Tell me why the hell you don’t have signs calling for Saddam to give up and go into exile to accompany your Anti George W. Bush and Anti Tony Blair signs!!!
Why don’t you have Saddam dolls and Osama Bin Laden dolls with beady eyes and funny noses protesting their stubborn beliefs??? While you are blaming the Bush Administration for this conflict, why don’t you don’t put 50% of the blame on them?
Self righteous bastards.
Gee, maybe because they’re trying to effect change in the policies of their own governments, and they’re bright enough to realize Saddam Hussein and bin Laden don’t give a fuck what they think. (Maybe Bush and Blair don’t either, but they have to at least pretend to be paying attention.)
I take it, then, that you think a pre-emptive strike is morally O.K. Am I right?
We, as a country, have never attacked another country merely because we thought it posed a danger to us. This is a very dangerous step and it’s one that I feel very uncomfortable about taking.
When Japan did it to us at Pearl Harbor in 1941, we and the rest of the right-thinking world were outraged.
I am outraged that we are considering it, especially against a tinpot piece of crap who is weaker now than when he was in 1991 when we last beat him down. Especially because the evidence that links him to terrorists and to weapons of mass destruction is very, very far from convincing. Especially because there are so many, many other ways to deal with Saddam that will not cause long lines at al Qaeda recruitment centers.
Attacking Saddam will guarantee that the U.S. and any allies that go in with us will forever be the targets of Muslim terrorists.
Attacking Saddam will put us into a spiraling terrorism, followed by retaliation, followed by more terrorism cycle so familiar in Israel. That’s a lifestyle of fear and death that I would prefer my children not inherit.
Wars are sometimes necessary, but only as a last resort. This proposed war is the workings uncreative minds who haven’t tried hard enough.
Same reason I don’t try to dialogue with the Amish via e-mail.
jeel, I know democracy is hard, but try to follow along:
Feel free to also notice that only a tiny, tiny fraction of protestors are burning flags or wearing Bush masks or fighting with police. Most are regular Americans who think a war is bad for the country.
Um, because in a Democracy, the authority for the elected representatives stems from the will of the people? When the ‘elected’ representatives are wayward and dismissive of that will, the people protest – why on earth does this bother you? The puppets are too silly? Don’t like the protesters? You could always move to a dictatorship.
Or more sensibly, you could get off your whining and uninformed ass and organize your own counter-protest complete with “I loves my Bush” balloons.
I know “right on” posts are a fucking pain in the ass, but I simply could not let Munch go unrecognized for his brilliant one-line response.
Well done.
I’m betting that most peace protestors actually recognize that Saddam is dangerous and unreasonable… the difference is that they simply don’t think war is a preferable solution.
The only problem I had was in Times Square when I forgot about those fucking protests and went up there to buy some shoes. I was pretty ticked off at them for tying up one of the busiest areas in NYC for a few hours, I’ll admit that. The only major problem I had was with their stupid ill-informed signs, and the sense of general cluelessness they seemed to have about the situation. Most of them seemed to be there just to be there. It sort of reminded me of those stupid little rich kid WTO protesters, who know nothing of what they speak.
However don’t get me started on this war they are desperately trying to cram down our throats.
What!?.. Did you fall asleep in history class? This ain’t exactly a precedent setting operation, spiff. Hell, historically, we don’t even have to think it poses any danger at all. They just have to piss us off. Some of the countries we have attacked for reasons other than self defense are:
Tripoli, 1801, fought over US refusal to pay “tribute” for shipping lanes
The Barbary States, 1815, same as above
Cuba (fighting Spain) 1898, we didn’t agree with the way Cuba was being treated - so we invaded it.
Columbia/Panama, 1903, We wanted a canal - Columbia refused the offered treaty. We, um, “helped” Panama to secede so we could build our canal.
Cuba, 1908, restore order
Haiti, 1915, revolution threatened our interests and some foreign nationals. Invaded and more friendly government installed
Cuba, 1917, just can’t stay out of there
Haiti, 1918, puppet government installed in 1915 didn’t work out too well
Cuba, 1961, Bay of Pigs
Dominican Republic, 1965, US intervenes in civil war
Libya, 1981, 1986, 1989, Qaddaffi was the Saddam of the 80’s
And I won’t even mention the Indian Wars.
US military history has a lot more to it than WWII, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. I don’t want to see our boys die needlessly either, but America always sends 'em somewhere about every ten years or so. It’s what we do. This Iraq thing? Nothing new. I think Teddy Roosevelt would have approved.
It’s not only Americans and British people protesting, tell me how many Australians, Germans and all other non-American protesters voted in the U.S. in 2000. So, you can’t tell me it’s only because we elect and choose our leaders, and when they go wrong we protest them. Fine, protest Bush…please do…but make a stink about the other asshole in the picture as well.
