Topic awaiting preservation: Stop the war against Iraq (Page 2 of 4)

We could say the very same thing to you Morgan...why did you attack Yannah right at start of this...you appear to be pretty self-righteous when you pre-emptivley tell her

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I doubt that you represent the people of Australia so don't make comments such as "most of the Austrialians are against this." You must not know shit about Saddam Hussein if you think a war to remove him from power is inhumane.

--Morgan Ramsay

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I'd also like to bring that 'inhumane' point up again. So morgan...you don't think it's inhumane to condone the killing of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's simply to remove one person from power. I could give an analogy that I think will nail the point of exactly how inhumane it is...but I won't becuase it will most likley deeply offend you. However...I think you should stop and think very carefully before you post in here again...just examine what your saying. Your killing yourself at the moment. Oh and

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Jeez, this is why I hate the Asylum....

--Morgan Ramsay

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Really? Then why are you posting here may I ask? If you don't like having people not agree with you, you shouldn't have even come aorund here. Someone is always going ot argue with you, especially when you trip over your own arguments.

I can't hear you~!!!

My...that was childish.

Then again...no more than I would have expected out of you.

Still can't hear you.

#1I hate to tell you this, but as the asylum currently doesnt translate text into audio format, it would be technically impossible for you to hear us...

#2 And it through childlike behaviour like this, when confronted by truth and still beleieng that you are right when wrong that causes wars.....thank fuck you're not in a position of power

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Wednesday 29 January: Do you think George Bush is doing a good job? (A good job at what?)
Yes: 15946 (32%)
No: 33624 (68%)

Tuesday 28 January: Does the US have just cause to wage a war against Iraq? (And what is/is not those causes?)
Yes: 17977 (38%)
No: 29816 (62%)

Monday 27 January: Do you think war with Iraq can still be avoided? (Do you and how?)
Yes: 13154 (55%)
No: 10553 (45%)

Thursday 23 January: Should Australian troops be going to the Gulf without UN approval? (Should Australia be in control of its military or should it follow the UN wherever they go?)
Yes: 13222 (25%)
No: 38870 (75%)

Monday 20 January: Do you support as UN-backed war against Iraq? (Why or why not?)
Yes: 29157 (49%)
No: 30207 (51%)

Tuesday 14 January: Should Australia be more concerned about North Korea than Iraq? (Why or why not?)
Yes: 19575 (67%)
No: 9515 (33%)

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Now guess how many of those answers are intelligent responses. Yes/No Polls are simple and are not an accurate representation of the views held by citizens of any one nation.

A wise man once said:
"You have to face yourself, when you want to face an other.
You have to face yourself ,when you want to learn.
You have to learn to live.
The only way you can face yourself is to admit when you are wrong
and only when you you know when you are wrong, you could know when you are right"

another said:
"If you want to know how to win, you should know how to loose"

WTF??? Ok so now based on morgan ramsey's latest idea, no one is intelligent enough to know what yes and no means when in response to a simple question.. Also that the format for opinion polls such as these should be changed becuase he thinks that they are not intelligent responses..


Do me a favour come back with something sensible or shut up

If I really wanted to persuade or win any arguement here, I would, but until the Australians who responded to me in such a thoughtless manner become intellectuals, my research and time becomes waste when used on them.

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The Most Dangerous Game

Opponents of war with Iraq have been arguing for some time now that, however depraved he may be, Saddam Hussein is a "rational actor," if only in the narrow strategic sense that would make him deterrable and, by extension, make invasion unnecessary in order to contain him. I'd like to add to that the radical assumption that George W. Bush, too, is rational. Or, if that's stretching credibility, that he's listening to advisors who are. If that's the case, then what, given a few more plausible assumptions about the relative preferences of the parties, can our old friend game theory tell us about the current conflict?

For simplicity's sake, let's begin with a standard two player game in a two-by-two matrix. Pretend Hussein has two fairly stark strategies to play: resist the U.N./U.S. disarmament efforts, or comply. Let's also suppose, somewhat more realistically, that Bush has an equally stark choice between using military force to depose Hussein, and leaving him in power. We'll represent the payoffs to each player (Bush, Hussein) ordinally, with 1 being a player's most preferred outcome, and 4 the least favored. Hussein would most like to be left alone while maintaining his resistance, but given his palpable concern with his own well being, would probably rather give in and be disarmed than face forcible ouster. If he is attacked, though, he'd rather be able to fight back with a full array of horrible weapons -- maybe try to kick off a "clash of civilizations" scenario -- than go gentle into that good night. Leaving a WMD-happy Hussein in power is the outcome Bush likes least, but a costly war -- lives lost and all those tasty oilfields potentially torched in the process -- is only slightly more attractive. It's a bit of a tough call between the scenarios in which Hussein is more compliant, but for the moment let's stipulate that Bush prefers not to have to send in the Army if he's satisifed that Hussein is playing ball. Those assumptions yield the following matrix:

chart at:
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2002_12_01_notesarch.html#90068610

In classical game theory, where both players simultaneously choose and play a strategy, this is bad news for all concerned. "Resist" is Hussein's "dominant strategy," which is to say, it yields a better outcome for him whatever Bush does. If Bush doesn't depose, he'd rather Resist, and if Bush does, he'd still rather fight it out, at the least going out with a bang, or a smallpox epidemic. Bush can predict this, and his rational response is Depose, giving us Resist/Depose as the unique Nash Equilibrium. This is particularly tragic, not only because war is never much fun, but because that outcome is Pareto-dominated by Comply/Leave: both players fare better in that scenario.

Of course, the actual situation is not quite so dismal, as evidenced by the fact that we're not actually at war yet. This is because the strategies chosen by the players are not simultaneous and independent. Bush?s threat is: if you don?t comply, then we will depose you. A sequential game of this kind is better modeled with the ?Theory of Moves? developed by a former professor of mine, New York University?s Steven Brams. On this model, we think of the standard matrix as a sort of game-board, with players taking turns either switching strategies or staying put, with an outcome being "final" when two consecutive turns end there. (After the first turn, that means: when someone stays put on their move, which in this instance we can think of as a player actually following through on an announced intention.)

