutions, and drawing down our forces in the Persian Gulf, which are an incendiary influence. And we should STOP supporting dictatorships in the Middle East. And, I'm sorry, but Iran is NOT a dictatorship. (Iran fled to the arms of the mullahs at OUR instigation, when we deliberately destroyed Iranian democracy in 1954, and inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and oppression under the horrible Shah of Iran. But Iran remains the most potentially progressive state among Israel's neighbors. (For one thing, they are NOT Arabs. For another, they have some democratic institutions (they are not ruled by kings and sultans), and a young population itching to modernize.) If they are PUSHED to defend themselves, they will. But if we STOP pushing them, and threatening them, there is every reason to believe that democratic pressures and trade will change them. Our policy toward Iran is nuts. And it is driven primarily by the Bush Junta's greed for oil, and by war profiteers on all sides, as well as by Israel's rightwing paranoia.)

My point is that we've taken the wrong, militaristic attitude toward the Middle East, for all the wrong reasons, and have created a disaster. We CANNOT solve that disaster with MORE disaster. We must take the difficult route of peace--or there will never BE peace!

-------

*(Read Carl Sagan's "The Cold and the Dark," for a description of what even a limited use of nuclear weapons will do to earth's atmosphere. It will kill the planet.)

[motocicleta]

15. Thank you, PP

Sometimes I get so despairing of hope that I limit my thinking solely to what I believe can be done from my negative outlook. Clearly it is a good reminder that there is the possibility of a wider, more holistic approach to the madness, i.e., what you are suggesting in terms of UN involvement, reduced US dependence on foreign oil, a curtailing of the Bush Junta, etc. I just get so down sometimes that I was looking at the issue as a standalone. If we are stuck with corporate rule, a military industrial complex that cannot be stopped, then and only then it would be best to manage the Iraq disaster so as to minimize the very real danger of setting up a situation that will only lead to more US hatred, more terrorism on all fronts, and the installment of a regime in the Middle East that will be far more dangerous than any we have encountered so far. That view comes from a belief that we cannot avoid our own homicidal regime. Your post reminds me that I should have more hope for the US than that.

Again, thank you. Peace.

[Peace Patriot]

16. I am glad I have heartened you. I myself have been very heartened by

keeping close track of many polls--which, as an aggregate, tell a far different story of what the American people want and believe, than what we are getting from some of the same news organizations in their slanted and very propagandistic news coverage and opinion. And if the American people had been LISTENED TO, we would have had a UN-brokered solution to any threat from Iraq back in 2003. In fact, the UN weapons inspectors were THOROUGHLY inspecting Iraq's WMD capability, were only about 30 days from issuing their report, that that capability had been destroyed, when Bush kicked them out of the country and invaded, slaughtering 100,000 innocent people in the initial bombing alone. So, what I see is that democracy WORKS--if it is permitted to. The American people--having learned the lessons of Vietnam--wanted a peaceful solution in 2003, and they want one now, in even greater numbers--although it is much harder now. Our democracy is creaking back to life--is what I see. The voters outvoting the machines and putting the Democrats in charge. And the wonderful patriotic work of so many people--to get truthful information out, to organize, to monitor the elections. But in too many cases, they didn't have the choice of a real Democrat--a real representative of the people. I think that Diebold/ES&S limited the anti-Iraq War, anti-Bush victory.

From the day I learned who was now "counting" our votes with "trade secret" programming, I have been ON this issue, because it is the heart of all our problems, as well as the heart of every solution. IF we can restore transparent vote counting--the fundamental condition of democracy--we can solve ANY OTHER PROBLEM--even Bush's debacle in the Middle East. There are of course many other reforms that are needed (busting up the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, for instance), but transparent vote counting is step one. If we have representatives who are beholden to us, problems get solved (instead of created!). And we have a deep democratic tradition, and precedents in living memory (for instance, the "Fairness Doctrine" as a requirement for a license to use the public airwaves), with which to go about reforming our system. We also have an American populace that is much better informed than anyone gives them credit for--and which, at the least, is trying very hard to see through the bullshit.

One stat comparison I love is this: At the same time that 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War (Feb. '03, with about half of those being against it outright, and the other half wanting a UN solution), about half the American people (50% or so) believed that Saddam had WMDs and/or had something to do with 9/11. Think about this for a moment. Even with Bush's disinformation rattling around in their heads, a significant portion of the American people were realizing that war was not the solution. They didn't trust Bush. They didn't want war. Saddam may have WMDs, but it was not a threat that justified a war. He may have had something to do with 9/11, but it was minor--again, not worth a war. I actually love this evidence that Americans were TRYING TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES even more than I love them for being against the war. To me, this was the best sign of all that the solution to whatever problems the Bush Junta created is THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Democracy!

I think we're headed back that way now--toward our roots and traditions in democracy. We need to work hard on being good citizens, and think long term. What will we do if Bush does his "Gulf of Tonkin" on Iran, and dumps a widened Mideast War on the incoming Democrat? And what if it's Hillary (whom I think is in collusion with them)? What do we do to CONTINUE restoring our democracy? What do we do to mitigate that war, and stop it? A crashing economy, or global warming, may take over that scene. And then we'll have to deal with that. But it's important to be realistic, and to plan long term. American democracy was not won in a day, and it will not be won back in a day. But it is a very great and sturdy heritage that cannot easily be destroyed. We are seeing that now, as it reawakens. It remained alive--via many courageous and determined people--through the darkest days of the Bush Junta, when many Americans became convinced that the REST of America had gone nuts, never realizing that they were not alone in their opposition to the Iraq War and to Bush, and that in fact they were the majority! The America we know and love is STILL HERE. It was never gone. And now we just have to persist in re-empowering it--a long term project.

[motocicleta]

17. It is precisely those polls that bring me down.

I can see that the US populace does not and has not supported the Bush Junta's efforts, but positive change is so slow. As my mom always says, slow down. Take one thing at a time. Fix that, then move on to the next. Voting issues are probably that one thing. It's just so difficult to remain hopeful with peak oil, the economy, and, last but probably most not least, climate change looming in the rear view mirror.

I don't know what I would do without DU.

[blues90]

20. What amazes me the most is why

so many american supported this attack in the first place .

I know people who stopped to think did not support this attack . Many did and I still can't imagine why . Let alone the politicians who say they did not have the true facts and were lied to . I seems to me that if a politician cannot stop and go inside their selve and say is this what we really want and if so why and if not why .

People had to know Iraq was beaten down from 12 years of sanctions and if this was not enough then they were out of touch with reality .