This should be pretty easy for you to prove. What’s your brother’s username, what was the email address of the person who emailed him, and what did the email say? Who was the one person, and what was the one conflict?
Was any of what you posted in the above quote true? Just the usual lies, I think, though I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
As it stands, you’ve tried to weasel the level of conspiracy down to something like “people on this message board are communicating with each other by posting on this message board, and they cooperate with each other in taking a position adverse to mine”
AFAIK, there isn’t a single known Iraqi member in Al-Qaeda. Iraq emerging as a vibrant democracy has nothing to do with terrorism as there was little Al-Qaeda membership in Iraq to begin with.
The fantasy , IMHO, is to expect some sort of force emerging from Iraq and cascading through the Mid-East creating prosperous democratic nations and removing the incentives for terrorism.
I think the US could have better utilized the dollars and resources right now tied in Iraq.
You know, you Brits and Aussies (pretty much the same thing, right?) lingo is a bit daunting. I don’t think I’ve got a real grip on this whole “wanker” thing.snicker
Is a wanker a troll? Are all trolls wankers, that is, are they mutually inclusive sets?
Terrorists aren’t confined to the group Al-Qaeda. If you destroyed that group completely another would take its place and then you’d have to deal with that one, too. If you don’t take away the underlying reason that these groups exist they will always be there.
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I fly between the UAE and Yemen regularly. In Yemen the women are completely covered. When they get off the plane in Dubai about half have lost their coverings. Eventually they won’t be putting them back on again when they return to Yemen. What else are they doing when they are out of Yemen? Maybe seeing that in addition to having more freedom, people have more prosperity? Maybe it goes hand in hand? It is just a matter of time and the influence of more liberal societies before things will change. A stable, prosperous Iraq would definitly influence its neighbours.
That’s actually a misnomer, Global Gobbler. It’s not “penis envy” (the laughable presumption that females must necessarily admire and envy the possession of a 2nd, entirely unreliable, brain) but “penis shame” the motivates us so encumbered, that we seek constantly to find a warm, damp place to hide it.
My only comment regarding what you’ve written regarding the Israeli/Palestine conflict is that your employment of the “Big Dawg” principle appears to be extremely flexible. But let’s leave that discussion to the side for the time being, and focus on the issue of Iraq and terrorism.
Let’s go through these claims one by one.
“I (Mr. Svinlesha) am getting histrionic.”
I am not.
I seem to defend Saddam as an innocent. He is guilty of the following:
2a) “Declaring his side against us, and being a major pain in the ass in many ways.”
The US and Iraq fell into an adversarial relationship for various historical reasons. But since the 1991 cease-fire Hussein never declared war on the United States or threatened it in any serious manner (other than, possibly, in rhetorical political speech). If adversarial relationships are the basis for the right to execute regime change in other nations, then Saddam would be well within his rights to invade the US and instigate a regime change for exactly the same reasons the US did it to Iraq. In the same manner, one could say that the Kuwaiti government, with its covert support for slant drilling into Iraqi oil reserves, had made itself a “major pain in the ass” to Hussein’s regime, thus granting him the legal right to invade Kuwait and execute a regime change – thereby leading us to the inevitable conclusion that Gulf War I was an illegitimate military exercise.
All of this follows logically if one believes in the rule of law and in the equality of states within the international system. If the US does stand for these values, as it claims to, then obviously it cannot reserve for itself the right to act in ways that are prohibited to other states. This thereby grants other states the legitimate right under international praxis to also engage in “preventative wars” as an exercise of sovereign privilege, if we claim this right for ourselves. Thus, to take a couple of examples, if the reasons you provide for the invasion of Iraq are to be considered legitimate, then we have no recourse but to stand by and allow China to retake Taiwan, which has been a threat to its security and a “major pain in its ass” for more than half a century now. (In fact, we should join a “coalition of the willing” to help China do so). The Russian invasion of Afghanistan can also be justified on this basis. South Korea is the “declared enemy” of North Korea, and a serious “pain in its ass;” therefore, North Korea has a legitimate right to instigate regime change in South Korea.
Perhaps you see that this principle can only lead to total international chaos.
2b) “Saddam is one of the worst dictators in a volatile part of the world.”
Indeed he was. But was he a direct or impending threat to the US, such that we were required to respond to him with an essentially unilateral invasion? This question goes to the heart of how one views the role of the US military. Personally, I’ve always thought that the US military was fairly limited in scope, created exclusively to defend US territory from foreign aggressors.
2c) “He attacked his neighbors.”
Indeed, he did, twice. Ironically, in the first of those “attacks” he had the full support of the US. The US government was glad he attacked his neighbor then (Iran), and even provided him with the material wherewithal to do so. But now, afterwards, we suddenly turn around and count that act against him. Frailty, thy name is America!
It’s also true that he attacked Kuwait; but for me, what is most significant is what he did not do: i.e., he did not attack the United States. And it seems to me that this act alone – armed attack against the territorial integrity of the US – is the only legitimate grounds for the unilateral employment of US military forces, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned. Nevertheless, it must be rather inconvenient for your argument that the US has actually signed international commitments to the effect that it will not engage in the “threat or use of force” in it relations with other states, except when it is itself under attack. See the UN Charter for references.
2d) “He repressed his own people.”
So did Pinochet, yet in that instance we supported him.
So did the Shah of Iran, yet in that instance we supported him.