Here, a different sort of problem arises: a problem not of convergence on a suboptimal outcome, but of failure to converge. Imagine we start in Leave/Resist, the status quo before September 11. Bush makes an opening feint, beginning to move towards Depose. On his turn, Hussein has the option of moving to Depose/Comply. He does so because, while this outcome is even worse than Depose/Resist from his perspective, he can predict that if he does so, Bush will use his turn to shift back to Leave/Comply. At that point, though, Hussein can get his best outcome by reverting to Resist, and the cycle begins anew. If this sounds familiar, it's because this describes fairly well the cat-and-mouse game the U.S. and Iraq have been playing since the end of the first Gulf War.

A cycle like this might be in Hussein's interests. Unlike Bush, he's not likely to be replaced by electoral "regime change" any time soon. If he can keep the game going, it seems reasonable for him to suppose that, sooner or later, the attention of the international community will turn elsewhere. Bush, however, has a piece of counterbalancing leverage. Recall that the move from Depose/Resist to Depose/Comply doesn't immediately make Hussein better off; it is advantageous only because he can rationally expect Bush to respond by shifting to Leave/Comply. Bush may be able to forestall that play by making a credible commitment not to revert to Leave at that point, at least after a fixed set of iterations of the cycle. That explains the somewhat strident "last chance" rhetoric we've been hearing from Ari Fleischer with respect to Iraq's "unsatisfactory" report. Repeatedly making public statements of that sort ties the U.S.'s threat-fullfilment credibility in future international games to its actions now, changing the payoff associated with backing off. In other words, the administration will want to attempt to convince Hussein that unless full cooperation is forthcoming now, they will invade despite future concessions or assurances from Iraq. They must, in short, appear somewhat bloodthirsty.

There is a further tangle as well. The decision to invade is fairly transparent; compliance is less so. Even with robust inspections, it is always at least possible that some further munitions or weapons labs are hidden away somewhere in Iraq. We cannot be sure whether Iraq is playing Resist or Comply. How to deal with this problem? One way would be to appear to have more information, and therefore a better idea of which strategy is being played, than we actually have. Perhaps -- and this is pure speculation -- this is why the administration has been so reticent about disclosing the mystery "evidence" of Iraq's further attempts to develop WMDs. Bush may be taking a lesson from old Perry Mason shows: you can sometimes extract a confession by pretending to have more evidence than you do. This also explains why the adminstration was so quick to declare Iraq's report -- amounting, apparently, to 1,200 pages of "Oh, dude, I'm clean officer. You don't need to check the trunk, really" -- unsatisfactory. If Hussein has been holding out, he may feel compelled to disclose some of his secret programs, fearing that Bush knows about them already, and will attack unless they're openly dismantled. Already, there have been revelations of secret arms deals with German firms in the report, something Hussein doubtless would have preferred to keep secret, since it weakens the hand of a nation opposed to war with Iraq.

Bush must walk a thin line. If Hussein believes that the U.S. is committed to invasion no matter what -- eliminating the bottom half of the matrix -- then Resist becomes a dominant strategy. Yet Bush must also send the message, for reasons outlined above, that he is more dedicated to invasion than would appear immediately rational. This seems like a fair description of precisely what the administration is trying to do.

One last wrinkle: are the preferences assumed for Bush correct? That is, could it be that leaving Hussein in power, even if he continues to seek WMDs, is not so bad as war from Bush's perspective? He may appear to have the preferences assumed in the model, but that may be because only if Hussein believes that the game sketched above is the game being played might it be rational to comply. Unfortunately, even if that's true, having made the commitment, future credibility now rests on Bush's acting as though these are his true preferences.

What's interesting here is that, if this analysis correctly models administration behavior, it would indicate that they do not believe, as some hawks have suggested, that Iraq is undeterrable and Hussein irrational. Instead, Bush & co. are behaving precisely as one would expect if they believed themselves to be playing against a rational opponent. Perversely, whether the administration's strategy succeeds may now depend on Hussein's being very different from the portrait they themselves have been painting of him.

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The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq
By GEORGE PACKER


f you're a liberal, why haven't you joined the antiwar movement? More to the point, why is there no antiwar movement that you'd want to join? Troops and equipment are pouring into the Persian Gulf region in preparation for what could be the largest, riskiest, most controversial American military venture since Vietnam. According to a poll released the first week of December, 40 percent of Democrats oppose a war that has been all but scheduled for sometime in the next two months. So where are the antiwarriors?

In fact, a small, scattered movement is beginning to stir. On Oct. 26, tens of thousands of people turned out in San Francisco, Washington and other cities to protest against a war. Other demonstrations are planned for Jan. 18 and 19. By then an invasion could be under way, and if it gets bogged down around Baghdad with heavy American and Iraqi civilian casualties, or if it sets off a chain reaction of regional conflicts, antiwar protests could grow. But this movement has a serious liability, one that will just about guarantee its impotence: it's controlled by the furthest reaches of the American left. Speakers at the demonstrations voice unnuanced slogans like ''No Sanctions, No Bombing'' and ''No Blood for Oil.'' As for what should be done to keep this mass murderer and his weapons in check, they have nothing to say at all. This is not a constructive liberal antiwar movement.

So let me rephrase the question. Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war?

The answer to this question involves an interesting history, and it sheds light on the difficulties now confronting American liberals. The history goes back 10 years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This war changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would do it.

Many of them had cut their teeth in the antiwar movement of the 1960's, but by the early 90's, when some of them made trips to besieged Sarajevo, they had resolved their own private Vietnam syndromes. Together -- hardly vast in their numbers, but influential -- they advocated a new role for America in the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals.

Against the liberal hawks there were two opposing tendencies. One was conservative: it loathed the idea of the American military being used for humanitarian missions and nation building and other forms of ''social work.'' This was the view of George W. Bush when he took office, and of all his key advisers. The other opposing tendency was leftist: it continued to view any U.S. military action as imperialist. This thinking prompted Noam Chomsky to leap to the defense of Slobodan Milosevic, and it dominates the narrow ideology of the new Iraq antiwar movement. Throughout the 90's, between the reflexively antiwar left and the coldblooded right, liberal hawks articulated the case for American engagement -- if need be, military engagement -- in the chaotic world of the post-cold war. And for 10 years of wars -- first in Bosnia, then Haiti, East Timor, Kosovo and, last year, in Afghanistan, which was a war of national security but had human rights as a side benefit -- what might be called the Bosnia consensus held.

