The Ultimate Irony

[helene_t]

Arguably GW is less of a ruthless imperialist than Julius Caesar, Dengis Khan and Queen Victoria. Hurra for GW.

 

Yeah, well, it's been less than 200 years since Victoria. Evolution has its limits. Maybe in 20,000 years the Icelandic Empire will show us all how it's done. In the meanwhile, Democrats like myself do what we can, but there is progress.

 

Sorry that it's not enough to satisfy you.

You're a realist. That's fine (no irony, I mean this).

 

What I tried to say was that whatever crime a US (or Chinese or Israelian or whatever) government commits, it cannot be justified by reference to bigger crimes commited by others in similar positions. It must be judged on it's own merrits.

 

My impression is that many Americans learned a lesson from Indochina. While some point to Iraq and say "obviously not" I think this is skewing proportions. I would blame the Iraq disaster more on stupidity than on evil. (As far as the US governement is concerned. There's a lot of evil going on in the Middle East but that's another storry).

 

It would suit the US well if they would acknowledge the damage they inflicted on Indochina and Nicaragua and offering monetary compensation. Other than that, I agree with most of your examples: some nice things, too can be said about US foreign policies.

[Al_U_Card]

Well you seem to forget I was against going into Iraq based on the info published in the media. I just think if we send our children to fight we need to win, whatever that means. What are we doing in Afghanistan?  Even Canada wants to pull its Nato troops out and not fight. Sure we invaded them 3 times in 1812 but that was just joking guys.

1812...the first war the US lost....to us....something to do with our chocolates and candies, I think....lol

 

Why do the fundamental and radical islamists fear and hate the US so much? The US lifestyle is pervasive and all consuming (not just a pun on the consumer society). ;)

 

This lifestyle tends to break down and dissolve religious thinking and practice and replaces it with freedoms of expression and thought. Those who control by "divine" right know that once they (the common people) get a taste of the "real life" how will they still manage to keep them on the "waiting for paradise" bus stop???

 

This is why the Ayatollahs and the Imams are whipping up religious fervor.....as only the blinded will fail to see.... :)

 

If the US spent half the time, money and effort wasted on the war on getting MTV and the Internet into any of these countries, they would spontaneously convert to friendly, secular societies within a generation. To paraphrase liberally, " The LAN is mightier than the sword."

[jtfanclub]

What I tried to say was that whatever crime a US (or Chinese or Israelian or whatever) government commits, it cannot be justified by reference to bigger crimes commited by others in similar positions. It must be judged on it's own merrits.

 

Absolutely. I'm not trying to justify what the U.S. has done. You can't really 'justify' what a nation (or corporation) does, any more than you can justify what a rock or bullet does. I'm trying to justify why we Americans who are aware of what's happening and don't like it haven't been able to stop it, just slow it down. I understand that to the extent that we DID go into Iraq (for example) that we, or more specifically I, have failed. I wish I had done more, but I think people don't understand the nature of super-powers, and how difficult it is to make them move against that nature.

 

Sitting back and clucking your tongues at our efforts isn't going to help.

[Al_U_Card]

Slobodan Milosovic, Radovan Karadžić ,George Bush.....as Harry Truman said "The buck stops here!"

 

The leader is responsable and should be held accountable. No one sits over him forcing him to follow orders.

[mike777]

There is where these posts lose me...comparing Bush to these guys or comparing Quantanomo Bay Cuba to the Balkans concentration camps or comparing the mass raping and murdering Balkan troops to the actions of USA troops.

[Al_U_Card]

A question of degree, point of view and time ....unfortunately.

[luke warm]

A question of degree, point of view and time ....unfortunately.

and historical context and accuracy and clarity of thought

[the hog]

There is where these posts lose me...comparing Bush to these guys or comparing Quantanomo Bay Cuba to the Balkans concentration camps or comparing the  mass raping and murdering Balkan troops to the actions of USA troops.

