It sounds like your conditions are that the terrorists are taken care of before you arrive there. What would be the point of having you then?
One of the reasons for the terrorists is because this is perceived as empire building by the US. The terrorists think that they can do the Afghani trick of wearing down their occupiers over a long period of time and eventually the US will pull out because the US population will tire of it as in Vietnam. A multi-national force supported by their local governments and populations would hinder that thinking and make the terrorist’s operations difficult at best. If the terrorists can’t interfere with the infrastructure rebuilding and people start getting comfortable and feel safe again then support for the terrorists will dry up in the Iraqi population. It would be a huge blow to the terrorists if the world said, “Well, we don’t agree with you as to why you went in there, but we will certainly help in cleaning this mess up for nothing if not the Iraqi’s sake”.
Hey, lets see if this works, “You are a fucking idiot! Anyone who would vote for Candidate X is an idiot. How can you be so stupid to allow someone like X to run your country?!” Does it make you upset when someone talks to you like that? If not you, then do you think it might make someone else upset if you talked to them like that? I think one of the reasons that GW is back in the White House is because people chose to voice their opinion in a negative way and many Americans took offense to that. It may not be logical, it may not be rational, and you may not like it, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not true. All I’m saying that the more you are derogatory towards someone the less chance you have to influence them. Shit, I like a good flame/rant as much as anyone which is making me wonder why I am arguing this, but the GW bashing is a continuous and monotonous drone that won’t solve anything anyhow.
I guess the alternate is to hide on an island in the middle of the Pacific…Hmmm…
At what point do you stand by and not do something when others are hurting or being killed? This is not a question just about Iraq. If you saw your neighbour being attacked on the street, what would you do? Close your curtains? Call the police? Go out and stop the attackers?
Just let it continue until the NKoreans somehow rise up against it? What if that never happens? It seems rather cruel to let these people suffer just because they are not in a position to ask someone for help.
Sounds a lot like interveiws with former SS guards who worked in the death camps, doesn’t it?
Who are you asking? NZ? We’ve been part of UN monitoring actions all over the world for years, including doing stuff like ensuring democratic votes, and seeing to it that brother doesn’t beat the living fuck out of brother. We were in Afghanistan with the US et alia after 9/11, but there are folks among the Bush supporters who tend to forget that in their zeal to agree with their Top Dog that all the other countries who kept out of invading Iraq are terrorist-abiding pussies. As Banquet Bear said, we’ve done our bit in Iraq.
Bush invaded Iraq to bring that country under America’s sphere of influence. At what point do you stop standing by and do something when there are human rights abuses happening now in nations who are part of the democracy-bringing “coalition of the willing”? I wait with interest to find out the answer.
Huh? Does it always have to be one extreme or the other?
The point where interfering might cause more harm then good.
There could be a million reasons he’s being attacked. Maybe he’s a drug dealer being attacked by vigilantes, or he’s a nice guy being randomly attacked.
Depending on the dynamics of the situation, helping him out might be a good move or a bad move. Personally this is why I find all this “Saddam was a bad, evil guy” shit so silly. It doesn’t seem like anyone takes the time to sit down and look at the whole situation. Essentially he was an asshole that kept a lot of other assholes in check.
Perhaps. In many ways I could care less about my neighbors, let them solve their own problems. Am I supposed to go offer to rebuild my neighbors house at the expense of fixing my own?
Maybe. But then again if the “attackers” have no beef with me, why should I give a shit?
If we had the resources to save the world I’d be the first person for it. If we don’t, then we should help ourselves, then anyone else we can. Sudan comes to mind.
I wouldn’t call the responses in this thread ‘grown up’ more like groans. Lets put it this way, if a lefty President was as bad as Bush, would you all be complaining?
But at what point do you react? When they’re so powerful and threaten to burn your house down? Because people like you had the attitude that ‘hey they’re not doing anything to me right now, so I’ll just stay out of it’ there comes a point where you can’t stand on the edge looking at the situation, theres going to be times where you either decide to react and do something, or stay put to a point where the threat is even greater.
Yes, hell yes. You do know I was right leaning up until about 9/11 right?
As I’ve said before, I judge the individual not whether to attack or support them depending on which party they belong to. There are many republicans which I support, and there are many democrats I loathe. I criticize Bush for his actions, and if someone else was doing the same thing, I’ll be screaming just as loud at them.
And what if your reaction was the wrong course to take? Sometimes standing on the sidelines, or staying out of something untl it affects you is the smart move. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE DYNAMICS OF THE SITUATION!
I can invent up a situation in which going to “save” a neighbor befalls more harm on me, then letting them get their ass kicked. You, I’m sure can invent a situation in which interceding saves the day.
Why do you assume that your neighbor’s problems will become your own? So if he’s getting beat up by some bookie he owes money to, and I don’t go help him, the bookie will come burn down my house after he’s done beating the shit out of him? If I go intercede and save him, will the bookie will magically go away forever, or come back with 10 of his boys and “burn down my house”?
Yeah, I’ll be minding my business there thank you very much.
Your logic is retarded man. You’re suggesting that the best course of action is to always get involved in the situation. Most sane people know that there are times to go in, and times to stay out
B. He is really such an idiot that most of the world cant stand him.
Are you even trying to imply that the world doesn’t have enough reason to bash him so much? I could probably name 10 things of the top of my head.
As any left wing, fuck that, has any pres from any wing, waged preemptive war on totally false pretenses? How about telling the world to shove it on greenhouse emissions? How about telling the world court to fuck off? Flaunted geneva conventions with tortured logic? etc, etc ,etc. Held people without trial on some Orwellian tip?
First we need a few people to do all this stuff, and then when only one of them gets singled out, we can claim bias. In the meantime the world seems to be calling a spade a spade.
