Ron Paul

The solution to the world's problems is not to bomb the shit out of the wrong doers. Nor is it to sit around and talk about how stupid it would be to do the former plan.

Fighting fire with fire is actually one of the ways to stop a forest fire.... just saying.
It is not impossible to stop the blodshed in the Middle East, whatever you might think about them. Or if it is could you provide some kind of evidence to back that ridiculous statement up?

No, installing a democracy is not a bad plan, but it was/is harder than most people think, and when we're still there 5 years after the invasion they say we've failed, but in reality, we're just making sure we don't have to invade again in 10 years because another dictator comes to power.

Nuclear Weapons...
What are you doing then? Telling them to stop being big bad bullies?

No, the plan is to install a democracy. That's what I and they have said all along, and you're just evading the question.

I wouldn't call 1918 modern and most of those conflicts were minor. I don't deny that their has been a lot of conflicts in the Middle East, but you're saying that we should avoid any military intervention in the region.

They actually did pretty good the second time and reached their goals(to limit Russian influence and giving Britain control over Afghanistan's foreign policy)

How do you trade with a country that has completely isolated itself?
"Get western culture in there"? Why would they even care?
Diplomatically involved? You're using very broad terms and I can't get a picture of what you would do.

The guy they popularly elect as president... He is probably going to be Shia since 65% of the population is, but that's really their decision.

Democracy, stability and freedom of expression etc. clear and achievable goals...

Mabye because they realise that if they open up to the world they will enevitably face a public revolution?

Like you said, middle eastern culture is dominated by tradition, and they're not just going to throw that away because we tell them that western culture is awesome... In fact it might have the opposite effect.

How do you do that with a regime like the Taliban? They wouldn't deal with the west in any way.

That's just not true the current incumbent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki didn't or his predessesors.

Afghanistan - The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden in return for evidence. The US invaded because they refused to bow down to silly things like typical practices in which you provide evidence to have some extradited.
Iraq - There are estimates of over a million dead as a result of the war. The country is very unstable now. The US priorities were oil and control over the region. Evidence of that is that US admins tried desperately to establish military bases in Iraq. On oil:

So a consulting firm wrote a law for the US government to guarantee profits for foreign oil companies. The passing of the bill would be seen as a benchmark by the Bush administration of al-Maliki. Yet 63% want Iraq's oil to be developed and produced by Iraq's state owned company. Good democracy you have there!

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to stone people in Iraq and Afghanistan just like it is illegal to kill someone elsewhere. Just because a small minority is doing it, doesn't mean it's common practice etc.

Yes I see what you mean, but I have no delutions that some Iraqis and Afghans are going to hate me(more like "the west") and I accept as the lesser evil to looking the other way while mass murder and genocide is going on.

Because they were religious extremists who believed all infidels who didn't convert should go and die? It isn't like western countries want to spend billions invading a relatively friendly state.

Link/sources? Didn't know this and have never heard about it before.

There is ONE estimate from a biased and videly critized source which claims this(ORB survey) while most other surveys report around half that number or less. That's still terrible, but Saddam killed somewhere between 300,000-600,000+ Iraqies because they disagreed with him(more or less), 70,000-300,000 Kurds because they were Kurds(ethnic cleansing) and caused another 800,000-1,000,000 deaths in his unprovoked attack on Iran(ask if you want sources)

I don't deny the US agenda is influenced a lot by oil, but what I'm discussing is if the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan can be justified morally. The US havn't done a good job when it came to building the nation back up, because they wanted to be in control(at least in many cases)

http://josefvstalin.com/threads/the...oops-from-afghanistan.6430/page-2#post-189923
http://josefvstalin.com/threads/the...oops-from-afghanistan.6430/page-4#post-190100

Firstly, the Lancet report of 2006:

plus 6 ish years of civil war and we're looking at a number around the million mark wouldn't you say? Some say that the Lancet report was too conservative. What Saddam did (with Western backing in the War on Iran & chemical weapons) didn't justify an illegal war of aggression. Those million deaths are on our hands. There is a civil war and an unstable country left in rubble. As the Arab Spring has taught us, dictators can be deposed, even ones the West likes (Mubarak) by an uprising of the people. This all misses the point entirely though because these wars are never moral and don't kid yourself that they are. They're always in the interest of the state that's intervening.

