Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Just keep the people frightened, then you can rule them forever.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

These are standard warhead designs, currently in the inventories of most of the world's armies, very likely including Canada as well.

Interestingly in this context:
Canada allows "Phosphorous pentasulphide, (CAS 1314-80-3)" [in the cathegory of "Group 7 - Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-Proliferation List - Chemical Weapons Precursor Chemicals"] only to be exported to the USA.
Source Export Control List (Canada)

Well, that's quite funny in the context of this discussion. But as a moral point, I don't differentiate between the sellers of such weapons and the users of them.

Clear lines have to be drawn in how war is waged and in how prisoners are treated. Ought we to overturn the judgements post WW2 against German military and politicians? Ought we to allow whatever techniques of torture men's minds might imagine? Where we draw those lines may be a matter of valid disagreement but they must be there and where in violation, the steepest of penalties administered.

Do you not think that, outside of psychosis, those who forward or perpetrate serious crimes against humanity during war are convinced that they support a righteous cause and do what they do for some imagined good consequence? What if, for example, a Muslim youth is as convinced as some of you that his cause supports the general good, and that beheading is unpleasant but necessary to the war effort?

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blatham wrote:

What if, for example, a Muslim youth is as convinced as some of you that his cause supports the general good, and that beheading is unpleasant but necessary to the war effort?

It is evident that many of them do hold such beliefs. Similar things could be said about the brutality of the Russians, Germans, Japanese - and as well the Allies during WWII. I'm quite sure that the emerging new great powers will in turn demonstrate their own fidelity to these basic characteristics of humanity.

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blatham wrote:

Clear lines have to be drawn in how war is waged and in how prisoners are treated.

I think this sentence mixes up two issues that should be considered separate. I am with George on the first half: I'm sorry to sound frigid, but there just is no nice, gentle way of killing people in a war. You might as well call them with phosphorous bombs. You might be able to define fancy rules for the battlefield, but the effort would be moot: Wars happen only after rule enforcement has failed. Hence, whatever rules you want to define for the battlefield, I don't see any practical way to enforce them.

On the second half of the sentence, I agree with you, Blatham. The line of the Bush administration on prisoners of war is appalling: 'We don't torture, but it isn't torture to hold a man's face under water until he passes out, and nobody is going to find out anyway because we don't let our prisoners talk to UN inspectors.' And oh, by the way, it sets a precedent that will come back to bite you fifteen years from now, when India and China will have surpassed America won't as the most powerful nation on Earth.

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What can one say on these matters hasn't been said a million times before?

We'll each argue for some level of control over the brutality of our weapons and our soldiers. And personally, I toss out a prayer that the folks who design, market and use such weapons, and the folks who promote the redefinition of 'torture', all land in a Dantean hell where they personally get back what they originated.

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thomas

That the attempt to police what occurs in battle will never be completely satisfactory seems clearly no different than our attempts to limit rape and child murder. The fact that our control of behavior is not complete does not take us to the conclusion that we therefore say "Well, ok then. Go at it."

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As far as I remember those phosphorous bombs killed civilians.

Of course, it really doesn't matter how they were killed - perhaps only for friends and relatives. And since those are enemies as well - who cares.

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Walter and Blatham -- As you both know, I have been arguing since I joined this community that America had no business invading Iraq. Given that it had no such business, it goes without saying that the approximately 30,000 dead Iraqi civilians are victims of a pointless massacre that the American government lied its nation into, as well as 40 other nations.

But given that Mr.Bush and friends have lied the nation into a war just because they felt like fighting it anyway, given that they have turned Iraq into a playground for terrorists which it wasn't before, and given that the line between the general population and the insurgents is getting blurrier and blurrier -- given all that, it really is a red herring to be shocked that this crime is being executed with white phosphorous as opposed to, say, machine guns, or chainsaws, or whatever. The war itself is the crime here; the specific tools of the criminals are barely relevant in comparison at all.

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Thomas wrote:

But given that Mr.Bush and friends have lied the nation into a war just because they felt like fighting it anyway, given that they have turned Iraq into a playground for terrorists which it wasn't before, and given that the line between the general population and the insurgents is getting blurrier and blurrier -- given all that, it really is a red herring to be shocked that this crime is being executed with white phosphorous as opposed to, say, machine guns, or chainsaws, or whatever. The war itself is the crime here; the specific tools of the criminals are barely relevant in comparison at all.

I don't think they "lied us unto it" and I don't think their real motivationn was "they felt like fighting it anyway". It takes a while to suppress an insurgency and as well to beneficially alter the historical trajectoiry of a country living under oppression and bnrutality. As to the rest - it is early to make any real judgements. Compared to other like beneficial transitions, this one has neither succeeded nor failed yet. We shall see.

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I almost totally agree with Thomas, where we part is that the US of A keep selling a product on the soap-box of "high moral ground" whilst using "illegal" and some would say "immoral" methods, such as torture and generally regarded "banned" weaponry such as naplam. Yes this war is a crime but it is a crime with "apparently" complicating factors that should add to its' criminalness.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I don't think they "lied us unto it" and I don't think their real motivationn was "they felt like fighting it anyway".

I agree the two of us disagree on those two questions, but that is not the point I am arguing here. I am arguing a point that does not depend on whether the war in Iraq was just or not. But blatham and Walter had appeared to read my postas suggesting that I excuse what the US is doing in Iraq; so I found it necessary to emphasize that I don't.

But my point about the weapons used does not depend on that. If the war in Iraq is an unwarranted unilateral agression by the United States, as I think it is, the crime of fighting it with the wrong weapons is dwarfed by the crime of the war itself. If the war in Iraq is just, as you believe, George, then the US can use whatever legal means it thinks most efficient for winning it. That doesn't include Napalm, and it doesn't include outsourcing torture to countries with torturous governments. But it does include white phosphorous bombs, the weapon blatham had taken issue with in the post I responded to.

The specific use of weapons doesn't matter all that much to me, whether the war in Iraq was justified or not. That was my intended point.

dyslexia wrote:

I almost totally agree with Thomas, where we part is that the US of A keep selling a product on the soap-box of "high moral ground" whilst using "illegal" and some would say "immoral" methods, such as torture and generally regarded "banned" weaponry such as naplam.

I agree. That's why I said agree with the second half of Blatham's post.

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Thomas wrote:

Walter and Blatham -- As you both know, I have been arguing since I joined this community that America had no business invading Iraq. Given that it had no such business, it goes without saying that the approximately 30,000 dead Iraqi civilians are victims of a pointless massacre that the American government lied its nation into, as well as 40 other nations.

But given that Mr.Bush and friends have lied the nation into a war just because they felt like fighting it anyway, given that they have turned Iraq into a playground for terrorists which it wasn't before, and given that the line between the general population and the insurgents is getting blurrier and blurrier -- given all that, it really is a red herring to be shocked that this crime is being executed with white phosphorous as opposed to, say, machine guns, or chainsaws, or whatever. The war itself is the crime here; the specific tools of the criminals are barely relevant in comparison at all.

Well said, Thomas.

It is a crime, of that there is no doubt. Too many people are involved in the commission of it for this to be freely admitted as yet, but history will judge us harshly, and the Abu Graib pictures are there for all time to underline the nature of this.

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Quote:

But blatham and Walter had appeared to read my post as suggesting that I excuse what the US is doing in Iraq;

No, I understand your position on the US initiation and execution of the war and so I didn't read your thoughts as 'excusing'. But I did read them as something slightly akin...that you'd allowed room for arguments devoid of the moral component.

How does it lessen the moral dilemma of using weapons such as napalm or phosphorous simply because you are viewing the use of these weapons from a vantage during a war rather than before or after?

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But perhaps I ought to drop down the level of my moral concern and protest.

It is just that, as a secular humanist, I worry that the traditional moral codes that have bound us together in civilized and compassionate community are at real risk from sectarian and nationalist fervor.

wink

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blatham wrote:

It is just that, as a secular humanist, I worry that the traditional moral codes that have bound us together in civilized and compassionate community are at real risk from sectarian and nationalist fervor.

Yeah, you're such a spoil-sport. Sometimes it almost seems as if you don't want this war at all.

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War is good when most of the variables are controlled, we should have invaded Grenada again. It would have been a slam dunk. (probably would have been greeted as liberators)

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I thought President Bush's speech today was one of his best yet. He won't get credit for it in the media of course, but if he continues in this vein, he'll have it back on track in no time.

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Right, he took a day supposidly dedicated to the memory of those that served and turned it into a campaign stump speech patting himself on the back. Veterans day is not about him, he should have realized that.

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Good rendition of the party line being repeated almost verbatim by every Democrat who received the memo.

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exaxtly, the dems and the repubs DISHONORING the vets that serve. Bush in the spotlight, the leader of the nation taking front and center stage.

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Bush supporters' aftermath thread

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