 

Bush should be compared to those you mention. He will certainly be condemned by History as he is a war criminal, pure and simple. Interestingly enough the other day an emminent jurist gave the opinion that Howard, Australia's PM, could be charged for war crimes under Australian law. Tony Blair is another who should be charged.

[Al_U_Card]

How the west was won.......uh genocide?

 

How the heathens were converted.....uh genocide?

 

How the war on terror was conducted...uh genocide?

 

Humanity (we are all in this together) has conducted itself in a shameful manner.

[mycroft]

Mycroft...go back and reread my first post in the thread.  Not the one about the world's policemen.  I know the propaganda about how we're the good guys and they're breaking the rules is BS, but it must be convincing somebody, or we wouldn't spend so much disseminating it.

 

Okay. I disagree with your argument that this is a war between democracy and Shar'ia. What I think this actually is is a long topic, and I've done it here before, so I won't repeat. North American society believes that Shar'ia is as unwelcome a law structure as Cromwellian Puritanism or Torquemadan Catholicism; you want to be here, you follow our ideas about tolerance and equality - we'll be tolerant in what you believe as long as you don't try to enforce it on someone who chooses not to believe it. But that has nothing to do with "democracy" as such. The fact that the rules are democratically created is, to an extent, irrelevant; more properly perhaps is the ethos that exists in North America believes that every person is important; which leads to both the use of democracy (every person has a say in how the government works) and the dislike of some of the more discriminatory parts of Shar'ia Law (every person should have the same rights).

 

I also disagree with your "if they break the rules, we should too." My reasoning is in my rant in the other thread, but basically, the terrorists want the US to change. If you break the rules, you've changed, and for the worse - that's a win for the terrorists. "The ends justify the means", if it is ever valid, is definately invalid when the means used actually promote the enemy's goals.

 

What would you prefer - 20 hours out of your life, every year, waiting in security lines, full-time tracking of your movements, your phone records, your spending habits, your library checkouts, for someone's sake - or a 0.0002% increased chance of dying in a terrorist attack?

 

Hmmm...20 hours a year, or no 9/11? I'll take the 20 hours a year. Not because I care about the terrorist attack more than I do about, say, Hurricane Katrina, but because we go apes**t every time terrorists 'get' us.

 

Which is, in fact, my point. If the US had responded with "they can try to attack us, and we will stop them, but not at the cost of destroying our freedom or changing our way of life, because that's what the terrorists want", rather than going apes**t, Americans would likely be *more* safe. I would lay any bet you want that without the PATRIOT Act, the TIA program, and all the other police-state innovations, without rendition, Guantanamo Bay, or any of the other questionable-at-best foreign policy innovations, that the US would have lost many fewer lives to terrorism in the last 6 years than they have lost with their actual reaction. I'm guessing that the extra deaths due to terrorism would have been what - 2 hours of smoking deaths? 2 hours of traffic deaths? 4 days of murders?

 

And the same thing applies to the billions of dollars in tax revenue (as opposed to the money lost due to terrorist action - and that's counting the WTC damage), and the amazing amounts of international reputation.

 

I think I phrased it in the other rant as "well, everyone knows that the US hasn't been the home of the Brave for years. But now they're losing the 'land of the Free' bit, too."

 

As far as tracking our movements, I assure you that we'll get that fixed.  The government is a slow moving ship.  When it gets hit by a big wave, it gets rocked from side to side a bit.  Things like this have happened before.  I wouldn't assume that we've gotten a permanent list to the right.

 

"right", "left" isn't the issue. Freedom vs Authoritarianism is the issue. If you had discussed a country with current US policies with a random American in 1960 - such as Terry stops combined with "fear of violence" searches and anything found in that being considered "in plain sight" for arrest; Hiibel-based identity checks; PATRIOT Act secret searches and monitoring; TIA and TSA monitoring and control of movement - they would have said "yeah, those damn Commies. I'm glad I live in a Free country." No?

 

Power is seductive; it is very rare to give it away once someone gets it, very difficult to take it away, and power tends to breed a lust for more power. The US founding fathers knew that, and tried to make it very hard to break down the barriers limiting the government, the army, and the police's power. In fact, they had to resort to a war to get to the point where they could so do.