So, I swear the only reasons that I read above that you came up with for not protesting Saddam is that everybody knows he is an asshole and he is an unreasonable individual…weak! Saddam thinks he’s doing a dandy job, and if 20 million people in the world held up a sign saying otherwise, he might think twice about continuing to believe that! Yes I said might.
Ace of Swords, I never said I loved Bush, but I have gone out during a Peace Rally with a ‘No’ Saddam (Saddam with circle and slash) banner and got dirty looks by most of the people there! So I guess I’ve already been off my whiny, uninformed ass already. :rolleyes: I’m not pro-war, but I refuse to blame the U.S. for everything before blaming our enemies equally.
Now if protesters don’t want a war, it seems like it would make sense to lay 1/2 of the blame on the guy who continues to violate the U.N. Security Council resolution which was put in place to avert the use of a pre-emptive strike. This was done at the request of members of the Congress who did not want Bush going alone after Iraq without a U.N. resolution. He’s (Saddam) the one defying it!
There were 100s of millions of protesters (if you ask the protesters to do the counting) out there this weekend. How would the leaders of Iraq, Iran, Al Qaeda and North Korea feel if 1/2 that energy was directed toward them? I guess it would have no effect according to you guys.
IMO the Bush Administration is doing many many things wrong in all of this…but it takes two to Tango…
Flame Away! Jeel
Jeel, I was protesting at the fact I don’t want warplanes landing in my neutral country, and the fact that my government are going to allow a flagrant abuse of our constitution regarding neutrality.
I also don’t want the world to rush to war unless all other possible avenues of disarming or removing Saddam have been exhausted.
You mean like the many “Against the war but not for Saddam” signs i saw while i was marching? I think somebody is talking about what he knows not. And last time i checked, Saddam wasn’t the one preparing to attack another country because we say so.
How does this logic work with us being upset with Saddam and telling him what to do? IT DOESN’T!!! We didn’t elect him, so by your logic we should shut up. Thanks for logically taking out your own side so we don’t have to.
Jeel – if I thought I could influence Saddam Hussein’s actions and policies by marching and waving a sign, I would. I can’t, and so I don’t. And I doubt that a few million protesters would have any more effect in Iraq than they would in PR China. Believe me – I would be much happier to have Saddam back down first.
OTOH, both Bush and Blair do have a certain amount of accountability to their respective voters, and in those cases where said voters feel disenfranchised it is their right in a democratic society to peaceably assemble to voice their views. Hence the march.
Actually, I didn’t bother with a sign – I just marched quietly along to register my general disagreement with current government thinking by my mere presence.
Actually, I agree with you Jeel. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the way you protest is as important as the act of protest itself. In other words, make sure that Saddam is all of his moronic self-infatuation can’t use your actions to support his regime.
Same thing goes for war: the way in which you go to war is as important as waging the war itself in determining the situation you will face in the post-conflict world. And GWB, being an incompetent idiot in my opinion, is going about this backasswards. In fact, if there was a blueprint for how not to start a conflict in the post-Cold War world, he’d be dead on.
What a mess.
OK, I’m going to try again.
jeel, the war as currently scheduled will come about solely due to the actions of the Bush administration. The only way a war will take place in Iraq in the next month is if Bush orders an invasion. Many people in this country think this is a very bad idea. Many people in other countries think this is a very bad idea. They don’t want the invasion to happen, so they are doing the only thing they can to try to stop it.
You can criticize this all you want, and tell them what they should also be upset about, but what’s the point? People who want to prevent a war don’t want to have a balanced, reasonable discussion of all the parties at fault, so that everyone gets blame assigned in the appropriate amounts. They want to prevent a war. Period.
jeel honey, what is stopping you from doing the very things you mentioned in the OP? Whay are you relying on others to do it?
Organize your own protest – no one is stopping you from doing it the way you want it to be done. That’s what is so great about this country.
Sorry, jeel, but from a marketing standpoint, the Beady-Eyed Osama Beanie Baby™ has been an unmitigated disaster.
At least in this country.
**Well I did not see a single such sign in all the news broadcasts that I watched or protests that I personally witnessed. BTW: Saddam may not be preparing to attack, but he has the ways and means of averting war by full compliance of the UN resolution!
It was not my logic! Someone else said above that they were protesting George Bush because he was an elected official of their government, and that protesting Saddam was futile…I was not fortifying that argument, on the contrary I was trying to make my point that those that did not vote for Blair or Bush SHOULD be protesting Saddam at the same time that they are protesting Blair and Bush and the U.S.
I understand that most people believe that Saddam and Osama and the likes, would not be effected by protests. But it frustrates me when the world blames the U.S. and U.S. foreign policy only during times of world conflict.
Yumanite…good point.
Beeblebrox
How many of those countries have turned out good in the end?
Even with nearly infinate power and money, America’s little experiments with deciding how other countries should be run shows that America downright sucks at picking out good foreign intervention campains. It seems like every time we install a government it just ends up on our war list a few year later. Why not cut out the intervening step?