Off topic discussion, but interesting nonetheless

[Funk, E.]

In principle I'm a pacifist or more accurately a fond believer in mutual human respect as the basis of any true moral standard. I believe that violence on any level outside of food acquisition (Long Live Omnivores! ;-)) is inherently immoral. I also believe that in the land of an eye for an eye for everyone ends up at least half-blind. The last person to loose a loved on in a war is never avenged, but that person is the only one who can start peace. I also have a black belt and will f**king kill anyone who threatens my or my loved ones’ well being. So as long as there is conflict, which according to world history would seem to be a human constant, then there is a need to get about it for the right reasons in the most efficient way possible.

If this drags on much longer Bush will loose no matter what the outcome is. The longer this war thing hangs in the air the longer international relations are strained, the longer the economy holds it’s breathe (and suffers) and the more expensive it become with all of those troops deployed. Either: a) f**king do it already and accept the consequences or b) don’t and accept the consequences. Indecision is always the enemy in a conflict.

I think Bush is in fact dim witted, but I also sincerely doubt that he’s really in charge. Our government hasn’t been run my the elected officials in a long time. There is an entrenched political infrastructure that has taken on a life of it’s own at work here and it’s interests become progressively more aristocratic in nature.

As for the whole French/freedom thing. It just goes to show exactly how malleable people are. I swear I’ve never seen a more stack jawed, “whatever you say� attitude in my life!

As for the anti-war = anti-american. That’s an age old tactic. People bow to peer pressure faster than a teenage boy cums during his 1st time having sex. If freedom of speech were openly curtailed it would provide a rallying point, a catalyst. Making certain things inappropriate eases people into forfeiture of rights. There’s a saying I forget from where but it goes like this: “People don’t want to be free they want to be secure.� Liberties are sacrificed in the face of fear and that is what a government seeking greater control needs. To create a fear external to themselves that the people feel is greater than their fear of their own government. People don’t realize that there are implications to the Homeland securities act, Anti-terrorism act and Patriot act that have not been used that are very compromising to civil liberties. If fully “activated� these laws are FAR more restrictive than they have been used for thus far and that is my greatest fear.

My dad fought in Vietnam, my brother in Kosovo and they fought for a free America. Seems a shame that our own government want’s to take that away.

Who says 2 cents doesn't by a lot anymore ;-)

[Deej]

Chris K. wrote:
> As from what the article link states, a man in his local mall
> buys a shirt that says "Give Peace a Chance". He puts on the
> shirt, is confronted by mall security and is demanded to take
> the shirt off. He refuses, and thus get's arrested by mall
> security. And this shirt was BEING SOLD in the mall itself!
> This, my fellow readers, is a typical example of our freedoms
> being thrown out the window. And don't get me started on the
> various un-just laws that have been passed with no hindsight
> to their sheer audacity.
>
> And I ask, what happened to, "The land of the FREE"?


Stephen Downs, the lawyer who was arrested, claims he was just sitting there minding his own, when he was accosted by the jackbooted mall cops. But according to mall security and police reports, he and another guy, were actually stopping other customers to protest the war, and some of the customers complained to security.

I definitely agree that everyone has a right to express his or her opinion, but they don't have a right to do it on private property, which the mall is. Also, if I were a business owner and I recieved complaints from customers who were made to feel uncomfortable, I'd toss the guy too.

Maybe he was just minding his own business and they tossed him because they didn't like his shirt, or maybe he was being an annoyance and they tossed him for that reason. Basically, it's his word against mall security and some other customers. To me personally, it sounds like a fair cop. Although, I doubt I'd have done more than cite him, and send him on his way. The police reports are at http://thesmokinggun.com/. Check them out, make up your own mind.

Ya no pick up the cage....ya no get the big dollahs!
DJ

[Andrew]

Okay, I usually avoid political discussions like the plague.  Let me add some information though.  It seems that we forget so easily.

Iraq and Iran were at war for quite some time.  During the war, Iraq used chemical agents against both the Kurds and Iranian civilians.  Iraq also used chemical weapons against Kurds during uprisings, after the Gulf War.  Why does the world so hate chemical weapons?  All weapons kill, but chemical weapons kill everyone unlucky enough to be in the area (and sometimes downwind).  They make a larger casualty zone, which is more likely to include innocents.  Chalk this up to the same reason the U.S. has never used another nuclear bomb.

Iraq invaded Kuwait, looted the museums, ravaged the populace, and refused to get out.  After about 6 months we went in.  Again, this whole mess (including the problem we now face, with a world divided) was caused by Iraq invading Kuwait.  If Saddam had withdrawn from Kuwait, I doubt our present would be as ugly as it was.

The peace terms were agreed upon by the UN.  Iraq disarms, so on and so on.  Even so, at one point (1995?  I think?) Iraq moved troops in what seemed to be preparation to invade Kuwait again.  The world freaked out.  We sent more troops.  Eventually Saddam backed down.