 

The current situation in Canada with renewing the sunset clause in our PATRIOT-like acts is evidence of that. From the CBC: "Neither clause has been used by police or prosecutors in the five years the act has been enforced, but..." as far as our Prime Minister is concerned, voting against renewing the powers is being "soft on terrorism". How about "we knew at the time that the powers we're granting are insanely invasive, so we put a sunset clause reqiring us to take a review of whether such invasive procedures are really needed. They were never used, and things didn't fall apart. Maybe they aren't actually needed?"

 

The truth is, in spite of what people may whine to the polls, most Americans are happy with the level of government interference in their life, or at least not unhappy enough about it to even write a letter to their local paper.  Tracking our movements etc. is something that most Americans are willing to live with, at least for now.

 

That I know. And Benjamin Franklin would say that most Americans are getting what they deserve.

Unfortunately, I am not "most Americans" - I am not even an American - but I have to live with it, too.

 

Michael.

 

P.S. JTF, having read your responses in the rest of the thread, I take back the "wog" comment. It was explicitly in response to your "Who are YOU to say..." paragraph, and it hit my hackles pretty strong. But it was an overrreaction. mdf

[jtfanclub]

But that has nothing to do with "democracy" as such.  The fact that the rules are democratically created is, to an extent, irrelevant; more properly perhaps is  the ethos that exists in North America believes that every person is important; which leads to both the use of democracy (every person has a say in how the government works) and the dislike of some of the more discriminatory parts of Shar'ia Law (every person should have the same rights).

 

It's more than that, I think. The core belief in our Democracy is that each individual has the right to determine what God's beliefs are. You have the absolute right to interpret the Bible your own way, including to interpret it as not the Word of God. When we make laws, it's based on the Authority of Man, and therefore can be revoked by the people on a vote.

 

In contrast, the core belief in Shar'ia is that people do not have the right to interpret the Quran. It's not sufficient that you follow the laws in the Quran, you must follow them according to the interpretation of the Council of Clerics. Laws are based upon the Authority of God, and nobody can revoke them. This is blasphemy to Americans, as much as anything can be said to be universal to Americans.

 

When Bush first announced that were were attacking Afghanistan, he made a point of belittling the Taliban for punishing people men didn't have beards. I was offended- what's the difference between punishing men for not having beards and punishing women for not wearing tops? But I think the point was that the Taliban declared arbitrarily that God wanted men to wear beards, while we Americans voted that women should wear tops.

 

I also disagree with your "if they break the rules, we should too."  My reasoning is in my rant in the other thread, but basically, the terrorists want the US to change.  If you break the rules, you've changed, and for the worse - that's a win for the terrorists.  "The ends justify the means", if it is ever valid, is definately invalid when the means used actually promote the enemy's goals.

 

Well, certainly, we don't want to turn into them. We don't want to torture prisoners or slaughter civillians. But funding our enemy's enemies in secret and promoting guerilla warfare by them isn't a moral issue- we've certainly done it before (eg. in Afghanistan in the 80's) and we're not ashamed to admit it. This is a war issue, not a case of personal morals/rights. At least, in my mind they're different.

 

I'm guessing that the extra deaths due to terrorism would have been what - 2 hours of smoking deaths?  2 hours of traffic deaths?  4 days of murders?

 

I don't think it would be less than what we had as we did it,but I agree that you have the scale about right.

 

"right", "left" isn't the issue.

 

I just didn't know the sophistication of my audience. Sorry.

 

Freedom vs Authoritarianism is the issue.  If you had discussed a country with current US policies with a random American in 1960 - such as Terry stops combined with "fear of violence" searches and anything found in that being considered "in plain sight" for arrest; Hiibel-based identity checks; PATRIOT Act secret searches and monitoring; TIA and TSA monitoring and control of movement - they would have said "yeah, those damn Commies.  I'm glad I live in a Free country."  No?

