You’re right of course. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that we’ve just shown that we’re serious about dealing with rogue nations. Clearly this capitulation is the payoff from 30 years of doing nothing and the timing is purely coincidental. And, of course, the hostages being released while Reagan was being sworn in was also a total coincidence.
Is this just your stance until you come up with something better? I hope your’re not planning on sticking with it.
After 30 years, he woke up one morning and said “You know what? I’ve really been a prick. I think I’ll decide to be nice. I’ll just call up George and tell him.” It had nothing to do with the fact that we we’ve been pulling rogue dictators out of spider holes for flea inspections. Did it?
I don’t understand your complaint. Are you saying we should have rebuffed Qadaffis’ capitulation and invaded on principle for the sake of consistency?
Stoid: Too bad. I was kinda hoping that giving you credit might allow me to have a truly memorable Twelve Nights of Christmas, one with each model. And then a thirteenth night for good luck, as it’s a thirteen month calendar.
Oh well.
No, I don’t think so. I think they did it as a final insult to Jimmy Carter. I don’t think they were sophisticated enough to consider what a boon they were handing to Reagan. Of course, neither was he.
Upon review, it occurs to me that I have been preaching almost entirely the same gospel for thirty-five years. You?
Dunno. The negotiations, according to Fearless Leaders own words, were underway long before the Iraqalooza. Is it Bush or Qadaffi who has the Time Machine? And if Qadaffi, why didn’t he use it? And if Bush, why didn’t he go back to Florida and…hey, wait a tic!..
Wow! Exactly wrong! That’s special!
Of course, now that you mention it, that’s the only course of action even more stupid and capricious than the one we adopted.
I meant, like, the only thing that could have been dumber than what we did…that would do for stupid what plutonium does for BANG!..would be to do what Scylla suggests and invade Libya anyway.
Unless that was sarcasm. Hard to know, sometimes, with ol’ Scylla
Just wanted to say that I verified that someone did say that Libya & Pakistan were neighbors. Not in this thread, but they did say it. I wasn’t imagining it. Whew!
Now I’m really off to bed.
Scylla didn’t suggest that, not even sarcastically. Scylla asked if that was what you were suggesting, having failed to understand your complaint concerning what appears to be a fortuitous event.
You said:
It sure looks to me like you’re bitching about “cutting a deal” with Qadaffi.
I agree that it’s a stupid argument, though. So why’d you make it?
Ah, at last. A response. I was beginning to suspect you didn’t love me anymore.
:dubious:
Whining? What whining?
I’m afraid that’s a question only you can answer.
Until now, our interaction on these boards has been characterized by mutual respect and a focus on the issues. I’ve always addressed your arguments rather than you and never sought to merely “characterize” your claims. Nor is it my intention to change that, really. On the other hand, I’m sorry, Scylla, but I have to call a spade a spade. Most of what you wrote in the post I reacted to has been addressed, countless times, over and over again, in tedious detail. If someone here is failing to address the issue, I’m afraid its you, who seems to be studiously ignoring the voluminous objections that have been raised to your position. Your last post, for example, was taken almost verbatim from a previous thread in which your arguments were scrupulously dissected. And yet here you are, a month later, repeating the same gibberish almost word for word!
In fact, pardon me for being so blunt, but some what you write is really just too stupid to deserve serious consideration, let alone rebuttal. Such as your continuous attempts to equate the Hussein regime with terrorist acts against the US, when you are by now, and also by your own admission, fully aware that Hussein has no connection whatsoever to such attacks. Conceding finally on Thanksgiving that the current administration has lied – straight up lied – about Iraq’s possession of “WMDs,” and thereby lied to us about the threat Saddam’s regime posed for the US, you nevertheless turn right around to state:
This despite your admission that the Iraq regime possessed no such weapons.
Note the use of past tense. Saddam had chemical weapons over a decade ago, before the imposition of UN inspections. He did not have those weapons at the time of the US invasion. This by your own admission. Yet still you try to use it as an excuse for invasion. I should not have to spell out this obvious disjunction to an intelligent being. Since I know you are intelligent, I can only conclude that you’re being intentionally obtuse.
And there it is again. You fucking lie. Saddam had not flaunted the resolutions. You know this. You admitted as much less than a month ago. He had no weapons, he did not flaunt the inspection process, and the administration lied when it claimed otherwise. You know this, you’ve admitted it, and yet you continue to make this argument as if it were true. This argument is drivel. Duckspeak. It has been demonstrated to you over and over again that it is drivel. You’ve completely ignore the counter-arguments and simply repeated yourself. In a month, after this thread has disappeared, I have no doubt that I will find you posting exactly the same thing again in some other thread. How many times does it take, Scylla? Or do you really think that we are so stupid that, if you simply keep repeating the same bullshit over and over again, we’ll finally forget our objections?