But on the eve of what looks like the next American war, the Bosnia consensus has fallen apart. The argument that has broken out among these liberal hawks over Iraq is as fierce in its way as anything since Vietnam. This time the argument is taking place not just between people but within them, where the dilemmas and conflicts are all the more tormenting. What makes the agony over Iraq particularly intense is the new role of conservatives. Members of the Bush administration who had nothing but contempt for human rights talk until the day before yesterday have grabbed the banner of democracy and are waving it on behalf of the long-suffering Iraqi people. For liberal hawks, this is painful to watch.

In this strange interlude, with everyone waiting for war, I've had extended conversations with a number of these Bosnian-generation liberal intellectuals -- the ones who have done the most thinking and writing about how American power can be turned to good ends as well as bad, who don't see human rights and democracy as idealistic delusions, and who are struggling to figure out Iraq. I'm in their position; maybe you are, too. This Bosnian generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority, but they hold an important place in American public life, having worked out a new idea about America's role in the post-cold war world long before Sept. 11 woke the rest of the country up. An antiwar movement that seeks a broad appeal and an intelligent critique needs them. Oddly enough, President Bush needs them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims, which he has largely kept to himself. They could make the case for war to suspicious Europeans and to wavering fellow Americans. They might even be able to explain the connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. But first they would need to resolve their arguments with one another and themselves.

In my conversations, people who generally have little trouble making up their minds and debating forcefully talked themselves through every side of the question. ''This one's really difficult,'' said Michael Ignatieff, the Canadian-born writer and thinker who has written a biography of the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin along with numerous books and articles on human rights. No one in recent years has supported humanitarian intervention more vocally than Ignatieff, but he says he believes that Iraq represents something different. ''I am having real trouble with this because it's not clear to me that containment has failed,'' Ignatieff told me. This kind of self-interrogation ends up with numerous arguments on either side of the ledger. Here's how I break down the liberal internal debate.

For War

1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.

2. Saddam has used weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them.

3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.

4. Democracy would benefit Iraqis.

5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.

6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.

7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab world.

8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do in Iraq.

Against War

1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections could still work.

2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation and international support.

3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could Saddam.

4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism could build to a more dangerous level.

5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.

6. Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.

7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.

8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's ranks.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue. Caution over Iraq puts liberal hawks, who are nothing if not moralists, in the psychologically unsettling position of defending a status quo they despise -- of sounding like the compromisers they used to denounce when it came to Bosnia. Fear means missing the chance for what Ignatieff calls ''a huge prize at the end.''

But wish makes a liberal hawk sound like a Bush hawk, blithely unconcerned about the dangers of American power. The liberal hawk is a liberal -- someone temperamentally prone to see the world as a complicated place.

This dilemma is every liberal's current dilemma.

The Theorist

After last year's terror attacks, Michael Walzer, the author of ''Just and Unjust Wars,'' among other books, published an article in the magazine he co-edits, Dissent, called ''Can There Be a Decent Left?'' Walzer harshly criticized leftists whose first instinct was to blame American policy for Sept. 11 and who refused to see the need for a war of self-defense against Al Qaeda. The article threw down an angry marker between the pro- and anti-interventionist left, and it drew heated attention to a 67-year-old political philosopher with a far-from-confrontational manner.

A year later, Walzer finds himself an ambivalent opponent of war in Iraq. Al Qaeda simplified things in favor of armed action; Iraq presents nothing but complication. ''The uncertainties right now are so great,'' he told me as we sat and talked at a cafe in Greenwich Village, ''and the prospects, the risks, so frightening, that the proportionality rule forces you the other way. And with a lot of other things going on -- suspicion of this government of ours, anger at the automatic anti-Americanism of people here and other places. It's all mixed up.''

Walzer is a strong advocate of multilateral action, and he faults the administration and its European allies for bringing out the worst in one another, American bellicosity and European complacency pushing the logic of events toward a war he says he doesn't believe is justified yet. The just-war theory requires that a threat be imminent before an attack is started. Since this is not yet the case with Iraq, an American war there wouldn't meet the criteria.

None of this means that Walzer is rallying opposition at teach-ins. In the 1960's, he was willing to join an antiwar movement that he says he knew would strengthen the hand of Vietnamese Communists ''because I thought they'd already won. I would not join an antiwar movement that strengthened the hand of Saddam.'' And yet he can't imagine one that doesn't. The nature of the enemy makes it almost impossible to be outspoken for peace, a dilemma that has created what he calls ''a kind of silent majority, a silent antiwar movement.'' Walzer's position offers cold comfort, for it ends up with Saddam still in power. ''It leaves me unhappy,'' he says.

The Romantic

These days, Christopher Hitchens sounds anything but unhappy. His militant support, first for the war with Al Qaeda and now for a war in Iraq, has led him to break quite publicly with former comrades. He has vacated the column he wrote in The Nation for the past 20 years and has said harsh things about the ''masochists'' of the anti-American left. Hitchens's apostasy has generated nearly as much attention on the left as the war itself, but over a three-hour lunch in Washington, his position struck me as more judicious than its print version.

Hitchens agrees with the ''decent skepticism'' of liberals who distrust the administration's motives, but he has decided that hawks like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz aim to use a democratic Iraq to end the regional dominance of Saudi Arabia. If this is the hidden agenda, Hitchens wants to force it into the open. He compares Saddam's Iraq with Ceausescu's Romania in 1989: it's going to implode anyway, and America should have a hand in the process.

In 1991, Hitchens was too suspicious of American motives to support the first gulf war -- a hangover, he says, from his days as a revolutionary socialist -- but on a visit to northern Iraq at the end of the war, he rode in a jeep with Kurdish fighters he admired who had taped pictures of the first George Bush to their windshield. It was a minor revelation. ''I'm not ashamed of my critique of the gulf war,'' he says, ''but I'm annoyed by how limited it was.''

Since then, Hitchens has steadily warmed to American power exercised on behalf of democracy. When I suggested that since Sept. 11 he has gone back to the 18th-century, when the struggle between the secular liberal Enlightenment and religious dark-age tyranny created the modern world, Hitchens readily agreed. ''After the dust settles, the only revolution left standing is the American one,'' he said. ''Americanization is the most revolutionary force in the world. There's almost no country where adopting the Americans wouldn't be the most radical thing they could do. I've always been a Paine-ite.''