With respect, I'm not sure how a state can have a moral agenda, especially a state which is state capitalist. Corporations have so much power that it's unlikely morals come into it.

Alright, but the Bin Laden did confess on that videotape and proclaimed it proudly to the world.

Civil war?! Wtf? There is an insurgency sure, but it's not enough to describe it as a civil war. And there certainly hasn't been 400,000 deaths since 2006.
The problem with counting the death toll is bias and unreliability.

Sure, and some say the Holocaust didn't happen. That doesn't make it any less/more true.

The "West" didn't back Saddam(but didn't intervene either) and it clearly was an illegal war of aggression...

This statement and claim is so utterly ridiculous and stupid that it boggles my mind. How are "we" responsible for the deaths caused by a war some crazy dictator on the other side of the world(for the US) started?

I agree, but there has been several popular uprisings in Iraq, and they were all put down brutally(much more than what we're seeing in Syria today) And I can assure you that Denmark didn't back Mubarak or any of the dictators in the Middle East.
The country was already in rubble(economically) after the Iran-Iraq war...

NOT what we are discussing. Sure the US etc. had economic/oil interests in mind when they made the decision to invade Iraq, but that's not what I'm here to discuss!

I'm pretty sure this is the ideologue talking. The US(or most other western countries) isn't state capitalistic and corporations don't have as much power in other countries as in the US.(In Denmark, they're practically without any kind of influence)

Can I have a source for that please? With a date as well. Remember we are talking pre-invasion.

Polls of the Iraqi people go either way, sometimes polling says people think there's a civil war, sometimes it doesn't. What was clear was that they didn't want the occupation that followed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/iraq

I don't know a lot about the Iraq-Iran war, but what I've heard is that the US played both sides. There is no question that US, the UK, and other European countries helped Saddam with his chemical weapons development. Us British helped build the flippin' Fallujah 2 chemical plant! The US & the UK also sold him weapons. Well, in the US it was 'farming equipment' (lol).

I meant responsible for the Iraq War deaths. But we're partly responsible for the gassing of the Kurds.

----UPDATE----

I think it was more than just on the mind, I think it was the primary motivation. The war was patently a war of aggression with no credible pretexts. I think I get your point though, that despite the actual intentions the result was a dictator deposed. I think I've answered this sufficiently that an uprising of the people could've done the same, not requiring an illegal war of aggression. Anyway, forgive me for not seeing the US as humanitarian when:

Economic sanctions brought deaths ranging from hundreds of thousands to over a million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions

So murderous sanctions lasted for 13 years. Humanitarian? Well what about when Saddam was gassing Kurds? The thing which you justify the invasion on? Sorry to disappoint you, we weren't that bothered about it:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199804--.htm

My reasoning are the exact opposite of... whatever the fuck you just said. Crazy viking......

Sorry I'm late on this answer. Going to skip some of the less interesting posts(you may count that as a win...)
1. The ORB survey is extremely unreliable. Asking 1,720 if they lost members of their family without further investigation is utterly ridiculous. They could have gone up to a murderer and asked him if he killed someone, and he could have said nooooo. I know the margin for error is there for a reason, but this is simply a too low-quality survey.
2. Some western countries did "play on both sides" because they didn't want any of them to "win"(if there is such a thing in war) They were afraid of the theocracy in Tehran and the dictator in Baghdad. And the building of a chemical plant was under the old bitch Thatcher, I mean what did you expect?
3. I know the governments in the various western countries are a bunch of cynical assholes, but the reason I'm defending the Iraq war is because the Iraqi people being surpressed and killed by a brutal dictator. Whatever the selfish intentions of the US or the other western governments were, is really not why I support them in this.
4. Yes, those sanctions were terrible and stupid. Food, medical supplies and other neccesities of the civilian populace should never be denied to any country no matter who is the dictator.
5. The Iraqi's had staged several popular uprisings(like I previously stated) and they were all beaten down brutally. Therefore I don't believe another uprising would have a different result, and we can therefore not let them handle it themselves.
6. I do believe the invasion of Iraq was fully justified, though not with the evidence/reasons the US used.
7. I care about the Iraqi population, and I thought and still think that the best way to help them was to remove the dictator.