Truth to tell, Scylla, I disagree. You are the one who needs to actually address the objections to your position, not the other way round, in order for this discussion to develop into anything other than yet another sterile flame-war. I suspect you have enough of those on your hands already.
You’re clearly an intelligent fellow with a developed capacity for critical thought. I’ve never thought you deserved the shit you’ve gotten from certain posters on various issues; the response you received in the “Scylla Thanksgiving” thread was way over the top in my opinion. Perhaps I should have intervened in that discussion to state my mind, but I saw no percentage in it. I understand that there is something about you that rubs some others the wrong the way, but I’ve honestly simply never seen it/understood it myself.
I nevertheless find myself agog at times when I read your posts. As soon as Bush and foreign policy issues come up your critical capacities seem to fly out the window, replaced by weirdo, pseudo-patriotic smarm. Do you expect me to take seriously your claim that the invasion of Iraq is somehow going to prevent “the nuclear fire from burning in NY or Amsterdam?” Must our discussion be reduced to debating such non-sense?
Since you’ve admitted that the administration lied, and that Iraq did not possess “WMDs,” why do you continue to use this invasion as an example of a responsible US policy to the “threat of terrorism?”
I’d thought well of you too. Your last post didn’t deserve the respect your previous ones did.
You mean like World Eater’s “asshole to the world” objection which you applauded with a touche? That’s a dissection?
Nonsense. Namecalling is not dissection. You demonstrated good faith, but you were alone in that respect so I abandoned good faith debate, told you I was doing so, and you said you understood.
Nonsense. Each post is original.
That should make it easy then.
Except for that Bush thing, Oh yeah, and attacking our allies like Israel and Kuwait. It doesn’t take a genius to see that one particular megalomaniac, Western hating scumbag who employs terror tactics is as good as another. Saddam happens to have a country. OBL does not. Pretending that Saddam has not committed atrocious attacks of terror against our allies and us is just stupid.
A sniper temporarily without a gun is still a sniper. The problem is not just WMD’s, it’s the environment that allows people to think they can get away with using them. It’s the people that use them. It’s the people who rule through terror.
Pretending that the guy is an innocent isn’t demonstrating your intellect either, you know?
Oh give me a fucking break. He flaunted the process for 12 years. You know that. Up until the end he still was not fully complying. We had to escalate dramatically to get even token concessions.
What exactly I admitted is now an obvious fact. Saddam was not in posession of what Bush said he was. Bush lied. Doesn’t mean Saddam’s a good guy.
Calling it names and characterizing it is still not rebutting it.
I do. I piss assholes off, because I make up my own mind and won’t be bullied into a position I don’t agree with. I’m not into the going with the crowd thing, and post what I beleive to be correct without worrying about the percentages.
Now that you’ve brought it up, there is that other issue. If you saw something was wrong, why didn’t you do something about it? Seriously, who gives a shit about percentages? This is a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance. If you thought it was wrong, I wish you would have said something. Certain nameless assholes post as they do, because there are no consequences. They can do it safely. If they get flamed for it, they won’t do it.
This environment’s led quite a few conservatives to give up. I’ve gotten more than one email about it.
If you want to abandon rational discussion and just hang out with the wingnuts, do nothing. If you want good discussion, you have to go on the attack against the vitriol and bad faith and insults regardless of whether they argue on your side or not.
Yes! You just don’t get it. You’re not offering alternatives or trying to look at the the big long-term picture, you’re just looking critically at compartmentalized issues in a vaccum. Witness, your defense of Saddam. To read your post, you’d think the guy was an innocent.
There’s nothing wrong with looking at individual actions or aspects minutely and critically unless you forget the larger perspective. This Iraq thing part of the campaign in the war on terror, and for you not to see how Saddam’s actions and stances fit into that seems willfully blind to me.
I just answered this in a great big long post, and then you complained that I did so. Why are you asking again?
Well…nobody seems willfully blind, and no one really ever suffers fits of delusional patriotism, so neither provides the answer. To one side Iraq vs. the US is a matter between sovereign states and is subject to appropriate criteria; to the other Iraq vs. the US is less about foreign policy and more of a police action against its leader. That Saddam was a head of state makes the issue that much more compelling. That’s what I came up with.
There’s no common ground, but it still doesn’t make sense to ouright dismiss one view or another just because of whom the person may vote for.
Oh, you poor fellow! I had no idea that reading comprehension was such a…challenge to you! Let me help.
Cutting a deal with Libya was a smart move. Attacking Iraq was a stupid move. As well as immoral, illegal, and dishonest.
