[quote]entheogens wrote:
Now, given that, why don’t we go and liberate Sudan, for example? Try and sell that to the American public. You wouldn’t be able to. It has to be coupled with fears of terrorism, etc. It’s the only way they would support it.
[/quote]
You know, speaking of use of the military, I would have been in favor of using military power to force Myanmar to accept foreign aid – basically, shoot any government forces that try to stop you from delivering food and supplies.
If ever there was a reason to break the rules and use military force, that would have been it. Talk about standing behind your words with respect to caring about life, about human rights, and all the other stuff that generally gets a lot of hand-wringing.
“Everyone” should be qualified. You might mean Republicans (and not even all of those) and a sizable number of Democrats. A lot of people never supported that notion. How and why anyone would have believed the flimsy evidence (remember that embarassing presentation that Colin Powell did before the UN) would be beyond me if it were not for the psychology of the nation immediately post 9/11. In my opinion, anybody who believed it was either giving the President the benefit of the doubt, had their own political agenda, was swept up by the post 9-11 fervor/fear, or didn’t really believe it but did not have the balls to stand up and say so. At least that’s the way I see it.[/quote]
And this would be a wrong conclusion, based on information we have. The UN that you mention w/r/t Powell’s presentation is the same UN - technically the UNSC - that acknowledged a belief in Saddam’s WMD. 15 out of the 16 UNSC members condemned Saddam’s WMD and his relationship with international terror elements.
The “flimsy evidence” was good enough not only for Congress, including those well-meaning Democrats who were poor victims of those always convenient external impersonal forces that make people do what they don’t want to do, but also the UNSC (minus Syria).
This narrative - that in the grips of post-9/11 “fear” that the “rush” to war was caused by a combo of sinister forces manipulating the electorate and poor dupes who were victims of their surroundings - is romantic, unsupported by the information we have available, and unoriginal. It should be put to bed with the other therapeutic mythmaking of the antiwar crowd to better focus on what went right with Iraq and what went wrong.
WMDs were privileged above other reasons, and I don’t necessarily think that was a bad thing.
Dealt with elsewhere in this thread, but it has been dealt with more times than I can count in other threads.
Tell me, Entheogens - when you walk past a homeless person and want to give him some spare change, do you stop yourself on the basis that you can’t give spare change to other homeless persons?
Yet another myth of the antiwar Left - that because you act on one, you must therefore act on all, and since you can’t act on all, you shouldn’t act on one - needs to be retired.
It couldn’t possibly be a lie - why would you sell a war on an issue you knew was patently untrue, only to invade and make yourself look bad because the WMDs weren’t there?
And, if an administration is nefarious enough to concoct a deceitful reason to go in, what exactly stopped them from planting WMDs and continue the lie to win favor (and keep up the global imperialist crusade)?
I don’t have a problem with someone being against the war per se, but let’s face facts - many on the Left would be antiwar no matter what information was put in front of their face.
In the case of pre-emption (like Iraq), they will be against the war because we weren’t attacked and had no “just war” to wage. If we were attacked, many would say “this is blowback!” and in true left-wing fashion, condemn a war against the “real victims” that had to strike us to teach us a lesson.
I’d love to hear an antiwar stance condemning the Iraq war based on a comprehensive view of the available facts. There are plenty of good reasons to disagree with the war within the context of the facts - I remember Senator Jim Webb opposing it on the basis it was a waste of resources when we should be thinking about China.
A discussion like that would be great fun - instead, around here, all we get are rehashed, rewarmed Leftist mythology.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Tell me, Entheogens - when you walk past a homeless person and want to give him some spare change, do you stop yourself on the basis that you can’t give spare change to other homeless persons?
Yet another myth of the antiwar Left - that because you act on one, you must therefore act on all, and since you can’t act on all, you shouldn’t act on one - needs to be retired. [/quote]
The only thing that needs to be retired is this pathetic notion that the US is some benevolent samaritan that’s out to make the world a better place.
The only thing that needs to be retired is this pathetic notion that the US is some benevolent samaritan that’s out to make the world a better place.[/quote]
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job - who else would? The Arab League?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job [/quote]
The job of murdering innocents? Of destroying homes? Displacing people? Maiming children? Promoting militarization? Fostering terrorism? Turning countries into chaos? Invading sovereign countries?
[quote]lixy wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job
The job of murdering innocents? Of destroying homes? Displacing people? Maiming children? Promoting militarization? Fostering terrorism? Turning countries into chaos? Invading sovereign countries?
What job would that be?[/quote]
Unbelievable.
Your own religious doctrines produce these things. What an Orwellian universe you live in. It’s the Muslims that are doing the killing and maiming of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and every where else Islam is to be found. But of course, they’re not real Muslims, right?
[quote]lixy wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job
The job of murdering innocents? Of destroying homes? Displacing people? Maiming children? Promoting militarization? Fostering terrorism? Turning countries into chaos? Invading sovereign countries?
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job - who else would? The Arab League?
Arabs can’t play football (that’s soccer to the uninformed hehe) for shit… [/quote]
I am not into worshiping overpaid athletes, so I can’t recall the names right now, but I do know quite a bit of Arab players in the European league. In fact, Zidane (an Arab) regularly topped the list of polls on the best players.
And I have to mention Larbi Benbarek, a Moroccan player who was awarded the highest honor in FIFA, the Order of Merit.
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job - who else would? The Arab League?
Arabs can’t play football (that’s soccer to the uninformed hehe) for shit…
I am not into worshiping overpaid athletes, so I can’t recall the names right now, but I do know quite a bit of Arab players in the European league. In fact, Zidane (an Arab) regularly topped the list of polls on the best players.
And I have to mention Larbi Benbarek, a Moroccan player who was awarded the highest honor in FIFA, the Order of Merit.
[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
I’ll give you Zidane,yes(even though he grew up in ,and played for,France)…but name me one decent Arab club or national squad…
See?Can’t be done![/quote]
In that case, why limit yourself to football? You can extend the argument to every other sport.
The job of murdering innocents? Of destroying homes? Displacing people? Maiming children? Promoting militarization? Fostering terrorism? Turning countries into chaos? Invading sovereign countries?
What job would that be?[/quote]
The job of your blend of Islamists, progressists, 7th century barbarians in a 21st century world, radicals, and “the Arab street”.
The US, as stated, is far from perfect - but to measure appropriately, let’s have a reckoning of the balance sheets between the United States and the Muslim world (ethnicity aside) on the matters of promoting human rights, prosperity, etc.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Neuromancer wrote:
I’ll give you Zidane,yes(even though he grew up in ,and played for,France)…but name me one decent Arab club or national squad…
See?Can’t be done!
In that case, why limit yourself to football? You can extend the argument to every other sport.[/quote]
No,they have always had some pretty useful middle distance runners…
The US is far from perfect, but someone has to at least try to do the job - who else would? The Arab League?
Arabs can’t play football (that’s soccer to the uninformed hehe) for shit…
I am not into worshiping overpaid athletes, so I can’t recall the names right now, but I do know quite a bit of Arab players in the European league. In fact, Zidane (an Arab) regularly topped the list of polls on the best players.
And I have to mention Larbi Benbarek, a Moroccan player who was awarded the highest honor in FIFA, the Order of Merit.
I’ll give you Zidane,yes(even though he grew up in ,and played for,France)…but name me one decent Arab club or national squad…
See?Can’t be done![/quote]
Zidane’s a Berber. They don’t identify as Arabs or particularly like Arabs.