Good post. And no, you never will get an answer to many of the points you bring up, or rather, have brought up many times before. For them to reply would mean exposing the fallacies of their weak arguments. Cheers.
These paragraphs are the closest thing that I can find in your post to a response to my question. I have done extensive reading and research on the subjects, and I believe that many of your presumptions are unfounded - such as the idea that "we" put Saddam "there." Most, by far, of Saddam's military and political support came from the Soviet Union over the course of the '70s and '80s. Most of the rest has come from the oil wealth that a perhaps exaggerated respect for certain notions of national sovereignty have forced us to allow him to collect. But even if your point has some validity in one or another respect, it does not amount to an argument against removing him and his regime - if we considered them to be a threat. As others have pointed out, it would only increase our moral responsibility to act: We would owe it to the Iraqi people and to the world to remove him. In passing, I feel I should state my strong disagreement with your statement that things in Afghanistan are worse now than they were before - either from our own narrow perspective regarding the security threat posed by Al Qaeda or from the perspective of the Afghan people. It is hard for me to imagine a regime much worse than the Taliban/Al Qaeda. Iraq, like North Korea, is certainly a candidate for that distinction, however. I find it even more difficult to imagine a much worse regime than Hussein's - and your notion that he's "done some good" for the Iraqis strikes me as rather profoundly frivolous or ill-informed. It's rather a lot like saying that a sadist who feeds his victims and treats their wounds in order to keep them alive for more torment has done then some good. So, back to the main point, you seem to agree that "blood-thirsty... embodiments of evil" should not be ignored, and your apparent proposal - finally a proposal! - is to give $250 billion to the "Iraqi people." I suppose we would send it in cash? Greenbacks or maybe Euros? Do the exiles get it, too? Details, details... Okay, there are 24,000,000 Iraqis. Under your plan, they each get a bit more than $10,000. I admit, this would be an, um, unusual step. First, it's worth noting that Iraq sits on potential oil wealth far in excess of this amount, but that it hasn't found its way to the Iraqi people - instead, much of it has been spent on Saddam's security forces and their installations, wasted on Saddam-glorifying public works, or has ended up in the personal accounts of Saddam and the rest. Iraq should be (and as a result of our intervention probably some day will be) one of the wealthiest nations in the Middle East - wealthy not just in dollar terms, but in terms of the welfare of its populace. Now, under your proposal, why would the suddenly moderately well-to-do Iraqis get rid of Saddam? His brilliant policies have just given his entire country a massive windfall. Indeed, they'd have good reason to add gold leaf to all of those thousands of Saddam portraits that appear on seemingly every street in Iraq. As for Saddam and his followers, what might we suspect they would do with their own shares - not to mention the shares they taxed, stole, or accepted as "gifts" from the populace? Um... I'm thinking that a large, well-armed organization whose members have devoted their lives (not to mention, the lives of millions of victims) to an aggressive form of Arab fascism may not see much reason to change their minds after receiving a massive reward (or ransom or bribe) from America. I'm thinking that giving $250 billion to a "bloodthirsty embodiment of evil" may not be particularly wise. Got any other proposals?
Ah yes! This will definitely work! ROFLMAO! trader556, with this one sentence you have encapsulated how truly ignorant and naive you are. Either that, or you're completely insane. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO MY COUNTRY?!?
KymarFye: The rest of Pinter's commentary is just rhetoric all derived from the same "style" of historical analysis, suffused with presumptions of certain knowledge and moral superiority, yet offering nothing even remotely resembling a practical or effective method of dealing with the world situation. KymarFye´s's commentaries are just hollow rhetoric all derived from the same "style" of "historical analysis", suffused with presumptions of certain knowledge and moral superiority, yet offering nothing even remotely resembling a practical or effective method of dealing with the world situation, brought about by mssrs. Perle, Wolfowitz, Kagan & al. stop this war and go home
I agree with this post, I am totally opposed to the war, it is imperialism. The American people, IMO, will deal with Bush and his policies next year. But right now, we are in a fight, and we must fight and win.