 

No. For one example, the Mirandas warnings weren't until 1966. Back in 1960, everything was considered 'in plain sight', and the populace was even more content to give up their rights in order to get the Commies. Ask a Black Panther about that some time.

 

P.S. JTF, having read your responses in the rest of the thread, I take back the "wog" comment.  It was explicitly in response to your "Who are YOU to say..." paragraph, and it hit my hackles pretty strong.  But it was an overrreaction.

 

Yeah, irony doesn't transfer well over the Internet. Sorry about that.

[Winstonm]

Mycroft...go back and reread my first post in the thread.  Not the one about the world's policemen.  I know the propaganda about how we're the good guys and they're breaking the rules is BS, but it must be convincing somebody, or we wouldn't spend so much disseminating it.

 

Okay. I disagree with your argument that this is a war between democracy and Shar'ia. What I think this actually is is a long topic, and I've done it here before, so I won't repeat. North American society believes that Shar'ia is as unwelcome a law structure as Cromwellian Puritanism or Torquemadan Catholicism; you want to be here, you follow our ideas about tolerance and equality - we'll be tolerant in what you believe as long as you don't try to enforce it on someone who chooses not to believe it. But that has nothing to do with "democracy" as such. The fact that the rules are democratically created is, to an extent, irrelevant; more properly perhaps is the ethos that exists in North America believes that every person is important; which leads to both the use of democracy (every person has a say in how the government works) and the dislike of some of the more discriminatory parts of Shar'ia Law (every person should have the same rights).

 

I also disagree with your "if they break the rules, we should too." My reasoning is in my rant in the other thread, but basically, the terrorists want the US to change. If you break the rules, you've changed, and for the worse - that's a win for the terrorists. "The ends justify the means", if it is ever valid, is definately invalid when the means used actually promote the enemy's goals.

 

What would you prefer - 20 hours out of your life, every year, waiting in security lines, full-time tracking of your movements, your phone records, your spending habits, your library checkouts, for someone's sake - or a 0.0002% increased chance of dying in a terrorist attack?

 

Hmmm...20 hours a year, or no 9/11? I'll take the 20 hours a year. Not because I care about the terrorist attack more than I do about, say, Hurricane Katrina, but because we go apes**t every time terrorists 'get' us.

 

Which is, in fact, my point. If the US had responded with "they can try to attack us, and we will stop them, but not at the cost of destroying our freedom or changing our way of life, because that's what the terrorists want", rather than going apes**t, Americans would likely be *more* safe. I would lay any bet you want that without the PATRIOT Act, the TIA program, and all the other police-state innovations, without rendition, Guantanamo Bay, or any of the other questionable-at-best foreign policy innovations, that the US would have lost many fewer lives to terrorism in the last 6 years than they have lost with their actual reaction. I'm guessing that the extra deaths due to terrorism would have been what - 2 hours of smoking deaths? 2 hours of traffic deaths? 4 days of murders?

 

And the same thing applies to the billions of dollars in tax revenue (as opposed to the money lost due to terrorist action - and that's counting the WTC damage), and the amazing amounts of international reputation.

 

I think I phrased it in the other rant as "well, everyone knows that the US hasn't been the home of the Brave for years. But now they're losing the 'land of the Free' bit, too."

 

As far as tracking our movements, I assure you that we'll get that fixed.  The government is a slow moving ship.  When it gets hit by a big wave, it gets rocked from side to side a bit.  Things like this have happened before.  I wouldn't assume that we've gotten a permanent list to the right.

 

"right", "left" isn't the issue. Freedom vs Authoritarianism is the issue. If you had discussed a country with current US policies with a random American in 1960 - such as Terry stops combined with "fear of violence" searches and anything found in that being considered "in plain sight" for arrest; Hiibel-based identity checks; PATRIOT Act secret searches and monitoring; TIA and TSA monitoring and control of movement - they would have said "yeah, those damn Commies. I'm glad I live in a Free country." No?

 

Power is seductive; it is very rare to give it away once someone gets it, very difficult to take it away, and power tends to breed a lust for more power. The US founding fathers knew that, and tried to make it very hard to break down the barriers limiting the government, the army, and the police's power. In fact, they had to resort to a war to get to the point where they could so do.