Libya has committed acts of terrorism against Americans. Libya has WMD. Saddam was neither. We know now that Saddam tried to cut a deal, offering precisely the same terms that we are accepting from Libya. But we preferred war.
Obviously not. But WE made a good point, and you’ve simply chosen to mischaracterize it and shunt it aside. The US is feared and hated by many. Some of that fear and hate is irrational, an expression of religious fundamentalism or even psychological pathology, but not all of it. The US actively contributes to the animus it suffers abroad by pursuing wrong-headed and ham-fisted policies, many of which are an expression of precisely the attitude you promote in your posts.
The issue is not one of making sure we “don’t hurt anybody feelings.” This is a typical caricature of the left’s position, but really unbecoming of serious debate. To cut to the chase, WE’s point is that in all of the reactions to 9/11, a few moments of deep soul-searching regarding our own role in world affairs is sadly lacking. Your reasoning exemplifies that deficit. Since, as you would have it, we are so obviously “generous, well-meaning, and right,” there’s simply no reason for us to take a step back and reflect over how we may be contributing to the situation we’re actually trying to solve. Do you think the history of unfettered US support for Israel, despite its actual flaunting of UNSC resolutions, might be responsible for some of that animus? Our government’s support of dictatorial regimes such the Shah’s? Our dirty little arrangement with Saudi Arabia? How does that reflect upon our “generosity?”
There was a good deal of unpleasant name calling, but there was also some reasonable debate. I thought Spavined did a good job of punching holes in your line of reasoning, and he also demonstrated good faith while doing so. Granted, I may be misremembering, and don’t have the energy at the moment to go back and look it up.
I have some trouble deciphering this. By “that Bush thing,” you probably mean the infamous assassination attempt. It was debunked; never happened (probably). With regard to “attacking Israel,” Hussein’s acts were despicable, but on the other hand, he was at war with most of the rest of the civilized world. And to classify Kuwait as one of our “allies” is far-fetched at best.
When Hussein invaded Kuwait, the US led a UN coalition that drove him out. How many casualties did we suffer in that operation, when we faced the Iraqi army at the height of its power?
In the year before GW II, the entire Iraqi GNP was approximately 1/5 the size of the US military budget, and growing at a whopping –6% a year. No, Scylla, it is really nutty to characterize that regime, after a decade of sanctions and bombing raids, as a credible threat to the US in any real sense. Such a claim stretches the imagination to the breaking point.
But please do list one “atrocious attack of terror” perpetrated by Saddam Hussein against the US. Just one. Inquiring minds like to know.
Well, here we are back in the debate again, but okay, once more into the breach:
To begin with, the idea that there exists an “environment” in the world in which people believe they can “get away with” using in “WMDs” against the US is simply ludicrous. You have to be kidding me. The entire US defensive posture is predicated on the principle of swift, overwhelming, and unyielding retaliation against such an act, and has been for decades. Have you never heard of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)? We are currently the preeminent military force on the globe; nobody, bar nobody, seriously believes they can attack the US and get away with it unscathed. Look what happened to Iraq when it overstepped the constraints set by the World Emperor – a decade of sanctions, bombing raids, and intrusive inspections, followed by trumped up charges of “WMDs” and an invasion. And they had never lifted so much as a finger against us, directly. Is that your idea of an environment permissive to attacking the US?
In fact, the only people who have thus far attacked America are a group of religious nutballs fully prepared to martyr themselves in the act. Nobody with even a small desire to remain alive on this planet would dream of trying to launch any sort of “WMD” assault against the US. The response would be swift and devastating, and would also retain the full support of the majority of the world’s population and even most, if not all, of the American left. Surely you don’t think I would have opposed US action against Iraq if it had actually attacked the US, do you?
In fact, this is a point you and I agree on, sort of. International relations should be conducted from a position of strength. However, you seem to think that the US lacks that, or lacked it prior to Bush; I’m here to tell you that you are way wrong. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. The US has operated for years from an illusion of invulnerability, especially since the end of the Cold War. A gigantic ocean off each coast has led Americans, and particularly their leaders, to believe that they could pursue virtually any policy they chose abroad with impunity. Which they have, each one more brutal than the last. This was the illusion, and this is what led to US hubris (of which, I’m sorry to report, you are a shining example), and this is what led to many of the terrible policies pursued by the US in the world beyond – after all, what can they do? Nobody can touch us, and if they try, we’ll fuckin’ nuke ‘em.
