If he could kick ass in a debate, I say sure. Why not?
Well, we could threaten to play the Taiwan card. A couple of Taiwan cards, actually.
One card, of course, would be our recognition of Taiwan. That, in and of itself, would be a pretty serious slap at China.
But even more significantly, we could threaten to arm Taiwan with nukes as a regional counterbalance to NK. (And as a poison pill that would pretty much shut the door on Chinese hopes of grabbing Taiwan sometime when we’re not looking.)
One wouldn’t want to play the cards publicly, except as a last resort. You’d want to allow China to claim that they were pressuring NK out of their own self-interest, without getting specific.
That’s just one thing we could try; I can think of others, and I’m sure the people who do this sort of thinking for a living can think of things that I can’t think of.
But since we haven’t tried, we aren’t going to find out what might could have been done. It’s just going to go undone, and every day it gets more likely that NK will have operational nukes.
And there’s a big difference between Saddam who was, for the most part, crazy like a fox, and Kim Jong Il, who’s just plain crazy. I’m a lot more scared of ‘just plain crazy’, thank you.
It’s an obvious and easy slip. Like I said I’m just anal-compulsive about that stuff and can’t help correcting people. 
“This particular catfight” was not referring at all to your comments on French history, or even that post, nor even specifically to you, but rather this entire thread taken as a whole. Another he said/she said bickering match between “pro-war” and “anti-war” posters shouting past each other and repeating a thousand minor iterations of the same arguments over and over and over. It’s boring, tedious crap and I can easily pick out a dozen or more ( probably a lot more ) threads in the past several days, all ostensibly with different OP’s, that all seem to converge on the same thing. It’s like trying to post on politics during an election cycle and inevitably being dragged into partisan bickering.
Now that’s not necessarily intended as a put-down of any of the posters involved here. I know a lot of people are strongly engaged on this topic and feel the need to articulate their positions. However, I’m only intermittently one of them. As with many long-running arguments here on the SDMB ( race, Islam, Israel, etc. ) after awhile I get frustrated and try to limit my involvement just a bit so I don’t start acting cranky and blow my carefully cultivated image as being Mr. Amiable :p. Besides, my crap is just as boring and tedious. My comment was only intended to indicate that I had no interest in getting involved in the meat of this particular discussion and going ten rounds trying to clarify, say, just what I meant by that one half-sentence fragment from 4 pages ago.
Of course, tomorrow I’ll probably jump feet-first into one of these endless donnybrooks, because that’s the power of the SDMB addiction.
However since you asked, I’ll provide a critique ( which should be taken as a formal adjudication between you and OliverH, but rather just MHO ).
Okay, one political comment ( told you it was an addiction ). I agree with the above - Both performed poorly. The Bush failure is far more egregious and substantive IMO, but that is situational ( he had a taller order to begin with ).
Now then…
Okay, first of all, while I’m not a slave to PC, there is a bit of value judgement carried in the phrase “Gallic arrogance”, which is perhaps better-suited to private conversations with friends than anonymous message boards. It’s the sort of things that gets people’s panties in a twist and it can kinda obviate the “this is not French bashing” disclaimer. Afterall, one could also call it “Gallic assertiveness and independance” as well. By comparison see how many folks start getting frothy if you use a phrase like “typical American cowboyism” :D.
As it happens I understand what you’re getting at and I agree that one can say that there are such things as cultural tendencies in character and in fact I’d probably happen to agree with the observation that no two nations are probably more alike than the United States and France when it comes to prideful declarations of jingoism.
However I wouldn’t oversell that point either.
I’d halfway agree, but I think this is an oversimplification and perhaps a bit dated. Go back to pre-WW II and you’d probably have a better argument ( and so would the French, not surprisingly ). I think ( and note that I’m neither French, nor have lived there, so take MHO as you will ) that a better statement would that they now consider themselves less the heart, than single most important player in Continental Europe. And in part they’re correct, at least until very recently, with united Germany now very nearly as important. However, I’d agree that the French government pushes it a bit too far in these new days of the EU - Chirac’s ( a raging jingoist if ever there was one ) idiotic comments to the East European states being a case in point.
This is a worse and much less accurate oversimplification and if you made any serious error it is here. Not that you can’t drag up a long list of French blunders and defeats, as you have below. But it sort of ignores the fact that France kept marching right through all of them up until 1940 as one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations ( often THE most wealthiest and powerful nations ) in Continental Europe ( and become the 2nd largest colonial power in the modern era ). One can’t reach that status by not being ‘terribly successful’. In point of fact from the Thirty Years War on, despite the very numerous blips, France has been outstandingly successful by most objective measures.
'course there are number of reasons for this - Ever play EU II? Hard to lose as France ;).
A little overstated, but close enough. It also recovered pretty well, for all of that.
Well, not just Wellington. Nor just Wellington and Blucher. I think it is over facile in this case to even reduce it to generals at all. But essentially, I agree.
Correct. OliverH’s nitpick is technically correct, but really it was Prussia that did the heavy-lifting. Prussia would have won it alone.
True, but immaterial. It bled every European participant white, Germany and Russia worst of all.
No particular argument with that.
That had nothing to do with anything, really. France remained the world’s 2nd largest colonial power, was still among the “advanced” nations in the world, owing to the nature of the campaigning she was still substantially intact, and was a part of the winning team. As their quick development ( easily predicted ) of atomic weaponry showed, they were expected to quickly play a dominant role again. With Germany divided, they were easily the major power of western Europe with Britain.
Not me. But while they needed the biggest boost, none of the above ( possibly excepting the U.S. ) would have survived without the others.
coughIndochinacough
Oops, sorry :D.
Anyway, no you’re incorrect - None of the European powers were immediately interested in giving up their colonial systems at the end of the war. Not France, not Britain, not Belgium, not the Dutch ( who did initially try the EXACT same thing in Indonesia the French did in Indochina and like them ultimately failed - the only difference being they had fewer resources and realized the futility of their position much earlier ), not the Portuguese - nobody. In fact the Portuguese were the last to let go in Africa ( in the 1970’s ).
Agreed.
- Tamerlane
Correction - I meant to say the above SHOULD NOT be taken as an adjudication between Weirdave and OliverH.
- Tamerlane
World Eater:
“Well, I think fantasy resolutions are all well and good, but I don’t think they would have put that forward if there was an actual chance of us accepting it. Too bad we didn’t take them up on it, because I’m pretty damn sure they would have wiggled out of it. You see it was a nice effort on paper, but in practicality it wouldn’t have worked, and we would have ended up in the same spot 60 days later. Of course in that time, someone would have come up with another plan for 60 more days, because SH just allowed an additional inspector in the country, and inspections are working and such.”
Well the truth is we’ll never know. But all that you do in the above is assume that a compromise wouldn’t have worked anyway. How can you be so sure? I suspect that the French were sincere in offering that compromise, b/c I think they genuinely wanted to curb US unilateralism–not to force it. I don’t think they were happy with the result that they got.
“Most of this goes on Saddam’s shoulders. He should have gone into exile, he should have disarmed, he should have never tried to acquire the fucking weapons. Every single fucking day he had a chance to go on the level, and every single fucking day he passed that opportunity by.”
I don’t like Saddam Hussein either. But he is not the President of the United States. Not only that, anyone who thought he would go into voluntary exile was dreaming: he is, to put it mildly, a crash-and-burn kinda guy.
I’m sorry, but I expect a lot more from my president than Bush delivered. That Saddam is a lot worse is small comfort to me.
“Do you honestly believe that 60 additional days would have made a difference?”
Yes I do. And for the reasons I stated above. It would have established the US as more genuinely committed to multilateral as opposed to neo-imperial approaches to international relations. That has been and remains the key issue for me. As it stands, this country has turned its back on the last 60 years of its history. I truly regret that. Sixty days would have been nothing as compared to the all but irrecoverable loss of what has been best in our history.
**Tee **:
“The 30-60 days might have cancelled our actions, because timing is an issue.”
Timing was an issue for war this spring. But Iraq wasn’t going away. Again, I’m well aware that Bush didn’t want to back down the small bit that he’d have to make that compromise work. I simply don’t respect him for that.
“I agree with Weirddave in thinking France didn’t realize that we were that serious.”
Well I make no claim to reading France’s mind: but I do think if that they didn’t realize how serious Bush was, they were very dumb. In fact, I think it’s much more likely that they thought they could get to Bush through Blair than by hoping to persuade Bush directly. Again–the man just could care less what the rest of the world thinks of him. How else do you explain a president who allows his Secretary of Defense to call longstanding allies “Old Europe”? On the other side of the Atlantic, that is an astonishing faux pas.
