Sorry, I’m kinda tired right now. Been a busy month. Could you elucidate?
FWIW, and I’m not sure that this is what you meant, I have no problem with helping other countries become democratic, building up their infrastructure and getting them self-supportive. Kinda like the quote attributed to Confucious (sp?) “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”
I would love to help make Iraq a self-governing, free state. Right now, Saddam Hussein is the only person allowed to run. anybody else who tries gets killed. Anybody who opposes him in any way gets killed. Anybody suspected of thinking of opposing him gets killed, along with his/her entire family. Hm…not exactly what I would call a healthy environment.
I do not want “client states”. I want free, self-governing, states where the citizens are allowed to determine their own fates, with government of law.
I believe in this so much that I’ve put my money where my mouth is. I’ve worn the uniform, both active and reservist, for sixteen years now. Both to protect our nation and to help free others.
Have you heard the Special Forces motto? (no, I am not nor ever have been SF.) It’s De Oppresso Liber, To Free the Oppressed.
Ah. Sorry, it’s been a very busy month, you can guess why.
I picked Wile E. Coyote, because he’s my hero. Not because he always fails, but because he never gives up. A handy trait when you’ve just marched 18 miles and have an ambush to set up, etc.
As for the quotes, hm. How about you try refuting them specifically? They seemed supportive to me, but then, I’m willing to believe the truth.
Do you know that a friend at church and I were talking about Bill Clinton and all of the allegations against him. I mentioned that woman (I can’t remember her name) who claimed that President Clinton had raped her. I mentioned that he’d admitted to perjury, a felony. I mentioned what he’d done to Paula Jones. And all of the other stuff. You know what she said?
She said that (a) he was too nice a guy to have done those things, and (b) even if he had, as long as he was pro-choice and wanted to tax the rich, he was alright in her book.
If we weren’t about to destroy him already, he would refrain because if he used them on us, we would destroy him, without hesitation. That is (or rather was) a pretty good reason for him to exercise restraint.
I may be against this war now, but if Saddam had used bio/chem weapons against the USA, or if he’d given them to someone who did, wiping Saddam’s regime from the face of the earth would be the minimum response I’d expect out of the U.S. as a great power.
Nothing wrong with Wile E. Coyote as a handle. In life, we’re all far more often in the role of the Coyote than the Roadrunner.
The stuff he buys to get the Roadrunner with, every last blowing-up-in-his-face bit of it, has the brand name “Acme”. So I was just making a joke based on the fact that someone calling himself “Wile E. Coyote” should never, ever, rely on any product of the Acme Corp.
Well, they just didn’t support your statement that Clinton sold nuclear missile technology to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions:
First of all, communications satellites aren’t nuclear missiles. Second, the key word is “allegations.” I can allege that you were involved in a threesome with Laura and Barbara Bush, but that wouldn’t make it so.
And I’ll be damned if I know what the other quote is supposed to show.
There’s people like this that drive us all nuts. But we can’t draw any legitimate conclusions by generalizing from them.
When Juanita Broadrick went public with her allegations in early 1999, what I wanted more than anything else was for the Democratic congressional leadership who had (rightly, IMO) defended Clinton against impeachment, to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and publicly ask him to resign. I still think it’s a shame they didn’t do that.
At any rate, that’s neither here nor there. The question is, what are the implications of Bush’s words the other night about the legitimacy of going to war to protect America, in the presence of only a potential threat? He could have couched his justification for this war in much narrower terms, but he used broad, sweeping language instead. Any thoughts on the implications of that language beyond Iraq?
There’s one problem with that position, RT. The same people who refuse to believe that he’s got WMD now would refuse to believe that he’d given them to whoever had used them against us.
I’m finally getting it through my thick skull that there’s no way to convince somebody of something that they refuse to believe, facts or no. I guess that’s why they wanted to kill Galileo, because his facts were contradictory to what people insisted on believing.
No you are not realizing that. Otherwise you would be noticing that the facts don’t actually support your positions. They support RTFirefly’s. When you get that through your thick skull, then you’ll be making some progress.
Mr Coyote, here’s a couple of excerpts from the article you quoted earlier.