Nothing in the real world changed on Sept 11, 2001. The earth didn’t spin off its course, even though it might have felt like it. Well, the Towers went down, and several thousand people lost their lives, which was horrible enough, of course – but that was it, really. It could have happened on any given day. However, something dramatic happened on the cognitive landscape of the American psyche: we lost our illusion of invulnerability. Basically, the chickens finally came home to roost, and we got a small taste of the sort of shit we’ve been dishing out, or helping to dish out, lo these many years. Al Queda is basically a creation of the CIA run amok, after all. We helped create them to push the Russians out of Afghanistan, and then we abandoned Afghanistan to them. Back in those days, the glorious days of Reagan, the US propaganda machine labeled bin Laden a “freedom fighter,” and we gave ‘em Stingers by the truckload, and distributed planeloads of cheap Korans to the all the madras we could find. We wanted to “destabilize” the eastern sections of the Soviet Union, which were a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. And did we care, really, about what we were actually doing to the people in the region? Fuck no! Why should we? What can those friggin’ camel jockeys do to us, after all? Without US support they would be lucky to own a pair of boxcutters.
Okay, it’s late here, and I think I’m getting off topic. The point is that contrary to your contention, the US has played hardball for decades. The end result is today’s VFUS (Very-Fucked-Up-Situation). Your response? More of the same! And to borrow your metaphor, there are a lot of snipers out there; your high-handed approach is probably going to merely lead us into a lot more sniper fire. The US cannot remake the world in its own image, try as it might. And it cannot recover the illusion of invulnerability it once possessed. The world is dangerous. It’s always been dangerous, but apparently many Americans didn’t realize this until recently, since danger always happened to people somewhere else on the globe. Welcome, then, to the community of nations. How many civilians died in Nicaragua, thanks to US support of the contras? More than three thousand, I’d bet.
Innocent? Innocent of what? Innocent of terrorizing his own people? Absolutely not. Innocent of attacking the US, of presenting a threat to the security of the US, of possessing “WMDs”? Absolutely.
?
There is more to this story than we can unravel tonight. You are correct if you claim that Hussein sought to resist intrusive inspections. But it is also true that many UN inspectors were spying on behalf of their respective governments. And ultimately, Hussein had complied with the demands of the international community, as we have seen. He had no “WMDs.”
That’s not it. A lot of people speak their minds here. I’d like to think that I’m one as well. Nor do I think that many of the people who treat you so poorly really qualify as assholes. I honestly don’t see what it is, though. Even though I strongly disagree with much of what you post, I’ve always perceived you as one of the few really honest, thoughtful, thought-provoking conservatives on the boards. Yet many do not. I think you must punch some button on certain people that I just don’t have.
I’m not sure. I’m asking myself that question right now as well.
My first answer, “that I saw no percentage in it,” came from my gut feeling that it would be fairly pointless to intervene. I’d probably take a lot of shit for it, and accomplish nothing. It’s like standing outside watching a family bicker; fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and what would be the point? Besides, you handle yourself alright.
Still, now, in hindsight, I’m not sure I did the right thing. I found myself caught between disagreeing with most of what you were posting and not understanding why you were getting so much shit for it. I probably should have spoken up in your defense. The same with the way things are going for you and DCU in the neighboring thread about Haliburton. But things have gotten so infected between you and certain posters that I’m simply not sure what my contribution would accomplish.
There was a time on this board when one was subjected to a certain amount of abuse no matter which side of the issue one took. I remember a thread a few months ago in which certain posters tried to argue that the SDMB was predominantly leftist in orientation, and that right-wingers were subjected to a barrage of abuse when they posted, while we lefties could basically get away with murder.
At the time, I thought the claim was completely without merit. Since the war started up, however, and especially since the WMD fiasco, much of the right here has simply evaporated. So I would agree with you that these days, the American right is less well represented here than it was before, and it is also my experience that righties get more abuse than they deserve here.
Finally:
Wrong, yet again. It is you who are not offering alternatives. You are rather offering more of the same.
The US needs to stop being so high-handed, and pause to consider the possible repercussions of the policies it pursues. That, just for starters. It needs to work more closely with it allies, not alienate them. We need to help the downtrodden. Here’s a specific policy suggestion: we should withdraw financial and military support for Israel until such time as they are ready to abide by UNSC resolutions, and withdraw their settlements from the Occupied Territories. We should do this not only because it would be symbolically important to the “Muslim World,” but because it’s the morally correct thing to do. We need to support democratic forces in Iraq, rather than petty wannabe dictators like Chalabi. Etc.
Sorry, Scylla, but no. Invading Iraq is a cheap ploy to convince the domestic US population that the Bush administration is doing something about terrorism; we now know for a fact that Hussein possessed no “WMDs” and had no credible contacts with Al Queda. It’s really part of a broader strategy of global domination that forms the basic tenets of neo-conservatism.
Quadaffi handed GeeDubya a big, fat Christmas present. GeeDubya managed not to fuck it up. Clearly, this is an improvement over his previous ham-fisted, stubborn and belligerant stupidity.