The US, UN & Iraq II

Kara,

Blair may have triumphed in the House of Commons yesterday, but he's loosing the battle for hearts and minds on the streets. (With children anyway)

from the BBC

Around the country, children were abandoning lessons to campaign against military action, with 20 pupils facing suspension from Cape Cornwall School in St Just, Cornwall, for walking to Penzance on Tuesday.

Ella Jones, Oliver Savidge and Charles Sime, all aged 14, said they had asked for their parents' permission to join around 100 pupils from Pimlico School.

"It is just Tony Blair and George Bush against the rest of the world. None of the public want this, Mr Blair is acting against our will.

"We are a peaceful movement. We are not here to cause a riot, but we don't think children are listened to."

Oliver said: "We got our parents permission to be here, but some people have walked out.

"We think it is right we have our say. Kids have rights as much as adults."

Police in Leicester have suggested they will set up extra patrols outside schools to stop pupils playing truant.




I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds this very funny.

Steve

On the eve of the next installment that American soldiers will make to protect the rights of those on this forum and worldwide to protest against and insult the traditions and honor of this great country, I present this masterpiece of understatement.


Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a
British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a
proprietor of many newspapers, including the Telegraph of London
and the Sun-Times of Chicago. In a recent London speech to the
Centre for Policy Studies, he noted that the United States, far
from being the "trigger-happy, hip-shooting country" of European
caricature, scarcely responded to the killing of dozens of U.S.
servicemen at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and on the USS
Cole in Yemen. "And when two of its embassies in Africa were
virtually destroyed, President Clinton's response consisted of
rearranging some rocks in Afghanistan and blowing the roof off a
Sudanese aspirin factory in the middle of the night."

Yet it is presumably to counter America's insatiable appetite for
using its military that the idea has arisen that America should
submit to plans to "collegialize" its power. The idea is that any
use, even after successive acts of war against America, requires
the permission of France, Russia and China, which have not sought
U.N. blessings for their respective military interventions to
discipline Ivory Coast, to grind the Chechens into submission and
to suffocate Tibet.

NATO's 16 European members have chosen to spend on their defense
a combined sum one-third less than the United States spends, and
they have used their spending so fecklessly that it buys only
about 10 percent of U.S. military capability. In an episode of
what Black calls "the Ruritanian posturing of the French,"
President Jacques Chirac claimed that the European Rapid Reactio
n Force would "project European power throughout the world."
Black notes that the force, a mere reallocation of forces from N
ATO, is "almost totally dependent on American airlift capacity,
and is essentially a parade ground force to travel about Europe,
marching down the main avenues of the capitals on their national
days."

So Black is bemused by the moral calculus that produces the
conclusion that the United States is morally obligated to use its
military might only at the behest of, or with the permission of,
nations that do not wish it well. These are nations that "do not
share America's values, and that affect neutrality between a
wronged America, a Gulf War coalition betrayed, and affronted
international law on the one side, and the evil of Saddam Hussein
on the other."

America has had "the most successful foreign policy of any major
country" not just because of its strength but because "it has
never had any objective except not to be threatened and when
threatened, to remove the threat." And it "does not believe in
durable coexistence with a mortal threat."

Black says that three of the greatest strategic errors of modern
times -- Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917,
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the Soviet refusal of postwar
U.S. aid in exchange for liberality in Eastern Europe -- involved
underestimating the dangers of provoking America. Khalid Sheik
Mohammed, one of the authors of the fourth great error, the Sept.
11 attacks, may have belatedly understood that danger when,
before dawn Saturday, he stood in his underwear, facing the drawn
guns of the men who told him America would like to ask him some
questions."
--George F. Will

"...American soldiers will make to protect the rights..."

Just to reiterate and clarify -- in no way are they protecting my rights.

There is a lot of truth to the George Will piece which perception posted above. America is slow, perhaps too slow, to anger. When aroused, she is terrible, perhaps too terrible, to contemplate. It is an incontravertable fact that America is like no other country which has ever existed, however comforting it may be to draw parallels or analogies from history.
The Old Rules do not work well in this New Game. The rules need be, and are being, rethought. The Political Picture of the Twentieth Century is not The Political Picture of The Twenty First Century. What the new picture may be is yet unknown; it is still developing.
Of one thing we can be certain. That is that a third-rate tinhorn dictator has managed to whipsaw the world into this mess ... something which could not have been accomplished without the complicity of The Whole World. While the approaches to the issue may differ, the blame and guilt are relatively equally spread among the major players. There isn't much innocence involved here at all.

You see what you and others fail to recognize is that your rights can vanish overnight.

This type of claptrap may make it easier to feel superior, but it is simply not true. Once again we see the intellectual laziness which accompanies any weak argument.

