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ORIGINAL: philosophy

well.......i see your point here LE........but let me offer a very radical solution.
......................We apologise........................
We apolgise for shock and awe, we apologise for killing thousands of civilians, we apologise for going in to Iraq. we go to the UN and we say, we're sorry, help us out. The US and the UK lose a vast amount of face, and probably end up having to pay quite a lot in damages. But you know what? It'd be the moral thing to do. And in an earlier post you drew a line between moral and practical.....i'm not prepared to concede that point :)

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

My son is now eleven years old, and I seriously worry about the newly introduced draft in 2013 that will see him sent to die in Iraq, in a war that some idiot created and that no one here wanted. I wish I could share your optimism, I really do.
E

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

My son is now eleven years old, and I seriously worry about the newly introduced draft in 2013 that will see him sent to die in Iraq, in a war that some idiot created and that no one here wanted. I wish I could share your optimism, I really do.
E

Is this for real or is it simply a fear? I could imagine the arsehole Blair doing this.

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I arrived in Baghdad on April 14, 2003, as a news consultant to the ABC investigative team led by veteran correspondent Brian Ross. Before the war, Brian had broadcast a profile of Uday and one of his first stops in Baghdad was at Uday's riverside residence. In the basement of the partially looted house, Bob Baer, another ABC news consultant, made an astounding discovery, the personnel files of the Saddam Fedayeen. We were amazed that the military had not inspected or secured such an obvious location and Ross made that point in his exclusive ABC news report. ABC had no further use for the files; but they had obvious value for the US military, containing as they did the names and addresses of the main resistance to the American occupation. I had thought Ross's story would arouse some interest from the Pentagon but there was no reaction. I then called Paul Wolfowitz's office to see if I could discreetly hand them over to the military. (I was still a professor at the National War College—and therefore an employee of the Defense Department—and wanted to help.) Although we were staying in the Ishtar Sheraton, a hotel guarded by US troops, the deputy secretary of defense could not arrange to pick up these documents before I had to leave the city.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

"Plus which, to apologise and repair would be to admit defeat and be a marker of weakness rather than strength which would not help us at all."

...it is not a defeat to apologise when wrong, it is an ongoing and insidious defeat to refuse to accept it. Neither is it a marker of weakness to admit when one has made a mistake, quite the opposite in fact. We wouldn't accept this sort of logic if applied to a human being so why accept it when a state acts like that, states are human artefacts.....we should not invent a new sort of morality that allow them to act in inhuman ways.

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

"the standing of the entire nation would go down, not up, around the world - not a recipe for outside investment or respect."

...i wonder in how much respect we're held by the world now for slavishly following the US line? Way i see it apologising is a short term hit leading to a long term gain......in the medium and long terms i believe it would increase respect for our country. Just as i have more respect for an individual who admits to making a mistake than one who bangs on and on about how, yes mistakes were made, but no, no-one is culpable. i agree entirely though with you when you suggest that my plan is an unlikely option for Blair.........but in all honesty i feel it is one that actually has long term gains to recommend it, unlike all the military solutions.....which merely defer the problem to another generation.

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ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster
That's Peter Galbraith speaking--A FORMER AMBASSADOR.  This was in April of 2003.  2003!

But we should just wait and see...maybe they know something we don't.

Do you really believe that, caitlyn?

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

Level - I will agree with you that 9/11 was a despicable and inexcusable attack on civilians that were just going about their lives and who (we will probably never know) likely had a multitude of positions on the way the west has dealt in foreign policy since WWII; for, against and neutral over Israeli abuses and tacit western support for them for instance. But to regard that attack as coming out of the blue with no cause or reason is I'm afraid too naive to have any credibility at all. It was a retaliation, not the opening punch in some hitherto non existent conflict. 

E

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ORIGINAL: Chaingang
"I just hope that we are greeted with open arms and cheers since we liberated Iraq!!!1111...What? It could still happen..."

No, Caitlyn - it could not.

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
The first, is stating as defacto truth, what is really only opinion. The War in Iraq is a good example. I have said many, many times that I don't think we should be there ... but, the moment someone starts saying it's a failure, they are venturing into the unknown
 
This argument lacks basis. Yes, whether or not the invasion of Iraq is a failure is not set in stone and is open to debate i.e. there is no 11th commandment lying around that tells the sole story.
 
However, based on the available facts, we can put together an informed view of failure/success. When a poster states Iraq is a failure, of course it is not fact, but, neither is the poster venturing into the unknown because it is an opinion based on certain facts. The wise money is on the opinion that Iraq is a failure not least because the country has almost descended into civil war since the invasion and you can have all the "democracy" in the world but when people are killing each other left, right and centre then it doesn't count for very much.