952 replies to this topic

[Mangala]

As many of you have heard I'm sure, the US is faced with the prospect of attacking Iraq. Does the US have a moral right to go into this country?

[AIGuy]

I say yes for 3 basic reasons.

Reason 1:

We defeated them in the Gulf war. And as I understand it disarmament and allowing inspectors in was a condition of the their surrender during the Gulf War.

Since we have intelligence and Iraqi defectors which say he is actively making and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in violation of the surrender agreement today. We have given him a final chance to prove us wrong by once allowing in inspectors with no limitations.

Reason 2:

We have intelligence that his senior officers have both met with Al Quida. Israel has intelligence that Iraq is sponsoring terrorism in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Based on these grounds the eminent attack can also be justified as an extension of our war against global terrorism and an unprovoked attack against Israel who is one of the United State's allies.

Reason 3:

Due to Sadam's recent history of using chemical weapon against his own Iraqi citizens he has positioned himself as a evil dictator with stated goals of uniting the Moslem World against the United States and it's allies. Even though he may not use his weapons against us directly it would be easy for him to put these weapons into the hands of terrorist groups to do his dirty work.

All three arguments combined cause me to believe that doing nothing would create a terrible risk for which we would certainly someday pay the price.

[thefirstimmortal]

As many of you have heard I'm sure, the US is faced with the prospect of attacking Iraq. Does the US have a moral right to go into this country?

No we don't.

[Mangala]

Why not Mr. O'Rights?

[thefirstimmortal]

Why not Mr. O'Rights?

Your working me hard Mangala:) FDA, Wealth, plus. I promise to get to it all. I have to complete my opening and closing statement for my case (State of Maine v. William Constitution O'Rights). Time will be short from here till Nov. 1st.

[thefirstimmortal]

A full scale nuclear exchange, lasting less than 60 minutes... could wipe out more than 300 million Americans, Europeans, and Russians, as well as untold numbers elsewhere. And the survivors - as Chairman Khrushchev warned the Communist Chinese, 'the survivors would envy the dead.' For they would inherit a world so devastated by explosions and poison and fire that today we cannot conceive of its horrors.
John F. Kennedy

[thefirstimmortal]

He that fights and runs away,
May turn and fight another
day; But he that is in battle
slain, Will never rise to fight
again.
Tacitus

[thefirstimmortal]

It is only necessary to make
war with five things: with the
maladies of the body, with the
ignorances of the mind, with
the passions of the body, with
the seditions of the city, with
the discords of families.
Tacitus

[thefirstimmortal]

The Romans brought
devestation, but they called it
peace.
Tacitus

[thefirstimmortal]

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

[Mangala]

I'm sorry Mr. O'Rights, I do not quite understand your point with the quotes you have submitted to this thread? Are you saying that Iraq will use weapons of mass destruction against us, or that we will use those weapons against Iraq, or that it is not moral for the government to even use any diplomatic aggression towards another country? Please clarify your quotes.

[Mangala]

If the US does go to war with Iraq, will they stay and build up the country into a democracy, or leave immediately?

[thefirstimmortal]

Language often obscures truth. More than is ordinarily realized, our eyes are blinded to the facts of international relations by tricks of the tongue. When one uses the simple monosyllable “America” one thinks of America as a unit, an entity. When to avoid awkward repetition we use a personal pronoun in referring to a country-when for example we say “America sent her troops to conquer Iraq”, we impute not only unity but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women who are the true actors. How different it would be if we had no such word as ‘‘America,’’ and had to say instead, 350 million men, women and children of very diversified interests and beliefs, inhabiting 9,629,091square km of territory! Then we should more accurately describe the expedition in some such way as this: ‘A few of these 350 million persons sent thousands others to conquer Iraq.” This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who were the “few”? Why did they send the thousands to Iraq? And why did these obey?

Empire-building is done not by “nations” but by men. The problem before us is to discover the men, the active, interested minorities in each nation, who are directly interested in imperialism, and then to analyze the reasons why the majorities pay the expenses and fight the wars necessitated by imperialist expansion.

[thefirstimmortal]

I regard war as the greatest scourge that state power could visit upon society. Like Christians, humanists, and many other people, they abhorred the mass murder that war entailed. But libertarians add something else to the argument against war. Liberals recognized that war disrupts peaceful forms of cooperation: families, businesses, and civil society. It wreaks havoc on the whole process of social cooperation and long-range planning.