British pamphleteer for the American revolution -- Hitchens has updated the role for Iraq. His relish for war with radical Islamists and tyrants (''You want to be a martyr? I'm here to help'') sounds like the bulldog pugnacity of a British naval officer's son, which he is. It also suggests a deep desire, and a romantic one, to join a revolution -- even if it's admittedly a ''revolution from above.'' ''I feel much more like I used to in the 60's,'' he says, ''working with revolutionaries. That's what I'm doing; I'm helping a very desperate underground. That reminds me of my better days quite poignantly.'' Hitchens has plans to drink Champagne with comrades in Baghdad around Valentine's Day.

The Skeptic

''Revolution from above'' was Trotsky's mocking phrase for Stalin's use of the Communist Party to collectivize the Soviet Union. It implies coercion toward a notion of the good. David Rieff, whose book ''Slaughterhouse'' condemned the failure of Western powers to intervene in Bosnia, compares revolution from above to Plato's idea of ruling Guardians. What they share, says Rieff, is a desire to pursue utopian ends by undemocratic means.

''I always thought there was more in common between Human Rights Watch and the Bush administration than either would be comfortable thinking, because they both are revolutionaries -- in my view, quite dangerous radicals. They believe that virtue can be imposed by force of law and force of arms. Christopher has the same view with his sense that a democratic alternative can be imposed by force of arms in the Middle East.''

Unlike Hitchens, an Englishman who ''liked the United States enough to have concluded when I was about 16 that I'd been born in the wrong country,'' Rieff is an American who grew up with a European education, traveled the world as a teenager and always looked askance at the notion of America as either savior or Satan. As an empire, America is neither better nor worse than other empires -- but to expect it to behave like Amnesty International is foolish. The difference between Bosnia and Iraq, Rieff says, is the difference between supporting democracy and imposing it. The former was a moral imperative as well as a strategic one; the latter is hubris. With Iraq, this hubris is leading to ''a hideous mistake.'' ''I accept everything that the Bush administration says about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein,'' Rieff says, ''but I do think it's a revolution too far.''

The Secularist

During the Congressional debates on the war resolution, it was just about impossible to hear an argument in favor of the administration without the words ''Munich'' and ''Chamberlain.'' The words ''Tonkin'' and ''Johnson'' were far rarer, which tells you something about the relative acceptability of World War II and Vietnam -- appeasement and quagmire -- as historical precedents. I wanted to ban all analogies, because they always seemed to be ways of avoiding the hardest questions. But the analogies are hard-wired, and Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, is right to say that Americans of the postwar generation ''have operated with two primal scenes. One was the Second World War; one was the Vietnam War. And you can almost divide the camps on the use of American force between those whose model for its application was the Second World War and those whose model for its application was the Vietnam War.''

For Wieseltier, whose parents survived the Holocaust, the primal scene is American power helping to end evil. Shortly before I met him at his Washington home, Wieseltier had seen a TV documentary with rare footage of the gassing of Kurds by Saddam's army -- a reminder of a primal scene if ever there was one. But that was in 1988, when America failed to intervene. Today, American and British pilots in the no-fly zone are preventing the very genocide that Wieseltier feels would justify an invasion.

Wieseltier is a secular liberal in the classical sense. He says he believes that the separation of religion and power marked a violent rupture with the past. This rupture created a new and universal idea of freedom and equality -- one that Islamic societies around the world have not yet been ready to face. Sept. 11 was a cataclysmic ''refreshment'' of this idea, after years in which only money mattered. But terrorism should not turn liberals into simple-minded missionaries; being a secular liberal means accepting that the world is a difficult place. ''Democracy in Iraq would be a blessing, but it cannot be the main objective for embarking on a major war,'' Wieseltier says. ''If there is one thing that liberalism has no time for, it's an eschatological mentality. There is no single, sudden end to injustice. There's slow, steady, fitful progress toward a more decent and democratic world.''

Wieseltier says he believes that Saddam's weapons and fondness for using them will probably necessitate a war, but unlike some other editors at The New Republic, he is not eager to start one. ''We will certainly win,'' Wieseltier says, ''but it is a war in which we are truly playing with fire.''

The Idealist

Paul Berman's book ''A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968'' traced a line from the rebellions of the 1960's to the nonviolent revolutions of 1989. It is essentially a line from leftism to liberalism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the great ideological battles of the 20th century seemed to have ended: liberal democracy reigned supreme.

Then came Sept. 11, which, Berman argues in a coming book called ''Terror and Liberalism,'' showed that, as it turns out, the 20th century isn't quite over yet.

''The terrorism we face right now is actually a form of totalitarianism,'' Berman told me in his Brooklyn apartment. ''The only possible way to oppose totalitarianism is with an alternative system, which is that of a liberal society.'' So the war that began on Sept. 11 is primarily a war of ideas, and Berman harshly criticizes Bush for failing to pursue it. ''We're going into a very complex and long war disarmed, in which our most important assets have been stripped away from us, which are our ideals and our ideas. He's sending us into war with one arm tied behind our back.''

Berman argues for a war in Iraq on three grounds: to free up the Middle East militarily for further actions against Al Qaeda, to liberate the Iraqi people from their dungeon and to establish ''a beachhead of Arab democracy'' and shift the region's center of gravity away from autocracy and theocracy and toward liberalization. In other words, war in Iraq has everything to do with the war on terrorism, and the dangers of an American military occupation that might not be seen by everyone in the region as ''pro-Muslim,'' though they worry Berman, don't deter him.

Perhaps the boldest intellectual move he makes is to claim a liberal descent for these ideas -- connecting the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sept. 11 and Iraq. This lineage, Berman claims, is represented not by George W. Bush but by Tony Blair, ''leader of the free world.'' Bush has presented the wars on terrorism and Saddam as matters of U.S. security. In fact, Berman says, they are wars for liberal civilization, and the rest of the democratic world should want to join. It doesn't bother Berman to hear conservative hawks at the Pentagon like Paul Wolfowitz talking similarly. ''If their language is sincere,'' he says, ''and there is an idealism among the neo-cons that echoes and reflects in some way the language of the liberal interventionists of the 90's, well, that would be a good thing.''