So did Batiste, yet in that instance we supported him.
So did Somoza, yet in that instance we supported him.
So did Suharto, yet in that instance we supported him.
So does Karimov (president of Uzbeckistan), yet in that instance we support him.
So does Aristide (president of Haiti), yet in that instance we support him.
So did Saddam, yet in that instance we supported him (until recently, that is).
So, what was your point, in terms of “Big Dawg” politics, again?
2e) “He used chemical weapons.”
And yet you’ve conceded that he was no longer a threat on that front, and that the administration lied about those weapons in order to instigate the war. Still, you continue to harp on this point. It is irrelevant, and you’ve admitted it to be so already.
2f) “He tortured.”
See my list of US allies, above.
2g) “He repeatedly showed he was not interested in peace.”
On the contrary, in my opinion; he did everything he could short of allowing a full cavity search of his own disgusting personage to achieve peace, at least with the US. His regime was busily disassembly its missiles while the US Army stood ready to attack on its border. He even caved in and allowed UN inspectors to look through his presidential palaces, an act equivalent to the US allowing teams of UN inspectors to roam through the White House and Congress looking for incriminating evidence.
But of course, like any national leader, he was interested in peace on his terms.
2h) “He was a maggot begging to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
You’ve hit the nail on the head. He was a maggot, not a threat. We chose to invade Iraq because we knew Iraq was a pushover. And that proved to be the case. How can a country that the US easily overran in the space of two weeks be construed, now, afterwards, as a serious threat to the US? The Hussein regime was so dangerous that it collapsed with scarcely a fight; the US lost less than 200 men taking over an entire country. And yet still people are trying to convince me, and themselves, that Hussein’s regime was some sort of deadly threat to America’s future well-being. Such an argument is pathetically silly, a self-contradiction that flies in the face of all reason.
Yes, I agree completely with this. Therefore the US government must weigh the consequences of acting against the consequences of not acting. Considering whether or not it can legitimately claim to have a “right” to invade another country is an important aspect of such a decision-making process, since other states will judge the US on its actions. (Such considerations are, in fact, not unlike considering whether or not one has the right to eat a Popeye’s chicken dinner one happens across on the side of the road while one is out running, for example.)
I believe a certain poster of conservative bent started an entire thread on precisely this issue, not long ago, explaining that the core value of the conservative philosophy revolves around something called “the law of unintended consequences.” This poster argued that when the consequences of an action are relatively unforeseeable, then true conservative wisdom suggests that one refrain from acting: the solution may be worse than the problem it was intended to solve. Does that ring any bells for you, friend Scylla? If this is indeed the case, then surely only a “liberal” would have supported the invasion of Iraq, fraught as it was (and is) with unforeseeable consequences.
Unfortunately, you have little more than speculation, and your own personal beliefs, to support your assertions. You do not even know if removing Qaddafi would have necessarily “removed a threat,” as we do not know how the resultant power vacuum would have been filled. Have you every heard of the “law of unintended consequences,” by the way?
However, we can say this now, with confidence; having not invaded Libya, but rather pressuring them economically and diplomatically, has resulted in the elimination of that country as a threat (to the extent that it ever was one); Libya has now publicly announced it will give up its “WMD” programs.
Clearly, you’ve never heard of the “law of unintended consequences.” My point doesn’t support your thesis; it shows that with relatively small means the US can effect large policy shifts in other states. Qaddafi cannot be blamed for the terrorism that he did not sponsor.
Regarding my entry into Sweden:
No accounting for taste, I guess.
You’ve asked for an alternative set of policies to be put forth in the so-called “war on terror.” When I have a spare moment, I’ll try to summarize the alternative promoted by the latest paper from the Army War College, entitled “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism.” It’s author makes a number of very important points that we have thus far overlooked in our debate.
P.S. Thanks to Gest and KSO for the correction. I did indeed mean Richard, not Daniel, Pearl. My bad.
After extensive internet research, I managed to locate your English Comp. teacher. I sent her your sentence. In a fit of despair, she shaved her head and joined Hairy Krishna.
Wow. I’m surprised anyone remembers that particular occurrence of cyber-spatial transgendering.
Anyway, in these days of postmodern sexual identity politics the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And in fact, I must admit that I am, really, a woman trapped within a man’s body.
Ironically, I also happen to be a lesbian…
Thanks. Its nice to be back – as long as we can get the grammar nazi off my back, that is. Scylla:
I realized after I posted that I missed a sentence:
To my knowledge, that’s exactly what the US does. As far as I can tell, such a response would also fit under the provision of the UN Charter, Article 51; not that an armed response is totally problem-free, since state-sponsored terrorism is also certainly covert, and the US is thus faced with the rather daunting task of tracing down the covert network and establishing a credible connection between the terrorist act and a given state.
The real problem the government faces, however, is how to address terrorism that isn’t state-sponsored, like Al-Queda.
But the point is fairly irrelevant regarding Iraq, anyway, since – by your own admission – Iraq has not sponsored any sort of terrorism against the US to begin with.
I’m just going to briefly list the policy recommendations at the end of the War College paper as an alternative to your “Big Dawg” approach:
Naturally, I don’t agree with all of the points listed above – in a sense, Record seems to be suggesting less of the same, rather than more of the same – but at least it is an alternative to the extreme neo-con programme you appear to promote.
