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Chris Alger
02-08-2003, 05:23 PM
On February 15 and throughout the weekend, demonstrators in at least 30 cities around the world will protest the imminent US invasion of Iraq. With as many as 10 million demonstrators expected from all over the political spectrum, it might be the largest peace event ever staged.

For those of you who oppose this war, I encourage you to turn out and be heard.

Jimbo
02-08-2003, 05:28 PM
I agree with Chris here. Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are valuable rights and should be excercised albeit peacefully. I do hope war in Iraq is not inevitable not due to peaceful demonstrations but due to Iraq complying with the UN Secutity Council resolutions before it is too late.

adios
02-08-2003, 07:03 PM
I wonder what the turnout will be in NYC?

MMMMMM
02-08-2003, 07:07 PM
I'm afraid I can't even share this moderate view, Jimbo--I think Saddam should be removed even if he were to comply fully with the U.N. Resolutions.

Why?

Well let's just say that I consider it odious in the extreme to allow this tyrant to go on broadly torturing and executing his own citizens as a means of retaining power. I doubt the causualties of this war will be anywhere near as high as most are worried about: Iraq has virtually no chance of even putting up a modest resistance. Iraqi soldiers will be surrendering as fast as they possibly can. The numbers of caualties due to this war might well be less than the number of citizens Saddam will continue murdering, torturing and raping over the next decade or so if he is allowed to retain power.

IrishHand
02-08-2003, 08:01 PM
My heart is warmed with the enthusiasm with which you embrace the US's self-chosen role in governing the entire world (or at least that portion of the world that's unable to put up a fight, since as I understand it you bascially oppose similar measures for China and North Korea).

MMMMMM
02-08-2003, 08:25 PM
Don't misinterpret what I said.

I'm not advocating that the US govern the whole world--and you damn well know it. I'm advocating throwing out a few of the worst tyrants.

Also, I'm getting sick of folks saying well, why aren't we throwing out every tyrant then? What a stupid argument. Isn't it better to make some progress, to right a few great wrongs, than to do nothing at all? And spare us the guilt trips, the criticism of motives, because we happen to have our own interests involved here too--that's another stupid argument we hear a lot now. If we can do ourselves--and others--some good, then what's wrong with that?

By the way, many Iraqis want to get rid of Saddam--but I guess that doesn't figure into your equation...instead you see it as the "the US's self-chosen role in governing the world"--which is a crock if I ever heard one.

Chris Alger
02-08-2003, 10:13 PM
"Iraq has virtually no chance of even putting up a modest resistance."

This reflects one of the more comical contradictions among mainstream war propaganda. He has a huge army! He invaded Kuwait! He has Weapons of Mass Destruction! He's an aggressive tyrant that threatens the region and the world! But we can overthrow him on the cheap because he's defenseless. It requires a thorough brainwashing to get people to think like this without seeing the obvious.

" I consider it odious in the extreme to allow this tyrant to go on broadly torturing and executing his own citizens as a means of retaining power."

I doubt it. I think you're just emotionally wedded to the notion that official enemies of the U.S. so designated have to go, regardless of what they've actually done.

As evidence, consider the widespread use of torture by those who "retain power" with the help of your own government. Turkey, for example. "While criminal suspects also face the prospect of torture and maltreatment at the hands of the regular police, Turkey’s anti-terror police have become infamous both within the country and outside of Turkey for the widespread use of such practices against detainees accused of political crimes, both violent and non-violent."

http://216.239.51.100/custom?q=cache:4BmgfFiva9sC:www.hrw.org/hrw/summaries/s.turkey.973.html+turkey+torture&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Despite these atrocities, and others I've pointed out to you, according to Asst. Sec. State Elizabeth Jones "Turkey is a very important partner for the United States. And in that respect, the United States has supported very strongly Turkey’s work in support of its accession to the European Union." This doesn't seem to bother you enough to demand that your country stop funding the Turkish government and providing it with lethal aid, yet you support something as expensive and devastating as a foreign war when it comes to torture and tyranny in Iraq, even if Iraq admittedly poses no conceivable threat to the U.S..

So while you rationalize your war rhetoric with a professed concern for human rights, what you actually say and do proves otherwise. You "really want" to do something about human rights in the same sense that someone who sits around smoking dope and watching TV all day "really wants" to get an education and become a material success. You can talk the talk, but refuse to walk the walk.

I'm sorry if this is harsh, but I'm sick of reading all this nonsensee about concern for human rights that is transparently dishonest.

MMMMMM
02-08-2003, 11:02 PM
I know you're trying to be considerate and logical here, and I'll give you credit for being considerate--but not logical.

Iraq being able to significantly resist our assault is a very different matter than Iraq being able to wreak malicious mischief on a large scale, or being able to attack us or our allies through terrorists or intelligence agents armed with biological weapons--or with radioactive "dirty bombs."

Turkey is indeed a nasty state in the regards you mention. Yet Iraq surpasses that by far, with widespread torture and executions of entire families, and even extended families. Saddam simply eliminates those he perceives as political threats. He is, in vitually every major respect, a mini-Stalin incarnate--hindered only from attaining greater infamies and atrocities, like his idol, by circumstances beyond his control. Nor has Turkey recently visited unprovoked war upon two of its neighbors, or slaughtered its own citizens en masse with weapons of mass destruction.

I maintain that Iraq does indeed pose conceivable threats to the US, and that these threats are potentially very grave. Just because Iraq can't lob Scuds at us doesn't mean that threats of radiological weapons or militarized anthrax aren't serious--imagine a REAL anthrax attack on our soil, not just a few letters. Saddam has allied himself with terrorist elements in Palestine, and probably supports Hizbollah at least indirectly in some manner (perhaps only by his relationship with Syria)--and Hizbollah's leader has recently announced that Hizbollah will be launching attacks against the United States.

No, I maintain it is quite naive to rule out the threat potential posed by Saddam--even if we can stomp Iraq into the ground in an all-out war.

Chris Alger
02-09-2003, 12:41 AM
"Iraq being able to significantly resist our assault is a very different matter than Iraq being able to wreak malicious mischief on a large scale, or being able to attack us or our allies through terrorists or intelligence agents armed with biological weapons--or with radioactive 'dirty bombs.'"

You persist in equating Iraq's record of attempted regional imperialism with a tendency to randomly murder large numbers of Americans. Saddam has been in power for nearly 25 years and has had every opportunity to "wreak malicious mischief." He hasn't done so. He has no incentive to do so. There is no evidence he is planning to do so. In the final analysis, all you are saying is that he's a bad guy, a domestic tyrant and regional aggressor, and therefore the U.S. has the unilateral right to invade, kill anyone who gets in its way, and dictate the form of government. Any other nation state that claimed such a right against "our" domestic tyrants and regional aggressors would properly be labled an international outlaw, a threat to world order and a "rogue state."

MMMMMM
02-09-2003, 02:50 AM
"Saddam has been in power for nearly 25 years and has had every opportunity to "wreak malicious mischief." He hasn't done so."

Trying to have George Bush Sr. assassinated wasn't malicious mischief? Anyway, you are putting too much trust in Saddam--way too much trust.

Also, any totalitarian government, which does not hold free elections, should have no moral legitimacy. It merely rules by terror and force. The whole world should rise up against such tyrants, yet you seem to claim it is wrong not to accord their governments equivalent legitimacy. If a band of thugs took over some tiny country, a democratic republic say--and turned it into a concentration camp, would you say that we should accord that new government legitimacy? I say hogwash. Further, I feel that every country in the U.N. which does not have a freely elected government should be kicked out of the UN and not recognized as legitimate by the rest of the civilized world--well, that's how I feel...whether it is practical is another matter.

I submit that there is a vast difference in the degree of moral legitimacy between those governments which represent their people and those which do not, ruling merely by force.

The words "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" are more than mere words, written by our founding fathers, and they are more than just "American words." If there is any good purpose to government, it is in representing the will of the people, and in helping to secure their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If there is any bad form of government, it is when government becomes a tool for oppression rather than representation.

Are you actually arguing that deposing Saddam is equivalent to another country deciding to depose our government because they don't agree with it? This is yet another example of what I feel are poorly constructed comparisons--the drawing of equivalences where there are real and substantial differences. While on the surface one may look like the flip side of the other, upon looking a little deeper we see the immense distinctions.

Zeno
02-09-2003, 03:01 AM
A good friend of mine that lives in Paris, e-mailed this website link to me the other day. I found it interesting. And that will be the end of my comments on it, for now, except to say that propaganda is always employed by both sides in a conflict of ideology. It is obvious that my old friend is very much against this conflict.

web page link for protest against war (http://www.uksociety.org)

-Zeno

Chris Alger
02-09-2003, 11:46 AM
There's nothing inherently wrong with propaganda. The problem is when an information source purports to be objective and factual turns out to be partisan and deceptive. The prevalence of propaganda from the mainstream media in the US is the basic reason why American attitudes toward Iraq are so different from public attitudes in every other country.

Chris Alger
02-09-2003, 12:50 PM
"Trying to have George Bush Sr. assassinated wasn't malicious mischief?"