The Straight Dope on this issue seems to be that China is trying to compete with the US for the commercial satellite launch business. They also want to make money by selling their rocket/missile technology to other countries, who may do less scrupulous things with any rockets/missiles they develop. Some security experts are freaked out because American interests who want to launch satellites are trying to help the Chinese improve the quality, safety, and reliability of their rockets. Now these higher quality, safer, and more reliable rockets may end up sold to, say, North Korea. All of a sudden they put two and two together and they have their own ICBM. The technology Clinton allowed to be exported to China was only dubious if you believe it was dual-use technology. The application they were putting it to use for was to launch satellites, not warheads, but it, theoretically, could be used for either. It seems a slippery slope. I guess they could use this technology to build ICBMs, and they have shown willingness to sell rocket/missile technology to other countries, which may just be dumb enough to actually build ICBMs with it. I’m still not quite sure how this equates to “the shithead [Clinton] sold nuclear missile technology to the Chinese for funds to get re-elected”. He allowed American customers to seek lower launch prices by those customers helping China tweak their satellite launch capabilities. That’s about it.
Oh, and lots of people give money to the DNC. The main payoff China was probably hoping for was continuation of “most favored nation” trade status during Clinton’s time in office. Also, you seem to have missed this quote at the end of your cite
Wile E. Coyote asks two fair questions. First, how did I happen to choose the name I use on these boards, and second, what would persuade me that the impending war with Iraq was a legitimate exercise of power by the United States? Let me try to deal with the questions in order, starting with the most frivolous.
As you recognize, a spavined gelding is a castrated male horse with an injury that makes the beast lame. Geldings are good only for work and a lame one isn’t good for much of anything except dog food, or in some countries presently out of favor with the present national administration and select juvenile members of Congress, as table food. Lame and impotent pretty well describes me–or at least my intellectual and political efforts. Whether I am a whole man is, as you must already know, none of your business. In here some place is, I hope, a clue that I do not take myself or these boards too seriously.
About what in my judgement would support an invasion of Iraq, recognize that these are my judgements and as considered and well informed as I might think them, others my find them lame and impotent. A vote by a majority of the Security Council, even with a French or Russian or Chinese veto, on a resolution that said that Iraq, meaning Saddam’s government, had defied the lawful demands of the international community that he voluntarily disarms and now the community was intent on doing it by force of arms would have taken care of my objections to this thing. Of course there was no vote, there was no veto, there was no showing of cards, because there was no majority of the Security Council willing to authorize the forcible pulling of Saddam’s fangs.
In terms of unilateral action by the United States, meaning action without an UN sanction, I would want to see a credible and present threat by Iraq against the United States or an ally. This may be begging the question since the underlying and more important question is just what would constitute a credible and present threat. The easy answer is nothing that has happened yet.
The present credible threat may be better illustrated than defined. It seems to me that the Seven Day War between Israel and Egypt and others in 1967(?), illustrates the existence of a P&C threat without an overt act of aggression justifying the Israeli preemptive attack. In our present situation I would want to see something that indicated Saddam was on the verge of committing a warlike action against the US, Israel, Turkey or even France. If nothing else, considering the rhetoric, I want something that a reasonably critical observer would take as showing that Saddam was on the verge of delivering nerve gas or anthrax to some outside group with ill will toward the US and/or its allies. I would want to see something that would persuade a critical observer that Saddam was harboring terrorist from groups with a history of attacks on the US and a refusal (in the mode of Afghanistan after 9/11) to deliver them over to the US on demand. I want something more that blatant speculation on flimsy evidence about what Saddam maybe could do sometime in the indefinite future if he ever develops the capability to do it.
I accept that Saddam has a store of chemical and biological agents somewhere. That, without something that would persuade a reasonably critical observer that there was a likely hood of use against the US and its friends just does not cut it. This would provide the basis for the international community as represented by the Security Council to decide to go to war–but the UN has rather pointedly made it clear that it is not ready to do that, yet. That is a decision for the UN to make, not the US. It is not for the US to go to war saying that the UN could have authorized a war so we are going even though the UN never did give the authorization.