But Berman, unlike Hitchens, doubts their sincerity. And in the end, Berman can't support the administration's war plan, ''because I don't actually know -- I believe that no one actually knows -- what is the actual White House policy.'' So he is left in the familiar position of intellectuals, with an arsenal of ideas and no way to deploy them.

one chilly evening in late November, a panel discussion on Iraq was convened at New York University. The participants were liberal intellectuals, and one by one they framed reasonable arguments against a war in Iraq: inspections need time to work; the Bush doctrine has a dangerous agenda; the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East is not encouraging. The audience of 150 New Yorkers seemed persuaded.

Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''

The effect was electrifying. The room, which just minutes earlier had settled into a sober and comfortable rejection of war, exploded in applause. The other panelists looked startled, and their reasonable arguments suddenly lay deflated on the table before them.

Michael Walzer, who was on the panel, smiled wanly. ''It's very hard to respond,'' he said.

It was hard, I thought, because Makiya had spoken the language beloved by liberal hawks. He had met their hope of avoiding a war with an even greater hope. He had given the people in the room an image of their own ideals.

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Really? Then why do a consistant number of people from that nation who (probably by some trick of the light) just happen to be citizens of it answered, mostly in entreme terms and protests that they did support the war...you see...a yes/no poll does support the views of a citizenry...in the end all questions come down to those two simple answers 'Yes Or No'

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I think the biggest point to come out of the thread is that there is a sizable opposition to the impending war on Iraq (I mean, at this point, who are we kidding, it's going to happen, the momentum has become too great it seems..)

So, in the spirit of debate, I begin by coming out on the side of military action. I do think nothing is gained by leaving Saddam in power. We will have to take him out eventually. This is an issue that should have been settled in 1991.

Now, what I don't understand is the anti-war position. I hear a lot of "the war is wrong" style argumentation, but I have yet to hear a cogent argument as to why the US shouldn't pursue this action. All I hear from the liberals on this forum is condescending remarks towards viewpoints that don't jibe with theirs, but very little in the way of an alternative solution to the problem.

So, to all the liberals on the board, I want you to tell me why I should consider changing my opinion on this issue.

Why should the US not invade Iraq? What will the US gain by not invading Iraq?


P.S. I'll post my views on the situation, in case anyone cares..

1. Saddam is hiding something.

If he wasn't, he wouldn't be playing these charades with the UN and the US. The question of course is what? I for one, am not keen on giving this thug the benefit of the doubt. It's an even bigger problem waiting to happen. What I don't understand is how the left immediately assumes some kind of government conspiracy to deflect from the economy, or other domestic issues. Do liberals believe the American public is that stupid? Apparently so... as if the average american couldn't possibly handle worrying about more than one political topic. Come on, guys, that's a weak argument. What's the point of keeping this guy in power? His track record speaks for itself.

2. Saddam is the master politician, and at times he knows how to play it so the Western left falls right into his hands.

Saddam will never do anything to promote peace until there is a gun at his head forcing him to do so. As long as there is another hoop to jump through.. another UN resolution, a debate in the Sec Council, a vote in Congress.. Saddam will use this to bog down the process and keep stringing us along.. knowing the delays will allow the anti-war sentiment to keep growing and make the US government's work that much harder.

As evidence I will refer you to Saddam's history of exploiting procedural delays and capitulating only under fire. It took force to drive Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991. At the outset of the U.N. inspections, he felt no obligation to comply except under threat of force. Missile strikes and troop mobilizations were necessary to halt Saddam several times: in 1993, after he tried to kill George H.W. Bush; in 1994, when he threatened to reinvade Kuwait; and in 1995, when he tried to crush the Kurds. Saddam drove inspectors out of Iraq in 1998 by making their job impossible, and he didn't let them return until George W. Bush made clear that that the alternative was an American invasion.

At every turn, Saddam used intervening deliberations to hint at conciliation and sow discord in the Security Council. He learned that there were issues on which Security Council opinion was divided and that by pressing on those issues, he could deepen the rifts among the members. In 1997, he lulled France, Russia, and China away from the U.S.-British alliance against him. Early in 1998, he used Kofi Annan's peace overture to thwart American and British military strikes. That fall, he pulled off another 11th-hour escape..With American and British planes in the air and headed toward Iraq, Saddam's right-hand man appeared on CNN and announced that Iraq would allow inspectors back in. Secretary-General Annan immediately accepted the overture, and the United States had to call off the attack. Naturally, Saddam reneged right away.

This is Saddam's genius. As long as war isn't the next resort?as long as there's some vote, consultation, or authorization that has to take place before the bombs begin to fall?he'll wait until that moment and fake compliance in order to kill the momentum against him. After he reneges and a new countdown begins, he pulls the same stunt.

Shooting Saddam may prove to be unnecessary, hopefully his cronies wise up and do the dirty work for us.... But don't expect him to hand over his weapons till our gun is a lot closer to his head. Inevitably, the next time we catch him fibbing or concealing or interfering in the inspections, there will be calls by the liberals for peace or more talk about what to do.

Here's an idea: Stop talking and start doing.

3. The other argument I don't get is that a war with Iraq will have destablilizing consequences in the Middle East.

How can you even say with a straight face that there is anything even remotely stable about the Middle East?

4. Liberals are mistaking means for ends.

Many people expressed relief when the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution ordering Iraq to submit to inspections. But resolutions aren't the goal. Inspections aren't the goal. Disarmament is the goal. If resolutions don't achieve inspections, or if inspections don't achieve disarmament, force must follow.

5. Liberals seem content with the gaps in the current agreements.

Loopholes in agreements are often easy to spot. The less visible and more exploitable problem is gaps in time. Every delay between transgression and punishment gives the Security Council time to waver and gives Saddam time to renegotiate. That's why President Bush wanted the Council's resolution to authorize immediate military action if Iraq reneged. If the Council orders troops to Iraq, Saddam will use the same ruse: When the troops arrive, he'll try to call a timeout.