1. There are good reasons to suspect this never happened. According to Seymour Hersh, "none of the Clinton Administration officials I interviewed over a ten-week period this summer claimed that there was any empirical evidence—a "smoking gun"—directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt." Hersh's investigation uncovered a number of omissions, deceptions and distortions of the evidence against Iraq, which at the time failed to persuade key members of his own administration and Congress. The media's tendency to report official claims about this event as if they were uncontestable facts is further evidence of the propaganda function, and, in your case, that it works.

http://newyorker.com/archive/content/?020930fr_archive02

2. Saddam's attempt to assasinate Bush did not implicate e WMD or suggest an inclination to use them offensively. Let's say that someone tells you that US WMD's were intended not for defensive purposes, but to wreak malicious mischief against the world. You ask for evidence, and they reply with "The US has engaged in assasination of foreign leaders." Wouldt you find this argument persuasive?

3. The argument that assasination justifies regime change makes no sense because it can just as easily be used to rationalize war and terror against the U.S. The US assasinated or tried to assasinate Patrice Lumamba, Fidel Castro, Muammar Qadaffi. The blanket assertion that attempted assasination means a proclivity toward terrorism and justifies war could be applied with equal force to us. Alhtough you are right that there exist substanial differences between the US and Iraq, a history of attempted assasination cannot be one of them. If war against Iraq can be justified, there must be some other reason.

4. Even accepting the government's version of events, the facts suggest that Saddam is not inclined to foment terrorism against the US (although, thanks to Bush, this situation might be changing daily). The assasination attempt occurred 10 years ago. Eschewing normal, legal means of redress, the Clinton Administration retaliation by firing 24 cruise missiles into Baghdad and killing innocent Iraqis. In the 10 years that followed, no evidence has emereged that Saddam has engaged in further assasination attempts or terrorism. Thus, the facts of this event that people like you invoke to justify war to prevent "malicious mischief" more strongly suggest that no such mischief will be forthcoming.

"Anyway, you are putting too much trust in Saddam--way too much trust."

It has nothing to do with trust. The issue is whether Saddam is so likely to engage in terror against the US that thousands of innocent people must be condemned. Rather than even approaching this standard, you have no facts suggesting that Iraq is any more likely to foment WMD terror against the US than any other country in the world.

"If a band of thugs took over some tiny country, a democratic republic say--and turned it into a concentration camp, would you say that we should accord that new government legitimacy?"

Of course not. (Nor do I think that the loser of an election has "moral legitimacy" to rule, but that's another issue). But the absence of moral legitimacy of a government does not provide grounds for war and the suffering it imposes on the bystanders and participants. Nor does it lend legitimacy to a regime imposed through war by a foreign government, even a democratic foreign government. You seem to be assuming (or swallowing the propaganda line by pro-war pundits like George Will and Wm. Safire) that the US will "liberate" Iraq and tolerate popular rule, even if it means a radical Islamicist government or one that wants to retain national control over oil resources. If so, you are being very naive.

MMMMMM
02-09-2003, 01:40 PM
I'm not saying Saddam's alleged assassination attempt on Bush justifies regime change; I'm merely using that as an example of his capability for malicious mischief. Another example would be the environmental holocaust he unleashed on the Gulf when he torched the oil fields.

It's absurd for you to say there are no facts suggesting Iraq is no more likely to foment WMD terror against the US than is any other country in the world. How likely is France to foment WMD attacks against the US? How likely is India? Great Britain?

I'm not presuming the new Iraqi government will necessarily be much better--but it's very likely that it will, since it's hard to imagine how any government could be much worse.

And it's really not "their" government--it's Saddam's government--illegitimate to the core--recall when he had perhaps a third of the Iraqi National Congress seized one by one by security guards in the audience (as he read out a list of names), hauled off, imprisoned and executed?

You are also appearing to make the mistaken assumption that war will necessarily entail more casualties and suffering than Saddam would inflict on his own people anyway over the next decade or so. The US almost surely IS NOT going to rain hundreds of cruise missiles all over the city of Baghdad at the start of the war, despite what you may have read.

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 02:20 PM
Of course not - we'll surely be sending food, supplies and Valentine's Day cards to Baghdad - the only place in that entire country that the Iraqi army is capable of defending for longer than a few hours.

