Broad cross-section marches againt war

[Glenn]

Will anything anyone ever says satisfy you? Maybe someday you will realize that everyone isn't out to get you. Your protest cost the city millions of dollars, disrupted travel, and took thousands of officers away from other concerns (unless they were just given extra duty and paid overtime...in which case add to the money [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ). Maybe you can give them a little leeway? I know it is all a big conspiracy, right? Didn't the organizers apply for the permit only a few days before? So should the city immediately stop everything so that they can allow 200,000 people to shut down their roads and then march an unmanagable crowd past a prime terrorist target? I know you are all pacifists so nothing will happen but heck with all the people in Bush masks, Bush himself might slip into the crowd undetected and blow something up!

[MMMMMM]

John,

After posting the above, I realized I had not really addressed what you had posted.

I think it's great that there seems to be a rising worldwide consciousness, if you will, looking for better solutions than war--hopefully this consciousness will make a difference, if not in the present case of Iraq, then at least in the future. Now, if Saddam would only get into the spirit;-)

I think "other solutions" have been tried without avail for many years, but there may be one last hope to avert war: efforts are still being made to convince Saddam to cede power and leave the country, and these efforts are far from exhausted. Hopefully Saddam will see the light and take this opportunity as he comes closer to the realization that no amount of game-playing or public opinion will otherwise save him. Let's observe that if this occurs, it will be due to his rational analysis that he will face humiliation and total defeat otherwise. If he should choose wisely and vacate, let's not forget that the primary enabling mechanism would appear to be the threat of overwhelming force.

It would be nice if we had indefinitely to contemplate such matters and to try new and different tacks with Saddam, but I do believe the clock is working against us with regards to WMD potentially or actually getting into terrorists' hands. At least, the clock certainly isn't working for us in that regard.

I applaud your apparent faith in the potential humanity of even those like Saddam and Pol Pot, and while I have much faith in the humanity of most people, historically there appears to me to be no reason to have such faith in history's very worst tyrants.

[MMMMMM]

If we DON'T take care of Saddam, he will continue to misuse and probably starve his own people. We could provide some relief if we could get in there, and I expect we will provide food and humanitarian aid on a large scale.


I've read several military scenarios of the possible war, with the most likely seeming to be a quick elimination of Iraqi military targets by air, followed by a complete encirclement and seige of Baghdad...not the street-to-street fighting Saddam is hoping for.

I don't hold wrath towards the Iraqi people, as you falsely portray--I hold disgust and contempt for their ruler. As for Arabs in general, I do not hate them either--and I think it is most unfortunate that so many of their problems are brought on by adherence to outmoded ideological and political systems. To the degree some of them hate us irrationally and intend to harm us because we are Westerners, I do condemn and pity that fanatically aggressive outloook.

A look at Saddam's history backs up the fact that he poses a serious potential threat to the region and quite possibly to ourselves. Rather than me having to prove it, I suggest that prudence would dictate that the opposite should have to be proved.

[morgan]

"Will anything anyone ever says satisfy you? Maybe someday you will realize that everyone isn't out to get you."

Calm down Glen. I don't have any argument with you, but you seem to be getting very upset with me. So I will try and address some of your points:

"Your protest cost the city millions of dollars, disrupted travel, and took thousands of officers away from other concerns"

As does every protest.

"Maybe you can give them a little leeway?"

Why?

"I know it is all a big conspiracy, right?"

I never said that, nor do I believe that. The city wasn't being very secretive.

"Didn't the organizers apply for the permit only a few days before?"

Change "days" to "weeks", and you'll be closer. It was more recently that the city finally conceded to allow a "stationary rally" -- that is they would allow a gathering, but no march (the city fought for a long time to not allow anything). That is when the court battle began. Note how most of this began way before the terror warning came out.

I'm sorry you're upset with me. But all I did was support a cause I believe in.

Morgan

[brad]

how does it cost the city? cant it be considered a form of welfare since it gives the police something to do?

or do u mean the police are taken away from their revenue producing activities (ie, writing tickets).

[Glenn]

Sorry about the tone. I just get a headache sometimes because a lot of people excercise too little common sense. The important issue is the merits of the war and it bothers me when people use it as an excuse to take pot shots at leaders, etc... There are a lot of people here who will never believe anything anyone in power tells them (unless it is that someone is lying to them [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ). Also, as a strong civil liberties supporter, I think that we need to choose our battles. When you randomly lash out at every goverment decision, it makes you look like a radical and then you will never be heard. I mean what does anyone here know about crowd management that the NYPD doesn't know? And since the answer likely is nothing than we should stick to things we know about. They challenged the decision in court and lost. Next hand. It wasn't really what you said that bothers me, it is the overall tendancy of posters of late to use namecalling, sarcasm and other inflamatory language instead of facts. For instance someone signed a recent post "dubya stand for whore". Where does that get us?

[Glenn]

To respond to your points:

"Maybe you can give them a little leeway?"

"Why?"

Because they are people just like you trying to do their jobs and for the most part trying to do what they think is right. Calling them wrong is one thing but hinting that they are liars and people who are out to destroy your right to free assembly is another.

"Your protest cost the city millions of dollars, disrupted travel, and took thousands of officers away from other concerns"

"As does every protest."

Which is why the right to free assembly shouldn't be unlimited. You can easily begin to infringe on the rights of others when you assemble in public place. If you wanted to go to central park, I think they would have no arguement, but when you start to disruput the business of the city by blocking roads, etc..., it has to be regulated. People who own businesses may have to shut down because there are 200000 people blocking where their trucks pull out. Are you giving them the money they lose because of this? They are people like you. And they may support a war. Or they may just want to do their job, and they can't. This matters too. The people who work in the UN have a right to not be blown up. They probably won't be blown up, but it is something that must be considered.

"But all I did was support a cause I believe in. "

All I argued with was your pot shot implying that your rights had been trampled upon, not your stance on the war or your excercise of free speech.

[MMMMMM]

Eagerness to actually kill others solely because of religious differences seems to be predominantly the province of Muslims, not Christians, nowadays.

The West had it's Reformation and Enlightenment; the Muslim world desperately needs a parallel ideological evolution.

Perhaps the U.N. should make it an international crime for anyone to issue international murder-fatwas.

Falwell at his scariest is still centuries ahead of that.

[Chris Alger]

"If we DON'T take care of Saddam, he will continue to misuse and probably starve his own people."

According to the Red Cross, due to sanctions the prevalence of malnutrition in Iraqi children under five almost doubled from 1991 to 1996 from 12% to 23%. You might find sanctions to be worth the price the Iraqi children pay.

But ducking this issue by pretending that Saddam is solely resopnsible for a policy created and implemented by the West is totalitarian doublespeak, regardless of how often you encounter the argument in the media. Arguing that Saddam's failure to comply with UN demands makes Saddam solely responsible for the sanctions that follow is equally ridiculous to arguing that Bush's failure to comply with bin Laden's demands makes Bush solely responsible for 9/11.

Saddam criminally refuses to do what's demanded of him to get them lifted, assuming that's possible, but nobody with any understanding of his history can be surprised by this. He's not the one being sanctioned, and prior to the UN he sanctioned his own people at will in far more barbaric ways. His undisputable lack of concern for his people is, furthermore, a staple of your argument for war. Which makes sanctions an issue of Western face-saving versus infanticide and child starvation It's just one step short of inficting pain for its own sake, or mass sadism.

[John Feeney]

Let me just clarify a couple of things. First, I really don't have any paritcular faith in the potential humanity of guys like Saddam, Pol Pot, etc. I doubt we disagreee much on how disturbed and maniacal most such figures are. I just think it may often be possible to get them out of power without war.

That leads to the main thing I've been driving at: Relative to the funding of the defense budget almost nothing is being spent on investigating and developing nonviolent alternatives. I haven't researched it heavily, but it appears to me that almost all such investigation/development involves small, private organizations. Their funding has to be almost nonexistent compared to the defense budget and the money that goes into private research and development of military technology.

What ideas and methods might arise if large think tanks and other organizations had billions of dollars to spend on researching and creating nonviolent methods?

That said, I don't mean to dismiss the efficacy of conventional diplomacy. It does seem, though, that it is sometimes not able to achieve its potential due to the attitudes of leaders involved. This is obviously just a subjective impression, but it seems leaders often react with frustration and abandon diplomacy before they have to. Thus, there too, I could see the value of research to address social issues which may often impede effective diplomacy. (or applying the results of existing research)

Additionally, as Chris points out, nonviolent resistance has often had surprisingly dramatic results. And that's without any of the R&D that I'd like to see. (I believe most of the techniques used have simply been developed "in the heat of battle," so to speak.) So even simple programs to educate people in the history and results of such methods might have great value. When people are unaware of potent alternatives, they're going to more quickly assume the time for war has come.

Finally - and I know we'll disagree here - now seems like a pretty good time to try encouraging and implemeting some of the nonviolent strategies we do have. Yes, there's a terrorist threat. Yes, they're working on adding to their methods. I do wish we had put more into nonviolent solutions sooner, but we're not facing imminent attack from Iraq. This unilateral attack idea seems to me to be way out of line with the current situation, and may set an incredibly dangerous precedent.

It's not like we can say, "Well, we've exhausted all nonviolent methods with Iraq and they didn't work." What sort of steps has the U.S. taken recently to foster nonviolent methods of resolving the problem with Iraq? Once you get beyond conventional diplomacy and weapons inspections, I don't see anything.