 

The current situation in Canada with renewing the sunset clause in our PATRIOT-like acts is evidence of that. From the CBC: "Neither clause has been used by police or prosecutors in the five years the act has been enforced, but..." as far as our Prime Minister is concerned, voting against renewing the powers is being "soft on terrorism". How about "we knew at the time that the powers we're granting are insanely invasive, so we put a sunset clause reqiring us to take a review of whether such invasive procedures are really needed. They were never used, and things didn't fall apart. Maybe they aren't actually needed?"

 

The truth is, in spite of what people may whine to the polls, most Americans are happy with the level of government interference in their life, or at least not unhappy enough about it to even write a letter to their local paper.  Tracking our movements etc. is something that most Americans are willing to live with, at least for now.

 

That I know. And Benjamin Franklin would say that most Americans are getting what they deserve.

Unfortunately, I am not "most Americans" - I am not even an American - but I have to live with it, too.

 

Michael.

 

P.S. JTF, having read your responses in the rest of the thread, I take back the "wog" comment. It was explicitly in response to your "Who are YOU to say..." paragraph, and it hit my hackles pretty strong. But it was an overrreaction. mdf

You have stated my beliefs far more eloquently than I ever could.

[mike777]

Not sure are you guys saying Canada was correct to send troops to Afghanistan and correct to send them home now. Why? Your logic lost me.

[Winstonm]

Not sure are you guys saying Canada was correct to send troops to Afghanistan and correct to send them home now. Why?  Your logic lost me.

No, Mike, it is simpler than that - once the U.S. response to 9-11 substantially altered the very bases of U.S. laws and constitutional freedoms, what happens afterwards is irrelevant because the terrorists have won.

[Al_U_Card]

Canada, in the past, for various reasons, adopted the "Peacekeeper" role for its military. This met with the approval of the Canadian people. Only the fervor of 9-11 dragged us away from that. Afghanistan is a "money-pit" of bloodshed and has been for centuries. Tribal and sectarian violence are just more reasons to stay away from these places........like I said before, we have the greatest weapon available...our society and its attractions...we don't need the sword.

[mike777]

Not sure are you guys saying Canada was correct to send troops to Afghanistan and correct to send them home now. Why?  Your logic lost me.

No, Mike, it is simpler than that - once the U.S. response to 9-11 substantially altered the very bases of U.S. laws and constitutional freedoms, what happens afterwards is irrelevant because the terrorists have won.

Again Winston this is too simple.

 

War always changes/alters a country, that does not mean the other side won.

I could not disagree more strongly if you think they won, yet.

[mike777]

Canada, in the past, for various reasons, adopted the "Peacekeeper" role for its military.  This met with the approval of the Canadian people.  Only the fervor of 9-11 dragged us away from that.  Afghanistan is a "money-pit" of bloodshed and has been for centuries.  Tribal and sectarian violence are just more reasons to stay away from these places........like I said before, we have the greatest weapon available...our society and its attractions...we don't need the sword.

I think you post says it all, military is for peacekeeping, not winning wars which involves blood, sweat and tears. Sigh.

 

Again this is the blue jean argument. They will want our bluejeans more than they will want to kill/convert us.

[Winstonm]

War always changes/alters a country, that does not mean the other side won

 

What makes you think this is war? 17 Saudis and a couple of Egyptians used the dreaded boxcutter threat to hijack three airplanes and crash them into three buildings....this is an act of war from all of Islam? Is this the best they could do? They are going to slay the Great Satan with 19 fools and 3 airplanes?

 

Give me a division of Syrian troops landing on the beaches of San Diego and I'll buy there is a war - don't forget that the neocons claimed "we create our own reality." The global war on terror? I, for one, have not forgotten the litany of increasing rhetoric to justify each escalation - first, we had to find and punish the perpetrators of 9-11, so we invaded Afghanistan with the reason of finding and bringing bin Laden to justice - but, oops, we couldn't find him.