The oil for food and medicine program was approved by the UN around 1995.   While thousands starve or barely survive, Saddam and his elite class enjoy palaces and Western luxuries.  Gold trim in the palaces?  You bet.  Sculpted fountains and waterfalls?  Yep.  Has he spent large sums of money on exotic foods and liquors?  (Allowed under the oil for food rules, a loophole.)  YES.   Does Saddam receive a cut from smuggled oil?  Money that has been used to buy "questionable" items?  Yes again.  Meanwhile, as said, the Iraq population wallows in poverty.  Oh, and why did Iraq buy nerve agent antitoxin?  About enough to equip the Republican Guard?

Saddam controls everything in his country:  radio, newspapers, religion, and schools.  It is hard to say that the people there are making informed choices about anything.

Two of Saddam's family (Sons or was it cousins?) fled the country with documents about secret weapons' programs.  This was around 1996 to 1998.  It included weaponized anthrax and VX nerve gas, along with a failed nuclear program.  They were eventually lured back and, unfortunately, killed.

I can honestly say that I would trust Saddam about as far as I could throw him, and he looks a little heavy.  After 12 years of trying to verify that he has disarmed and his country suffering, along with continued vigilance against his nasty little self, we are only marginally closer.  Someone made the point that it seems the UN's stance is, "Do this or we will pass another resolution about it."

Another thought:  if you were really getting stonewalled and wanted to break the wall, wouldn't the immediate threat of war seem like a good tactic?  Who knows.  Maybe we are not planning on going to war, but using 250,000 troops as our final chess move to hopefully avert such a war.  I could be wrong; I can hardly say that I read minds.

Many of the antiwar people I have talked with were not able to discuss the history of the region and the issues.  Most of all, their final argument was, "But the whole world is against war."  That is never a good argument with me.  It elicits my response to such arguments, "Cliff, jump, now."

I don't want to go to war.  It means leaving my wife and soon my daughter.  It means knowing that some of my fellow Marines will not be coming home.  It means that, despite two thousand years of progress, man still has to resort to violence at times.  But, if it is the only way, so be it.  I've said this before a few fights, "Let us get this over with, so we can get on with our lives."

[yaddo42]

I finally saw Michael Savage on his new weekend MSNBC show last week (I haven't read anything of his, other than quotes, or heard his radio yet, don't know if it's on locally). He was advocating declaring war on Iraq as soon as possible, if for no other reason so the Sedition Act can be invoked to jail anti-war protesters, dissenting journalist and writers, and most of Hollywood to hear him tell it. To quote Bruce Dern in 1975's POSSE, "What a nice man."

The whole "french/freedom" fiasco shows the level of most political discussions in this country. Are we going to renamed french dressing also, or will we all switch to Catalina dressing? Will people boycott Jerry Lewis' Labor Day telethon since the French like his movies so much? Will old episode of SNL have to redubbed so that the Coneheads claim to come from Bulgaria (the Joey Bishop of Bush's Rat Pack-like coalition). Will people burn effigies of John Cleese's rude French guard from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL?

Sheesh.

[Funk, E.]

Andrew makes good points. All points that I have read about. When this whole thing started I became increasingly discontent with both side (on the street anyway) having the stupidest rhetoric so I decided to take a closer, more in depth look.

Saddam is a threat and I believe would be more destabilizing than an American occupation. Saddam has perfected the art of hiding and mobilizing illegal weapons facilities/laboratories. He has them, they exist, they are a serious threat. Also the lack of international consensus is a mired issue. There are politics in Russia, Germany and France that motivate the leaders of those nations that are unique to their situation besides arms sales. Every one sells guns to everyone. Get over it. If people recall their history correctly we didn’t enter either world war on the outset. We recanted after the fact.

Will our intervention change the economic stratification in that country? Will the poor be less poor? Will less of them starve and be denied medical attention? Sorry Andrew, I respect you immensely, but I doubt we will play such an altruistic roll. In our own country I have a hard time qualifying the “improvement� in the lives of most black people since the Civil War. I find most of them are a) not free and b) not with a higher standard of living and c) abused and killed about as often as before. I think our own society is becoming more stratified. Also, sympathy for the poor is rarely a priority in our foreign policy. Anyone who thinks we’re doing this for the sake of “freeing the population from a vicious dictator� is deluding themselves. We didn’t kick Hitler’s ass to save the Jews. Just like we did nothing while Pol Pot slaughtered 3 million of his own people. It’s just not a factor in our decision making process. We’re in it for strategic reasons, sound strategic reason, but “humanitarian� concerns are strictly window dressing.

On a side note: this whole we did this and that for France and France did this and that for us routine. I wasn’t alive when we helped France in WWII I can’t say that they owe me for the kindness. Vice Versa, thanks for the statue, but what have you done for us lately. Debts of honor/gratitude die with the people who made them. The fact that they aren’t on the bus with the US government isn’t treachery, it’s politics. We stepped into Vietnam for them. They stepped in on our Revolutionary War. Who cares. It’s over. Past cooperation obligates no one.

[Pete B6K]

Ok, you made a lot of fair points, Andrew, but the problem is they don't counter the reasons why I think war is the wrong thing to do.