6. Why are liberals so keen on negotiating with Saddam?

Haggling with Saddam goes like this: He shoots a rock through your window. You tell him to hand over his slingshot. He says he will if you'll give him $2. You give him a dollar. He says that hardly seems fair, why not throw in an extra 80 cents. You give him 40 cents. He asks for another quarter, you give him a dime, he asks for another nickel, and so on. As long as you're splitting the difference, the game goes on. You have to stop talking and grab him by the collar.

7. What is up with liberals and "fairness" regarding Saddam? Does he deserve it?? hell no !!

UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has gone out of his way to assure Middle Eastern reporters that he'll be fair to Iraq. Bad idea. At a minimum, fairness implies that Iraq is entitled to unspecified considerations, which Saddam will be happy to specify. At worst, fairness implies even-handedness, obscuring the difference between perpetrator and victim.

8. Are liberals naive enough to believe that Saddam will actually cooperate?

Blix said he was going to Baghdad to seek cooperation with the Iraqis. That's asking for trouble. If everyone agrees to do the right thing, great. But if not, and if you can do it by yourself, go ahead. If you insist on Iraqi cooperation, you give Saddam the power to set terms by withholding cooperation. Ditto for France, Russia, China, and the rest of the Security Council. If Bush had insisted on getting the council's cooperation in demanding new inspections, he would never have gotten it. He got it by making clear that if he didn't get it, he'd go to war.

9. Why are American liberals so keen on switching the burden of proof to the U.S. government, and not Saddam where it rightfully belongs?

Keep the burden on Saddam. If you show Saddam a photo of himself holding a canister of nerve gas, he'll say he's gotten rid of the gas since you took the photo. If you try to get into his basement to show that he's still got the gas, he'll block the door. That's his strategy: to make evidence collection your problem. Four years ago, he succeeded: U.N. inspectors left Iraq because he wouldn't let them do their job. To avoid that mistake, we have to make evidence collection Saddam's problem. Bush has done so by making clear that he'll disarm Iraq by force unless inspectors disarm it peacefully. Blix says effective inspections are in the Iraqi interest because "otherwise, they would not be credible." But the only reason Iraq cares whether the inspections are credible is that if they aren't, Bush will strike.

10. The more we argue amongst ourselves, the more credibility Saddam gets.

Over the weekend there was a huge rally in D.C. against military action in Iraq, and an ever increasing furor over the debate of action or inaction with regards to Iraq. In a nutshell, that's what Saddam wants us to do: zoom out from the offense on which everybody agrees?Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?to a broader debate over American military activity in Iraq. Blix has worsened the problem by suggesting that his inspections could lead to a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Saddam would love to drag Arabs and Muslims into his fight by making his disarmament contingent on Israel's.

11. Liberals seem to have forgotten recent history.

We spared him in the Persian Gulf War in exchange for his agreement to inspections. Then he dragged his heels on the inspections, and after a few years, everyone forgot the original deal. Inspections began to look like a favor he was doing us. They aren't. They're his probation in lieu of being toppled. If he violates probation, we have to follow through.

12. Liberals seem to want to separate diplomacy from force.

When the Security Council passed its resolution, pundits and foreign leaders congratulated Secretary of State Colin Powell for leading the administration's diplomacy camp to victory over its war camp. But if the hawks hadn't been noisily preparing for war, the diplomats wouldn't have obtained the resolution. If Iraq cooperates with the inspectors in the weeks ahead, people will say that it shows military power isn't necessary. In fact, it strengthens the case for his ouster.

13. The American Left seems to trust Saddam more than they do their own country.

I find this one particularly disturbing. Like Johnnie Cochran, Saddam knows that the best way to deflect scrutiny from the defendant is to put the U.S. on trial. The inspectors are too well regarded to be charged with malice, so Iraq instead accuses the United States of manipulating them. Iraq contends that the resolution gives some countries pretexts to interfere in the inspectors' work, subjecting them to the pressure and desires and claims of specific countries, first of all the United States, which has aggressive goals.

Like a driver caught in a speed trap, Iraq plans to argue that the rules have been rigged to manufacture crimes and prosecutions. War, not Iraq, is the real enemy, if you believe the Iraqi spin.

However, the purpose of the resolution, as conceived by the Bush administration, is to force Saddam to choose between compliance and defiance. Saddam, though, wants a third option: defiance in the guise of compliance. The antiwar movement is eating this ruse up.

If the preceding arguments give the Security Council enough of an excuse to drag its heels on authorizing war, he'll have succeeded.

---

and one more thing why edit the posts and remove the contents????

Probably because one is Australian, and resented it when his views are misrepresented? And because Yannah did make a point...though I feel one could have made an issue out of the 'coward' part...

Though the language was a bit harsh, I can understand why such a reaction is to be expected...most Americans, IMHO, would react much the same in the same situation...

Though I find it quite humorous, that Yannah was right...Ouch!

@ Yannah, though part of your post was indeed correct (thanks, Tom), calling the US cowards is not.

So...I think we have established the facts here...can we please move on with the topic?

[This message has been edited by WebShaman (edited 01-31-2003).]

Morgan you are way out off line...
If you think not every individual can think by itself.
Every single individual has choosen to answer this poll and made the decions to vote what he did based on the knowledge he or she had on that moment.
So any given poll represants the knowledge of the voters who did the poll.

IF you think they are stupid just 'cos they do not agree with you think again.
and beare it is this "we know what is good for you" mentality which make alot of people angry on americans.
Thouh they are not the only ones who think this dangerous way.
And i has to say a lot off them don not think this way.



~So it's your birthday today? congratulations and have a nice day. So it's not? have a nice day too~

Morgan...can I ask...how were we rude and thoughtless? Did we offend your poor little illusion that you are always right? Geee...I'm sorry for exposing you to the real world.

And how is it any less thoughtless than you just coming right out and tell one of the Australians that 'she musn't know shit' if she thinks the way she does.

Again mate...in your relentless persuet(sp?) of proving yourself right...you have taken a few stpes backwards by accusing someone else of doing something bad, when you had done the self-same thing earlier in the thread.

Again you're assuming that I somehow inferred that their intelligence is inferior. That is partly true, actually. The one who sits down and questions the question is the one who searches to better understand the question for an answer cannot be arrived at in such a hasty manner through yes/no quizzes.