The only people who may actually care little or not at all for the lives of innocent Iraqis are Saddam and his crew.

claptrap is running over the banks on both sides of the levee

tw

Even that's a point of view from site which you look on it.

Tartarin said in part:



That is my opinion, too. Our country's troops that President Bush is sending to attack Iraq are in no way defending my freedom.

Tartarin wrote:

"American soldiers will make to protect the rights..."

"Just to reiterate and clarify -- in no way are they protecting my rights".

I simply cannot allow this statement to go unchallenged----The person who made this statement has allowed her hatred of this admininstration and current American foreign policy to cloud her mind to such an extent that the above statement appears delusional to anyone who reads it. The premise being that freedom of speech is a birthright of anyone born in this or any other free country. The truth is that freedom was purchased with the blood of soldiers and other patriots and regular installments must be made such as World War I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Afghanistan, and now Gulf War II.

This is not a law of warmongers, or those of us who abhor war but realize it's inevitability, this is the law of human nature. The human nature that spawns and fosters the rise of monsters to positions of power in some unfortunate countries. Most often these monsters are nurtured by false ideologies such as Marxism(Stalin),(Mao), (Ho Chi Minh),( The Kim dynasty in NK), Fascism (Hitler)---religious ideologies such as (Emperor Hirohito), the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the oppresive regime in Iran, but in some instances these monsters are the products of psychological defects as in the case of Saddam. His insatiable drive for power over other people was fueled by his cunning realization that in todays world whoever controls the ever decreasing supply of fossil fuel (oil and natural gas) controls the world. Had he not made several fatal errors in judgement he would have already realized that dream. He would by now possess several nuclear weapons with which he would have blackmailed the world into allowing him to seize control of the all the oil in Saudi Arabia. He would have pushed Israel into the sea as all Muslims see as the ultimate victory. Saddam would now be immortalized in the Muslim world and in History. Thank the almighty that he is mentally unbalanced and he only studied Stalins tactics instead of Sun Tzu( the greatest student and architect of the art of war) and his lack of knowledge caused him to make some very foolish decisions.

Again we can be thankful that some men who recognized all of what I have just said can and have advised a president who has the ability to visualize the dangers that we have accidentally avoided and who is willing to pursue a policy which will correct the past shortsightedness.

Have a look at reality forum participants.

the only reality i see on this forum is the polarization of the participants in both directions

Our rights started to disappear on 9/12/01 and have been under siege ever since. It isn't just Ashcroft who is to blame, but every American who lets it happen.

Yeah, we're no different than the rest of the world in our division over this. I expect neither camp will achieve total vindication, and I expect the division to remain for a long, long while, even if the focus of that division changes. It is absurd that so insignificant a popinjay dictator as Saddam Hussein became the most influential man on the planet. That it happened is clear evidence we all have much to learn yet. Time and energy would be better spent on working jointly to a solution than by the current practice of staunchly promoting exclusionary partisanship. That joint effort appears at best unlikely.

Let me restate my point then. I know of no person who cares nothing for the lives of innocent Iraqis, nor do I think you can offer me evidence that you know of anyone outside the Iraqi leadership who feels that way.

I happen to recognize the difference between not caring if someone dies, and recognizing that it is a regrettable risk forced upon us by the choices Saddam has made.

perception



Have a look at reality, especially when quoting history (e.g., when you start counting all the wars, the US was involved, then please all!). And don't insult an US-ally like Emperor Hirohito as monster - that could weaken your "chain of proves"!

Tres, I don't know whether it's happened in A2K, but I've certainly heard and read those who don't give a hoot (to put it kindly) about Iraqis. They seem quite proud of their opinion that might makes right.

Perception

We have European DEFENCE forces. The problem is you spell it DEFENSE, which means ATTACK.

tw

I surely have another view of what is a "regrettable risk". And I still think, Saddam didn't get his weapons from 'nothing' but sold by ... . Since this has been discussed x.-times, I don't want to start again.


As a historian, however, I know that wars are looked at specifically twice: once at the beginning and then ... later.

I do hope, we all will have years later still the feeling that our leaders were acting with grave responsibility before God, their conscience and before history.

Besides polarization I see hypocracy at it's ugly worst. I witnessed several who profess contempt for all soldiers, make attempts to salve their consciences by wishing the safe return of some of our soldiers.

Many of you have already made known your desires for my country to fail in this military action and now you wish to deepen the wounds already inflicted, with your hypocracy.

This country is too strong to be destroyed from without but students of Marx believe the path to our destruction is from within and are intent on pursuit of that goal. Yes I want to be one those voices that worry Krugman, that vociferous advocate of anarchy; I want to drown out those who advocate the inward decay of our country and institutions by negative actions instead of positive proposals for meaningful change.