Are you actually arguing that an unprovoked war, what amounts to an act of mass murder and terrorism ( “Shock and awe” as you say ) by America, would be moral if it had been a more successful mass murder/terrorist strike ? You are saying that if we had killed so many and terrorized the rest that they were too scared to defy us, that would make what we did good ?
Are you arguing against the moral righteousness of war in general? If not, what cause would be better than toppling Saddam Hussein, if the peace could have been won as well? Note that more troops != more civilian deaths. You would have to show that the extra troops would cause more deaths than the death squads and general lawlessness, in addition to the better stability caused by being able to rebuild the infrastructure due to better security, a virtuous circle that could have restored Iraq’s previous higher standard of living and given potential terrorists and insurgents less reason to join.
Which is not to say that 500,000 troops would have accomplished this, but they had much better chance than what we put it: i.e. deliberately not enough.
(I think this is dangerously close to a hijack since you appear to be arguing against war per se, which is naive in the extreme, rather than debating the question of whether it is moral to lie to get us into war.
Fighting someone who’s an actual danger ? Nor do I see how replacing Saddam’ reign of terror with an American one would be an improvement.
Of course it does, you yourself talked about using “Shock and Awe” to get them to submit, which means even more death and destruction.
I’m arguing against unprovoked war. They did did not ask us to come and “save” them, nor were we protecting anyone else. It is most certainly not just to lie to get us into an unjust war.
Are these people white guys in suits (ie, corporate stiffs)? Nope.
Would white guys in suits (ie, corporate stiffs) take over the biz if it were legal? Yep.
Frankly, I don’t know what you’re talking about… And in case it wasn’t clear, I would have no problem if pot were made legal. In fact, I’m not in favor of making any drugs illegal.
Far out, John. By the way, those brown barrels you sold me in '68? Bummer. Owsley, my ass.
Dave’s not home!
Here’s what your article claims to establish:
Notice what they’re saying: it could be peer and social factors that contribute to cannabis being a gateway drug to the hard dangerous stuff. What they did not control for, could not possibly control for, was whether the current legal status of marijuana (i.e., not) might have some effect on these social factors. In other words, the very fact of marijuana being illegal could quite possibly have the effect that you dislike.
There’s also something else you really should establish if you want to press your current argument: whether the stepping-stone effect, the increased likelihood of marijuana users to try other drugs and become dependent, is greater than the effect from legal substances such as tobacco (nicotine, of course, being an incredibly addictive drug) and alcohol (which seems to cause many more deaths than marijuana).
Speaking of those deaths, yet another thing that we really need to know: whether this stepping stone effect, even if it really is worse, leads to dependencies and drug use that cause greater harm than the known harm caused by legal drugs.
Which leads me to my problem with this whole thing: Your apparent haste to tell other people what they shouldn’t be doing is based on very little information.
I have no real dog in this fight. The idea of strange chemicals in my brain skeeves me out enough that I dislike taking over-the-counter allergy medication. There ain’t no way that I’m smoking a cigarette, let alone a marijuana joint. But right now I’m not trying to tell people that what they’re doing is wrong, wrong, wrong. Right now you, and the rest of the anti-pot people, don’t have much going for you, and yet you still seem to insist that your way of telling other people what to do is the right way.
You asked in the other thread whether people could realize that your positions are held honestly, and to tell you the truth, I have real trouble believing that. It seems to me, you’d find out much much more about your position before you’d be willing to tell a large number of harmless people what they can and can’t smoke if you were really being honest with yourself. This tendency isn’t at all uncommon. It’s probable that I’m not very honest with myself.
But right now, I’m not trying to tell others what to do.
It is true that there are several other places we could have better used our troops, but Saddam was in the top 10. Just because the repressed people can’t speak for themselves does not mean they are not being repressed.
There was no moral reason not to go in. There is only ethical reasons, such as lying and as you have said the will of the Iraqi people was unknown and unknowable due to lack of free press. But I believe the polls taken right after the convention land war that said iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam.
There’s only one reason Saddam has been lauded by many on the loony fringe as a more sympathic leader than the American pResident: he didn’t have to do as much repression due to the fear factor. Now, if we were to successfully instill fear into the insurgents and terrorists they would perform fewer acts of violence, necessitating fewer attacks that might kill civilians (not to mention fewer death squads, etc.)
However, by going in and showing our weakness (in a strictly military sense, not in the Hate Amerika Loony Right sense,) we have emboldened our enemies within Iraq to the point where it might be unwinnable.