 

Then, oops, we forgot that Saddam is going to give these terrorists nukes, so the "next time" it will be a mushroom cloud over Manhatten, and so we invaded Iraq. Then there weren't any WMD, no nukes, no truth to the claims - so we had to justify Iraq another way, by creating an Axis of Evil and"if you aren't with us, you are with the terrorists" came to be.

 

But we couldn't win in Iraq, either, so we had to find another reason to keep on sending troops into the region and the worldwide, global war on terror was born as the greatest threat to civilization ever to crawl out of a cave.

 

How did we go from finding a single man responsible for single terrorist act to fighting the entire world in a war to end all wars due to ideological differences? Where was this war prior to 9-11?

 

Besides, war does not alter the basic foundation, the very principles upon which a nation is founded - unless you lose.

 

Have you studied the Homeland Security Act, the Military Commissons Act, and the John Warner Defense Act?

 

The Homeland Security Act removes the protections against illegal seaches and seizures and the rights to be secure in our persons and papers.

 

The Military Commissions Act eliminates habeus corpus.

 

The John Warner Defense Act eliminates the rule of posse commitatus.

 

Looks to me like the U.S. constitution is also a victim of 9-11. Or maybe the constitution wasn't "with us" so it was "with the terrorists".

 

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny."

 

~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

"If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another...after the war is on."

 

~Senator Robert M. La Follette

[jikl]

Someone please charge GW with War Crimes. When the US defied the UN and attacked anyway, they basically became a dictatorship.

 

You ****ing signed the UN charter, now it is inconvenient for you to follow it? Please.

 

Sean

[helene_t]

Not sure are you guys saying Canada was correct to send troops to Afghanistan and correct to send them home now. Why?  Your logic lost me.

No, Mike, it is simpler than that - once the U.S. response to 9-11 substantially altered the very bases of U.S. laws and constitutional freedoms, what happens afterwards is irrelevant because the terrorists have won.

The terrorists certainly succeded in destroying the political dignity of the U.S. (which was probably their main goal) but I'm less sure if they acchieved the same with respect to Canada and the rest of the Western civilization. (Some would point to U.K. but I think that driving Tony Blair insane is not quite the same as uprooting the British political system as a whole).

[mike777]

Winston as you well know, of all posters, I claim we are in are real full war.

If we are not then I agree the USA is insane.

 

I repeat that the post of comparsions is ugly, wrong, insane and horrible. Those that agree with that post, I do not respect.

[the hog]

Winston as you well know, of all posters, I claim we are in are real full war.

If we are not then I agree the USA is insane.

 

I repeat that the post of comparsions is ugly, wrong, insane and horrible. Those that agree with that post, I do not respect.

I am really curious, Mike. With whom is the US at war and who started it? On what date was war declared?

[helene_t]

Mike: Who is at war? A Texan golf club in war with the rest of the World ("if you're not with us you're against us"), particularely traitors like Colin Powell? With whom would you otherwise agree that "USA" is insane? I for one, don't think US people (outside beforementioned golf club) are insane.

 

Maybe it could be said that the U.S. is involved in a war in Iraq. But this depends on ones definition on the terms "war" and "involved", which is a purely sematic issue and hence cannot be related to any conclusion with respect to the mental health of GW (let alone the mental health of the U.S. people as a whole).

 

Finally, it's not clear to me what "comparisons" you're talking about.

[mike777]

Winston as you well know, of all posters, I claim we are in are real full war.

If we are not then I agree the USA is insane.

 

I repeat that the post of comparsions is ugly, wrong, insane and horrible. Those that agree with that post, I do not respect.

I am really curious, Mike. With whom is the US at war and who started it? On what date was war declared?

1) radical islam

2) radical islam

3) do not know exact date, many years ago. More than 13 years ago, did you miss it?

[Winstonm]

Mike, I know you to well educated, as are many other posters on this thread, so I do want you to know that I respect your opinions on these issues - you could be right.

 

I respectfully disagree with your position - but I could be wrong.