When will you know that isolationist is not applicapble for us american's. we need to work with other countries to avoid war.

The US is not the world's police. The world does not want the US to be the worlds police, and to be fair, you have supported more genocides/dictatorships than you have opposed. The whole war on terror thing is a bunch of bullshit, seeing as you guys fund hundreds of terrorist organizations around the world.

Edit - Coming from a guy whose country is occupied by some 60+ US military bases. We don't want you here.

When you say "world" does not want us to be world police {WP} neither do we. When the no fly zone went over
ghadafi we did not want anything to do with it. BUT WAIT! France,UK, and everybody else wants us to lead the assault?
Why so we can come out looking like bad guys and political sheilds for them? We don't want a "world on terror" either
its a joke for us too but were not going to let people like bin laden just do as they please and try to blow the white house like
they tried to do. Besides i haven't seen you come up to a good solution for ending the war on terror on "even terms" besides
well just leave them alone/not our buissness." Ya, speaking from pastime we did that in europe to not go to war with
Nazi germany cause it "wasn't our problem" and "lets have less ships cause that will prevent war" Neither of which worked
by the way. So tell me comrade ler in all your good wisdom can you tell me a good FEASIBLE plan on how to solve the war on
terror? can you? your not in our shoes so stay out how's that for isolationism?

EDIT: Our tax money is going to your country congratz

France and Britain never asked you to lead it. You guys funded Libyan terrorist organizations years before the revolt, with money and weapons, so the war was started by you, really. Also, funny you should mention that, because Al Qaeda supported the Libyan rebels, and the US intervention.

Gaddafi libya was the first country in the middle east to give women equal rights, it had free housing, free healthcare, free education up to university, free electricity/water, and heck, Gaddafi's daughter was a Lesbian.

Now, NTC Libya has been accused by human rights groups of ethnic cleansing/genocide, it is illegal for women to leave the house without a man, physical abuse against women is legal, homosexuality is crime, alcohol is banned, and the Radical Islamist/Al qaeda supporting factions are the majority in the government. Good job there, mate.

Also, 9/11 was not an unprovoked attack. Bin laden did it as a response to the US bombing middle eastern cities. Hell, the US had already been responsible for the deaths of some 2 million Iraqi's alone by 1999.

Bin laden's goal wasn't to turn the US into an islamic state. It was to stop the US from attacking, and building military bases in the middle east. If you want to end the war on terror, stop being dicks to the world, and stop funding terrorist organizations. (May I remind you that Bin Laden is a former CIA Agent?)

Edit: And by the way, those military bases are funded by Australian taxpayers, not Americans. Also, we have no legal jurisdiction over them either, which is fabulous.

If bin laden was CIA then i was with the UN Special forces who went in and destoryed the Soviet union.
Hell i bribed Army Generals and even gorbachev to do it all for us. then i went and robbed all their money. {sarcasm}
Yes they did they wanted us to spearhead a infantry assualt. Ghadafi also had a lot of abuse history. NTC libya is not on my radar
so no comment {in fact probable since they are rebels}. Well bin laden should have spoken with words {by the way i consider negotiations
intervention} instead of bombing us with crazy plots. We supported Al-quida to stop soviet expansion into the middleeast because we
knew they put all their chips into that game so we pulled out all the stops.

Why does he care where we happen to negotiate for a U.S Base? oh wait hey let me pull a comradler
{May i remind you that he also bombed and assualted embassy's?} Also Pre-WW2 there was an entire
commision devoted to numbering down on how many ships we could in the seas to patrol america. They thought
less ships=less war they were wrong and we have taken this lesson along with "don't let people get away with attacks
on U.S soil or freinds". Just look at sudan invading Kuwait sounds like hitler invading Czechoslovakia. so we went in their and
stoped him, if we had done it with hitler WW2 could have been avoided instead we caved in and ignored the problems. Deconing
Bases does not help us stop "terror". I comend you but give me something more realistic.