Liberals also understood that war creates big government. Throughout history it has provided an excuse for governments to arrogate money and power to themselves and regiment society. Thomas Paine wrote that an observer of the British government would conclude “that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” That is, it seemed that the English and other European governments engaged in quarreling in order “to fleece their countries by taxes.” The early twentieth-century liberal Randolph Bourne wrote simply, “War is the health of the State”; it is the only way to create a herd instinct in a free people and the best way to extend the powers of government.

[thefirstimmortal]

The American Founders, happy to be free of endless European wars, made peace and neutrality cardinal principles of their new government. Americans regarded the wide Atlantic Ocean as their great protection from European intrigues. “The true interest of the States,” the Continental Congress resolved in 1783, “requires that they should be as little as possible engaged in the politics and controversies of European nations.” George Washington wrote to a French friend in 1788, “Separated as we are by a world of water from other Nations, if we are wise we shall surely avoid being drawn into the labyrinth of their politics, and involved in their destructive wars.” In his Farewell Address, Washington told the nation, “The great rule in conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.” And Thomas Jefferson described American foreign policy in his First Inaugural Address this way: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none.”

John Quincy Adams, son of a prominent Founder and himself a future president of the United States, enunciated the American view of foreign policy in a Fourth of July address in 1821, when he was President James Monroe’s secretary of state:

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. . . .

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit! European liberals envied the peaceful American republic and made peace and free trade their cardinal principles. Building on the analysis of David Hume and Adam Smith, nineteenth-century English and French liberals pointed out that countries benefit from the prosperity of their neighbors, who have more to offer in trade. They insisted, “If goods don’t cross borders, armies will.”

[thefirstimmortal]

Can the government that can’t stop violence in American cities somehow bring peace to the rest of the world? One can support the newest foreign military adventure only by ignoring the wreckage left by all the previous military adventures.

After the 1991 war against Iraq ended, many people continued to feel the U.S. had been right to become involved. Some of them said, in effect, “Going to war was the right thing to do, but it didn’t settle anything because the U.S. didn’t go all the way and remove Saddam Hussein from power.”

So, despite killing thousands of people and spending billions of dollars, the war failed to settle matters. Why? Because the government mishandled the project. But when has government handled anything correctly? War is just one more government program.

Before the fighting, the Dictator Syndrome had led each of the war’s supporters to think the government would wage it his way. Perhaps he thought he would answer the phone one day and hear a voice say, “Hey, buddy, this is George. Colin Powell’s here in the Oval Office and we’ve got Norm Schwarzkopf on the other line, waiting for instructions. On this war thing, should we go on to Baghdad or wrap it up here?”

No one was going to ask your advice on waging the war. Your ideas about how it should be handled were just idle daydreams.

This is government, not Burger King; nothing is done your way.

[BoulderHead]

As many of you have heard I'm sure, the US is faced with the prospect of attacking Iraq. Does the US have a moral right to go into this country?

What are morals? Who decides what is or is not moral? If it is the strong who decide such things, then is it really moral? Morals have nothing to do with it at all because morals are subjective.
Shooting someone in the head, on the other hand, is very objective and is quickly recognized by virtually anyone to be undesireable (at least for themselves, that is).

[BoulderHead]

If the US does go to war with Iraq, will they stay and build up the country into a democracy, or leave immediately?

Oil interests in the region are considered of National importance. Troops will likely stay until a pro-US government is established, probably democratic at least outwardly. Look about the globe and witness the US presence in many nations. 'They' will stay as long as it pleases them.



War is, at first, the hope that we will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off. -Karl Kraus

[Anita]

If US wage war with Iraq then the whole world economy will go down. So for the benefit of the third world countries which depend on Gulf countries for fuel US should not go for war.

[thefirstimmortal]

...immoral, ag­gressive, ruthless, coarse, and generally evil. They are responsible for most of the troubles in this world. They’re not like us.

That was pretty much the summary of the daily news about the Russians 15 years ago. But sometimes something slips through the net of prejudice, some small bit of a sign that is so clean and true and real that it wedges open the eyeballs long enough for us to see not an enemy but fellow travelers, joined to us by mem­bership in the Fellowship of Joy-and-Pain.

See Nicolai Pestretsov. I don’t know much about him, I don’t know where he is now, but I’ll tell you what I know.

He was a sergeant major in the Russian army, thirty­six years old. He was stationed in Angola, a long way from home. His wife had come out to visit him. On August 24 years ago, South African military units entered Angola in an offensive against the black nationalist guerrillas taking sanctuary there. At the village of N-Giva, they encountered a group of Russian sol­diers. Four were killed and the rest of the Russians fled, except for Sergeant Major Pestretsov. He was captured, as we know because the South African mil­itary communique said: “Sgt. Major Nicolai Pestret­soy refused to leave the body of his slain wife, who was killed in the assault on the village.”