It's absurd for you to say there are no facts suggesting Iraq is no more likely to foment WMD terror against the US than is any other country in the world.
Why is that absurd? You cling to a position, and yet offer no evidence to support it. You still haven't introduced the slightest bit of evidence that Iraq is "likely to forment WMD terror" attacks against the US, although there can be no dispute that you subscribe wholeheartedly to the current administration's official position on the topic. (They also haven't been able to come up with credible evidence, which is why we're having this discussion.) However, I agree entirely that France, India and Great Britain have also indicated no intention to "forment WMD terror" against the US. As such, I also wholeheartedly agree that it would be wrong to invade France, India or Great Britain.

Really...it seems to me that you preach the government line very effectively. Of course, your position appears to me to have the same foundation - they're bad, we're good, and we'll make the world a better place by smacking them around a little. I just like a little more in the way of rational motivations. Don't get me wrong - I understand that the primary reasons for invading Iraq have nothing to do with the legitimacy of their regime or the threat they don't pose to us. I understand that the US has some excellent financial and economic reasons for continuing our policy of exerting unjustifiable influence on the area. While I might think it's wrong, I understand it. Along those same lines, I understand those who embrace our new form of imperialism and the "might makes right" approach to foreign policy. Of course, I disagree with that too...

Irish

MMMMMM
02-09-2003, 02:45 PM
Irish, you are going overboard into the realm of the idiotic.

Do you really think England, France or Israel are equally likely as Iraq to foment attacks against the USA? Do you really need someone to disprove this for you?

Sorry but I don't teach kindergarten classes. You're not a moron so please don't pretend to be one just for the sake of argument.

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 04:11 PM
Do you really think England, France or Israel are equally likely as Iraq to foment attacks against the USA?
Yes. I believe the likelihood that any of the nations discussed will, in the near futrure, engage in terror attacks on the US is zero percent. None of those countries has shown any propensity to do that, nor do I have reason to suppose any of them is likely to adopt policies consistent with that belief.

Do you really need someone to disprove this for you?
Disprove what? You've never proven anything to start with - you've done nothing but harp on and on about what a huge threat Iraq is to the US despite a complete and total lack of evidence in support of this proposition. I'm a lawyer - I like facts and evidence. Anytime you or the current administration feel interested in presenting some, I'll be thrilled to receive them. You then go on and on about how we have some sort of obligation to dispose of Hussein, although you object to any notion that we're either imperialistic or paternalistic in our foreign policies.

MMMMMM
02-09-2003, 04:54 PM
Lawyers and politically correct types tend to make very poor intelligence analysts;-)

Anyway, I'm taking your words to heart. I'll be stocking up on umbrellas in case the French decide to bombard us with aerosolized wines.

I'll also be opening a remedial kindergarten class (for those who missed it) entitled "Common Sense."

Jimbo
02-09-2003, 04:57 PM
IrishHand wrote "I'm a lawyer - I like facts and evidence." From what I have read of your posts you like them as long as they do not refute your chosen position whereupon you revert to rhetoric and misdirection. Rather than feebly arguing against US policy decisions why not leave JAG and become a politicain where you may be able to make a difference. However I do admire the fact you are a member of our Armed Forces and that being so I should probably cut you a little slack.

MMMMMM
02-09-2003, 05:04 PM
I'm actually beginning to doubt that he is a member of our armed services, and suspect it may just be a screen persona;-)

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 05:27 PM
I'm not in JAG - I wanted to be a real officer. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Jimbo
02-09-2003, 05:35 PM
You may be correct MMMMM but I do believe he is likely an attorney. As to his competence in that field I think it may be somewhat suspect.

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 05:50 PM
Stranger's opinions about what I do (or how good I am at it) are always welcome - and of course highly relevant to the topics we're discussing.

Jimbo
02-09-2003, 06:32 PM
I am pleased to learn that you agree as to it's relavance. Normally ones profiency in their chosen proficient is directly related to their competence in general.

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 07:12 PM
I have chosen a few professions - and I intend to add a few more before I'm done - which one did you want to talk about?

Jimbo
02-09-2003, 07:19 PM
Intelligence analyst. Didn't they teach you in law school not to ask a question for which you do not know the answer in advance? I do thank you for not being critical of my incorrect spelling of the word profession in my prior post and commend you for understanding what I meant.

IrishHand
02-09-2003, 09:59 PM
Nope - never been an intelligence analyst. I leave that to my buddies in Intel. I'm more of the bomb-dropping type - at least in a military sense. And no, they don't teach you in law school to never ask a question when you don't know the answer. I learned that from a movie. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

As for your spelling - I actually thought it was cool how it worked out. If you say your phrase as written: "[n]ormally ones profiency in their chosen proficient is directly related to their competence in general" it actually sounds like what you meant to write even though it's a different word. I'm easily amused by such things.