Victor Davis Hanson speaking at UC Berkeley on April 29

[clonach1]

Don't divert! There is no threat of Totalitarian Islam. There is A real THREAT of ZIONIST TOTALITARIANISM.

911 is an inside job engeneered by the ZIONISTS AMERICAN JEWS.

[davepx]

It' wasn't the media, it's the US & UK governments that used the WMD tag to conflate nuclear and garden-shed materials. Saddam not only pretended to have chemical weapons in the 1980s, he used them against Iran and they did likewise. But those were destroyed in the summer of 1991. So we end up with 100,000 (and possibly several times as many) dead and 4 million refugees, for nothing. And Bush & Blair knew it.

Another two years? Why invade when there were no legitimate grounds anyway?

[MrJs1G]

@davepx

Damn, even though I disagree with most of what you said, I can't help but applaud you for such civility, research, and analytical ability.

If only all YouTube discourse were like yours and thegland's...

[davepx]

Well that's very nice of you - as you say, nice to enjoy a civilized exchange of differing views on such a touchy matter.

[davepx]

None of them grounds for war without UN authorization (which wouldn't have been forthcoming because Saddam wasn't attacking anyone in 2003): that's why we created the UN in the first place. It's no good condemning others (selectively) for breaching UN resolutions while ripping up the whole Charter, as the invasion did.

[krm6886]

@davepx The UN resolution authorizing the first Gulf War was never fulfilled, and thus was still in-effect. Further, the UN did pass a resolution that threatened (not directly quoted) "further means" if Saddam continued in violation of both sanctions and law. You seem to forget that Saddam had just recently halted his secret nuclear program and was refusing access to inspectors. Still further, your defense of Saddam (had it been successful) would have resulted in him STILL owning Iraq.

[davepx]

@krm6886

"Saddam had just recently halted his secret nuclear program and was refusing access to inspectors."

Huh? What "secret nuclear program"? There was none. And the inspectors were back in Iraq. It was Washington that told them to get out in March 2003, not Saddam.

Saddam still "owning" Iraq? So what? It'd mean far fewer Iraqi dead, and it'd mean a powerful counter to Iranian aspirations. The US got rid of one minor Sunni irritant and created a Shia regional superpower. Nice going.

[krm6886]

@davepx

Oh, Christ. Okay, you'll need to do some actual reading to facilitate a legitimate debate, you cant just yell things out and hope you're right. Saddam DID have a defunct nuclear program that we didnt fully know about until after the invasion. Yes inspectors were in Iraq, but they werent allowed everywhere (plus, as I said, it was HALTED prior).

I'm glad you could stomach Saddam's reign, since you were unaffected. Millions of Iraqis were. But yes, mistakes were made. Congrats.

[davepx]

@krm6886

You're the one shouting things out & hoping nobody'll challenge them. Saddam had no WMD program after 1991. We knew enough long before the invasion. Millions were affected by Saddam's rule? And the millions displaced by the invasion's murderous aftermath? "Mistakes were made" is something of an understatement: the whole enterprise was a moronic catastrophe. Don't congratulate me, congratulate the invasion lobby for making Saddam's rule seem not so bad after all.

[krm6886]

@davepx

As you know, WMD teminology has been, like everything else, butchered by the media. Chemical weapons AND nuclear weapons are often included, often divided. Saddam intentionally pretended to have chemical stockpiles (both Saddam and Aziz admitted this numerous times) as a bluff against Iran. This is why he disallowed some sites for inspection.

Note: you denied a nuclear program and then qualified by saying "not after 1991"??

Re: invasion, I wouldve waited another 2 years...

[davepx]

@thaglund1

... though I do take your point about the tiresome mythologising of some who inexplicably consider themselves on the left. Their imagined oil grab was among the lesser of their transgressions against common sense.

[davepx]

I'm well aware of the arithmetic of the Sunni-Shia divide within and outside Iraq, but I don't see its immediate relevance here. Sunni Iraqis simply haven't flocked to aQ, whose numbers remain pathetic. The movement has a very limited aoppeal elsewhere, enough to provide the personnel for a few high-profile bombings, but no mass support. I don't know what "resolve" Maliki should have shown other than acting to reverse Sunni alienation. But that alienation didn't get channelled into aQ's cause.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

"Posturing and dithering"? You mean some countries thinking the invasion was a stupid & criminal act and refusing to go along with it? That's called foreign policy. And common sense.

As for "the problem" taking care of itself, Saddam was contained. He'd scrapped his biological & chemical weapons in 1991 and had no nuclear program. There was no legitimate basis for war. There are other ways to deal with problems than just killing & destroying.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

Well I'm not concerned with what some opponents of the war said. I was almost alone in saying it wasn't about oil. That that claim's no longer doing the rounds says more for its advocates' readiness to face reality than does Hanson's reluctance to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of the invasion he defends.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

Well aQ isn't the insurgency. Others do the fighting. I don't know what if anything Abu Khalid's reminiscences show, but they don't support what Hanson says.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

A dearth of recruiters for what? That's right, suicide bombing, for which you suggest there was a surfeit of candidates. If there were so many willing bombers, why prioritize recruitment of more?

No, what that (rather superficial) article suggests to me is that there was a sufeit of isolated foreign jihadis and a dearth of Iraqis willing to replace them when they'd carried out their mission.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

Sunni districts of Iraq haven't countenanced terror for the past decade. They may have provided fighters against a foreign army of occupation, but they've shown little enthusiasm for aQ's cause.

If there is a "moderate" Islam, invading Muslim countries on fraudulent pretexts and killing tens of thousands of civilians is hardly the best way to win it over.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

PS. As for Hanson's "fides", I'm not sure what they are. He may replace "heroic" tales of blood-spattered derring-do with more elegant narratives of battling in imagined noble causes, but he's still a peddlar of (slightly) upmarket war-porn to those who like their world in cardboard-cutout format free of challenging analysis.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

Their being in such need of recruiters hardly suggests a groundswell of support. Neither does the revelation that "new arrivals were strictly forbidden from venturing outside" their safe houses support Hanson's claim that they were "welcomed" in the areas where those places were presumably located.

[davepx]

@thaglund1

I'd make more sense, yes. But then I wouldn't be trying to gloss over the Iraq fiasco.

[davepx]

The Sunni community "welcomed in" aQ, did they? Nope, most of them wouldn't have anything to do with it, which is why it never got much beyond blowing up marketplaces.

And this guy gets to speak at Berkeley??