I agree with you that Saddam is a disgusting, horrible, evil person and I have no qualms with him being removed/killed/skinned/whatever.  If someone were to give me a gun and put me within sight of him, I'd kill him. And for someone who'd consider himself a pacifist to a great extent, that's saying something.

But we all know full well that that isn't how it will happen, there is no bomb with his name on it, there are only thousands of bombs labelled 'IRAQ', or maybe 'eyerack' if you let George label them.  The country will be bombed to smithereens, millions more innocent civilians will die, each one of them as innocent and as worthy of life as your own wife and daughter.

And in talking about the sanctions you prove how wrong they are. It goes to show that the sanctions didn't affect Saddam, they only affected the innocent people, who have to live on an average 40c a day each.  And there was never any reason to control the import of medical supplies and equipment, which is what the sanctions did.

And you may be interested to hear (as I'm fairly sure US media won't tell you) that your own government DOES research and produce biochem weapons.  They discovered a loophole that allowed them to manufacture these weapons under the pretense that they were for 'domestic law enforcement', which has no international laws on biochem weapons.

International law states clearly that pre-emptive force is only acceptable in the face of a clear imminent attack on another country.  Why the UN isn't disarming the US and UK for that reason is beyond me.  I could point out our weapons of mass destruction myself.

And the 'war for oil' issue is one that divides even those against the war.  Whether it is the reason for the war or not, I am certain it is a factor, maybe a 'fringe benefit' or 'silver lining' to Bush and Co.

I think I'll call it a night before I go on forever about this,
Pete

[Drezzy]

I'll add my 2 cents to the original topic:

Ancestors of mine came from France. I'm mostly Scottish, Portuguese, and British, but I do have some French in me. While I'll make the France joke here and there, I can't say that I support the "freedom"-ing of all things with the word "French" in them. What's the point? By doing so, it creates the scene that America is the little boy wanting to get into a fight with the weird mean kid down the street, and the good friends next door named France and Germany are trying to talk America out of it, but he won't listen, and just calls them sissies.

[Chris K.]

Is it just me, or are you all really tired of these celebrities (i.e., George Clooney, Martin Sheen, etc.) trying to give their so-called "say" of this upcoming war? To me this is just a typical "Worship me, damn it!" attitude of these big stars who try to make their incoherant statements. I don't mind them disagreeing. But could they make their claims with logic attached to them; they say the same thing (i.e., Bush is a bad president, it's all about the oil, all the money will be wasted on the war, etc.) everytime they open their big mouths.

A friend of mine joked to me about the celebrities claims. He said: "With all these big stars claiming this war will waste 'their' estimate guess of $5 million , I'm not suprised. They just want that million to go to their paychecks and their upcoming crap-film, which will probably tank. And they say the million will be a waste on this war. Ha!"

[Squishy]

Remember Afghanistan? Boy, we had a coalition and everything. There were protestors, but not nearly so many, and Saddam is generally regarded by the entire world as Darth Vader's dirty cousin. So why does the sequel suck so badly?

Thomas Friedman made a lot of sense in a recent editorial; he actually came from a point of view that I'd lost in the day-to-day point-by-point arguing: everyone wants Saddam deader'n Hell. The devil's in the details.

The only reason anyone's fighting over this--to the point we're talking about digging up each other's graveyards--is because Bush wants it done His Way, on His Terms, on His Schedule, f*** you all. He has convinced the world that, at best, his motives are highly suspect, and at worst he desires world domination at unimaginable cost. He (with a great deal of help from Saddam's old buddy, Donald Rumsfeld) has squandered all the good will the world gave him on September 11th. Lyrics from hymns and phrases like "crusade" littering his speeches, he seems to want the Middle East united against him. In that, at least, he's doing an incredible job.  

The fact that he's currently blowing billions of bucks buying buddies--and you know how long THAT sort of loyalty lasts--says everything about his foreign policy, and none of it good. It's become so ridiculous that, if you exchange the words "France" and "Canada," our current situation resembles nothing so much as "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut."

I just hope the climax's different.

Notes:

Lest anyone insist I'm trying to decieve, Bob Boudelang is a fictional parody character. "So stop saying that!" :)

Wasted Irony has a kickass rebuttal to the spin that says we have to give Chimpy what he wants, right now, no questions asked.

Damned Un-American Commie Bastards!! We should drive them out of our good, Christian country!!

[Squishy]

Oops, that link won't hunt. Try http://www.wastedirony.com or this if it works.

[Squishy]

This is either brilliant satire or flabbergasting stupidity.

"Can you prove that it didn't happen?"
--Criswell

[Damien]

I like to know if they are going to make "Hot Shots part 3"

[Flangepart]

STAR SPANGLED ICE CREAM....uh...Flabbergasting Satire?

[Chadzilla]

Yeah, but the Ice Cream taste as good as Ben & Jerry's?

[Squishy]

It tastes like crap, but if you complain John Ashcroft has you shipped off to Gitmo for "questioning," traitor.