Your overall argument simply confirms my suspicion that the response from those who stand in opposition to the war, are not really arguing about Iraq, or the USA's efforts there in this particular case. It is a knee jerk response by people who already hate us for things done in the past! That is the problem that many people have. They are so fixated on past hurts, that they lack the ability to function in present and real time. They are damaged psychologically. Reminds me of unhealthy personal relationships, where people carry baggage from the past into the present, and that baggage keeps them from dealing in real time, finding real time solutions. A classic example of this kind of passive aggressive behavior is seen in many marriages, when the husband tries to deal with the anger of his wife that he thinks is related to a specific event in the present, when in fact the wife is angry about a series of events in the past that she has been harboring, or anger she carries from her first marriage, and unloads all of her hurt and venom on something as silly as taking out the garbage. So the world is carrying much frustration from the past about the USA and othe powerless situations, and this is influencing their decision making right now. Instead of truly analyzing this particular situation, in the light of common sense, based on the facts of this case, they are already of a mindset to side against the USA no matter what we do. We are guilty until proven innocent, because of past behavior in their minds, behavior that they deemed wrong, but were powerless to stop. So this buildup of hatred, pain, fear, and resentment boils out into the present situation. The liberals are forced into a position of defending a madman like Saddam, which if they stopped to think about, goes against their real belief systems. This kind of biased thinking may be overcome if people will admit that their reasoning is clouded by the past. They need to let go of the past, and deal with today, right now. This is not about "whether it is missile defense, the international criminal court, kyoto, disregarding Geneva convention rules about enemy combatants in Cuba, the list goes on" but it is about Iraq, Hussein, and the coalition forces enforcing the UN resolutions once and for all. As such, these leftist anti American, anti Bush types, cannot be found to function with effective reasoning processes. They become quite emotional, and in fact end up defending a man like Hussein who represents all they deem wrong in the world. Amazing what not dealing with resentments can do to a person. Resentments are death, work through them, or you will never be able to function clearly in a real time environment, an environment that is fluid and in need of thinkers who can get outside of their own restrictive mental processes, so that they can apply their reasoning and thinking ability to one problem at a time. It is entirely possible to think that America was wrong in many things in the past, yet right at the present. It is possible to think that the war was not the best course of action, but now that it has begun to be in favor of the USA winning it as quickly as possible. Would you want to be judged on every new incident on the basis of the facts of the present time incident, or would you want to be judged based on all the screw-ups of the past? Suspend guilt and innocence from the past, clear you mind of prejudice, and just look at the facts with objectivity, in real time, in a realistic manner. By the way, the same is true of trading the markets. Those who are still carrying fear or anger from the last trade, will rarely function with a clear enough mind to make good decisions in the present.
...so far it's $250 bn to Iraq as the only proposal from the ET peace camp, but that plan must have had some, uh, holes in it - anyway no one's spoken up for it, not even its author. C'mon, guys! Let's hear a proposal that you're willing to defend! We don't need to look at what Harold Pinter vomited on the occasion of some pro-Saddam rally last year, and we really don't need another one of those conspiracy rants fit for being xeroxed and glued to a bus bench by a wandering schizophrenic - let's hear what real world policy you support! Of course, I've been asking for months, and still haven't heard anything that you're willing to stand by. Okay, though I don't see why I should have to do you work for you, I'll help out. Blogger Jim Treacher had another proposal, which he described in the context of a recent quote from Michael Moore. You guys really ought to like it: http://jimtreacher.blogspot.com/ You guys ready to rally around this Trail of Candy Initiative? Or do you want to go back to Mother Of All Bribes (trader556's peace MOAB)? Let me know, and then maybe we can have some lively discussion and dialogue! Lookin forward to it!
gee sys KF, i didn't realize you are THIS rational and lucid and well-read. glad you jumped into the fray. no one here can hold a candle to you dude, you're tearing them up! i really mean this. nice work KF!
C'mon, guys! We don't need to look at what KymarFye vomited on the occasion of some pro-war rally, and we really don't need another one of those imperialist rants fit for being xeroxed and glued to a bus bench by a wandering bloodthirsty schizophrenic "neo-con".
Am I to understand that your proposal is mimicry? We send a bunch of Arabic-speaking children to Iraq, and every time Saddam makes a speech, they'll repeat it back to him with a few words altered, until they annoy him to death? A couple pages ago, I wrote this: You've now responded with two posts that clearly qualify as devoid of content, and utterly irrelevant to the actual discussion (or, rather, the abortive attempt to conduct a discussion). QED You are unwilling, for instance, to defend the implication of Pinter's speech that the people of Afghanistan and the just security interests of the United States were ill-served by the destruction of the Taliban-Al Qaeda regime. You seem to have no answer for the Iraqi people, and apparently consider their plight to be beneath discussion, as you support a policy that ensures their indefinite subjection to state terror, impoverishment, and despair. You can't even say whether you believe Iraq poses no threat in the short or longer term, and that the US should simply withdraw from the region, or whether you instead favor containment of some kind, along with all that it entails (including the implicit threat of military action by the same US forces which you so happily deride). I see no need to go again into the tired Old Left polemics that you, through Pinter, appear to adopt as your own, or to the many other times that you've posted some other article or essay on ET, but remained unwilling to stand up for it. Your performance is typical of the impotent, narcissistic culture that appears to have taken over much of Europe. You and your comrades pretend to believe in dialogue rather than armed conflict, but again and again you demonstrate a total inability to engage in dialogue: When faced with views that do not square with your own, you resort to personal attacks, vapid sloganeering, and emotional demonstrations. You don't show enough respect for language, even for the language of your own statements, to make communication possible. War is never entirely predictable, and the price of victory is often unexpectedly high. Still, if a successful conclusion of this battle helps to expose the mendacity, moral cowardice, and self-destructiveness of European political and cultural elites, then it may well have been the worth the price for all of us, even apart from the improvement in the lives and hopes of Iraqis and in the security of the United States and its allies (both its true allies and its treacherous ones). Of course, Europe may be hopeless, whatever we do - there's certainly much evidence to that effect, at least in the western regions of the continent. I prefer to hope that the European disease may be treatable, someday even curable, however unpleasant the symptoms.