OK, so arson is hunky-dory as long as the arsonist also proposes the rebuilding plan? That makes arson not a crime? That makes arson a good technique for urban renewal?! Really?
First you say that the U.N. is effectively endorsing Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but now you’re saying that they’ve been presented with a fait accompli which they have no choice but to go along with. Which is it?
Are you sure you want to keep resorting to this silly “logic?” Your arguments get goofier with each passing post.
By the way, a “virtuous citizen taking the law into his own hands,” by any other name, is a “vigilante.”
This is all rather thick . . . but it seems to say that the existing contracts (e.g., Halliburton’s), and existing Coalition policies regarding the oil, will remain in place and the Interim Government will merely take over some of the donkey work of collecting and disbursing the money, without having any authority to make any fundamental changes in the arrangements. Have I got that right?
I said no such thing. You want to call Bush actions a crime? Fine. But if your neighbour has committed what you believe is a crime and then you say, “Oh well, let’s make the best of it”, you acqiesce in that crime. UN doesn’t have to go along with Bush. They could move court to Timbuktu or Jalalabad and expel “criminal” US.
Basically, I see no difference between “endorsing” and “going along”.
At this point, New Iskander, UN has agreed that the US needs to turnover sovereignty to Iraq. And US should maintain responsibility for the security of Iraq. Not a change in their position at all. “Going along,” “endorsing,” or any other verb you want to use doesn’t mean that UN members have somehow come to believe in the legitimacy of the US action and have come to support US’ involvement.
As far as making no difference between “endorsing” and “going along,” hypothetically, if someone held a gun to your head and then demanded your money. Would you consider acquiescence to be an “endorsement” of the thug’s actions, or would you consider it “going along?” Or is the nuance still lost on you?
You are a babe in the woods. Did you in your most wistful of moments think that you could engage these sad robots into a serious discussion about the implications of the 15-0 UN vote?
Ha!
They care not for the good of the persecuted peoples of this world, they care only for their incompentency compensating egos and their biological hatred of George W Bush.
Your time would be better spent if you chopped down a pine tree and talked to its stump.
Milum, don’t post stuff in invisible text unless it’s spoilers in Cafe Society. If you have something to say, I am sure you can say it where we all can see it, hm? Invisible text will certainly not save you from a warning if it is mertited, so watch your step, invisible or no.
You must be the kind of person who always slams the door on the way out.
Oh well, someone has to clean up after you, and I’m sure the other lazy lefties won’t volunteer, so it’s up to me again.
Old bugaboo “vigilante” word. Lethal to anything good. We can’t have “vigilantism”. Well, no, actually we can have leftist “popular vigilantism”, but that’s all. We can’t have gov’t vigilantism. Too dangerous for the World. We can have gov’t by welfare burocrats sponging off the population in the developed countries. We can have murderous dictators terrorizing the population in underdeveloped coutries. We sometimes can have genocides even. But we can’t have gov’t vigilantism. We can’t challenge the World status quo. Too dangerous.
Well, it is turning out to be too dangerous, isn’t it? Toppling Hussein has done nothing to abate the terrorist threat – if anything, it’s gotten worse – and we have add more instability to an unstable region. Instability that, whether or not the U.S. pulls its troops out of Iraq this year, might lead in the near future, by any of a dozen different paths, to more wars within and/or between Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This is not dangerous?
Well, golly gee, New Isk, I had no idea that my political persuasion fostered all those dreadful things! Perhaps if we of the left stopped spending so much time gathering daffodils and hating freedom, we would have more time to sit at the feet of hard-headed realists, such as yourself. Taking notes, of course, and gasping in admiration.
But, a quibble. A small matter, really, trivial, but that’s the trouble with quibbles. Can you actually prove any of these otherwise extravagant claims? As you know, faith is in short supply these days, so if you’re not too busy?
I don’t think so. Nations were known to take much greater risks. Think of France declaring war on Hitler and starting WWII. Think of Chechnya challenging Russia. Besides doing too little is also very dangerous, as we learned on 9-11.
I remember that you advocated complete withdrawal from ME. I would support that too, as long as we are doing something decisive. However, I’m afraid it wouldn’t solve anything. There is much bigger aspect to our presence in ME than simply securing a portion of our domestic oil intake. For good or bad, we are the world policeman. If we withdraw, will it be better for the world or worse? We couldn’t stay away from previous world wars.
9-11 might have happened because the CIA and the FBI did too little, Iskander. It certainly did not happen because the State Department and the Defense Department did too little. There is no conceivable pre-emptive military action that the U.S. could have taken to eliminate Bin Laden’s power base of angry Muslims. If the U.S. had scrupulously kept its nose out of Middle Eastern affairs after Carter negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel, that might have prevented 9-11.
Then why are there no U.S. troops in Sudan?
Who appointed us? The world doesn’t want to be policed by the U.S. The Europeans don’t want it, the Japanese don’t want it, and the Middle Easterners (except for the Israelis) sure as hell don’t want it. What can justify this kind of unilateral imperialist thinking in this day and age? Besides, we’re not really suited to the role. As a society we’re too insular, too inward-looking and narrow-minded, to dominate the world beneficially. If the European Union were the global military hegemonic power, instead of the U.S. (and over the U.S.), that would be a vast improvement. But why does the world need any hegemonic power at all?
