"Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked"

[Redleg]

“I always get a laugh out of the accusations of President Bush lied. Its rather humorous in a sad pathic way. Politicans by their very nature use colorful words to sell their agenda and their ideas.”
Yeap, and it is called politic. It was used before, and it will be. Is it moral? No. Do you lead a country, even a small one with morality? No. And I am sorry to say it, but to choose to follow a man knowing he lied is worst than the man who just achieved his goals, whatever they were/are…

Care to guess how many Presidents in the United States have lied while in office? Care to guess how many Presidents have been shown to have lied in office?

Then pick any democratic government and its leader and ask the same question.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Hmmm...Monastery stuff creeping in here....


UK and France honored the first portion of their defense agreement with Poland in 1939 by declaring war and mobilizing.

Why did they not attack on day 15 as had been promised?


1. Not really ready.

Commanders on the ground were reluctant to attack a fortified position on limited preparation with an army they viewed as not even half-prepared. The lesson of Russia's on-time attack beginning day 15 of War One -- and the debacle of Tannenberg that resulted -- must have played on more than one mind. Such reluctance may have been overcome by staunch political leadership (arguments as to how much of this either possessed at the time vary), but then we have...

2. Stunned by the pace of modern conflict.

By Sept. 15th, the battle in Poland appeared to have been decided -- the commitment to attack and draw pressure away from Poland was predicated on the notions of conflict persisting from War One, where few dedicated defenders were beaten, and never rapidly. Blitzkrieg was psychologically stunning. Under such conditions, the Western Allies may well have considered any day 15 effort as simply "throwing good money after bad" in that it would be too late to actually help Poland and would only decrease their own forces prior to the inevitable battle in the West. The stunning impact of the blitzkrieg rendering the Western Allies unwilling to attack was very much exacerbated by....

3. The invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.

On Sept. 17th, just 14 days after the Western Allies declared war, the Soviets decided that Germany had won and began their invasion to collect the spoils owed them in the secret portion of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. This was immediately prior to the ostensible kick-off date for the Western counter-punch and could not have had anything but a chilling effect. Poland, fighting valiantly but inneffectively against the German blitz from the North, South and West now had a second Great Power enemy slamming in from the East. Any rational assessment would have to have concluded that the destruction of Poland was a foregone conclusion.


Ceg, from your perspective I can well understand your apparent bitterness. Recognize that any failure to act was more a result of being completely out of their depth in coping with the unfolding realities of then-modern war more than any lack of regard for the Polish people. I say this with some regard, as I have no doubts that my mother's kinfolk (Dombrowski) were involved and paid the price.

[Tachikaze]

Except for the fact that most Americans, at the time, justified the war on the factthat saddam, a crazy man, had nuclear weapons. Oops, those were bogus along with all of the other *facts*. There are many dictators outther and there has been no bombs thrown against them. It seems like a very singular attack.

Of course, I see it your way. But the conservatives will look at the same information differently. Because their values differ, they will use different justifications and reasoning.

This call for more evidence and support seems to go nowhere.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

No amount of arguing is going to change the fact that we are there and must see it through.

The question is, based on what we have found post-invasion and even based on what we thought we knew but later turned out to not be completely true, was all of this still worth a war? It is only further complicated by poor planning.

Perhaps the more educated public might have been able to assess the evidence we had and thought we had, and came to the conclusion that war was worth it. But from the hype leading up to the war it was awful easy for paranoid joe regular to decipher that Iraq had big nukiller missles aimed at us and was sending Bin Laden moneygrams. Subtle as those insinuations may have been, its a hollow opinion many held, which would explain the huge shift in public opinion about the administration from one extreme to the other. Someone inferred something they werent supposed to, and now they are mad they were "lied to."

I think they "myths" the article dispells are the ones believed by uninformed people, uninformed liberals in most cases. The politicians who perpetuate the myths are aiming for the lowest common denominator. We have those in both parties, and liberals often shoot down "myths" from the right that were only ever believed by uninformed conservatives aka the Toby Keith Shock and Y'all crowd.

All this being said, based on what I thought I knew and what I know now, I still think a gung-ho invasion was not the right choice, and is never the right choice unless time is of the essence, which it wasn't.

Iraq was a problem that festered for 10 years, and I honestly think that a decade of inaction and sidestepping was replaced with a policy just as ridiculous and uncreative

.

Great post! Shame it should come so late in the discussion, not getting the attention it deserves.


Now to off-topic Poland 1939 :

'broken treaties and crappy allies'

Yes, the treaty was broken. Because the UK and France promised more than they could deliver. We didn't have 8000 divisions ready to overrun Germany and march all the way too Moscow before winter. A realistic assesment of the situation in Europe in 1939, then and now, leads to the conclusion that was reached: the fate of Poland must depend on the outcome of the war at large.

Frustrating for Poland? Sure. A betrayal? No.

The UK was allied to France too, their fates combined. Was it frustrating to see the UK abandon the continent in 1940? Sure. Was it a betrayal? No again. What were they to do, eh?

In both cases the partners did go on to fight a bitter war, honouring the alliance, and paying a high price for it.

[cegorach]

I thought everyone knows about it or is willing to check but:

" On August 25 the Polish-British Common Defence Pact was signed as an annex to Polish-French alliance. Like the “guarantee” of March 30, the Anglo-Polish alliance committed Britain only to the defence of Polish independence. It was clearly aimed against German aggression. In case of war, United Kingdom was to start hostilities as soon as possible; initially helping Poland with air raids against the German war industry, and joining the struggle on land as soon as the British Expeditionary Corps arrived in France. In addition, a military credit was granted and armament was to reach Polish or Romanian ports in early autumn.

However, both British and French governments had other plans than fulfilling the treaties with Poland. On May 4, 1939, a meeting was held in Paris, at which it was decided that the fate of Poland depends on the final outcome of the war, which will depend on our ability to defeat Germany rather than to aid Poland at the beginning. Poland's government was not notified of this decision, and the Polish–British talks in London were continued"

next

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on August 22. The full text of the treaty, including the secret protocol assuming a partition of Poland and Soviet military help to Germany in case of war, was known to the British government thanks to Hans von Herwarth, an American agent in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yet, Poland's government was not informed of this fact either.

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The French assault was to be carried out by roughly 40 divisions, including one armoured division, three mechanized divisions, 78 artillery regiments and 40 tank battalions. All the necessary forces were mobilised in the first week of September. On September 12, the Anglo-French Supreme War Council gathered for the first time at Abbeville in France. It was decided that all offensive actions were to be halted immediately.

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Maurice Gamelin ordered his troops to stop not closer than 1 kilometre from the German positions along the Siegfried Line. Poland was not notified of this decision. Instead, Gamelin informed marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły that half of his divisions are in contact with the enemy, and that French advances have forced the Wehrmacht to withdraw at least six divisions from Poland. The following day, the commander of the French Military Mission to Poland ,General Louis Faury, informed the Polish Chief of Staff, General Wacław Stachiewicz, that the planned major offensive on the western front had to be postponed from September 17 to September 20. At the same time, French divisions were ordered to retreat to their barracks along the Maginot Line.

Explain this by inability and there is more, before and after 1939.

If you want - you can use PM to do it, because it will be too much off topic text here, but I think it will be extremely hard to explain all those Poland was not notified everywhere, don't you think ?

[solypsist]

thread locked until i have had time to sort through all this thread ad hominem attacks and insults.