Oh, and just because it looks like this one almost slipped through…
Fuck you too, sailor.
Then why haven’t many of the millions and millions of people opposed to the war brought suit against the gov’t for violating the UN charter and thus (as your arguments go) the US constitution?
If it’s the legal slamdunk you’re painting it as, they couldn’t lose, right?
This thread has long outlived its usefulness and is being kept alive by some who just want to protest their righteous indignation so that we all may know how good they are.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I love you too.
Aw, my favourite wild-and-furious-she-devil-with-menustration, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Do you think I can pick up university chicks if I go around chanting “International Law”?
“International Law”
“International Law”
“International Law”
“International Law”
Me thinks I’ll have them hornier than a bitch in heat quicker than you can say “Chumsky let me suck that one for you”
Now go change your knickers before you soak through.
- Rune
askeptic: well, since you have neither confirmed or denied reading the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article 6, here’s a link for your convenience:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Article 6, in full (applicable section bolded for your convenience):
“Article VI. - The United States
All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Now that you are familiar with the provisions of Article 6, perhaps you can enlighten me regarding your interpretation, which apparently means that the U.S. has no obligation to follow treaties into which it entered willingly.
You know, there are all sorts of arguments that legitimately could have been made for invading Iraq without the agreement of important U.S. allies, but “because we had no obligation whatsoever to listen to anyone else” isn’t one of them. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with the state of my knickers (by the way, Winston, over here the idiom is to get one’s panties in a bunch), and was also a major difference between Iraq and Kosovo.
I agree that the U.S. should obey international law because I believe that people and nations should keep their promises. If you want to make an argument that there was a conflict in this case between U.S. and international law, or that following international law would lead to the perpetuation of evil, I may or may not agree with you, but I can respect your position. But to argue that the obligation never existed is ludicrous.
sailor, I’d missed that, too. Do you mean to tell me that you think the cause of most of the Iraqi fighters against the US at this point is less immoral than the cause of the US?
My impression is that most of the Iraqi fighters are fighting either for a return to something similar to the Baathist regime, or for the establishment of a Wahabbist theocracy. As immoral as the US invasion was, either of these alternatives is going to be far worse.
The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, and in this case, it seems dangerously simplistic to argue otherwise.
Daniel
Oh but I agree, just as there are all sorts of intelligent arguments that could have been made for NOT invading Iraq that does not make you sound like a bunch of lawyers on speed. Which of course has has nothing to do with your knickers (I believe “panties in a bunch” is how you say “knickers in a twist” – but I’m neither English nor American, so there… and now I’m going to start a sentece with an “and”…) And I think you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere I’ve said anything like “because we had no obligation whatsoever to listen to anyone else”. You might have caught me saying something like “because we should not keep from doing what we think is correct, because other people think otherwise.”
- Rune
I may not be a lawyer on speed, but I am a paralegal on caffeine. Yes, I’m fond of laws, but that’s primarily because I believe most of the time, and in this case in particular, they merely codify the Right Thing to Do.
Correct; that’s what I meant. I know both versions of the idiom, but well, not everyone does, and I’m a language nut, and besides, a little levity makes the day brighter.
I know; my points were aimed primarily at askeptic and anyone else who agrees with him on this issue. That’s why I addressed him directly in the beginning. You were just a sideswipe. Sorry, but it’s not always all about you. 
My prior post:
Twit’s response:
QED
It seems to me that it is very common for people to discuss various groups of people without expressing opinions as to specific individuals.
-The insurance industry depends on the accuracy of their actuarial calculations. They may not “hope” my Aunt Tilly dies at age 76.2, but their financial well-being depends on a whole bunch of our Aunt Tillies dying when they are “supposed to.”
-Many folk (myself included at times) may say “all lawyers are whores,” something I would never say directly to the face of the lovely Mrs. Dinsdale, Esq.
-Medical procedures and vaccinations are approved and even required in some instances, despite proven mortality rates associated with them. Doesn’t mean the medical community and government entities hope my precious little Dinsy Jr. to die of a vaccination reaction, just so your little Susie won’t get the sniffles.
Yet when I discuss military casualties, for some reason I am specifically referring to everyone’s individual friend or family member. That did surprise me, as well as the vehemence of the reaction. Feel free to disbelieve me.
Face it. When someone chooses to become a member of the military, in many respects they agree to become essentially a very expensive bullet with a face (attribution unknown). They are one specific type of unit for exerting force within our military arsenal. Hopefully those in charge don’t waste their bullets. But the choice of when and how rapidly they are expended, is not the bullet’s to make.
And, IMO - but apparently not many others’ - various aspects of the manner in which military assets are used should be open for discussion. Each individual soldier is worthy of tremendous respect (until proven otherwise in individual cases.) But that does not mean that the manner in which troops are used and/or lost ought not be discussed. IMO, as precious as each individual serviceperson is, an individual soldier - either in the concrete or abstract - is not of infinite value, such that their health and well-being outweighs all military and social concerns.
Finally (for now) it seems to me that those folk who are hung up on the specific word choice in my OP, are largely the same folk who responded to criticism of the stated WMD basis for this Iraq war by parroting “x-words in the State of the Union address.” Yet, these folk ridiculed another president’s arguments based on a particular definition of specific words. A useful technique for obscuring issues and quelling meaningful debate.
Yet if someone in the insurance industry hopes out loud that old people start dying faster so that their bottom line improves, they’ll catch a lot of shit for it. You OUGHT to catch shit for saying that all lawyers are whores, and I’m astonished that your wife puts up with your calling her a whore. And medical procedures are approved despite proven mortality rates precisely BECAUSE they decrease overall mortality.
When you hope for deaths, you’re not hoping for something abstract, even though you think you are. There’s no such thing as an abstract death.
Yes, you are. Rather, you’re saying you’re all right with the death of their friend or family member. Say this in ten years, and you’ll be saying you’re all right with the death of your son.
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The difference between a bullet and a human is, please dear god tell me, clear to you.
I agree. Your OP came across as suggesting that troops ought to be killed in a manner that benefits a specific political party. Although discussion of how troops should be used is acceptable, that specific suggestion is hideous and loathsome. Later posts have made it sound as if you’re arguing something slightly different from that, something with which I strongly disagree but which is not nearly so horrifically misguided.
Daniel
Sounds suspiciously like a utilitarian argument - the type of which I thought my OP presented. Tho rephrasing your statement in the context of my OP I would have added (not substituted) broader societal concerns to the second “mortality.”
I’d like to correct a misstatement I made earlier. I said my OP was met with near universal hostility and ad hominems. I re-read that thread. Clearly, several of the initial responses were either neutral, sought clarification, or reasonably disagreed. I suppose that the fact that the GD thread was locked, combined with the tenor of this thread, caused me to misremember the nature of the brief original “debate.” Sorry.
I hope you did not mean this the way it reads.
The consequences of not having your children vaccinated against what were once common childhood illnesses goes far beyond “the sniffles”.
From a City of Philadelphia public health site:
“The last nationwide measles epidemic occurred from 1989 through 1991 when over 55,000 measles cases and roughly 135 deaths were reported in the United States, with over 1,700 cases and 9 deaths in Philadelphia…Complications of measles are more common among children less than five years and adults over 20 years of age, and include diarrhea, ear infections and pneumonia. Among the most serious complications of measles, encephalitis (acute swelling of the brain) occurs in 0.1% of cases with 15% of these cases resulting in death and 25% of post-measles encephalitis cases resulting in permanent brain damage. The overall death rate from measles is 1-2 per 1,000 cases. Pregnant women infected with measles experience relatively higher rates of miscarriage, premature labor, and low-birth-weight babies. Measles in persons whose immune systems are compromised by disease may result in more severe and longer periods of symptoms and infectiousness.”
And that’s just for measles.
Dinsdale, just for purposes of clarification, I do not think your comments have been worthy of banning/flagellation etc. And (relative to your latest comments), I hope that you and members of your family never experience a horrifically painful attack of shingles (another disease that can be prevented through childhood vaccination against chickenpox).
But man…having dug a hole for yourself…stop digging.
You were caused to misremember by the actions and tenor of others. So… What is it you’re sorry for? Being born?
While agree that Dinsdale should not be Banned (not that I have anything to say about it) but can he not be subject to flagellation? It seems fair.
Because the UN charter is not a self-executing treaty. It’s an agreement to pass legislation and restrict government action in a manner consistent with its wording, not a piece of legislation in and of itself.
Plus, individuals don’t have standing in international courts (only states do, and the list of cases they are prepared to fight on behalf of their own citizens is short) so those are right out.
The Federal Government is generally immune to suit in its own courts for this sort of thing, and none of the people who might have standing in a case like that can sue anyway; ie. troops and their families waive their right to sue for being deployed when they enlist, and nobody else can show harm to themselves.
Gee, Lib. I’ve been trying to express myself accurately and consistently here (tho not up to the standards of some) in the face of considerable hostility. Folks are choosing to flyspeck my posts, and obsess over individual wordchoice, rather than consider whether there might be a germ of debate-worthy substance anywhere therein. Within this context, I realized that I made a statement of fact that upon reconsideration I considered inaccurate, and I apologized for that. Strange that you find that concept so foreign…
Jack, surely you are not sufficiently obtuse to think the purpose of my vaccine example was to reference the dreaded anti-sniffle vaccine.
Askeptic - you might wanna be careful about urging flagellation –you might find I like it!
Meanwhile, with all this talk about stoning, who’s bogarting that joint?
And from my perspective, however deep a hole I may have dug, it is not yet deep enough to accommodate the volume of bullshit flung in my direction. 
It is clear that you are pretty bright, and you have some understanding of legal concepts, I am curious why you chose to ignore the legal princeples with which you are obviously familiar in order to support the inane arguments of a poster in another thread? (the one about international law)
Dinsdale:
I am. My friend. I still think you chose a poor way to make your point, and that you dug the hole deeper on your own. But you have gotten a ration of shit which I still don’t know whether you diserve or not.
The utilitarian argument your OP appeared to put forward was on its face hideous–namely, that a massive number of violent deaths of young people would be justified if it’d just get George Bush out of office.
It’s also a utilitarian argument that the violent rapes of plenty of underage prostitutes is justified if it gets the rocks off of one American businessman. The fact that such an argument is utilitarian has nothing to do with whether the argument is hideous.
You’ve clarified since then, I think, that it’s not George’ Bush’s defeat that’d justify the deaths of so many young people, so much as it’s the consequent avoidance of deaths of even more people. THAT is not a hideous argument; that’s simply an argument based on IMO a faulty premise.
However, your clarifications have not been very clear, and they’ve been mixed with some astonishingly crass mockery of people who got angry at your OP. At this point, I think you’d be best served by issuing a simple unadorned apology and letting the issue drop for now.
You might later try to make your utilitarian argument again, but this time, pay attention to phrasing it in a careful manner, not a manner intended to incite sensationalism. As it is, I think this attempt is too clouded by the horrible mistakes you made in the OP and in later posts to be discussed profitably.
Daniel
>> it’s not George’ Bush’s defeat that’d justify the deaths but the consequent avoidance of deaths of even more people.
I understood that was what he meant from reading post #1 but some people prefer to look for the chance to be offended whether it is by finding racism, anti-Americanism or any other reason. The look for thos opportunities and they found one here. Then no matter how much the poster explains himself they will not accept the explanation because that would mean having to renounce their offended feelings and righteous indignation which is what they enjoy. I’ve run into a few assholes like that who will pick on a word or phrase like a rabid dog and not let go no matter what you explain. A slip of the tongue or a poorly worded phrase will condemn you in their eyes forever and there is no redeeming yourself after that.
>> THAT is not a hideous argument; that’s simply an argument based on IMO a faulty premise.
Well, that was what the other thread was trying to propose for discussion but discussion was impossible after the rabid pit bulls sunk their teeth in the flesh of the thread.