By “funny” you mean exactly the same as every democracy in the world? If not, can you point out one that is run by public opinion polls?
Funny. In a very similar instance (though a parting speech not an introductory one) many Democrats indeed chose to walk out in protest.
And yet our country still stands. Imagine that.
You mean the Bush installed puppet government?
The key words in Voyager’s post were “whenever someone from the other party told a lie.”
If one party walked out every time the other party lied or misrepresented the truth (not that Speier did that), there would never be a quorum.
No, I mean the duly elected government, recognized by the UN. But even if it were a puppet government, what of it? It’s as legitimate a government as has ever existed in that country. What if it were a military dictatorship (that could come to pass at some point)? That’s pretty much what South Korea was for decades while we had troops there. Those things are simply irrelevant wrt whether the US has a reason to stay in Iraq indefinitely. We’ve done it many times in other countries.
And I’ll also remind you that the US (and other coalition forces) are in Iraq, now, under the unanimous approval of the UNSC.
It’s not really democratic when Sunnis and Kurds are excluded from representation and it doesn’t really change the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis don’t want us there (and neither do most Americans, for that matter).
Wasn’t Saddam “duly elected, recognized by the UN”? And the government of Hungary, circa 1954? Beset by dirty fucking hippies, they invited a few Soviet armored divisions in to help. You regard this as “legitimate”? You’ve got some very careful parsing there, big guy.
Pretty much everything.
In the immortal word of Darth Cheney: “So?”
Speaking on behalf of the DFH contingent, we’d kinda like that sort of thing to stop happening. We don’t like that much. The people we do it to seem not to be thrilled, either.
I had no idea you had such abiding respect for the conferred legitimacy of the UN. Rather surprising. But you can put a communion dress on a two-dollar crack ho, doesn’t make her a virgin.
I’m just really confused by how you think this is relevant to whether the US has any reason to station troops in that country. We’ve done that very thing frequently in the past. The Phillipines was hardly a democratic country, and South Korea was a military dictatorship. Yet we had lots of troops in both of those countries. Neither you nor I might like that, but it’s reality.
And you know what? I’ll bet you we’ll have troops in Iraq 10 years from now even if we have a Democratic president the whole time and a Congress controlled by Democrats. Read the fine print in Clinton’s and Obama’s Iraq policy. They ain’t getting us out altogether. 100 years? Who knows-- that’s too far out in the future for me to make predictions.
elucidator: I think you’re missing the point I’m trying to make. I don’t want us in Iraq. I don’t want one single American soldier there. But I want a lot of things that aren’t going to happen. **Diogenes **is simply wrong when he says we can’t have any reasons to station troops in Iraq if (by the will of Allah) things settle down there.
Kinda depends, don’t it? By “troops”, do you mean a couple dozen Marines stationed at the Embassy to keep the hookers from peeing on the steps? Or one hundred thousand plus, serving primarily as shrapnel absorption units?
You have a gift for parsing, John, sometimes pinning down your position can be like trying to impale a blob of mercury with a sewing needle.
I mean thousands. Maybe as many as 50k (which is about what we have/had in both Japan and Korea for decades).
The problem is that we need some considerable amount of force just to protect our embassy there, not to mention any other “interests” that we have in Iraq or the region. And if you try and do that with too small of a force, they’re going to be vulnerable to attack.
Eh? They’re in Parliament too, and the president is a Kurd.
If our choice is between having 50k troops in Iraq indefinitely for the purposes you state, and having none at all and no embassy and no influence of any kind, we should choose the latter without hesitation.
If he leaves the troops in Iraq for a hundred years he will sacrifice them. They will die of old age.
I agree. But I’m trying to predict what I think will happen, not say what I want to happen. I don’t think any president, Republican or Democrat, will just give up completely on Iraq.
You’re equating this new congresswoman to DeLay??? Notice, in your own cite, that he was insulting fellow members.
You are amazing.
I was just pointing out to you that this sort of thing isn’t exactly unprecedented on either side - which you would have known yourself had you bothered to look things up at all.
And I wasn’t trying to equate DeLay to Speier - that would certainly take some doing. But if you’re going to go by insults as the measurement here, weren’t Republicans permitted to feel insulted at a charge that at best could be described as a gross misdirection and at worst a blatant lie?
In any case, not for you to decide. Whatever outrage Republicans felt, they felt. Whatever actions they took, they took. And if you get pissed off about it more than their base gets fired up over it - well, that’s their cross to bear.
No, because it was not a misdirection in any sense. (See post #69.)
The essential question is, “What country runs its affairs with the consent of the governed?” Normally, one determines that consent via elections, but given their repeated postponement, public opinion polls seem like the next-best thing in Iraq’s case.
Now, and for another eight and a half months, per UNSC Resolution 1790.
But you know it’ll be renewed, right? Just like that one is the renewal of the previous one: UNSC Ressolution 1723.