“But for the US [regime change] is a relevant issue. France didn’t have to deal with the hostile acts, the warmongering of SH, they are not as responsible for the security of the region, and the global effort to combat terrorism, they do not have the INC in residence lobbying the government (I don’t think), they do not have a steady trickle of Iraqi nationals in residence voicing the atrocities of the regime (apparently.)”
I’m sorry Tee, but this reasoning seems to weak to me. Do you really believe that the Bush adminstration takes its cue from the INC? The EU should be just as responsible for the security of the region as the US. And the UN or, at the very least NATO, is the appropriate institution through which to execute that responsibility. Beyond that you simply have the US exercising more dominance than is welcome by anyone else on the globe: from the Canadians to the Angolans to the Egyptians to the Germans.
“For me it’s an easy choice: we’ve gone up against the UN on Iraq before, with the UK, and we’ve chosen to act in our own interests. We settle differences later. That there would be a UN role in post-war Iraq was never in question, I don’t think, because I’ve been reading that all along.”
Well for me that choice is nothing less than catastrophic. A reversion to a kind of imperialism not seen since the turn of twentieth century. And you see how good Bush is at settling differences; have you read what kind of role he plans to relegate the UN to–against Blair’s wishes, I might add?
Getting back to the OP, how’s the search for WMD going?
:::shrugs::: Sure, a UN-led role in Iraq is a great idea, if that’s what the INC, the Kurds, the general citizens want…if they don’t want that, then I’m against it. Simple. My impression is that the UN is not viewed favorably by Iraqis at this particular time.
I have a feeling the US will lead, the UN will have primarily a humanitarian role, and we’ll be getting out of there in the time frame that’s already been mentioned. That’s fine with me too.
“Old Europe.” It’s one of those things…for every person outraged, one will silently applaud. Guess which one I was.
Well I’m sure there are a few people at Blockbuster that could, but I prefer we leave the expert stuff to, you know, experts.
They’re going to try looking in Syria next. Maybe the light’s better over there.
How can I be so sure? Well for starters I have 12 years of proof that the current course of action wasn’t very effective, what do you have? You suspect this? You think this? Cmon, that’s not going to cut it.
**
Yes well he certainly crashed and burned. Do you think the fact that he couldn’t step aside and save thousands of innocent lives makes him more or less of an asshole?
**
Bush dropped a ball that Saddam started rolling.
**
Well 60 days could have possibly been used against us to stonewall and push us further away, did you think of that?
The reality though, is 60 days later we would have been in the same exact place. The need to put our foot down and say enough would still be there, those who oppose the war still would, and those for nuking SH would still be for that. I don’t think everything would be rosy and people would holding hands and singing Kumbiya as seem you to believe.
I don’t think everything would be rosy and people would holding hands and singing Kumbiya as seem you to believe.
What the fuck am I Yoda?
You hopefully get the gist. 
I don’t think everything would be rosy and people would holding hands and singing Kumbiya as seem you to believe.
What the fuck, am I Yoda?
You hopefully get the gist.
MOst definately disagree unless you mean just specifically “there would have been an invasion of Iraq”. The major difference would be (and now can never be), that other nations who’d expressed serious misgivings about the US/Brit position, believing that the action was premature etc, would have been able to see that invasion was used as a last resort.
(aside to RTFirefly that was cold, man. Accurate, but cold )
My last thought on this silly side debate, but I can’t say that all experts have degrees. Nor, again are all those with degrees truly experts. World Eater, you should always make sure people know their stuff independently of having a degree. I pray that you select your medical professionals based on more than their letters. But good luck to you.
I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know I do in fact check more then letters, but I sure as hell don’t go Blockbuster to get a check-up.
There is no doubt in my mind that we will “find” WMD. Whether its there now or not, we will certainly “find” it.
This just in ->Underground Nuke Facility Found
Please return to your regularly scheduled programming until more info comes in.
Foxnews seems to be down.
WE from the article: (not the whole thing since i don’t want to get in trouble)
Sounds like it is a storage place for nuclear waste. But where did the waste come from?
BTW, since an embedded reporter is involved ( Carl Prine, embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division), you are not allowed to look for different sources on if this is true according to Weirddave, or you are an asswipe :rolleyes: