[…]neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Iraq, the surge, and Afghanistan: Obama’s mind is a difficult thing to change[…]…

That history means the Iraqis do not have the context the Germans did to accept their suffering. A German today can say their parents made a bad mistake, their nation suffered for it, and things worked out for the best. The Iraqis do not have that context to accept their history.

On the AP: an article that awards “victory” to the current policies of the Bush Administration while neglecting to deal with the possible consequences of the refugee crisis in Iraq doesn’t exactly impress me.

On your claim that Senator Obama intends to spend as much on his civil projects as on the military, funding two things equally well does not mean spending as much money in each case. It means spending as much money on each project as required to get the job done. Given the intrinsic expense of military operations, a well funded civilian corps would cost much less than an equivalent military.

FredHjr: Please quote the post in which I called the US an imperialist nation. I think that in the Republican party, you have a self-indulgent, leadership, either uninterested in or incapable of addressing hard questions of war and peace or taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

I will start my 12 step program of desisting. Wish me luck!

You are arguing with a Canadian Leftist who considers us the imperialistic killers of innocent Iraqi civilians. They NEVER address the issue that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths in Iraq are caused by the Baathist Fedayeen, the al Qaeda thugs, and the Iranian proxies and al Quds force terrorists.

I know you’ve debunked this, but I just wanted to express my thought that we are wasting bandwidth on this one. The man has no understanding of what really was happening in Iraq pre-OIF or post-invasion. Just a cobbled together pastiche of talking points from various Hard Left and Useful Idiot propaganda mills.

From the AP. No friends of America there.

Instead, the invasion led to half a million deaths and ten times that many refugees.

I’ve already debunked this several times, and growing tired of doing so.

THE TOTAL NUMBER OF DEATHS IS IRRELEVANT.

Your argument is equivalent to citing the number of SS members killed, lumping them in with concentration camp victims, and saying that provides a poor basis for German democracy. The situation is exactly equivalent.

Let’s look at the figures for historical precedent.

Nazi Germany had a population of 69 MM in 1939, and suffered 7.2 MM deaths (10.5% of the population; and that’s a count, not a wildass extrapolation, as your figure is).

Of the 7.2 MM deaths, 5.5 MM were of military personnel, while the remaining 1.6 MM deaths were those of civilians.

We invaded and occupied Germany, after inflicting much worse losses (either of military personnel or civilians — you pick), and yet Germany is today a democracy, and (by European standards) friendly to the United States. American troops are in Germany to this day.

Similarly, Japan had a population of 71 MM, and lost 2.7 MM (3.8%. of the population). Of those, 2,1 MM were military personnel, the remaining 0.6 MM were civilians.

We invaded and occupied Japan , after inflicting worse losses on the Japanese than the Iraqis have suffered even on your dubious figure. Furthermore, the United States killed everyone of those people. None were lost to domestic terrorists, unlike Iraq, where the majority of civilian deaths are attributable to car bombs in markets and such. Yet Japan is today a democracy, and friendly to the United States. American troops are in Japan to this day.

Now let’s look at the Korean War. No one knows how many Korean civilians were killed, but the estimates are in the millions. Yet South Korea is a democracy today. Not a perfect one, but then there is no perfect one, and at least they don’t have a monarch. American troops are in Germany to this day.

One further example, which you’ll probably enjoy, because it involves dead Americans. The American Civil War killed over 0.6 MM out of an estimated population of 31 MM (1.9% of the population). The South was occupied by Union forces for years after the Civil War. Yet the U.S. is a democracy.

Iraq has an estimated population of 28 MM. Accepting your 0.5 MM figure (which is disputed, and most of which were killed by terrorists, not us), that constitutes 1.8% of the population of Iraq, or less than a fifth the proportion of the population of Germany that was killed, half the proportion of Japanese killed, and about the same as the proportion of Americans killed in the Civil War.

So you’re wrong on the facts, even accepting your numbers: it’s perfectly possible to have a democracy result from much worse casualty figures than those you proferred for Iraq, even accepting the sophistry of lumping together all “excess deaths” and laying them at our door.

I beg to differ re the Republicans. I think the intervention in Iraq is something that will one day be recalled with pride, and should in fact be cited with pride now. No other nation on earth would actually lift a finger to do what it thought was right, whether or not you agree with that assessment.

As for your claim that Senator Obama would spend as much on his civil volunteer programs as he would on the military, do you have a cite for that?

Your wish is my command. See 16:45 in his speech at the link. Maybe he was misquoted.

As for the fiscal meltdown, well, over 10 years, Senator Obama’s proposals would forego less than half the revenue Senator McCain’s would. As for your claim that Senator Obama would spend as much on his civil volunteer programs as he would on the military, do you have a cite for that?