How the hell could they ask us to save them? To get back to the OP a bit, other than the lying thing, would it have been morally correct for Roosevelt to proactively get into WW2? After all the German people did not ask us to “save” them :rolleyes:
We should have finished the job in Iraq '91 (Mideast leaders understand lose war = lose regime and leader’s life) but now is better than never.
Bricker: Please respond to post 15 when you get a chance. Thanks.
Bricker:
I’ve never seen anyone convincingly argue why marijuana should be illegal while cigarettes and alcohol remain legal. If marijuana is too dangerous to be trusted in the hands of an American citizen then I weep for our future.
Of course, we all know it’s because cigs and alcohol are ingrained in our culture and weed is associated with those dirty, traitorous, long haired hippies. At least, that’s the impression I get talking with the fine people of my state.
Bricker, I think this may be the best argument you can put forward (but feel free to prove me wrong): Alcohol and cigs should be outlawed, but can’t pragmatically due to the societal outrage that would occur if such legislation were to pass. It’s better to bleed them to death with a thousand cuts. I wouldn’t be surprised if cigs were de facto illegal or extremely unpopular in the next 50 years.
As for Iraq…well, there’s been so many threads, so many cites, I don’t understand what position you are advocating, especially with your comparison to WWII…but OK, let’s go with it. Bush is today’s FDR, recognizing the uh…grave and gathering threat of Iraq? Thus, lying to go to war is justified.
So what would’ve been the consequences of not invading? Iraq was secular, Iraq pulled vital resources from Afghanistan, Iraq was a paper tiger in a cage at best, Iraq just doesn’t make any sense to me…I’m sure you’ve heard all of these before. But I’ve never heard an adequate response. What was the point of invading Iraq? If Bush is lying about WMDs for public acceptance, what was the noble motive? The desperation?
At least part of Bricker’s response is taht the consequences of not invading would have been getting nuked, given the information people honestly beileved to be true at the time the decision was made.
Which is not a prima facie ridiculous argument.
Actually, pot was originally banned in large part because of its connection with blacks. At the time there wasn’t any such thing as a “hippie.”
I am not for one instant suggesting Bricker is a racist; pot was banned before he was born. That’s just the history of the law.
Last year, 16,885 Americans died in drunk driving accidents. That’s actually low, historically speaking, but in recent years the number has stopped going down. The total number of Americans killed in drunk driving accidents to date is likely greater than the number of Americans who have been killed in all the wars the United States has ever fought. Now, mind you, I am not even getting into the lives destroyed by alcohol addiction that don’t involve cars.
So why shouldn’t alcohol be banned, Bricker?
Bump…
Bricker, please respond to my post #15 when you get a chance. Also, I think a bunch of people have asked you a tough but fair question about your views of marijuana vs. alcohol/tobacco, and have done so for the most part in a polite and non-piling-on fashion… I’m honestly quite looking forward to your response.
Assuming without deciding that alocohol and tobacco are generally as dangerous as marijuana, there is a simple reason to treat them differently: pragmatism. We have to. We have multi-billion dollar legal industries built up around alcohol and tobacco. It’s not politically or practically feasible to criminalize them. We can avoid adding to the list of harmful substances which are legal much more easily than we can unrachet the legal status of tobacco and alcohol.
Yes. But I don’t agree that we’ve reached that point.
For me, the answer is: while I am troubled by the facts, I do not believe we’ve reached a point where I can conclude that the President deliberately, pre-meditatively, and repeatedly lied. The conduct post-invasion is attributable to surprise and lack of contingency planning, not malice or lying.
I’d trust Bill Clinton under the same circumstances. I don’t trust Bush MORE on the Iraq war simply because he’s pro-life and opposes raising the minimum wage.
“They screwed up” is not the same as “they’re massively incompetent.” The war went fine at first – that is, with relatively minimal casualities, they drove into the capital city and forced the Iraqi President into hiding, toppling his government. The fact that things didn’t go as planned in subsequent steps is a hit against competency; it’s not “massive incompetence.”
“Far less?” No. Somewhat less, perhaps.
I don’t imagine that to be a significant factor.
I argue that it’s immoral in the same sense that running a stop sign is if there’s no traffic: it’s forbidden by law, and we, as part of the social contract, agree to be bound by and obey the law. We do not have the right to selectively obey only the laws with which we are in agreement.
The act is not intrinsically wrong. It’s wrong because she has an obligation to obey the law.
Please explain how incompetence becomes evil. Here is what I don’t get. If the invasion were immoral, then it is immoral whether or not the occupation was done competently or incompently. The cost might be less if it was done competently, but you can’t judge morality on cost.