It was as if the South Africans could not believe it, for the communique repeated the information. “He went to the body of his wife and would not leave it, although she was dead.”

How strange. Why didn’t he run and save his own hide? What made him go back? Is it possible that he loved her? Is it possible that he wanted to hold her in his arms one last time? Is it possible that he needed to cry and grieve? Is it possible that he felt the stupidity of war? Is it possible that he felt the injustice of fate? Is it possible that he thought of children, born or unborn? Is it possible that he didn’t care what became of him now?

It’s possible. We don’t know. Or at least we don’t know for certain. But we can guess. His actions an­swer.

And so he sat alone in a South African prison. Not a “Russian” or “Communist” or “soldier’ or ene­my” or any of those categories. Just-a-man who cared for just-a-woman for just-a-time more than anything else.

Here’s to you, Nicolai Pestretsov, wherever you may go and be, for giving powerful meaning to the promises that are the same everywhere; for dignifying that covenant that is the same in any language, ”for better or for worse, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love and honor and cherish unto death, so help me God.” You kept the faith; kept it bright, kept it shining.

(Oh, the Russians are a rotten lot immoral, aggressive, ruthless, coarse, and generally evil. They are responsible for most of the troubles of this world They are not like us.)

[Mangala]

Mr. O'Rights you keep speaking of war in a general sense, could you please focus on your opinion of the war with Iraq?

[Mangala]

Boulderhead yes morals are subjective, so what is your moral standpoint relative to your set of morals?

[Lazarus Long]

Re: The RUSSIANS ARE A ROTTEN LOT...

"Russians"
Written by Sting (& Sergei Prokofiev!)

In Europe and America there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mister Krushchev said, 'We will bury you'
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

How can I save my little boy
From Oppenheimer's deadly toy?
There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent to put
Words in the mouth of the president
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore
Mister Reagan says 'We will protect you'
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too




Now substitute Islam for the Soviets, or maybe North Koreans. Nothing is exactly as you are being told it is. Now is the time to test the power of this medium called the Internet. No domestic source of news should be read without at least one contrasting foreign source to compare it with. Now is the time to question authority.

[BoulderHead]

Boulderhead yes morals are subjective, so what is your moral standpoint relative to your set of morals?

Greetings Mangala,
I believe people may be justified to kill in a case of direct self defense. Having a 'moral right' in this case boils down to killing without this justification, which is why it must make an appeal to something other than an obvious case of direct self defense. This is why they speak of what Saddam ‘might’ do if he had nuclear weaponry, etc.

[thefirstimmortal]

I think my next door neighbor might have a gun, and someday he might shoot me. I think I'm going to demand that he prove to me that he doesn't have a gun. If he claims that he doesn't have a gun, I'm going to insist that he's lying and shoot him just to make damn sure he does'nt use this gun against me. Is'nt this basically our policy with Iraq right now.

[Lazarus Long]

ANOTHER WAR, STILL NO PROOF
Wed Dec 25,10:02 PM ET
By Ted Rall

A Groundless Ground War Edges Nearer


NEW YORK--Eleven days after September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) promised to release proof that Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) were guilty of planning and executing the attacks on New York and Washington. "We will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case that there will be no doubt when that case is presented that it is Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who has been responsible," Powell told ABC News.

National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, speaking a few channels over, on CNN, echoed Powell's pledge. "Clearly we do have evidence, historical and otherwise, about the relationship to the Al Qaeda network to what happened on September 11," Rice said on Sept. 22nd. "We will begin to lay out that evidence and we will do it with friends, allies and the American people and others."

Afghanistan (news - web sites), along with Pakistan, had hosted Al Qaeda training camps. Al Qaeda, Bush said, had attacked us. So we bombed Afghanistan. The Bush Administration spent the next three months overseeing the dropping of explosives, killing an estimated 10,000 Taliban soldiers and at least 3,500 Afghan civilians. During the year since we installed a puppet ruler, Hamid Karzai, as interim Afghan president, at least 36 American soldiers have lost their lives defending Karzai's fragile regime.

So where's Rice's "evidence, historical and otherwise," confirming that Al Qaeda carried out 9/11? Where is Powell's "persuasive case"? The Bushies, as usual, are keeping mum. We, the American people, have yet to see the slightest shred of evidence tying Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Michael Jackson or the Easter Bunny to the attacks.

Fifteen months and still no proof! There are only three logical explanations for Bush's failure to produce the goods:

Al Qaeda and the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. Possible, but unlikely. Who else would have done it?

What with the war and all, the Bushies simply forgot to write up a report. Impossible. If proof existed, the Administration would have released it to make people like me shut up.

The evidence is circumstantial at best. Now we're talking. More likely than not, American intelligence strongly suspects bin Laden et al. but can't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

ARTICLE

[Lazarus Long]

SLATE Online Magazine

"WMD" and "Inspection"
Are Saddam's weapons really so unconventional?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Thursday, December 26, 2002, at 10:43 AM PT

In the summer of 1991, I went to the Kurdish city of Halabja for National Geographic magazine. This is the town that's now world famous for being hit by Iraqi chemical weapons. The effects of such tactics are mainly instantaneous—hence the celebrated picture of hundreds of families lying in the street as if an angel of death had done a drive-by—but the longer-term fallouts are quite arresting, too. Women, in a region celebrated for modesty, could roll up their heavy skirts to show horrifying burns. People were blind. Children were in semi-autistic states. One unexploded weapon, bearing Iraqi air force markings, was still lodged in the rubble of a basement, and I possess a photograph of myself sitting gingerly on top of it. So I didn't need this month's belated admission by Tariq Aziz, now Saddam Hussein's vice president, that Iraq had finally accepted responsibility for the atrocity. (It's worth minuting, however, given the long campaign by a section of the American right, and some parts of the United States defense establishment, to blame the crime on Iran.)

Was Halabja, however, struck by a "weapon of mass destruction"? Although the answer may seem self-evident, actually most of the city and many of its inhabitants are still there. A sustained day of carpet-bombing with "conventional" weapons would have been more lethal, as well as more annihilating. And an attack with anthrax- or smallpox-tipped devices would still have left the buildings intact, as "neutron" bombs are also supposed to be able to do.

The term "WMD," then, appears to be both an over- and understatement. It can overstate the destructive power of some weaponry, while understating its wickedness. The two most destructive moments of the last Gulf War were, in point of casualties, the revenge taken by Saddam on the Shia and Kurdish intifada in the conflict's closing moments; in point of physical mayhem, his decision to ignite the Kuwaiti oilfields during Iraq's ignominious retreat. The main weapon in the first instance was the helicopter-gunship, and the chief one in the second instance was high explosive. Mass destruction of humans and resources was the outcome in each case, but this tells us little about the weaponry (while telling us a good deal about the regime).

The term "WMD" originated, as far as I can tell, as a Soviet expression during the protracted '70s and '80s negotiations about arms control and détente. It was a generalization, as well as something of a euphemism, but it was also a loosely pejorative way of referring to thermonuclear weaponry. This kind of warfare obviously meets all conditions of condemnation, because it causes unimaginable damage to cities and to the infrastructure, as well as vaporizing civilians by the million and tearing apart the web of nature that we call the ecology. Insofar as we can tell, it also threatens the whole biosphere and creates long-term risks from radiation and climatic change. At its worst, it could cause extinction rather than mere extermination: killing everybody alive, as well as those yet unborn—a true and apocalyptic "end of history." No gas or bug or nerve agent can quite do that.

Slightly fatuous though it may be to admit it, we probably draw back from words like "gas" and "chemical" because, like the term "germ warfare," they seem sinister and underhanded. They supply a rhetorical means of hissing at the villain and his ghastly laboratory. The use of gas in the trenches of World War I is part of a folk-memory of horror (and it also presaged the use of vermin-killing methods on civilians, which along with its racism is what makes the concept of the "Final Solution" so rank and disgusting). However, if we are to try to be objective about it, the use of gas is not more grossly destructive than the use of incendiary and blockbuster bombs to create an urban firestorm, as was done in Tokyo and Dresden. Disease warfare, repellent as it may be, is unstable and tricky and dependent on methods of dissemination that tend to require sophisticated and accurate missiles.

It is very obvious that Saddam Hussein has tried to acquire the only real "WMD"—the thermonuclear type—and it's fairly apparent (to me at any rate) what he wants them for. The best evidence is that he has failed in this enterprise, while a good intuition would suggest that having sacrificed so much in the quest he is unlikely to give it up. So, one justification for his removal might be the simple statement that he will never find out what it feels like to be a nuclear dictator. That would be a justification somewhat blunter than any the Bush administration has felt able to advance. The official pretense now is that methods of supervision will both disclose and pre-empt the threat. Possible, but improbable.