Feel free to take it up with those people, Wile E..
Here, you can take a position and argue in support of it, or argue against the position someone else here is arguing in support of. But here, you can’t really argue against the position that some “they” out there take, because that’s effectively a straw man.
Ack. There’s several good points here that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten rather busy since last night. I will attempt to reply with something approaching coherence later this afternoon, if possible.
Hm…would it be a bad idea to climb into an “Acme” tank?
I am committed to peace, with the following clarification: In matters of aggression, America should only be concerned with defense and carefully-considered response to direct attack.
It wouldn’t take much to convince me that there is a credible threat. We are constantly faced with credible threats. I am faced with a credible threat of being run over by a truck every time I walk down the street to get a sandwich. That doesn’t mean I need to blow away everyone in the street with a machine gun on my way to Jack in the Box.
If I get mugged walking down the street, then I would consider it proper to defend myself.
The whole premise that we must disarm Iraq is wrong. Why not disarm India or Pakistan or Russia? They actually have nuclear bombs! Iraq is a sovereign nation. Until we are directly harmed by it, nothing gives us the right to determine what goes on inside someone else’s borders. Nothing gives us the right to unjustly rob a nation of its sovereignty.
Only if they actually attack us or our allies would I reluctantly stand by action against them.
“But they have actually attacked us, however indirectly, in the form of giving support to Al Qaeda”, you say.
Possible, although I am not convinced of it. I think it is wiser to give Iraq the benefit of the doubt (and it is a huge doubt, in world opinion) in favor of peace.
“But Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who harms his own people”, you say.
This much is unequivocally true, and extremely unfortunate. With enough persuasion, I could come to agree with action to remove him on these grounds. But only with the support of the rest of the world.
“But Saddam Hussein eventually will sell his WMDs to terrorist groups who will use them against us”, you say.
Perhaps. But we should never shed anyone’s blood based on conjecture.
“So you’re saying that we should wait for another full-scale terrorist attack on our soil before taking defensive action?”, you say.
Theoretically, yes. But not practically. You see, we have already declared war against terrorism in response to September 11. Did we preemptively strike Afghanistan’s Taliban prior to 9/11? No. Although it may have averted tragedy, to have done so would have been as wrong as today’s war against Iraq.
Although this is not the first time America has taken offensive action that might be considered “preemptive”, it is undoubtedly the most notable, the most specious, and the least popular worldwide. Maybe we will have averted some sort of conjectural Iraq-sponsored terrorist attack in the future. And maybe the people of Iraq will be, on the whole, better off without Saddam Hussein.
But it is bad for the world when we begin a war. We have now lost far more than we could ever win.
I’m not sure a rolleyes was appropriate Spavined Gelding. Wile E. Coyote has indicated that he may be called up to go overseas at pretty much any time. There may be dozens of reasons why he couldn’t come back to this thread aside from pretty much the only one which would deserve a rolleyes(cowardice and refusal to face criticism of his statements).
Although he and I have different takes on the war, I have seen no indication that he is arguing in bad faith. He seems genuine in his beliefs and he seems capable of that most critical quality in a debate, adjusting his position when new facts are introduced. We won’t know for sure until he comes back, of course, but I don’t think there is enough evidence to write him off with a :rolleyes:.
Enjoy,
Steven
[sub]Damn! I can’t figure out if this was a good use or a waste of post 1k[/sub]
I know Wile E. has many other posts to respond to but…
From what I’ve gathered, he used WOMD’s on the kurds which Saddam doesn’t view as his own people. Just because they happen to exist in his country doesn’t necessarily make them his people.
If I’m wrong here, someone please enlighten. I find these conversations interesting and informative for both sides as I really don’t have the time to go through the internet and find all these sites and references.
I agree with you, Steven - and I think it was a good use of your 1000th post. (Congrats, btw!) I suspect this is the first time our Coyote friend has had an opportunity to debate online, and he threw himself in real fast, before he really had a chance to pick up on what’s fair and what’s not in debate. I think he’s got a decent chance to learn. I guess we’ll find out if he returns here once his life settles down again.