In all seriousness, if you think for one moment that it is inhumane to remove Saddam from power, you are a fucking idiot.

MR You are not thinking by yourself are you?
You spit out the rubbish the USA propaganda machine has put in your head...
Shut up and be silent.

Now could someone close this thread before we have to get real nasty.


~So it's your birthday today? congratulations and have a nice day. So it's not? have a nice day too~

er... australians???????


want to make that australian.....


i am english

and wait untill they become intellectuals????

Five Ways to Lose an Argument on Iraq
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/9/18/184142/095

quote:

---

All about oil?
Jan 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition

Why invading Iraq would not produce an oil bonanza for America

?IF WE are the occupying power,? said Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, on January 22nd, Iraq's oil fields ?will be held for the benefit of the Iraqi people.? The Bush administration was examining different ways of managing the oil fields in the event of America invading Iraq, he said. Stung by criticism in much of the world that lust for oil is driving its enthusiasm for war, the Bush administration is trying to reassure sceptics that Iraqi oil would not be run only to suit America. Yet even without these assurances, it is far from certain that Iraqi oil could be the bonanza for America that its critics imagine.

These critics claim that any post-Saddam regime?which they presume would be a puppet of America?would move quickly to start pumping out vast quantities of oil. It would surely give in to American pressure to leave the OPEC cartel of price-fixers. Iraq's gushing wells would quickly undermine the cartel's grip, prices would collapse and OPEC might even be destroyed altogether?taking with it such unsavoury regimes as Saudi Arabia's.

Actually, even if Mr Powell's assurances turned out to be flimsier than they appear, there are good reasons to think Iraq would not become either an OPEC-slayer or America's private petrol station. Two new reports on the subject stress the constraints and challenges?not the easy pickings and limitless bounty?that Iraq's oil represents for America.

One report, by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the James Baker Institute of Rice University, argues that Iraq's oil is not the prize it seems from afar. Iraq has vast reserves, but its infrastructure is, in the words of Dutch experts who inspected it a few years ago, in ?lamentable? condition. A decade of sanctions and under-investment have cut Iraq's output and done permanent damage.

In the short run, a war would further disrupt Iraqi production (especially if Saddam Hussein were to destroy oil wells): the result would be greater market power for OPEC and maybe $40-per-barrel crude, says Phil Verleger, an energy economist affiliated to the CFR. After that, even assuming that rebuilding the oil sector were a top priority for a new government, and oil revenues were immediately redirected for that purpose, the CFR-Baker study reckons that it would still take nearly a decade and up to $40 billion to revive Iraq's oil sector. That could lift Iraqi output to 4.2m-6m barrels per day, up from around 2.5m bpd today. However, it would still fall far short of Saudi Arabia's whopping output of over 8m bpd today. That is why no truly independent Iraqi government would ever leave OPEC to go for volume instead: the Saudis have so much more oil than anyone that they will always win a price war.

Besides, talk of a speedy revival of Iraq's oil sector may be too optimistic. A report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) observes that, after a regime change, there would be many competing claims for money that would slow investment in oil: buying food, financing reconstruction, paying for ?democracy building? and keeping the peace. Iraq also has debts of over $100 billion?not including war reparations due to Iran and Kuwait for Mr Hussein's past aggressions. However, this argument would be weaker if an occupying American government footed the bill for oil investment.

In an effort to curry favour with anybody ready to oppose UN sanctions, Mr Hussein has offered juicy chunks of Iraq's oil bounty to companies from Russia, China and France?countries whose geopolitical strategies are also tainted by oil. Whether America could tear up such contracts and ?pre-contracts? is unclear. American and British firms, which have been prevented from bidding for such contracts, would lobby to have them scratched and retendered (along with other Iraqi oil contracts) in a contest in which they have (at least) a level playing field. But to avoid a legal morass, the CFR-Baker report recommends the immediate creation of a UN dispute-resolution mechanism. Unless some way is found to provide a secure legal framework for oil concessions, much-needed foreign investment in Iraq could be delayed by years while the lawyers bicker.

In short, for all the accusations that America's war plans are motivated by the goal of cheaper oil, there would probably be no such prize, at least for many years. As the CFR-Baker report says: ?There has been a great deal of wishful thinking about Iraqi oil.? It does not expect a bonanza.

---

ok i have refrained from making personal comment so far, except for pointing out that i found your original post in response to yannahs somewhat rude?

but how about this for a suggestion or a hypothetical situation.


You are a pain in the ass, i think you might have something which could harm a lot of people, so what i am going to do is walk down your street with a shit load of weapons, kill anyone that gets in my way, including your familly to get to you, even though they may be innocent parties. then i am gonna kill you....


yup sounds perfectly humane to me

And since there's a few of you starting to call me names (which is hypocritical because the same few was telling me I was doing wrong by calling others names), I'll post my "literature" list. After you read what I've read, I'm sure you'll come to the conclusion that I am not an idiot or an ignorant savage.

quote:

---

I don't expect too many people here to have read any of these books. Nevertheless, please take a look despite the length.

POLITICAL/HISTORY BOOKS

? The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
? Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
? Rogue Regimes: Terrorism & Proliferation by Raymond Tanter
? Essentials of California Government by Dr. Michael Newbrough
? Liberty and Consciousness by Dr. Michael Newbrough
? America & The World: Essentials of Foreign Policy by Dr. Michael Newbrough
? Essentials of American Politics by Spitzer, Ginsberg, Lowi & Weir

INTELLECTUAL BOOKS

? Mythology?s Last Gods by William Harwood
? Darwin?s Dangerous Idea: Evolution & Meanings of Life by Daniel Dennett
? Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
? Wrinkles In Time by George Smoot
? The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark by Carl Sagan
? The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe Report by Timothy Ferris
? At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman
? The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins
? The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio
? The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
? Time's Arrow & Archimedes' Point by Huw Price
? The Time Before History by Colin Tudge
? The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
? An Intimate History of Humanity, Theodore Zeldin
? The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
? The Hubble Wars, Eric Chaisson
? Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle
? Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
? The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
? Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
? The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
? Timescale by Nigel Caulder
? Virus X by Frank Ryan
? Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin
? Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski
? Slight of Mouth by Robert Dilts
? No Logo by Naomi Klein
? Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn
? The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
? Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson
? Media Virus by Douglas Rushkoff
? The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE

ESSAYS BY JOE E. DEES

? Statistical Thought In Social Sciences: A Phenomenological Basis
? The Human Dialectic of Absolute Premises: Christianity and Marxism
? Gender and Nature in Contemporary Neo-Paganism
? Zen Buddhism and Existential Phenomenology: The Dancer and the Dance
? A Game Theory Analysis of the U.S.-Iraqi Conflict

ESSAYS BY DAVID MCFADZEAN

? A Computational Laboratory For Evolutionary Trade Networks

ARTICLES

? Five Ways To Lose An Argument On Iraq by kuro5hin.org?s dachshund
? Various FAQs by the Church of Virus? Hermit

ESSAYS BY ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY

? ANY ESSAYS BY THIS MAN

---

I think we've said all that can be said now....