Responsibility for this pretense is shared by those who trust the idea of "inspection" and those who take the word at its face value. There's a potentially nice coincidence between the notion of "inspection" and the work of epidemiology: Good hygiene counters the epidemic. But these things require reciprocity. Who on earth goes to the doctor and, in response to his questions, tries to make him guess where the pain is? ("You didn't ask the right question!") The correct treatment for a regime of sadism and megalomania like Saddam's is more akin to the "committal" procedure adopted for those whose mental disturbance is a menace to themselves and others. ("Take your meds and then we'll have a long, long talk.") That's why inspection has had to be enforced upon him in the first place. The existence of weapons of indiscriminate destruction, or weapons of mass terror, might be inferred from the profile of any modern government. The threat they might constitute could only be inferred by a close study of that government itself. And you could not properly "inspect" or diagnose Iraq, after all that's been endured and discovered, without being in control of it. Thus, those who emphasize "WMDs" might as well be honest and admit that they are talking partly about latency. And those who sincerely want to see a genuine invigilation ought to confess that "inspection" is only another demand for (and condition of) "regime change."


Related in Slate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Noah looked at the difference between chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction in "Chatterbox."

[thefirstimmortal]

Some analysts believe that computers with human-level intelligence will be a threat to humankind. In the 1950s, many analysts expressed a similar concern. Clarke addressed this issue head-on in Profiles of the Future. He said the notion that intelligent machines must be malevolent entities hostile to human is “so absurd that it is hardly worth wasting energy to refute it.” Clarke asserted that those who worried about hos­tile intelligence machines were merely projecting their own aggressive instinct, inherited from the jungle, into a world where such aggressive instincts do not exist. In Clarke’s view, the higher the intelligence, the greater the degree of cooperativeness. If there is ever a war between hu­mans and machines, he noted, it is easy to guess who will start it.

[thefirstimmortal]

Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?
George C. Wallace

[Lazarus Long]

Poll: Americans Wary of Tax Cuts, War
2 hours, 33 minutes ago

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Two out of three Americans believe it's prudent to hold off on more tax cuts, a centerpiece of President Bush's domestic policy agenda, an Associated Press poll found.

They greet the new year more cautious about their personal spending yet somewhat optimistic their financial situation will improve.

On the international front, the poll found people wary of a war with Iraq and much more likely to view Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and his al-Qaida network as threats than Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

Those anxieties were voiced by Joanne Arriola, a 62-year-old retiree from a utility company in Butte, Mont. She's seen her retirement fund reduced sharply by the troubled economy, worries about the effects of a war in Iraq and is convinced that war will return to America.

"It's a scary new year," she said. "My children are too old to go, but a lot of young people aren't.

"When the war starts, it will start here, too. I think that once we're in the war, we're going to see something on our soil."

Two-thirds said they were worried that war with Iraq would increase chances of a terror attack in the United States, according to the poll conducted by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pa.

On economics, even most Republicans said it would be better to hold off on tax cuts to avoid deeper deficits. The White House is putting together tax cuts that could total $300 billion. It would feature lower taxes on shareholders' dividends, accelerate the 2001 tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans and provide new depreciation breaks for businesses.

"My husband and I decided to pay off all our debts," said Julia Kerner, 37, a pharmacy technician from Frederick, Md., "and I think it's better for the government to wait on more tax cuts. They are a quick fix, but they start undermining the income coming in to support this or that program."

Almost half, 44 percent, said they expect their family's financial situation will be better a year from now. That's a more optimistic view of the future than a year ago, when a third felt that way. The poll of 1,008 adults was taken Dec. 13-17 and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Republicans were more optimistic than Democrats and young adults significantly more optimistic than older people.

But if many people are expecting the economy to improve, they're also watching their spending more carefully. In the poll, 44 percent said they were now more cautious about what they spend than they had been, while half have not changed spending habits. That's up from 30 percent who said they were cautious about spending in the spring of 2000, before the nation's economic bubble began to deflate.

Women had a more cautious outlook than men, blacks more cautious than whites.

The economic uneasiness was evident even though public support for President Bush remains strong in polls generally, especially his performance on fighting terrorists. Bush already has given the go-ahead to double the 50,000 U.S. troop deployment in the Persian Gulf region in early January for possible war with Iraq, according to administration officials.

Women were more likely than men, by a margin of 40 percent to 26 percent, to say they worry a great deal about the increased threat of attacks in case of war.

By a 2-to-1 margin, people said they saw bin Laden as more of a threat than Iraq and Saddam. People were more inclined to see al-Qaida as a threat by about the same 2-1 margin, no matter their age, sex, income level or race.

"Those in al-Qaida are the ones who brought terrorism to the forefront," pharmacy technician Kerner said.