Let’s talk justification. Consider two cases. In one, the Decider is honestly uncertain whether an invasion is necessary. He incompetently does not collect all the facts, and makes an incorrect decision. Incompetence, yes, but is the invasion immoral?
In case two, the Decider has pre-decided to invade. He claims to be collecting all the facts, but structures the investigation to ignore or downplay those arguing against the invasion. Immoral? Maybe. Incompetent? Certainly not. I think the second case is much closer to the truth, given the plans for war long before the invasion. Exactly who the Decider is is unclear here.
Along the same lines, what is the morality of refusing to take the next step in investigating a potential problem. Hastert did not know of Foley’s IMs, and he certainly does not support the solicitation of minors. Was his refusal to investigate further immoral or incompetent? I don’t know - I think it depends on whether his inaction was to try to avoid a scandal damaging to the party or from a lack of curiousity - a lack prevalent in high Republican circles these days.
Certainly a consistent and logical position. BUT, isn’t there a similarly pragmatic argument to be made about pot? Given that the damage it does is VERY small, so small that well-intentioned people can basically argue whether it exists at all (as compared to alcohol and tobacco), and given the enormous cost of enforcement, of public-health-issues relating to unregulated non-FDA-approved supply, the social cost of kids growing up without their parents who are in jail on drug charges, etc., doesn’t it make sense to legalize? At the risk of sounding patronizing here, I honestly get the impression from your tone that you think pot should be illegal just because you think pot should be illegal, beacuse, hey, it’s pot. And it’s illegal. And daggumit, that’s how Uncle Sam wants it.
Do you dismiss as alarmist and/or paranoid and/or blindly partisan those who do believe that the president more-or-less-deliberately lied? Or at least, didn’t put in due diligence in finding out the truth once he saw the data he wanted to see?
There’s screwing up and there’s screwing up. If you hire me to build a wall, and I say “well, this wall will withstand winds up to 30 miles an hour, but at 35 miles an hour it will start to bend and flex, and if those winds keep up long enough, eventually it will fall over”, and then it starts to bend at 33 instead of 35 mph, but basically fails in a way that I designed and anticipated, well, you’re not happy with me because I didn’t build a strong enough wall. But at least I had some idea of what was going on, some description of potential failure states, etc. If, on the other hand, I say “I will build you a super awesome happy wall! It will take only a week! And come in under budget! Buy! Buy! Buy!” and then the wall keeps falling down and crushing kittens, and never seems to get finished, and takes 3 years longer than estimated…
It’s not like Bush at the beginning said “we’re going to topple Saddam. That will be easy. Then we’ll have to work for a peace. It might be tough. We hope to be out within two years, but things could stretch out…”, and we see that his worst case wasn’t quite bad enough, but at least he had a worst case. So, either all the people planning the entire war (which includes not just an invasion but an occupation/withdrawal/whatever) were monumentally off in their estimates, or they didn’t share their estimates with the president, or he didn’t share them with us.
Well, we kind of do. There are things more important than laws (see many parts of the civil rights movement). And some laws are more important than others. If there’s a law that doesn’t really have popular support (PARTICULARLY in the community in which you live), isn’t really enforced, and which is clearly a victimless issue, the imperative dimishes until it becomes irrelevant. Now, obviously, this is a heck of a slippery slope, and it might make an interesting hijack.
So your personal support for a particular drug is dependent upon how big of a lobbying arm they have.
Let’s not forget that there’s a firmly established multi billion dollar (albeit illegal) marijuana industry in this country. Pragmatically speaking, it seems we should recognize this and instead of losing billions on enforcement we could gain billions in tax revenue.
It seems you are willing to deal with marijuana “idealistically” but alcohol and tobacco pragmatically.
“Politics is the art of the possible.”
Not at all. It should be illegal because it’s harmful, and because that particular horse is still in the barn. The booze and tobacco horses are out; there’s no use trying to shut the barn door on them.
Oh, not remotely! People who believe that Bush’s team either lied or was grossly incompetent have a lot of solid argument on their side. It’s a reasonable position to take. I just don’t share it – but I don’t dismiss it out of hand.
It is entirely plausible that he didn’t share his worst-case estimates with the nation.
Then the thing to do is work to change it – or engage in civil disobedience; flaunt your violation of the law and demand to be arrested. Choosing to ignore the law is a violation of the social contract. It’s not generally the recommended choice.
No - there is a clear distinction between pot and the other two – there is considerable popular suppport for keeping pot criminal. That’s a reasonable, pragmatic distinction.