This thread is dead.

quote:

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I think we've said all that can be said now....

---

I very much doubt it - esp. as it was closed whilst I was preparing a reply

I'll move this to P & S where we can kick around what is the hottest topic of the moment.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Right so skirting around the fact that you can't say all [insert nationality here] are for/aagainst war with Iraq without being proved wrong.........

---------------------------

On the question of who is 'responsible' or not see this:
www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,886148,00.html

It appears the British and Spanish leaders didn't consult with certain EU leaders before issuing their letter which is only going to cause problems. This is a map of how Euorpe stands on war with Iraq (note: PDF):
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2003/01/31/europe_iraq.xpress.pdf

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Thanks Emps. That is a very nice little maps.
Clearing some things i think.

~So it's your birthday today? congratulations and have a nice day. So it's not? have a nice day too~

Thanks for that emps...and you're right...you can't say that 'all' are for are against something...the best thingi s though...None of us ever did...Morgan just said we did.



[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 01-31-2003).]

Thanks for the info, Emps. Very interesting...

So...why is this issue dividing Europe? And the rest of the world, for that matter?

You know, on the surface, it's really a cut-and-dry issue, isn't it? But wait...underneath, maybe it isn't...

I would like to know, why some lands support Mr. Bush's stance, and why some do not. Is it maybe because Mr. Bush's stance on Iraq is not clear (well, other than the military one)? I personally don't quite know what to make out of Mr. Bush's motives for Iraq...maybe the rest of the world is also mulling this over? Food for thought...

Skaarjj: Quite so back to the actually important issue the impending war.......

And for those against the war:
www.peacepledge.org
www.nonviolence.org/iraq/
www.unitedforpeace.org
www.votenowar.org
www.antiwar.com
www.endthewar.org
www.stopwar.org.uk
www.moveon.org/nowar/
www.nowarblog.org
www.why-war.com
www.iraqwar.org | | www.againstbombing.org - a bit of an odd one.

I am impressed by the sheer number of web sites out there.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

WS: Its not really about "lands" in most countires its around 50:50 (except in the Middle East and France and probably some other countries) - although the UK is pretty evenly split on this we are the #2 country driving this through which does seem a little odd and likely to backfire on Tony Blair if things go wrong. In fact virtually the whole of the cabinet are against the war without a second UN resolution (except for Hoon the defence minister who has been described as having gone 'native' in the Ministry of Defence).

Is there actually anywhere in the world that has a large majority in favour of war with Iraq? What are the numbers like in the US at the moment?

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

OK Here is a formal challenge to Morgan Ramsay:


A Formal debate in the phillosophy Thread on the following topic:

Is the worlds position that the slaughter of thousands of people is justifyable in removing Saddam Hussien from power or merely that of an extremist few???

Rules:

1.Posts must be left in their original state at all times.
2.No temper tantrums or personal slights


We will make this a team debate so please find someone prepared to back your argument, as the title suggests it cant be a one person per team debate

It's a little too specific and I would, actually, prefer to stay out of political and morality debates on this forum. Don't forget that I'm leaving as soon as Thaddeus gets my e-mail.

i thought you would have liked a go at that, since its exactly your position

Jumping in a bit late here.

Most of the people I speak with think that this war is the only way for GWB to remain in office. His domestic policies are flopping, he does not have the sucess he once showed in the polls. He will obviously lose in 2004 unless he pulls a big bomb out of his ass.

tomeaglescz: Its too emotively phrased - good try though.

And I thought I'd share this:



___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

quote:

---

I would, actually, prefer to stay out of political and morality debates on this forum

---

Please stopit - it hurts my ribs, and now I can't see shit for tears!

___________________________
Money is the game other people play, that I try to avoid by having just enough not to play it.
-Norman Mailer
[Dufty][Cell 698]

Holy crap!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe all this happened after I fell asleep last night! Simply amazing.

Emps! I love how you pull out the little presents I insert in my posts sometimes. You know I consider France and Germany's positions irresponsible, the 8 countries that have sided with a strong position against Iraq referred to their plan as negligent. I don't see a huge difference between irresponsible and negligent in this current context. I expect Russia and China to oppose us as a matter of principle.

Do you think my characterization went too far?

[edit] Diplomacy first? Without a military build up there would be NO diplomacy happening right now at all. We are waiting for a peaceful solution. We are offering exile, and all sorts of room and time to stand down. This simply cannot be an indefinite wait. There are real people in the field and real conditions that warrant a decision one way or the other. Right? What am I missing in that analysis? [/edit]

. . : slicePuzzle

[This message has been edited by Bugimus (edited 01-31-2003).]

Umm...you expect Russia to go against U.S. action? um...I hope not

Bugs!:

quote:

---

I love how you pull out the little presents I insert in my posts sometimes.

---

and I love you dropping those little nuggets in to make sure I read everything carefully

So onwards:

quote:

---

Do you think my characterization went too far?

---

Yes. It smacks of if-you-aren't-with-us-you-are-against-us-ism. My viewpoint is that the concerns of countirues like France and Germany are:

a) Useful brakes on our (US/UK) 'enthusiasm'

b) An expression of a more widespread (and pos. more extreme) but unpsoken/unheard viewpoint that there are possibly other (better?) ways of going about this without 'unilateral'/unsanctioned (literally) war. We need a constructive debate and there is a growing feeling that our leaders are steamrolling us into a future we could/should avoid (igniting the Middle East with ill-timed intervention).

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor