A strike on Iraq

[STING2]

Welcome Back Klaus:

you have mis-quoted me I'm afraid, because I never discussed comparison's between Hitler and Hussain with you. BAMA was the one that had their pics in one post and I think that is who your thinking of. I'd rather not get in to that debate at this point because I think I have a different view than both you and Bama on that point.

Now in response to Klaus:

The Mujahadeen acting against Soviet aggression in their country was not terrorism! They were fighting unlawful Soviet military occupation of their country like any other country would. The Taliban and Al-quada were not formed until the 1990s after US involvement in Afghanistan had ended.

Sometimes one does have to make peace with an enemy to fight a greater enemy. If you don't believe this, I guess you feel it was wrong for the USA to support the Soviet Union in World War II against the Axis. This commendable idealism needs a healthy dose of realism to go with it.

Any weapon can kill someone that you don't want to. Mass destruction weapons are those weapons where its not possible to control to a great degree, the level of damage that is done to unintended targets. While a Daisy cutter is powerful, we can control where it is used so civilians are not hurt by it. The same cannot be said for Chem/Bio/Nuclear weapons because whether can carry its effects in unpredictable directions.

The difference between the terrorist and the USA, is we only have mass destruction weapons to deter their use against us, terrorist seek to have these weapons because of their effectiveness in killing as many innocent civilians as possible.

There is a UN resolution that justifies military action against Iraq to bring it in compliance with UN resolutions including the ceacefire. While it does not explicitly say that regime change should be used to bring Iraq into compliance with the ceacefire agreement, it does not state that regime change cannot be used to accomplish the goals of the ceacefire agreement. But disregarding that, military action is approved by the UN to bring Iraq into compliance with UN resolutions as stated in the ceacefire agreement.

Again, my whole criteria for nations that are candidates of regime change involves BOTH BEHAVIOR and WMD CAPABILITY. Countries that are seeking mass destruction weapons but not acting behavior wise like Iraq are NOT candidates for regime change. Nor are countries that behave like Iraq but DO NOT have WMD capability. It is the two combined that makes Iraq a candidate for regime change. Right now they are the only one on the list, because currently they are the only country that meets that criteria. Oh, and when I say behavior, I don't mean simply similar behavior, the level and degree of that behavior has to be equal to that of Iraq.

The US would like to get a new resolution that would involve an inspection regime that would be backed up with force unlike the previous inspections regime. That is what the new resolutions are about.

Iraq has been in open violation of the ceacefire agreement since 1998 which means that Iraq is at war with the USA and the UN from a legal standpoint. The USA and other UN countries are obligated to use military force to bring Iraq back into compliance with the 1991 ceacefire agreement. This is what the UN ceacefire agreement states. So it is other UN countries that are going against international law, not the USA. Instead, the USA and the UK are the only countries willing to do what the UN ceacefire agreement calls for!

Part of the reason the USA wants a regime change is because after many years Saddam has failed to live up to the ceacefire agreement he signed and is doing things that threaten the whole international community. The oil is of interest to everyone on the planet. The price of oil is determined by how much is available. If supply is threatened or cut off, energy prices for everyone on the planet go up. Everyone spends money on energy everyday, whether its heating your home, turning a light on, or going somewhere in a car. Increase the price of doing that over a long period and you will ruin the global economy because people will be forced to spend less money in the economy and more money for their daily energy needs.

The price of oil would temporarily go up with a war, but over the longterm, it would drop further because the region would be more stable. This what happened in the 1990s with the Gulf War and its aftermath. Initially prices went up, but then the price of oil dropped heavily. 1999 saw some of the lowest prices for oil in history.

Dresden was not bombed to weaken the morale of the people. It was bombed because it was a key industrial, transportation, and communication hub. It was taken out at the request of the Soviet army to worsen the logistical situation for the german military on the eastern front. I hope you understand the importance of logistics for a military and the importance of industry, transportation, and communication area's in your rear to aid your forces at the front. That is why Dresden was taken out.

We are not violating international law by invading Iraq, we are complying with it by doing so. Violation of the UN ceacefire agreement calls for the resumption of offensive operations against Baghdad! That is a fact. From a legal standpoint, we are already at war with Iraq because of their open violation of the ceacefire agreement since 1998! We have tried everything to force Iraq to comply with the ceacefire agreement over 11 years. That is way to long to have let this go. Iraq has not complied, nothing short of military force will make Saddam fully comply. Its time that the international community follow international law and the USA and enforce the UN ceacefire agreement of 1991! Not only is it legal for the USA to attack Iraq to bring it back into compliance with the UN ceacefire agreement, it is in fact mandated! Thats a legal fact!

 

[Not George Lucas]

Shouldn't the decision to attack be up to the people whose treaty was violated? It was a UN treaty, and the UN doesn't want an attack. An attack on Iraq would only be mandated if :

a) there were actual physical proof of weapons of mass destruction.
b) the UN called for an attack.

I believe George W is making a mistake. He should look to the past for guidence. While past situations may not have been identical, they were similar and they do deserve some consideration.

1. The Cold War - For 40 years, the we had nuclear weapons pointed at us. Presidential advisors urged for a strike. They wanted it sooo bad, but it was not in the nation's best interest. Why? They could strike back, of course. If Iraq has weapons, they, too, could strike back. If they don't, the attack would have been for naught, and the US would be the bad guy in the public eye.

2. Bay of Pigs - The US wanted to remove Castro from power because he was a corrupt dictator. Eisenhower and his advisors drew up a plan. Congress approved it, and Eisenhower approved it. When Kennedy was sworn in, he learned of the plan and, figuring that Eisenhower (former 5-star general) and his people were all for it, and Congress was all for it, put it into motion. The plan failed miserably. Lots of innocent people died. Kennedy was viewed as a weakling, and no one took him seriously. My point here is that we have no idea what's going on in Iraq, and it's possible that an invasion could be foiled by leaked information or poor planning. We've already had potential battle plans go to the press, for God's sake.

3. Cuban Missile Crisis - We had actual physical proof that the USSR was installing bigass missiles in Cuba, merely 90 miles from the US. Kennedy's advisors urged him to strike or invade. Kennedy, having learned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, decided to do neither. Instead he placed a blockade around Cuba so that anyone entering would have to be searched, destroyed, or turned away. My point here is that invasion of Iraq is not necessary. If inspectors find weapons, they can have them dismantled. If the inspectors are turned away, it may be possible to implement another plan that doesn't involve lots of killing. Frankly, the whole idea of jumping into a war scares me, especially in an unjust war such as this.

 

[Not George Lucas]

This thread needs a kitten.

 

[U2Bama]

Adolf Hittler was much more than that and comparing him over and over again with different other assholes just to show how bad that other "new Hittler" is (I think i hear about comparisions like that once a month) just reduces his unique cruelty or his sick vision of the "Herrenrasse" to name just a few. Besides that he told the world what he wanted to do in advance ("Mein Kampf").

I am well aware that Hitler was much more than that when it was all said and done; I simply don't want Hussein to become a fraction of what Hitler became, yet Hussein has exhibited plenty of tendencies which, to me, are VERY similar to the attitudes of Hitler. Perhaps there is a REASON why you hear the comparison once a month.

Thank you for mentioning MEIN KAMPF. Are you aware that Arabic translations of MEIN KAMPF and THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION are widely available in Iraq, and the Arabic translation of the former recently hit the bestseller list in Palestine?

I think these patterns and similarities are worth exploring further rather than dismissing as disrespectful; that's all.

~U2Alabama

 

[STING2]

Not George Lucas:

It is not a UN treaty, it is a ceacefire agreement with explicit conditions which call for the use of military force if the conditions are violated. It is not something that has to be voted on. The UN, in the ceacefire agreement, already approves military action against Iraq if Iraq violates the terms of the 1991 ceacefire.

a. the UN inspectors including Scott Ritter, in 1998 when they were thrown out, confirmed that not only that Iraq still had chem/Bio weapons but that they could reconstitute much of what the inspectors had siezed or destroyed in 6 months. It is not incumbent on the UN to prove that Iraq does not have mass destruction weapons, it is incumbent on Iraq to prove that they do not have mass destruction weapons.

b. Again the UN has already called for the attack. The UN ceacefire agreement calls for military action if Iraq breaks the terms of the ceacefire. Because Iraq has been in open violation of the ceacefire terms since 1998, from a legal standpoint, Iraq has been at war with the UN since 1998.

Here is why these historical situations are not similar:

1. The USA was never going to launch a conventional attack on the Soviet Union to change the regime. Why, we never had a military force large enough to do that, we were barely able to deter the Soviets from invading western Europe once they achieved nuclear parity with the USA. Presidential advisors only urged for a nuclear strike in the 1950s if we detected a Soviet build up for either a conventional or nuclear strike on Europe. The US policy then was "Massive Retaliation" if a Soviet Attack on Europe was about to happen, pre-emtion indeed. In the 1950s the Soviets ability to hit the continental USA was minimal or non-existent. It was felt that a quick nuclear strike against the Soviet Union could destroy what nuclear weapons the Soviets could use in Europe and of course disrupt any invasion plans they had with Europe.

But In the 1960s the Soviets developed a large force of long range ICBMs that the US could not hope to destroy in a first strike. It is at this time that the Soviets had finally achieved a "second strike capability". The Soviets had achieved Nuclear Parity with the USA, and nuclear war was thought of as assured destruction. The problem was the USA could no longer threaten nuclear war against the Soviets if they invaded western Europe. US policy went from massive retaliation to flexible response in order to defeat a Soviet invasion without the use of nuclear weapnos, but if need be respond to a Soviet strike with nuclear weapons.

To sum up, 1. we did not change the regime in the Soviet Union with military force because we never had the capability to do so, even during the part of the coldwar where the continental USA was not even threatened by nuclear attack. 2. The Soviet Union was far more rational in its actions than Saddam Hussain or even other rogue nations that exist today. The Soviets were detered by are policy of containment and avoided doing things that would risk premature war with the USA and its allies. 3. Saddam's actions over the past 20 years have been risky, irrational, and unintelligent when compared to Soviet actions. The Soviets may have wanted to control the planet, but they were not stupid like Saddam. 4. The stand off with nuclear weapons between the USA is not the same as the stand off with Iraq and what Bio/Chem/Nuclear weapons they might have. In the Cold War there was the possibility of total destruction of the USA. With Iraq, were trying to prevent him from getting the ability to destroy a single US city. 5. Saddam may deliver Mass destruction weapons to terrorist and attack the USA that way. In this senerio we may never find out that the mass destruction weapon was supplied by Iraq. So even if Saddam was slightly rational, he may feel this is something he could get away with and he actually might be right. The fact that he is a risk taker and irrational only proves that this is a likely possibility.

2. The Bay of Pigs invasion failed because it relied on cuban defectors to defeat the Cuban military rather than the much larger and powerful United States military. If the US military had invaded Cuba in 1961, Castro would have been captured or killed and Cuba today would be a democracy. One of the greatest crises's in the countries history, the 1962 cuban missile crises would never of happened! Iraq was soundly defeated on the battlefield in 1991 with the lowest military losses for a war involving that many troops in history. Iraq is far weaker in 2002 than they were before the 1991 Gulf War. Their military is only 1/3 the size with outdated often broken down equipment. They will be facing a US military that is stronger than it was in 1991. Victory is assured, the only question will be how many casualties it will take.

3. Some of Kenedy's advisors urged him to strike and invade, but Kennedy and OTHER military and political advisors knew that any Soviet first strike no matter how devestating, would still leave the USA with nuclear weapons in other places around the world. This meant we had a survivable second strike capability to hit the Soviet Union with. The Soviets knew this and had no real intention of striking the USA with nuclear weapons. If the Soviets had a first strike capability(meaning the ability to completely neutralize US nuclear forces worldwide with a first strike), Kennedy would have ordered the strike on Cuba.

The only thing short of invasion and regime change are coercive inspections. This requires the deployment of large military forces to the region including into Iraq. Instead of being escorted by Iraqi's, the UN inspectors would be escorted by US military forces. Any obstruction of inspections like Iraq did in the 1990s would be met with massive military force to clear the obstruction. Iraq would have to unconditionaly agree to allow these types of inspections which would include the deployment of large numbers of US forces into Iraq to insure that Iraq is completely disarmed! Once that is done, which could take years, provisions must be set up to prevent Saddam from ever being able to resume a WMD program. This may include the permanent stationing of UN inspectors and with military forces to monitor Iraq on the spot to prevent resumption of their weapons programs. This is the only way short of regime change that Iraq can possibly be disarmed and UN resolutions complied with. If Saddam were willing to agree to coercive inspections which includes the deployment of US troops on Iraqi soil, then I say we should go this way. If he really believes the USA is going to attack and take him out, he may agree, but then again given his irrational past, he may not.

Any war is clearly justified given Iraq's violation of the 1991 ceacefire agreement and the threat that poses to the world. Open violation of the 1991 ceacefire agreement since 1998 by Iraq, legally means the UN and Iraq have been at war for 4 years now. The best way to prevent the mass loss of life from Saddam's weapons programs is to disarm him. It is unlikely that Saddam will agree to COERCIVE inspections, which would leave regime change as the only option to disarm the country.

 

[TylerDurden]

3. Cuban Missile Crisis - We had actual physical proof that the USSR was installing bigass missiles in Cuba, merely 90 miles from the US. Kennedy's advisors urged him to strike or invade. Kennedy, having learned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, decided to do neither. Instead he placed a blockade around Cuba so that anyone entering would have to be searched, destroyed, or turned away. My point here is that invasion of Iraq is not necessary. If inspectors find weapons, they can have them dismantled. If the inspectors are turned away, it may be possible to implement another plan that doesn't involve lots of killing. Frankly, the whole idea of jumping into a war scares me, especially in an unjust war such as this.

Imagine if GW/Rumsfeld/Cheney were in charge then.
"Quick! Fire a few off before they do!"
Pre-emptive! Good idea!

If you can have huge Russian nuke missiles parked on your doorstep, aimed at your capital cities, and you can sort it out without a shot being fired, under the pressure they were under, then surely some 3rd rate dick in the Middle East mucking around with fairly basic weapons, with no threat of using them, and all the time in the world to find a solution, should not need a mass US invasion to fix.

 

[STING2]

Uh no I don't think so.

Saddam is not the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union never had the intention of using nuclear weapons in Cuba and Kennedy and most of his advisors new that. It was a crises because it was the first time the Soviets had a non-interceptable way of hitting the continental United States. But the Soviets new that the USA had a survivalable second strike capability which would hit the Soviet Union if they did anything. With Saddam, we do not have this level of deterence because of his history of irrational behavior unlike the Soviet Union. In addition, there is no way to deter a terrorist attack with WMD weapons launched by suicidal terrorist supplied by Saddam. The threat is that Saddam may believe and risk supplying these weapons to terrorist, believing that it could not be clearly traced back to him. This is actually a distinct possibility that we would be unable to trace the source of WMD weapons used in a terror attack on the USA. His risk taking and irrational behavior in the past is evidence that he may take a chance and do this. If you can't deter an attack from happening, you have to pre-emt it. There is no margin for error when trying to prevent an event 10 times worse than Saddam Hussian.

We have waited for and tried many things to bring Saddam into compliance with the UN resolutions for 11 years without regime change. If thats not being patient than I don't know what is!

 

[TylerDurden]

Uh no I don't think so.

Saddam is not the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union never had the intention of using nuclear weapons in Cuba and Kennedy and most of his advisors new that. It was a crises because it was the first time the Soviets had a non-interceptable way of hitting the continental United States. But the Soviets new that the USA had a survivalable second strike capability which would hit the Soviet Union if they did anything. With Saddam, we do not have this level of deterence because of his history of irrational behavior unlike the Soviet Union. In addition, there is no way to deter a terrorist attack with WMD weapons launched by suicidal terrorist supplied by Saddam. The threat is that Saddam may believe and risk supplying these weapons to terrorist, believing that it could not be clearly traced back to him. This is actually a distinct possibility that we would be unable to trace the source of WMD weapons used in a terror attack on the USA. His risk taking and irrational behavior in the past is evidence that he may take a chance and do this. If you can't deter an attack from happening, you have to pre-emt it. There is no margin for error when trying to prevent an event 10 times worse than Saddam Hussian.

We have waited for and tried many things to bring Saddam into compliance with the UN resolutions for 11 years without regime change. If thats not being patient than I don't know what is!

I'm about to walk out the door, so sorry this is fast...
I agree that there is a threat of him supplying something to terrorists. That to me is the hard one to debate. I don't know why 'they' don't try and draw more attention to that possibilty.
It's all good and well pointing out that he may be able to launch a missile to a certain radius in a certain amount of time, but there's no way he would. He has been irrational before, but no-one was telling him not to. Since Kuwait he has been limited to fighting stupid political wars. Toying with the Inspectors is a game, one he's very good at. You say the US wasn't worried about the Soviets in Cuba, because they knew they couldn't win, so weren't going to launch first. Iraq has Israel right there, nuclear armed, and I think it's fairly obvious that the US wants his head on a plate. Surely Saddam is not suicidal.
My point is, an attack from Saddam, by Iraq is no threat.
The supply to terrorists could be, and I think he should be dealt with in a very heavy handed way. All out war may achieve the immediate goal, but it could turn real ugly real fast.
Like I said I'm moving quickly and this ain't a good post. I'll get back to this....

 

[Popmartijn]

It is not a UN treaty, it is a ceacefire agreement with explicit conditions which call for the use of military force if the conditions are violated. It is not something that has to be voted on. The UN, in the ceacefire agreement, already approves military action against Iraq if Iraq violates the terms of the 1991 ceacefire.
[...]
b. Again the UN has already called for the attack. The UN ceacefire agreement calls for military action if Iraq breaks the terms of the ceacefire. Because Iraq has been in open violation of the ceacefire terms since 1998, from a legal standpoint, Iraq has been at war with the UN since 1998.

Then why doesn't the US go on and invade Iraq? Why all this messing around? As what you say is true and that military action is allowable at this moment, then why is the USA still waiting? They already have many fighter planes in the Gulf, so they can start bombing right away. They don't need a new UN resolution and they can tell this (that the violation of Iraq has as a consequence that military action is approved) to the UN. The member states passed the resolution in the past, so you can remind them of it. Then why all the fuss? Or is there something wrong with the logic of being allowed to take military action?

To sum up, [...] 2. The Soviet Union was far more rational in its actions than Saddam Hussain or even other rogue nations that exist today. The Soviets were detered by are policy of containment and avoided doing things that would risk premature war with the USA and its allies. 3. Saddam's actions over the past 20 years have been risky, irrational, and unintelligent when compared to Soviet actions. The Soviets may have wanted to control the planet, but they were not stupid like Saddam. 4. The stand off with nuclear weapons between the USA is not the same as the stand off with Iraq and what Bio/Chem/Nuclear weapons they might have. In the Cold War there was the possibility of total destruction of the USA. With Iraq, were trying to prevent him from getting the ability to destroy a single US city. 5. Saddam may deliver Mass destruction weapons to terrorist and attack the USA that way. In this senerio we may never find out that the mass destruction weapon was supplied by Iraq. So even if Saddam was slightly rational, he may feel this is something he could get away with and he actually might be right. The fact that he is a risk taker and irrational only proves that this is a likely possibility.

I have to disagree with Saddam's perceived irrationality. I think he's very rational. First, he's a dictator that tries to do everything to stay in power. On a second level he tries to have as much power as possible in the region by pushing the boundaries. Third, when he's forced out of something he rather destroys it than that his opponent gets it. This is it, basically, that describes Saddam Hussein. It explains how he stays in power (eliminating the domestic opposition, complying with the international world when they are against him) and how he tries to expand his power (Iran/Iraq war, the invasion of Kuweit, trying to get WMD). He explores the boundaries of what he can (chemical weapons against Iran) and cannot (invasion of Kuweit) do. As I say, he's extremely rational.
That's why he's suddenly allowing weapons inspectors back in, saying they have unlimited access. He doesn't want a war, because by averting it he'll stay in power (probably). Does this make him dangerous? I think not.

BTW, regarding my third point of Hussein's rationality (what he does when he loses something to an opponent), rumour has it that when the US does invade Iraq, the first thing he'll do is set fire to all his oil fields. If he isn't in power anymore and has no more control over his oil, then neither will the USA. If you thought the fires in Kuweit were bad, then wait until the second largest oil producing country is set on fire. Chemical weapons have a lower priority.

Iraq was soundly defeated on the battlefield in 1991 with the lowest military losses for a war involving that many troops in history. Iraq is far weaker in 2002 than they were before the 1991 Gulf War. Their military is only 1/3 the size with outdated often broken down equipment. They will be facing a US military that is stronger than it was in 1991. Victory is assured, the only question will be how many casualties it will take.

So you're saying that Iraq is a weak country at the moment (at least far weaker than in 1991). Then why all this talk of them being dangerous? This isn't in line with what you said earlier.

Marty

 

[Klaus]

Welcome Back Klaus:

you have mis-quoted me I'm afraid, because I never discussed comparison's between Hitler and Hussain with you. BAMA was the one that had their pics in one post and I think that is who your thinking of. I'd rather not get in to that debate at this point because I think I have a different view than both you and Bama on that point.

Sorry that one was quoted from U2Bama i forgot to point that out and was too lazy to create 2 postings

Anyway it would be interesting to get your point of view because it's different - discussions with someone who has the same view is boring

The Mujahadeen acting against Soviet aggression in their country was not terrorism! They were fighting unlawful Soviet military occupation of their country like any other country would.

Folowing this argument the Irish IRA would be not a terrorist organisation either.

Sometimes one does have to make peace with an enemy to fight a greater enemy. If you don't believe this, I guess you feel it was wrong for the USA to support the Soviet Union in World War II against the Axis. This commendable idealism needs a healthy dose of realism to go with it.

Yes - it is necessary sometimes - but you are also resposible for the results (Arming Iran, Iraq and giving Bin Laden tons of money to buy Weapons for example)
All i wanted to say is that sometimes it's dangerous to support enemies of enemies because some of them could be your enemies either

Any weapon can kill someone that you don't want to. Mass destruction weapons are those weapons where its not possible to control to a great degree, the level of damage that is done to unintended targets. While a

Right - that's what i wanted to say.

Daisy cutter is powerful, we can control where it is used so civilians are not hurt by it. The same cannot be said for Chem/Bio/Nuclear weapons because whether can carry its effects in unpredictable directions.

Most governments don't think tha it's just a powerful weapon and that's the reason why it's international unlawful to use it (Genf Conventions)

The difference between the terrorist and the USA, is we only have mass destruction weapons to deter their use against us, terrorist seek to have these weapons because of their effectiveness in killing as many innocent civilians as possible.

Both are targeting their enemies - the difference is that their enemies are our friends and vice versa
Both sides are thinking that they kill for a good reason and
(Of course we don't target civilians because of our morale)

There is a UN resolution that justifies military action against Iraq to bring it in compliance with UN resolutions including the ceacefire. While it does not explicitly say that regime change should be used to bring Iraq into compliance

As far as i read the UN resolutions it would violate international laws when the USA tries a regime change there.

The USA and other UN countries are obligated to use military force to bring Iraq back into compliance with the 1991 ceacefire agreement. This

It's always the job of the UN to decide this not of single members.
If the US government thinks it should be done - fine talk about this at the UN.
Starting War without mandate from the UN violates international laws.
And that would put your country one step into the wrong direction.

the USA. Instead, the USA and the UK are the only countries willing to do what the UN ceacefire agreement calls for!

The UN is the sum of their members.
If only the US (and UK are not pro war they are only willing to folow the US and pay the blood price) wants war it can't be pro UN.

The oil is of interest to everyone on the planet. The price of oil is determined by how much is available. If supply is threatened or cut off, energy prices for everyone on the planet go up. Everyone spends money on energy everyday, whether its heating your home, turning a light on, or going somewhere in a car. Increase the price of doing that over a long period and you will ruin the global economy because people will be forced to spend less money in the economy and more money for their daily energy needs.

That's the point - War for cheap Oil!

It is in our interest to have cheap oil but we can't give up our ideals and our understanding of right and wrong because of money.

Dresden was not bombed to weaken the morale of the people. It was bombed because it was a key industrial, transportation, and communication hub.

I dissagree but it's the wrong place to continue this discussion.

We are not violating international law by invading Iraq, we are complying with it by doing so. Violation of the UN ceacefire agreement calls for the resumption of offensive operations

please tell me which UN resolution you are thinking of that you have the opinion that a invasion could be legal.

against Baghdad! That is a fact. From a legal standpoint, we are already at war with Iraq because of their open violation

From a legal standpoint the US and Germany were at war until the reunification of Germany!

of the ceacefire agreement since 1998! We have tried everything to force Iraq to comply with the ceacefire agreement over 11 years.

For a verry long time noone did anything in these 11 years.

France started to trade with Iraq again and noone put presure on them.
And Turkey is the main hole for smuggling but noone cares.

We agree that it's neccessary to put presure on Iraq. The only difference is that you think war is the only possibility for that.

And everything you said to Not George Lucas will show every anti-american regime that they have to have ABC Weapons to make sure that they are not conquered by the US Army.

And i don't agree to your vision points 1.2.3.

1. A war versus the Soviet union would have Killed nearly all life on the plantet.

2.+3. Castro would have been killed and the next regime might have been like his corrupt predecessor. (But of course pro american)
Imho the US Regime forced the revolutionaries of Cuba to become friends of the Soviet union (like you mentioned before without ABC Weapons the US government whould have liked to change the regime pro american).

When the USA tries to change the world (With military force) the way they prefer it it reminds me on a german proverb:

"Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen"
(try to translate it yourself )

Only if we can stop suicide terrorists we can stop terrorism - and you can't stop them with bombing or conquering a country.

Maybee my oppinion is not pro war bacause of our (European) history.

Klaus

 

[hiphop]

Howdy. Does this mean I am missing the best thread?

Respect.

 

[STING2]

Popmartian,

The UN ceacefire agreement approves military action against Iraq if it violates the ceacefire agreement. Obviously the reasons for being cautious in this country is the cost money wise of taking down the Iraqi regime and having to have soldiers stationed in Iraq for the next 10 years. Nationbuilding is a difficult process which is why we are going slow about this and in addition why we want the support of other nations. In forcing compliance with ceacefire resolutions, regime change may have to happen. But then we are faced with the task of nation building. We do not want the 200 Billion dollar plus cost to fall just on our shoulders, we want as many countries as possible to help out with the peacekeeping and other duties afterwards. Were slow to move down this direction because of the aftermath. Coalitions are always better than going alone, but that does not prevent us for acting alone if we feel we have to.

As far as the actual military invasion, it would have been launched years ago, if nation building in Iraq was not a factor. But thats not reality and the USA and international community cannot afford to have Iraq crumble after an invasion. The threat to security and stability would be even greater if that happen. So the answer to your basic question of what is stopping us or slowing us down since we already have approval for military action is, we want as much financial and economic support that we can get from other countries as possible for rebuilding the country after the war or conflict is over. Getting little or none does not mean we will not act though.

I do not find rational the invasion of a country 3 times as large as your own, Iran, to be a rational political/military move on the part of Saddam. Aside from the fact that the war accomplished nothing for him and put the country in a worse economic situation, it also almost led to his death and Baghdad being overrun. Not to smart or rational in my opinion.

Once the war was over in 1988, within two years he decides to invade a target that will not be able to resist like Iran, Kuwait. The consequences of doing this were obvious to most people except Saddam. There is no place outside Europe and a few places in Asia, that is of greater national interest to the USA than persian gulf oil. If there is any place that the USA is willing to fight a war its hear, the interest are to high. Despite that fact Saddam annexed Kuwait and continue to prepare for war believing the Americans after Vietnam did not have the stomach for it. It was obvious to most intelligent experts that the US would crush the Iraqi military machine, which Saddam had conveniently placed 2/3s of in Kuwait. On the last day of the war, there were US troops who had no Iraqi troops in between them and Baghdad. Defectors have said at this point Saddam feared for his life and had actually planned to leave the country if US forces advanced toward Baghdad, which they could do virutually unapposed. It was not rational to risk war with the USA and the possiblity that he would be killed. Again another irrational miscaculaton by Saddam.

The reason Saddam has been able to do little on the international front as far as invading countries is that his conventinal military machine used in Iran, Kuwait and Saudia Arabia has been smashed. He has few if any of the Scud Missiles he fired at Israel in 1991. His ability to threaten his neighbors has been greatly reduce, except in one new horrifying way. Saddam still has the ability to produce WMD weapons. While his military has been smashed, it does not take a large amount of WMD to cause severe loss of CIVILIAN life in a terrorist attack in a foreign country. This is Saddam's last true capability to threaten the world. Based on his past irrational moves, he could assume that he could get away with a WMD attack by using international terrorist as the means of delivery. It is very possible that it will be dificult to trace the use of such weapons back to Saddam. Saddam being a risk taker is potentially likely to act in this regard. That is why Baghdad has to be Truely disarmed through Coercive Military inspections or Regime change!

We can handle the fires in Iraq just as we handled the fires in Kuwait. Kuwaiti oil is all over the market today, just as Iraqi oil will be when Saddam is out of power.

I said Iraq is CONVENTIONALLY WEAKER than they were in 1991. They also have a smaller number of weapon systems that could deliver weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's threat is from its pursuit of WMD that could be handed to terrorist at any time! That is the threat that Iraq poses. Saddam's behavior and risk taking suggest that he is likely to do this. In additon, his obession with having weapons that have little military use, but a huge use if trying to inflict mass loss of life among a civilian population is damning evidence that this is his goal.

 

[STING2]

The difference between the IRA and the Mujahadeen is that the Mujahdeen were resisting an INTERNATIONAL invasion of their country. No one in Afghanistan claims to be apart of the Soviet Union. The majority of people in living in Northern Ireland claim to be apart of the United Kingdom. Next the Mujahadeen targeted Soviet troops in Afghanistan. They never attacked Soviet Civilians in the Soviet Union. They never bombed Moscow. On the other hand the IRA targets civilians. Most people killed by the IRA are civilians. Most people killed by the Mujahadeen during the 1979-1989 war were soldiers. The Mujahadeen have a legitmate right to resist Soviet Occupation of their country. I do not see the IRA response to civil rights abuses in Northern Ireland to be appropriat at all. The are other options available to the IRA to work out their grievances. The UK is a democracy, the Soviet Union is not. The Mujahadeen only had one option vs the Soviets, submit or fight.

Again, the USA supplied the Mujahadeen with some weapons during the Afghan/Soviet War. 70% of the weapons were supplied by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The leader of the Mujahdeen later became the leader of the Northern Alliance that opposed the Taliban, Al-quada and Bin Laden. Bin Laden's chief role in the Afghan conflict was giving money and getting other arabs to come to Afghanistan to support the Mujahadeen. There is little if any direct connection between the USA support for Mujahadeen and then support for Bin Laden. Most of this is simple generalization. Tons of money to Bin Laden, nope. Bin Laden was a business man that had his own money.

Its true that the USA supported Iran when the Shah was in power to counter Soviet supported Iraq. The US never sold weapons to Iraq. Iraq did capture US weapons from Iran during the Iran/Iraq war though, but this was a tiny amount.

Terrorist target innocent civilians, not military personal! We do not target civilians we target the military. Huge difference.

I understand the UN resolutions do not explicitly call for regime change, but they do call for military action if the ceacefire is broken to disarm Baghdad.

The UN has already approved US military action through the ceacefire agreement. It true it does not explicitly say we take military action as far as changing the regime, but it does say we are mandated to resume military action to bring Iraq in compliance with the UN ceacefire agreement. There is no need for a vote because the vote took place 11 years ago.

The USA is not pro war, we are pro international Security!

Were not giving up are idea's of right and wrong for cheap oil, we are enforcing are idea's of right and wrong by preventing Saddam and others from threatening the economic health of the world!

Again, the UN CEACEFIRE AGREEMENT mandates that military action be taken to enforce the agreement if it is broken!

The USA tried though those 11 years to keep santions on Iraq and prevent other countries from doing trade that would violate the sanctions. We flew to no-fly zones in the North and the South of Iraq to insure the security of other countries that bordered that area and deny Iraq the use of airpower against Shia an Kurdish civilians. The USA was involved in a intensive inpsections regime to try and disarm Iraq peacefully. The USA has done a lot of things, diplomatically and peacefully, over the past 11 years to get Iraq to fully comply with UN resolutions. It has failed. That is why force is necessary! It is the only language Saddam understands!

I don't see how your assertion that what I said to Not George Lucas imply's that every country would go for weapons of mass destruction to safeguard against US invasion. I'm afraid you did not understand what I said. The US did not invade the Soviet Union because they had nuclear weapons, the US did not invade the Soviet Union because we never had the CONVENTIONAL military strength to do so, if that had been are intention. After the 1960s the likely hood of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union during a conflict was made less likely when the Soviets achieved nuclear parity with the USA. BUT it made a conventional military conflict in europe MORE likely because the use of nuclear weapons was unlikely because of the uncontrollable risk their use in the war would create. Before the Soviet achieved nuclear parity with the USA, the USA had the option of using nuclear weapons with little fear of Soviet ability to strike the continental USA. That option went away when both sides had the weapons in large numbers and their use would mean defeat for both sides. At that point , nuclear weapons became military unuseful. The Soviets could now attack western Europe with the confidence that their nuclear weapons would deter the USA's use of nuclear weapons to defend Europe. Weapons of Mass destruction only deter an attacker if the possible attacker does not have Weapons of Mass destruction itself. Rogue nations attempting to obtain weapons of mass destruction will in fact only increase the likely hood that they are attacked by the USA. The USA is not detered by their WMD because it has its own arsonal of WMD. Part of the reason that Chem/Bio weapons were not used in WW II when most countries had them or could build them.

 

[STING2]

In response to Klaus again:

The USA could have installed a democracy in Cuba just like we did in Italy, Germany, and Japan after World War II. The proper investment of funds would achieve this.

As Afghanistan is the case you sometimes do have to bomb or defeat a country in order to stop terrorism. It is unfortunate that the USA did not intervene in the world the way it has since World War II, before World War II. From Europe to Asia, to the middle east, the US military intervention has secured democracy, prosperity, security, and stability, for millions of people in many countries around the world. My father served in the US military for 30 years during the Cold War and I am very proud of his service to help secure democracy, prosperity, and stability throughout the world!

 

[ultraviolet7]

In response to STING2's reply to me (late as usual!)

Ok you live in Argentina and this has been your personal experience from you have seen. But, I'd like to see national statistics which would contradict UN DATA which shows Argentina at #34 standard of living in the world. I live in the USA, and of course were the wealthiest country in the world, but there are people in my country who could describe somewhat similar personal experience in regards to their situation from 1970 to 2002. But obviously this persons personal experience is not the situation for most people as shown by national statistics on poverty and wealth in the USA. The point here is while personal experience is informative, it alone cannot be extrapolated to be the condition for the nation as a whole. If the United Nations has made a mistake in its ranking then please list the national statistics that show this. I have the Human Development Report from 1991 as well and I can look to see where Argentina ranked then, but I doubt it was higher than it is today. I'm not saying your wrong on the conditions today vs. 1970, I'd just like to see more "national data" that would contradict the United Nations information.

There certainly must be national statistics somewhere, in fact all the time the media are reporting official and private figures regarding this. However, statistics are just that, they may be informative to some extent but they don't always reflect accurately what the real situation is since their reliability and degree of objectiveness depend on who perform them, to what end, what interest they are supposed to serve, what factors are taken into account, what's the studied cases' profile, how many cases are actually involved, etc. It notorious also that statistics may be easily manipulated to fit a particular government's need. In fact the administration we had during the 90s was very fond of reporting GDP and economic growth figures since they were indeed higher than in previous years and of concluding that we were already on our way to becoming a "first world nation". However even if they might have managed to fool the international community they certainly could not do the same with local population since the "first world" slogan was repeatedly brought up as the greatest joke of all time. To cite the inaccuracy statistics may report a recent example comes to mind. Some time ago a national census was run and among the questions posed there was one regarding employment: to say that you worked for as little as an hour a week or only occasionally (probably because it was all you could get) automatically checked the "employed" box, which is obviously ridiculous since such a situation can be hardly considered "employment". The results naturally did not reflect the real degree of unemployment there currently is in this country and which can be easily verified on a daily basis on site.

While your doubt regarding what I reported as being an isolated case extrapolated from reality may be logical, be absolutely sure that I wouldn't have brought it up if didn't accurately reflect what we are seeing in this country day to day since I have no particular interest in putting myself on the public stand. In fact what I reported reflects the situation of well over 90% of Argentinians since those who have seen their situation improve in the last 30 years are less than 10% of the population. Such figure is by no means an invention of mine but is brought up by the media all the time as the actual percentage of people who enjoy a privileged life status in this country. If the statistics you mention have been performed on that particular segment of the population I can perfectly well understand the #34 ranking for standard of living since those people are certainly better off than years ago and are actually enjoying lifestyles perfectly comparable to those in first world societies. But then again their case clearly does not reflect the majority of the people. In fact the dramatic shrinking of the formerly wide middle-class base is hard fact which not only can be sensed and suffered in everyday life but is also widely discussed in the media at every level.

To further demonstrate the relativity of statistics, it's enough to compare how GDP and economic growth figures related to people's actual standard of living during the 90s. In fact while it was celebrated at governmental level that such figures were progressively increasing the actual well-being of most of the population was inversely proportional. The increase in GDP and economic growth figures in this country during the last decade responded to various factors such an increase in trade which was however strongly tilted to import due to the overvalue of local currency, privatisation of most state-owned companies, short-term investments in most cases speculative and an initial euphoria in consumption due to the increase in actual cash flow result of such sales, of such speculative investments and of the expansion of virtual money in the guise of CCs and relatively easy access to credit. Such euphoria however was extremely short-lived (no more than one and a half/two years at most) since in the import-favourable scenario it wasn't very long before industrial facilities started to close down as it was more cost-effective to import than to produce locally, this started to create widespread unemployment, cash flow rapidly decreased, buying power started to dramatically shrink, access to credit became readily more difficult, foreign investments became progressively more sparse not to say that many already established ones actually left the country and the worst recession in the history of this country was just round the corner.

In fact what you stated in your previous post re "importing more than you export does not mean a country is not economically healthy" is true up to a certain extent. I mean that to retain economic "good health" in such a situation there must be a substantial national treasure reserve to allow to resist heavy outward capital flow, there musn't be loan payment deadlines in the short term and there must be the sufficient political space and freedom to determine overall policy changes such as subsidisation, increase in import taxes, etc at short notice, should the situation be getting out of hand. Nevertheless a trade policy heavily slanted to importation produces recession in the long run. The degree of gravity of such recession depends basically on the above said factors. The examples you brought up about trade deficit reaching in fact its peak during the height of US economic expansion in the 1990s and South Korean increase in exports during the SE Asian crisis are easily explained since the effects of such policies are not felt at the same time the events are taking place but some time later. In fact the US experienced an economic expansion in the 90s with trade deficit but now it's suffering from recession result of such policy. South Korea started tipping its trade balance towards exports during the crisis, now it's experiencing a period of economic progress.

do you find it revolting that the USA helped the Soviet Union(Stalin was as evil as any Nazi if not worse) during World War II? Do you think the USA should not have helped the Soviet Union during World War II? Do you know what that would of meant for the world if the Soviet Union had been knocked out of the war by the Germans?

Both situations can't be possibly compared. On the one hand you surely must be aware that the US had little to do with the Soviet Union not being knocked out of the war by the nazis. In fact Operation Barbarossa (Hitler's campaign to take over the Soviet Union launched in June 1941) was repulsed at a terrible life-cost mainly by the Red Army with the invaluable aid of Russian civilian population and the harsh Russian winter. In fact at the time the US were barely at war and in any case much more committed on fronts other than the Russian one. The US' primary objective regarding their collaboration in the European front was to aid Great Britain and France mainly against Hitler and not in particular the Soviet Union who had even refused to constitute an alliance with the British at the time. Undoubtedly the Soviet Union's containment of Germany on its western front and on a lesser scale of Japan on its eastern one was useful to defeat a common enemy and to such end Stalin was eligible to receive US support in case it was needed. What I mean is that the US did not go into war in Europe to prevent the Soviet Union from being beaten by the nazis since its regime was as hostile to the US as the nazi was, but rather to prevent a nazi takeover of western Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. US war operations on European soil can easily prove this point, as a matter of fact US participation was sensitively lower in eastern Europe than in the west.

The subtle difference between American incidental collaboration with Stalin during WWII and support of fundamentalist guerrilla groups in Afghanistan in the 80s was that in the first case the Soviets' action against the nazis was extremely useful to defeat US true allies' enemies but not the goal of such aid which instead was aimed in general at preventing economic interest areas from being controlled by a hostile competitor and at the preservation of traditional trading partners BUT ALSO included in the package help to countries who had been attacked by an alien power with a dictatorial and racist regime to regain or retain freedom and self-determination. In the case of Afghanistan there was absolutely no interest in the freedom of the nation or the rebuilding of such as a democratic state but rather the paramount goal was that it was not Soviet controlled since such control seemingly jeopardised western interests in the area. To this end a fundamentalist force with no intention whatsoever of helping to build a free and democratic Afghanistan was funded. This is what I find revolting. I mean my repugnance does not stem from the fact that the US should try to defend their interests in foreign countries which is perfectly licit but rather that most of the time they stop at nothing in order to attain such goal. This policy many times has brought about situations/governments, etc which have been/are highly harmful to local communities.

In my view your comendable idealism needs to be infused with a healthy dose of realism.

Regarding this comment, I'd appreciate that you refrained from qualifying my line of thought and from telling me what I need to do. This debate has been civil because we have respected each other despite our differences, please let's keep it that way.

I'm certainly not expecting the USA to advertise a supposed policy of using Fundamentalism as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. But I do expect a lot more than the "facts" you gave to support that conclusion. I do not deny the logic, it just that the fact that we supported resistent fighters in Afghanistan does not alone prove your point.

I did state other examples and I believe that all of them prove my point. If you "don't deny the logic" it should be fairly simple to draw conclusions from such facts as I described, however you don't seem to be willing to admit the correctness of my statetemet under ANY argument simply because you disagree with it as a matter of principle. Because of this no fact is ever going to be enough for you. Furthermore it's not my intention to try to convert you or anybody else for that matter. It makes no sense to continue revolving around this point since we've reached a dead end.

Again if its a well publish fact that we sold weapons other than Tow missiles to get the release of hostages, please show me an article that proves this and just list one or two weapon systems other than the Tow missile that was sold to Iran, and in what quantity. The USA sold lots of weapons to Iran while the SHAH was in power, but not after his fall. Please list any weapons system and in what quantity. You don't have to list everything, I'd just like to see some of this evidence that you say you have.

Let's leave the Shah alone, shall we? We're not talking of pre 1979 Iran! I didn't say that I personally possess such evidence and I've already stated that I can hardly state type of equipment and quantity since this is not something that the media publish nor am I an intelligence agent or a military expert with access to such information. What I said is that the media at the time reported once and again that the US was selling equipment to Iran independently from the missile exchange for hostages. If I can I'll try to rake up some of the articles if they are anywhere accessible to be found.

Again, I don't follow your logic that if the Soviet Union was colapsing that would mean that their client State would colapse as well.

That's NOT what I said!! Please try re-reading what I actually wrote in the various posts. Anyway let's see if I can make myself clear: the fact that Iraq was equipped militarily (i. e. bought armament) from the USSR made it a Soviet client state but NOT NECESSARILY a Soviet satellite state (i.e. under complete Soviet control). In the beginning you implied that because Iraq bought from the Soviet Union it was automatically a Soviet satellite state, which clearly is not the case. In reply to this I said that if your theory were to be true (i.e. that Iraq was really a Soviet satellite state rather than a Soviet client one) it should have collapsed readily after the fall of the former USSR as the Warsaw Pact states did. Since it did not, it is clear that Iraq might have been a Soviet client but it was NOT in the Soviet orbit in the same way the Warsaw Pact nations were. I hope this clarifies it.

Many of the liberals and Palestinians claimed the Israelies killed 7,000 people at Jenin, it was later discovered that 48 people were killed and that most of them were terrorist. It was also discovered that the Israelies warned everyone to leave before they launched their attack on the terrorist, at least the IDF seems to care about the Palestinians unlike the terrorist who claim to be fighting for them!

The actual figure is of no relevance since the fact that they should have killed just one single civilian in the sort of operation they performed at Jenin would be just as condemnable since what is being discussed here is the legitimacy of the IDF's modus operandi in many of its operations. The fact that they "warned people to leave" is not a valid excuse since people were in their OWN homes and by not leaving they were possibly trying to defend their property. They probably must have thought that the IDF would not go as far as bulldozing their homes if they stayed inside. Another reasonable possibility is that civilians might have been actually held as hostages by the terrorists, so they hardly would have been able to leave at all at such prompt.

Actually Police whether it be in the USA, UK, Ireland or anywhere else often use deadly force against criminals in urban area's which does put the lives of innocent civilians at risk. I fully condone the Police using these means to bring criminals to justice, because the risk is minimal compared to letting criminals simply get away. How could the allies in World War II or any other country taking legitimate military action against an enemy be able to if the possible risk of civilian casaulties prevented them from acting.

No, you're mixing up concepts here. While it's perfectly legitimate that the police use deadly force to tackle crime and that accidentally civilians might be injured or killed because of it, what we are actually discussing is not whether it is legitimate or not to use deadly force but rather in what way such force is actually used. You surely wouldn't approve of the police bombing a building where a criminal is holed up holding hostages just to do away with him, would you? Or do you believe that in order to do away with a criminal the immolation of a few innocent lives (provided they're not closely related to you) is worth the final result?

its not policy to murder innocent Palestinians

It may not be a policy but it's done on a daily basis and not necessarily by accident.

The IDF has the capability to kill everyone on the West Bank, but they don't, they try to avoid civilian casualties but accidents happen

Intentionally bulldozing houses when it's known that innocent civilians are inside can be hardly called an "accident".

In trying to explain why the terrorist attack civilians instead of military targets, you have failed to explain how that would accomplish their goals of having the IDF leave the West Bank. There is simply no logic in attacking civilians. They have nothing to do with the IDF being on the West Bank. There are far better methods for resisting IDF occupations on the West Bank. If one has the ability to blow up a building with innocent civilians why wouldn't they have the ability to at least attempt to do the same against a military target. Their slaughter of Jewish civilians in Israel cannot be explained by any logic.

Is it that hard to understand? They are trying to have the IDF leave the West Bank in exchange for putting a stop to terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians! Another reason is to bring international attention to their problem since violence has an undeniable power in this sense. Come on, you're certainly aware that it's way easier to attack a civilian target than a military one! The slaughter of Jewish civilians can be perfectly well explained by logic, what it certainly can't is to be condoned in any way.

The USA is in obeying the UN by enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq. It is other UN members that are in defiance of their own organization by not enforcing the resolutions against Iraq. Since the other countries are not obeying the UN resolutions regarding Iraq by enforcing them, then by your logic they should all leave the UN as well.

It seems to be a matter of opinion, since if it was so clear that terms of the cease-fire agreement were violated there would be absolutely no obstacle for Bush to be given immediate green light to launch this attack. Why would there be any opposition? Hussein isn't precisely a popular character anywhere. On another account there's absolutely no logic in what you state at the end since the other countries are not bypassing UN regulations but are rather asking for evidence to conclusively prove that the terms of a UN agreement are being actually violated. It doesn't seem to be so obvious to them as you claim it is.

Because the UN cannot be convinced to act on a certain situation does not in fact mean the condition that is claimed does not exist. The UN failed to act in Kosovo! Civilians were being slaughtered by the Serbs by the UN could not act because of the Soviets veto power in the UN. NATO acted and brought peace to the region. The UN is a wonderful attempt to communicate and resolve differences, but it is not a world government. I guess you think all 19 members of NATO should leave the UN since their action in Kosovo was not approved by the UN.

No, actually I don't think so, since the need of intervention in Kosovo was agreed upon by a large part of the international community. In fact it was as you stated, supported by all NATO members to which quite a few extra NATO allies including my country must be added. Such operation was certainly endowed with much more legitimacy than an action such as the one the US proposes to undertake which has gained practically no international adhesion.

You know your criticism of the USA and the UN could also be leveled against virtually any member of the UN at one time or the other.

Certainly, why not? Though more powerful members are much more prone to such deviations. The case that it's the US being criticised now is simply rooted in the fact that it is the US who is involved at the moment. My appraisal of a similar situation involving any other nation would be exactly the same so there's no need to hint for anti-Americanism.

 

[STING2]

In response to Ultraviolet7:

Thats true that there are a lot of statistics that appear that are inacurate or politically motivated or taking out of a certain context obscuring their true meaning. I do have import/export figures for Argentina that I could look up going back to 1980. I have not looked at that yet though. The United Nations though, and those that are apart of making the anual UN Human Development report try to given an accurate picture of the standard of living in countries worldwide. The members who compose the team making the Human Development report are economist, statisticions, and other experts from around the world. I think they try to give an accurate, objective, unbiased look at what the standard of living is in each country and how each country ranks among others. That certainly does not mean that their info is perfect, but I think they try to present an accurate picture. So I'm not really sure what to think on this. To much conflictive info. I'll give the import/export stats a look and see if that adds anything. I did see in the Economist this week that Argentina's GDP is -16% from this point last year. A 16% drop in GDP is not a recession, thats a depression. The UN development report for 2002 should be out in a few months, will have to see what the new figures look like.

On the subject of trade deficits I think an important factor is what percentage of the economy is actually involved in international trade. The Greater that percentage is the greater the effects of any trade deficit or surplus. But, I doubt the recent US recession is due to the US trade deficit. The reason is that the US trade deficit has been around since the 80s. Early 80s in fact. Actually I need to check to make sure, but I'm almost positive the early 80s were the last time we had a trade surplus. Over that 20 years of trade deficits we have had economic expansion of the late 80s followed by a small economic recession in 1990/1991 followed by a few years of slow growth then the most rapid and longest sustain economic expansion in are nations history. The trade deficit has continued throughout all of this and I can't really see it turning to a surplus any time soon unless tariffs are raised to reduce imports, and other markets become more open to US exports. A reduction in the strength of the US dollar could also push exports up and imports down, as buying American becomes less expensive relative to foreign products.

Very well said on the Soviet Union and World War II. The Soviets did by far the most fighting and dying. But the USA did send the Soviets Billions of tons of food, clothing, raw materials, and other supplies. I need to look up the statistics to be more exact. We did send them a few tanks, but back then, Soviet tanks were superior to US tanks.

The USA though helped and wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from being Knocked out of the war, because if the Soviets had been knocked out of the war, barring nuclear weapons that had not been developed in 1941, it would have been impossible to defeat the German military machine without the Soviets. So actually it was a vital reason to get into the war. US supplies and aid was already flowing to the Soviets before the USA was bombed by Japan at the end of 1941. The USA was of course totally unprepared for World War II. It took a while to build up enough military power comparable to the Soviets to be able to act at the level and strength that were at. There was no way we could have conducted D-Day in June 1942 only 7 months after Pearl Harbor. US participation was not large in the military sense in Eastern Europe because it was difficult to engage the German military from that front. There was a plan to send troops through the Balkans and hit German troops troops fighting the Soviets from the rear, but this was abandoned because the terrain in the Balkans was mountainous and easy for the Germans to defend. Italy was tried because it was easier terrain wise than the Balkans but that proved to be difficult as well as the fighting bogged down in central Italy. The best way to the heart of Germany though for US forces was through the plains of Northern France and into Germany. Much easier terrain for armor advances than the Balkans or Italy. Plus there was the advantage of forcing the Germans to fight on two widely different fronts. US troops were never sent in large numbers to Russia itself because of the greater logistical requirments involved plus other factors that would complicate things. But US Bombers did sometimes fly to the Soviet Union and fly missions from the Soviet Union against German forces. This was not typical though.

I should stop here because I'm starting to refight World War II. But, the USA aided the Soviet Union because having them knocked out of the war could very well mean complete German victory everywhere. I see your point with Afghanistan, but again you have to put Afghanstan in the context of the Cold War where resources are limited. Building a nation into a democracy is expensive. The USA only provided 1/3 of the supplies for the Mujahadeen which was little at best anyways. I see nothing immoral about helping people resist Soviet Occupation. I don't think we should have left the area so quickly when the Soviets left, but the demands for aid to Eastern Europe were to strong. Remember all this occured in 1989, Soviets leave Afghanistan Communism collapses in Eastern Europe. We simply do not have the economic resources to help everyone at any given time. Still though, I could tie any support to resisting Soviet occupation anywhere in the world to the goal of one day having a world that is set up along similar lines of American Democracy and Capitalism which was our goal in World War II. Very indirect and not specific to Afghanistan at the time, very true. In general, both examples are still aiding an enemy or a neutral force to fight another enemy. Both examples can be linked to helping preserve democracy somewhere no matter how direct or indirect the link is. So I do think it is a legit example.

Sorry about the comment, that was not good. I failed to realize that could be personal. I think I was just remembering a debate in a University class where such statements involving realism and idealism are often used. I'll try to make sure this does not happen again!

I don't want to beat a dead horse either , but I think your only examples on the Fundamentilist bulwark against the Soviets were Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, and Iran after the fall of the Shah. I disagree and still disagree on both points. Were there any other examples? Sorry if I do not remember them. I should probably go back to look. But as you said this one is probably a dead horse.

As far as Iran and the Shah go, I was just pointing out that the small number of old US equipment captured from Iran by Iraq, was US equipment that was bought while the Shah was in power. I have never seen any evidence or reports of US arms sold to Iran in addition of the arms for hostage deal. But if you have something, I would like to see it, if you felt like obtaining it. But don't worry about though. I have a weapons table like the one I posted for Iraq for Iran too. But I'm willing to look at other pieces of info.

I see your point with Satellite State and Client State. I think we were both misunderstanding each other on this one. No disagreement now.

On the issue of the use of force, I agree that the Police would not bomb a building to catch a single criminal, but again were not talking about that in Palestine or Jenin either. Were talking about organized resistance with hundreds of fighters armed with homade bombs, RPGs, and plenty of small arms, enough to inflict heavy losses on a lightly equiped Israely force. The IDF went in with light Infantry(foot soldiers) to TRY and keep civilian casualties down. Of course this is often done in vain in all conflicts. It would of been easier and less risky to IDF troops to simply suround Jenin and carpet bomb it from the air. They did not do that because of the mass civilian losses that would create. If there were a way for them to pinpoint where the terrorist were, then a precision strike from the air might of worked and prevented unnecessary civilian losses. The Israelies went in with foot soldiers though because it was impossible to pinpoint exactly where the terrorist were, hiding among the civilians. They tried to evacuate Jenin, and most but not all did leave the area of fighting.

You fail to mention the Israely lives that were saved by catching so many terrorist in one spot. The loss of innocent lives is unfortunate but there is only so much the IDF can do to protect innocent lives when a well armed terrorist group decides to make its stand in a civilian area. It has never been confirmed how all the 48 civilians killed at Jenin died. The Bulldozing of a house with civilians inside may of happened because of mis -communication in the heat of battle, which is when these events took place. If it was Israely policy to bulldoze any house in the area with civilians in it, there would be far more dead civilians.

Well if there is to be an exchange for Israely forces leaving the West Bank for no terrorism in Israel, why has Hezbolah not ceaced their terrorism since Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon which they promised. Perfect example of how land for peace does not work. Israel had actually pulled out of large area's of the West Bank even when there was a massive increase in terrorism. But following all the attacks in the Spring the Israely's moved back in heavily. What i curious is before last Spring with so many Israely forces withdrawn from the West Bank, why was there a corresponding increase in terror attacks. Your Logic would state that the Israely's would be rewarded for withdrawing many of their forces from the West Bank, not attacked. This turns the logic that, if the Israely's completely withdrew from Palistine there would be no more terror attacks, on its head. Rather, the terrorist are interested in simply one day wiping out Israel and all Jews. It was and has been the stated goal of the Arab countries with four attacks on Israel in the 20th century.

Well I guess some UN members are blind. Please tell me who does not agree that Baghdad is not in violation of 16 UN resolutions. Did the inspectors finish their job. NO Who does not know that the inspectors were thrown out of Baghdad in violation of the UN ceacefire agreement? Perhaps reluctence or opposition stems from having to participate in paying for the rebuilding of Iraq after an invasion. We like to have the support of the member nations to enforce the UN resolutions as the law calls for so that we can get help with the cost of undertaking such an operation. But if no one is willing to help, that is not going to prevent the USA from doing the right thing if it feels the need to act.

There may not be as much international support for an operation in Iraq right now as there was for Kosovo in 1999, I was just pointing out the the UN was not the be all and end all of what could and could not be done internationally. If it was, action would never of been taken in Kosovo. From the legal standpoint of the UN though, the ceacefire agreement legitmizes US action against Iraq to force it to comply with the terms it agreed to.

 

[Klaus]

The difference between the IRA and the Mujahadeen is that the Mujahdeen were resisting an INTERNATIONAL invasion of their country.

The IRA thinks that they resist the British invasion (Ireland was a country of its own in history - so it's international too)

I would classify the Mujahdeen as Terrorists others would classify them as "liberty-fighters" pretty much the same just the view form the other side of the same fight.

... The are other options available to the IRA to work out their grievances. The UK is a democracy, the Soviet Union is not. The Mujahadeen only had one option vs the Soviets, submit or fight.

Most of the things you said were right .- historical comparisions fail most of the time.
I just wanted to point out an example that it's easier for you to take a look "from the other side"

But.. no matter if it's a Democracy or not People imho have a right to decide on their own which government they want.
It's not our job to bless the world with our style of living - except the majority of the people call for support to get the regime change done. (As it was in Europe)

Most of this is simple generalization. Tons of money to Bin Laden, nope. Bin Laden was a business man that had his own money.

But he got tons of money from various US organisations (CIA for example).
They didn't care about his motivations too much they were glad to have one who hates the Russans as they did.

But that's also not that important. The US foreign politics made lots of mistakes in the cold war and some of them we still see in the "Arabic world"

Its true that the USA supported Iran when the Shah was in power to counter Soviet supported Iraq. The US never sold weapons to Iraq. Iraq did capture US weapons from Iran during the Iran/Iraq war though, but this was a tiny amount.

Because of a Dictator like the Shah the religious fundamentalists got enough support in the country to make their revolution.
It took a long time - but now the Iran made it's own way to a democracy. It isn't as perfect as our democracies but it's on the way and it's leading into the right direction.

Terrorist target innocent civilians, not military personal! We do not target civilians we target the military. Huge difference.

That's what i said before.
We don't target civilians because we believe they are not our enemies.

I understand the UN resolutions do not explicitly call for regime change, but they do call for military action if the ceacefire is broken to disarm Baghdad.

So you agree that the focus change from the US to the "change of the regime" isn't supported by the UN resolutions?

That's all i wanted to say.
And if you do this without a UN res. you violate international laws.

(As you do when you use daisy cutters)

The USA is not pro war, we are pro international Security!

Everyone is pro (nat. and internat.) Security. But it's not only me who thinks that the military action the US is planing increases the risk of international terrorism.

Were not giving up are idea's of right and wrong for cheap oil, we are enforcing are idea's of right and wrong by preventing Saddam and others from threatening the economic health of the world!

If you want to do so than please talk with the other governments of the World in the UN and find a way.
Try to understand them as they try to understand you.
If you want more peace in the world you should respect the war-monopol of the UN. Stop unilateral actions.
If you don't care about international laws don't expect that the enemies of the US would do it.

Btw supporting the ICC would be a step in the right direction too.

Again, the UN CEACEFIRE AGREEMENT mandates that military action be taken to enforce the agreement if it is broken!

Right - and that's why noone calles it an invasion or unlawfull when you would inforce the Boycot of iraq with Military.

The USA tried though those 11 years to keep santions on Iraq and prevent other countries from doing trade that would violate the sanctions. We flew

Our governments weren't interested too much to enforce the trade boycott with Iraq (good examples France/Turkey - noone put presure on them).

USA was involved in a intensive inpsections regime to try and disarm Iraq peacefully. The USA has done a lot of things, diplomatically and peacefully, over the past 11 years to get Iraq to fully comply with UN resolutions. It has failed. That is why force is necessary! It is the only language Saddam understands!

We had this discussion before the inspections failed not only because of the Iraq but also because of the US they put spies in the inpsections-team and because of that Sadem threw them out of the country.

I don't see how your assertion that what I said to Not George Lucas imply's that every country would go for weapons of mass destruction to safeguard against US invasion. I'm afraid you did not understand what I said. The US did not invade the Soviet Union because they had nuclear weapons, the US did not invade the Soviet Union because we never had the CONVENTIONAL military strength to do so, if that had been are intention.

I don't share your opinion.

After the 1960s the likely hood of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union during a conflict was made less likely when the Soviets achieved nuclear parity with the USA. BUT it made a conventional military conflict in europe MORE likely because the use of nuclear weapons was unlikely because of the uncontrollable risk their use in the war would create.

I think you're wrong here - a looser could always be willing to destroy everything when he can't win anymore.
Because of that there was no more chance to win a war when the enemy had nuclear weapons.

Rogue nations attempting to obtain weapons of mass destruction will in fact only increase the likely hood that they are attacked by the USA. The USA is not detered by their WMD because it has its own arsonal of WMD. Part of the reason that Chem/Bio weapons were not used in WW II when most countries had them or could build them.

Chemical weapons were used in WW II.

In response to Klaus again:

The USA could have installed a democracy in Cuba just like we did in Italy, Germany, and Japan after World War II. The proper investment of funds would achieve this.

There is one big difference between Europe and lots of other countries US invaded or were trying to invade.

In Europe the people were happy that they were free again.
They welcomed the enemy soldiers with Flowers. I don't think that the Cuban People would have done this because of a currupt US supported military regime they had before. I don't believe that the Iraqi people would welcome the US with flowers either.

As Afghanistan is the case you sometimes do have to bomb or defeat a country in order to stop terrorism.

I can only repeat myself - i'm not a pacifist and i agree that at some point military force can be neccessary (most of the time because the problem was ignored before or the problem resulted of a war before)

It is unfortunate that the USA did not intervene in the world the way it has since World War II, before World War II. From Europe to Asia, to the middle east, the US military intervention has secured democracy, prosperity, security, and stability, for millions of people in many countries around the world. My father served in the US military for 30 years during the Cold War and I am very proud of his service to help secure democracy, prosperity, and stability throughout the world!

I understand that you're thinking verry positive of the US military because of the things you said above but you shouldn't ignore that lots of military action (not only from the US but also from the US) killed many people and installed dictator regimes.

You can't win war against terrorists with military actions only. War can lead to new terrorism because it creates new hate especially if your war could be for egoistic reasons only (Oil, Gold, other resources or just strategic points to threaten someone else.)

Klaus

 

[STING2]

In response to Klaus:

The IRA targeted British civilians in England, Scotland and other area's outside Northern Ireland. The Mujahadeen did not target Russians in Moscow or any other Soviet city. The Mujahadeen went after Soviet military targets. In the eyes of the world, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was just that. In the eyes of the world the British never invaded Northern Ireland since Northern Ireland is apart of the United Kingdom. Even Ireland itself agrees that Northern Ireland is apart of the United Kingdom. I have ancestors that come from Northern Ireland in my background who are protestant and not Catholic. Clearly they may have well viewed where they lived to be apart of England as well. Most people in Northern Ireland are Protestant and would ask you, What United Kingdom invasion are you talking about?, we are apart of the United Kingdom. One of the chief differences between terrorist and freedom fighters are that terrorist target civilians while freedom fighters go after the source of occupation which is a foreign military. With your logic, your saying that Afghanistan had no right to self-defense or to be supported by other countries in that self-defense. Afghanistan was an independent country before the Soviets invaded. Northern Ireland has never been an independent country at any time. The majority of people there want to remain apart of the United Kingdom.

Hey if you have a factual dollar amount of a money transfer from the CIA to Mr. Bin Ladin himself, prove it. People alleged this simply because Bin Ladin was involved in the war in Afghanistan and so was the CIA. There fore they automatically assume without hard evidence, that the CIA must have given Bin Ladin tons of money. Bin Ladin already had tons of money before the war. But hey, if you have documented evidence lets see it here, otherwise this is just unproven speculation.

US foreign Politics was not perfect during the Cold War, but it certainly made far less mistakes than had been made prior to the Cold War. There is very little I would have changed about US Cold War policy. It was massivily successful in finally achieving its goals.

I agree that UN resolutions do not explicitly say that regime change is necessary if Iraq violates the ceacefire agreement. But military invasion of Iraq to force compliance with UN resolutions is clearly mandated. If, AND ONLY IF, in such an invasion, it is found that the only way to bring a resolution to the war and there by Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions, would a regime change be justified.
For example, if Iraq had refused the UN ceacefire agreement in 1991, US forces would have continued toward Baghdad. If as US forces entered Baghdad Saddam still refused and continued to fight US and Coalition forces, Saddam would have been eventually captured, Killed, or would have left the country. Regime change is obviously possible even if it is not intended, if Iraq chooses not to cooperate and resist UN resolutions.

The UN would not exist if it were not for the USA. We always do seek to work with are allies and listen to their views. But the UN is not the be all and end all of when and where countries can take action to defend their citizens or prevent slaughter. The UN never approved NATO military action in Kosovo but we took it and saved thousands of people from being slaughtered by the Serbs. The USA has the right to defend its citizens without a vote from any international body. We seek support of the international community, but lack of that support will not prevent us from acting to defend ourselves.

The USA had to have spies on the inspection team because Iraq was already cheating and hiding its weapons from the inspectors. The USA set of devices to monitor Iraqi movement without them knowing. It was this intelligence, called spying, that allowed us to detect when and where Iraq had stationed sensitive equipment. You CANNOT effectively inspect and disarm Iraq if you do not spy on them without them knowing! This spying was the only way we were able to discover they were cheating. The fact that they were cheating not only allows the us to spy, but were mandated by the ceacefire agreement to actually invade the country with military force let alone spy!

A looser, unless he is Saddam or Hitler or have mental problems would not be willing to destroy everything including himself if they were about to loose. From my father and other people I know that were high ranking US officials during the Cold War, I know for a FACT that US strategy in Europe changed from massive retaliation with Nuclear weapons to FLEXIBLE RESPONSE in the 1960s. Flexible response strategy involved resisting Soviet invasion only with conventional weapons and ONLY using Nuclear weapons if the Soviets used them first. We never stated pubically that we were giving up the right of a first use of Nuclear weapons in a conflict, but our goal was simply to be able to deter each type of conflict with similar weapons, a conventional one with conventional weapons a nuclear one with nuclear weapons.

If we were being defeated by a Soviet invasion of western europe, it accomplishes nothing to esculate to the use of nuclear weapons to defend oneself because that would just bring down Soviet nuclear weapons on our remaining troops and cities plus exposing the US mainland to devastating nuclear attack. Such a decision is essentially suicide. Suicide is not a defensive action and will not save what we are trying to defend. In fact it would only insure its destruction. Far better to be defeated but survive to fight another day even if its a century later.

If chemical weapons were used on a large scale in World War II, please tell me when and where, and how it effected the outcome of the war. Why didn't Germans use chemicals against allied infantry on the beaches of Normandy. God knows the Germans had more than enough time to set up a system to kill large numbers of US and allied infantry that went on to the beaches without any protective gear. While your at it, give me the estimated number of deaths from chemical weapons in the war as well.

How did the Kuwaiti people react to US troops in the 1991 Gulf War? As far as Iraq that might be less certain since Iraq has so many different ethnic groups. There certainly will be ethnic groups in Iraq that will chear a US invasion.

I know war is not the only way to prevent terrorism but it is part of it. The US does not go to war for egoistic reasons. We go for to war for reasons of national security and international security. WE also do not target civilians in any war we go into unlike other countries. In my view and from what I have seen and read, all major US military action since 1945 has been justified.

 

[ultraviolet7]

Originally posted by STING2
The UN ceacefire agreement approves military action against Iraq if it violates the ceacefire agreement. Obviously the reasons for being cautious in this country is the cost money wise of taking down the Iraqi regime and having to have soldiers stationed in Iraq for the next 10 years. Nationbuilding is a difficult process which is why we are going slow about this and in addition why we want the support of other nations. In forcing compliance with ceacefire resolutions, regime change may have to happen. But then we are faced with the task of nation building. We do not want the 200 Billion dollar plus cost to fall just on our shoulders, we want as many countries as possible to help out with the peacekeeping and other duties afterwards. Were slow to move down this direction because of the aftermath. Coalitions are always better than going alone, but that does not prevent us for acting alone if we feel we have to.

As far as the actual military invasion, it would have been launched years ago, if nation building in Iraq was not a factor. But thats not reality and the USA and international community cannot afford to have Iraq crumble after an invasion. The threat to security and stability would be even greater if that happen. So the answer to your basic question of what is stopping us or slowing us down since we already have approval for military action is, we want as much financial and economic support that we can get from other countries as possible for rebuilding the country after the war or conflict is over. Getting little or none does not mean we will not act though.

I actually do find Popmartijn's observation logical, and though your argument seems to be a reasonable explanation for the delay in action on part of the US, there are some obscure points. If the threat posed by Iraq regarding its probable provision of WMD to terrorist groups is as impending as you claim, in view that there's no evidence of Al-Qaeda having been in any way definitely knocked out, of bin Laden having been killed, of other terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, etc of being inactive (on the contrary), of the success the 9/11 attacks were in the eyes of terrorist organisations, it's reasonable to conclude that the US or any other western target can be hit by terrorists ANY MINUTE now. This means, following your logic of immediate threat, that every minute action is delayed the safety of US and other western citizens is increasingly put at risk.

Do you seriously believe that in such a case the monetary cost of preventing the "crumble of Iraq" post enforcement of the cease-fire resolution should be reasonably considered a priority?

In fact it would be thousands if not millions of US/western citizens at risk of being victims of a bio/chem attack. No government is willing to face such scenario under any circumstance. Furthermore if financing for post cease-fire enforcement costs requires an extra effort on taxpayers' part, who in their right senses would refuse paying more if they were certain that this operation would liberate them from a potential bio/chem hazard? For these same reasons no other western nation would be posing any obstacle but rather would fervently support the elimination of such potential risk. The fact that they are so reluctant to approve of action and that the US doesn't immediately launch an attack under such circumstances, you'll excuse me, sounds somewhat suspicious.

I've got to rush right now - I'll reply to your post to me later.

 

[STING2]

In response to Ultraviolet7:

Sorry but I never said that the attack was impending or about to happen at any minute. Were acting because of the possibility of this in the future, and Saddam's violations of the agreements he signed. In addition, any large scale invasion of Iraq requires the deployment of large numbers(250,000) troops many from the continental USA itself. This is not like Afghanistan! All of the support element for such a force are in the US reserves and would have to be called to duty, which requires congressional approval, which the President is trying to get. Bottom line, we could not invade Iraq tomorrow even if we wanted to. Its going to take several months to position the forces that would be required to take over a country the size of Iraq half away around the world. While we prepare to position forces to possibly do that, we are trying to seek support from other countries for rebuilding Iraq after a possible invasion. Until any invasion force for Iraq is ready, we will continue to hunt for Al-quada using special forces and other intelligence organizations.

 

[ultraviolet7]

In response to STING2's previous post to me

The members who compose the team making the Human Development report are economist, statisticions, and other experts from around the world. I think they try to give an accurate, objective, unbiased look at what the standard of living is in each country and how each country ranks among others. That certainly does not mean that their info is perfect, but I think they try to present an accurate picture. So I'm not really sure what to think on this. To much conflictive info. I'll give the import/export stats a look and see if that adds anything. I did see in the Economist this week that Argentina's GDP is -16% from this point last year. A 16% drop in GDP is not a recession, thats a depression. The UN development report for 2002 should be out in a few months, will have to see what the new figures look like.

Maybe they have good intentions but as I said it depends on what's the profile of the cases studied, their number, whether figures such as GDP and economic growth ones are given priority over actual field research, etc. It's really conflictive info all right, and it's really alarming to think that in the same way this country's data is badly distorted such could very well be the case with other nations' reports. About our present situation being depressive rather than recessive there's absolutely no doubt.

The USA though helped and wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from being Knocked out of the war, because if the Soviets had been knocked out of the war, barring nuclear weapons that had not been developed in 1941, it would have been impossible to defeat the German military machine without the Soviets.

It naturally would have been impossible to defeat the Germans without the Soviets. My point however is that the US did not go into war to save the former USSR from a nazi takeover, but rather to avoid such a takeover in other sensitive areas. I mean that it was a vital reason to lend the Soviets a helping hand because their defeat would have meant the failure of the real objective the US was concerned with which was to preserve their natural allies Great Britain and France as partners in trade as well as to avoid nazi control of the Middle East and of the whole of North Africa further than the already Italian controlled Libya. It's obvious that the Soviets indirectly helped to attain this goal since they were fighting their own war against the nazis. It's also obvious that it was recognised that they almost fought the war single-handed and that it was tacitly acknowledged that they could have probably defeated the nazis in the eastern front anyway in view of the generous compensation they were awarded at Yalta. Re D-Day, it had to wait indeed since it not only required of a certain amount of military power but it also relied rather heavily on intelligence operations. To establish a really effective intelligence network required its time. Moreover as we know D-Day also relied on the internal cracking of the nazi military and governmental hierarchy which was still monolithic in 1942. Furthermore though 1942 marked two decisive setbacks for Hitler at Stalingrad and El Alamein, the nazi forces were still compact and strong enough as to inflict heavy blows on the Allies such as at Dunkirk. I agree on what you say regarding US tactics to force the Axis to fight on different fronts.

I see your point with Afghanistan, but again you have to put Afghanstan in the context of the Cold War where resources are limited. Building a nation into a democracy is expensive. The USA only provided 1/3 of the supplies for the Mujahadeen which was little at best anyways. I see nothing immoral about helping people resist Soviet Occupation. I don't think we should have left the area so quickly when the Soviets left, but the demands for aid to Eastern Europe were to strong. Remember all this occured in 1989, Soviets leave Afghanistan Communism collapses in Eastern Europe. We simply do not have the economic resources to help everyone at any given time. Still though, I could tie any support to resisting Soviet occupation anywhere in the world to the goal of one day having a world that is set up along similar lines of American Democracy and Capitalism which was our goal in World War II. Very indirect and not specific to Afghanistan at the time, very true. In general, both examples are still aiding an enemy or a neutral force to fight another enemy. Both examples can be linked to helping preserve democracy somewhere no matter how direct or indirect the link is. So I do think it is a legit example.

There's nothing immoral in helping people to resist Soviet occupation provided those people don't support an ideology as opposed to western moral principles as the fundamentalists do and as long such resistance leads to a truly democratic regime in which the same ideals that are supported in the free world can be applied in benefit of the local population. I mean, I understand that during the Cold War it was paramount to prevent the Soviets from taking over key areas further than what was already under their control, but while Islamic fundamentalism can perfectly well achieve the goal of communism containment, I don't see how it contributes in any way towards the end of establishing democracy and capitalism in the same lines as in the west. The constrainment of communist expansion is not enough a reason in my view to conclude that aid to such groups contributes towards the securing of western systems in the affected areas or in general. Fundamentalism is notoriously opposed to western forms and in particular to the US. Possibly it was thought at the time that as fundamentalist groups weren't self-sufficient as the former USSR was, they would always depend on US (or US controlled) funding to become operative and therefore would be easier to handle than a Soviet-controlled area in the Middle East. In fact they seemed to be for a time until they gained enough power to defy their previous mentors, which they hate anyway, and perform on US soil an attack not even the Soviets had dared to undertake in their own time. In my view this policy is (and has proved to be) extremely dangerous in the sense that it can backfire too easily and can hinder the achievement of the primary goal, as it can be presently witnessed in that terrorist groups of Islamic fundamentalist extraction are having all the west on the rack, not only jeopardising any further expansion of the western system but threatening it at its very origin.

The WWII and the Afghanistan cases are impossible to compare in my opinion because even if during WWII an enemy was helped, such help was accessory to the achievement of another immediate and clear goal which indeed contemplated the reinforcement of the western system. In addition this enemy's contribution in defeating a common evil was more than generously compensated as to secure certain basic lines of future behaviour even in presence of an "undeclared" conflict such as the Cold War. This scheme worked because the Soviet Union was under the control of a steady force with almost no internal opposition ever since the massive purges performed by the the Soviet leadership of the time within their own ranks. This guaranteed that the agreements reached with such authority would have a minimally solid base.

In the Afghanistan case a hostile force was helped to do away in the area with a lifelong enemy, but the concept of securing democracy and capitalism was way too diffused since the force helped was undemocratic and opposed to western systems by nature and to make matters worse it was not conformed by a compact block in which there was either a clearly defined policy (through elements like a Constitution, a government system backed by real power, tradition, etc) or a clearly defined authority which would guarantee basically the enforcement of any agreement. In fact the mujahedeen while reunited in their majority under common religious fanaticism experienced unsurmountable differences within their ranks due to ethnic divisions which prevented the emergence of a clear leadership in absence of a clear political system. In this scenario it was impossible to reach any solidly based agreement, nor it seemed, out of plain arrogance or gross miscalculation, to be of any relevance to the US that it was, since it was probably thought that the mujahedeen could be easily manipulated in view of their outward dependence to be able to operate. What I mean is that it seems that the US didn't see the need of reaching any agreement, let alone to negotiate any compensation since it was probably seen that the aid given during the conflict itself was to be considered enough compensation. The 90s events are clearly consequential. The Islamic fundamentalists' natural rejection of western culture together with the fact that there was no benefit in the area other than the removal of the Soviets has put them in a position of jeopardising the very system the aid given to them was meant to protect.

Sorry about the comment, that was not good. I failed to realize that could be personal. I think I was just remembering a debate in a University class where such statements involving realism and idealism are often used. I'll try to make sure this does not happen again!

Apologies accepted. Thank you.

You fail to mention the Israely lives that were saved by catching so many terrorist in one spot. The loss of innocent lives is unfortunate but there is only so much the IDF can do to protect innocent lives when a well armed terrorist group decides to make its stand in a civilian area. It has never been confirmed how all the 48 civilians killed at Jenin died. The Bulldozing of a house with civilians inside may of happened because of mis -communication in the heat of battle, which is when these events took place. If it was Israely policy to bulldoze any house in the area with civilians in it, there would be far more dead civilians.

Maybe many Israeli lives were saved, but to this end Palestinian civilians had to be killed. I wonder if the IDF would have been so ready to do away with civilians to catch terrorists, if the civilians had been Israeli, for instance if terrorists were holding Israeli civilians as hostages or were discovered to be infiltrating Israeli civilian centres such as universities, stores, etc. Palestinian civilians immolated to save Israeli civilians. It undoubtedly responds to a logic of war. But then Mr Bush should refrain from calling Sharon "a man of peace". BTW it was not the bulldozing of ONE house but of several of them with people inside. In any case my point is that while it's perfectly legitimate for the IDF to protect Israeli citizens, what's not is that they purport to do away with terrorism with methods way too similar to what the terrorists themselves use. This makes it state-endorsed terrorism. OK they don't use suicide bombers but methods such as bulldozing civilian homes with people inside because terrorists are supposed to be there too aren't much different.

Well if there is to be an exchange for Israely forces leaving the West Bank for no terrorism in Israel, why has Hezbolah not ceaced their terrorism since Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon which they promised. Perfect example of how land for peace does not work. Israel had actually pulled out of large area's of the West Bank even when there was a massive increase in terrorism. But following all the attacks in the Spring the Israely's moved back in heavily. What i curious is before last Spring with so many Israely forces withdrawn from the West Bank, why was there a corresponding increase in terror attacks. Your Logic would state that the Israely's would be rewarded for withdrawing many of their forces from the West Bank, not attacked. This turns the logic that, if the Israely's completely withdrew from Palistine there would be no more terror attacks, on its head. Rather, the terrorist are interested in simply one day wiping out Israel and all Jews. It was and has been the stated goal of the Arab countries with four attacks on Israel in the 20th century.

In the first place it has to be stated that Hezbollah and Hamas are extremist organisations who may include in their agenda the wiping out of Israel and Jews in general, but that is not what the majority of Palestinians and Lebanese want. This is not something I'm conjecturing on but rather which I've heard repeated once and again by Israeli Jews who are furiously for retaliation against terrorist groups and blindly approve of everything the IDF does in this sense. However these groups are massively supported by the civilian population mainly because they also claim to fight for their right to an independent state which is what all Palestinians want. The question is why they support the Intifada headed by groups whose motivations represent what they want in a sense but are opposed to their wishes in the other. The answer is fairly simple: they've lost any faith they could have had in the good will of Israel and of the US. A brief analisys of the past ten years' events may be helpful.

In the post-Declaration of Principles years there was a significant decrease in terrorism in the area (even if there were actually attacks on both sides) and the world thought that peace could finally be reached. As a matter of fact Arafat, Peres and Rabin were awarded the Peace Nobel Prize in 1994. However the Declaration of Principles and other accessory agreements like Oslo II and the Wye River Memorandum indicated that Israel had to turn over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the newly created Palestinian Authority whose interim rule would not exceed a five year period (expiring in 1999) after which permanent settlements would be enforced including the proclamation of an independent Palestinian State.

Internal changes in Israeli politics (the assassination of Rabin in 1995, the victory of the extreme right with Netanyahu in 1996, the return of the Labour Party with Barak and finally back again to the right with Sharon) mainly related to the peace negotiations with the Palestinians conspired against the peace process, since many of the territories that had to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority weren't, Israeli settlements in territories actually turned over were not dismantled but rather reinforced, access to territories now lawfully under Palestinian Authority still remained under the control of Israeli military as well as basic supplies like water to them. This responded both to the fact that Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups were still operative (though on a lesser scale) which could legitimately make Israel doubt of true Palestinian intentions and to the fact that the Israeli right-wing factions disapproved of the terms of the agreement with the Palestinians.

When in 1999 the Palestinian Central Council was legally authorised to proclaim an independent Palestinian State, in the light of the commitment made by President Clinton in a letter to Arafat to do everything he could to ensure that the negotiations on the permanent status of the West Bank and Gaza were concluded within a year, they agreed to postpone the proclamation of independence. During that year Barak and Arafat agreed to redefine the Wye River application timeline regarding the redeployment of Israeli troops as well as on the dismantling of 10 of the 42 illegal settlements established under the Netanyahu administration. The failure to proclaim the Palestinian State at the originally accorded date created unrest among the Palestinians and reinforced the position of terrorist groups who had never been favourable to negotiating with Israel (much less under US tutoring). Such unrest officially broke out as new violence after Sharon, at the time the Israeli opposition leader, performed an uncalled for visit to the Al-Aqsa precinct in East Jerusalem, a place considered holy by the Muslims. This was seen as an open provocation and there were massive Palestinian demonstrations which were violently repressed by the Israeli police. This fact, though symbolic, officially triggered the second Intifada led by extremist groups. Sharon's victory in February 2001 didn't but deepen the conflict since his aggressive policy included the reoccupation of territories under lawful control of the Palestinian Authority, expansion of settlements and the persecution of Palestinian terrorists. US Senator George Mitchell elaborated a report which called for a freeze on such activities on part of Israel to put an end to eight months of violence and US Secretary of State Powell even named a special mediator to help the two sides implement the Mitchell report which was naturally supported by Arafat but not by Sharon who has so far refused to co-operate. The Palestinian Authority is now in a position it can't control terrorist groups since they've got massive popular support. If Arafat (who I don't particularly appreciate) should try to oppose terrorist activities he would face a revolution which would put in his place more extremist (fundamentalist) authorities since the people seem to believe that the only way they can achieve the goal of an independent state is through these "freedom fighters" as past negotiations with Israel monitored by the US were never fully respected.

What I mean is that if the peace process would have been respected throughout, there would be no reason for Palestinians to massively support groups like Hamas. Even if they could continue to be operative because of their fanaticism, their resources would be much more limited since less people would want to join them or help them altogether and it would be the same people who would back their government in getting rid of them since they would be seen not as freedom fighters but rather as an obstacle to achieve lasting peace in their hard-earned new country. Also if such peace process would have been completed and the Palestinian government didn't comply in trying to do away with the remnants of terrorist organisations, the UN could easily step in since there would be a breach in some of their regulations (resolutions 242 and 338 in particular) regarding peace in the area.

I hope this helps to explain why terrorism has never been fully done away with in the area.

Which four attacks on Israel do you refer to in particular?

Well I guess some UN members are blind. Please tell me who does not agree that Baghdad is not in violation of 16 UN resolutions. Did the inspectors finish their job. NO Who does not know that the inspectors were thrown out of Baghdad in violation of the UN ceacefire agreement? Perhaps reluctence or opposition stems from having to participate in paying for the rebuilding of Iraq after an invasion. We like to have the support of the member nations to enforce the UN resolutions as the law calls for so that we can get help with the cost of undertaking such an operation. But if no one is willing to help, that is not going to prevent the USA from doing the right thing if it feels the need to act.

I was just suggesting that some countries might interpret the law differently, otherwise there would be no reason for them to oppose this action. Regarding the last item I already replied on another post.

 

[Klaus]

Hello Sting,
thanks for your detailed reply i just don't have enough time to answer you faster. I'm sorry for that.

In response to Klaus:

The IRA targeted British civilians in England, Scotland and other area's outside Northern Ireland. The Mujahadeen did not target Russians in Moscow or any other Soviet city. The

As far as i know the Mujahideen didn't only target the Soviet army but also critic and civilians.

I didn't want to raise a discussion about Afghanistan here. I just wanted to show you that the "Axis of evil" can change verry fast maybee a better example:

We should take a close look on our friends and enemies when we prepare for war - because it's easy to see only the things we want to see.
Then dictators become monarchs, terrorists become rebells and agression becomes selfe defence and vide versa.

Hopefully a better example:

Donald Rumsfeld visited a country and called the President (or as i would say Dictator) trustworthy. He sent greets from his president and said he was happy to be here...

The folowing 8 years the USA sent equipment and raw materials for manufacturing biological and chemical wapons.
They got differnt labratory equpment. 3 Years late US military labors even gave them Anthrax and Botulinus to the "educational-ministery" of this country.
2 years later the dictator used toxic gas versus a minority in his country more then 5000 people died.
After that US continued to sell "dual-use goods" and helped him to research Biological, Chemical and Rocket technology.

Date? December 1983 - The Country? Iraq

I don't want to say that the US government did evil things - their point of view was just different than today (also it were partially the same people as today)

But like they didn't see the truth in the 80ies there is a good chance that they could miss it again.

Hey if you have a factual dollar amount of a money transfer from the CIA to Mr. Bin Ladin himself, prove it.

I know i had it from a serious magazine (ai monitor something like that) but i can't find it anymore - searching the web for "bin laden CIA" is hopeless these days

US foreign Politics was not perfect during the Cold War, but it certainly made far less mistakes than had been made prior to the Cold War. There is very little I would have changed about US Cold War policy. It was massivily successful in finally achieving its goals.

nothing is perfect and i don't expect it that way. the USA has much power and because of that a verry high responsibility because noone could stop them if they would do something wrong.

The USA did a lot of bad things starting right after its foundation. But the USA did also lots of verry good things (also starting right after its foundation)

I agree that UN resolutions do not explicitly say that regime change is necessary if Iraq violates the ceacefire agreement. But military invasion of Iraq to force compliance with UN resolutions is clearly mandated. If, AND ONLY IF, in such an invasion, it is found that the only way to bring a resolution to the war and there by Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions, would a regime change be justified.

I agree that presure is neccessary on Sadam.
I agree that war is a possibillity
but before that we should invest the same energy and money in peaceful actions to put presure on him (for example controlling the merchandise with military enforcement. Acting against governments which don't sell non-humanitary stuff to the iraq regime.)

The UN would not exist if it were not for the USA. We always do seek to work with are allies and listen to their views. But the UN is not the be all and end all of when and where countries can take action to defend their citizens or prevent slaughter. The UN never approved NATO military action in Kosovo but we took it and saved thousands of people from being slaughtered by the Serbs.

The USA has the right to defend its citizens without a vote from any international body. We seek support of the international community, but lack of that support will not prevent us from acting to defend ourselves.

Yes of course the USA has the right forr self-defence. Noone qould criticize that.

I just don't see any Iraqi submarins near chicago or Iraqi MIGs over washington that would have to be struck back.
But baghdad has no chance to threaten the United States so the US dosn't have to defend anything.

Preventive war is another thing. It's unlawful. If you call preventive war a defence than every war - even the wars of the 3rd Reich can be interpreted as "only selfdefence".
Preventive war is a taboo in the international comunity - and there's a good reason why it is that way.
It's also a taboo to change regimes of different countries - no matter how much we hate them. This would be colonially.
And colonially would bring up lots of "rebells" (remember what i said before about for rebells?)

The USA had to have spies on the inspection team because Iraq was already cheating and hiding its weapons from the inspectors. The USA set of devices to monitor Iraqi movement without them knowing. It was this intelligence, called spying, that allowed us to detect when and where Iraq had stationed sensitive equipment. You CANNOT effectively inspect and disarm Iraq if you do not spy on them without them knowing! This spying was the only way we were able to discover they were cheating. The fact that they were cheating not only allows the us to spy, but were mandated by the ceacefire agreement to actually invade the country with military force let alone spy!

We never stated pubically that we were giving up the right of a first use of Nuclear weapons in a conflict, but our goal was simply to be able to deter each type of conflict with similar weapons, a conventional one with conventional weapons a nuclear one with nuclear weapons.

I thought one of your president said this that Nuclear weapons are just for response- but it's too long ago i don't know who it was.

If we were being defeated by a Soviet invasion of western europe, it accomplishes nothing to esculate to the use of nuclear weapons to defend

I think you don't have to be a "Hittler or Stalin" to push the button "revenge".
And i'm not sure that everyone who can trigger this button - will stay cool in a situation. I'm glad that most of them are well educated and not hot tempered.

But don't forget the human factor.

If chemical weapons were used on a large scale in World War II, please tell me when and where, and how it effected the outcome of the war. Why didn't Germans use chemicals against allied infantry on the beaches of Normandy.

Not in a large scale like in World War I - i agree to that point. Also not in Europe

Why no Chemical weapons in the Normandy?

Several reasons - the most important one was that large parts of the german military were not willing to do this because they knew that they would loose but they hoped to get a carea in fighting against Russia - they hoped that the powerfull German army was necessary to win a fight against the communists.
Some others were against hittler but just too scared for rebelion and they waited for the loss of war "to turn things back to normal" in germany. (fighting against hittler failed misserably everyone who turned against hittler was killed - somme in concentration camps - some emediately, some were killed including their whole family.

uh.. i don't want to turn this into a WW debate maybe we should open a thread for (not only this) subject of WW2

How did the Kuwaiti people react to US troops in the 1991 Gulf War? As far as Iraq that might be less certain since Iraq has so many different ethnic groups. There certainly will be ethnic groups in Iraq that will chear a US invasion.

Sure there will be some - but for a change there needs to be a majority cheering - also people who can build up a new state and will be respected by the majority of the country.
A "satelite government" won't work for nation building.

I know war is not the only way to prevent terrorism but it is part of it.

Imho war is not a weapon that fits for preventing terrorism.

The US does not go to war for egoistic reasons. We go for to war for reasons of national security and international security. WE also do not target civilians in any war we go into unlike other countries. In my view and from what I have seen and read, all major US military action since 1945 has been justified.

I didn't want to say that the US is targeting civilians (and i hope i never said this).

1I tried to point out that every fighter fights his enemy - in our understanding civilists are no enemies. Terrorists have a different view of what is worth killing.

1b)i think cruelties and murder of civilians by purpose hapened in every military - after all there are too many humans - some of them are "black sheeps" and seeing all this cruelty in war dosn't turn out the best sides of humans).

2On the other hand lots of innocent civilians are killed by mass destruction weapons (see a-bombs over hiroshima and nagasaki). Also lots of civilians were killed by purpouse some still thought it would be for a good reason (to shorten the war)

If military from our culture kills civilians by purpose our people are shocked because we are sure the other people are not our enemies - it's just something between the governments (classical european idea of war - 2 kings hate each other and the military has to do the job.)


2)This is verry different in other cultures. If the race or the religion is the reason for war ALL civilians from the enemiy are guilty and therefore they do not need to separate between civilians and military.

3)a little different approach are the ones who just hate the enemiy so much that killing civilians is no good thing but it's "legal" because it's the only way to win.


i hope i cleared out what i wanted to say first with just one sentence.

 

[Hi Bias]

 

[STING2]

In response to Ultraviolet7:

In the case of aid to the Mujahadeen, I still think it was the right thing to do, because while it might not have contributed to the formation of democracy immediately in Afghanistan, it did contribute to the long range goal of containing Soviet Communism which was threatening the very existence of democracy on the planet. The building of democracy today in Afghanistan would not be possible without the democracies of the West. The democracies of the West exist today because the Soviet Union was successfully contained. It is not immediate nor is it direct, but nearly all actions by the West(including Afghanistan) to contain Soviet Communism in the Cold War contributed to the eventual victory over that Global threat to democracy, and there for contributes to all democracy then and in the future anywhere in the world, including Afghanistan where a democracy is currently being built.

In the case of "Fundamentalist" in Afghanistan its easy I suppose to generalize. The Mujahadeen was composed of members who did believe in womens rights and were open to some for of democracy without sacraficing many of their religious beliefs. Members of the Mujahadeen many years later would become members of the Taliban and to a lesser extent Al-Quada, but a large portion would also become members of the Northern Alliance. There was a huge degree of difference between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban/Al-Quada on many issues. Its not really correct to say that in supporting Fundamentalist we were not supporting any groups or people that might be interested in a western style democracy. The problem is there is not actually a single definition of a Fundamentalist and political and social views among them can vary. Maybe many that most might mistake or consider to be Fundamentalist are in fact not. What we do have is certainly a society of tribes where religion is strong and there is no history of democracy. But that in of itself does not mean we should not support them when they are attacked by a foreign power that threatenes us as well.

Al-Quada while based in Afghanistan has cells in many places around the world. Afghanistan was chosen in the mid to late 90s as a place to train, but there are other countries that could have been used as well. It does not follow that are support for the Majahadeen in the 1980s has today threatened are democratic systems. Al-Quada came from outside of Afghanistan and could have been based in other countries. The Northern Alliance has never threatened any western democracy and has only helped the West. The Taliban was supported by Pakistan in 1996 to combat their enemies in the Northern Alliance. In hind site, leaving the region so quickly after the Soviets did may not have been in the immediate interest of Afghanistan, but it was not necessarily a long term threat to US interest since Al-Quada's main base could have been located in a large number of other countries not even in the immediate region.

It may be Israely policy to bulldoze the houses used by terrorist, but its not policy to bulldoze houses with people inside. I'm not saying this did not happen as I'm sure it did. Certainly there may be members of the IDF that took criminal action. Another factor is mis-communication which is so common in intense combat operations especially at night. Some of these houses were bulldoze in the middle of combat. Confusion and possibly some criminal IDF members led to the bulldozing of houses "with people in them", not Israely State policy. I see no equation of Israely tactics with Palestinian terrorist at all. In addition, if the IDF had the goals and aims of the terrorist they are fighting, everyone in the West Bank and Gaza would have been murdered decades ago. While the IDF has the power to do this, they have not done so. IF the Palestinian terrorist had the power of the IDF, they would not even hesitate to do this to the Jews in Israel.

I find Palestinians resort to Terrorism because of the failure to comply with a signed treaty on time an absurd action for them to take. Clearly they have benefited from working with Israel and the USA on eventual statehood. When has violence of any type benefited Palestinians in the last 55 years? The process was working, most Israely troops had withdrawn from the West Bank. Their violence only helped to elect Sharon. The Palestinians failed to crack down enough on terrorist before the 2nd intifada but still Israel was committed to the peace process and working out the final details. The best peace deal the Palestinians would ever get was handed to Arafat and he rejected it. Their reasons for supporting the terrorist stem from a lack of education and the understanding of Law/Government. If your a Palestinian and believed to have aided Israel, you are not given a trial, but are instead beaten to death by a street mob. In Israel, there is the rule of law and a trial for those that are accused of acting against the state.

The 2nd intifada has only made things worse for Palestinians. Clearly their choice to give more support to the terrorist was not at all intelligent when they had gained so much by working with the USA and Israel. If Palestinians want to have a State, they need to disengage from terrorism which will NEVER achieve any of their goals. They then need to form institutions of law and government and show responsibility in those area's before Israel can seriously consider leaving the area thereby allowing them to form a state. The only way the Palestinians will ever have a state is if they work with the Israel and the USA to achieve that. Its unfortunate that Palestinians fail to realize this, but it does not take a genious to do so.

 

[Klaus]

In response to Ultraviolet7:

The 2nd intifada has only made things worse for Palestinians. Clearly their choice to give more support to

Right - worse for palestinensians - but look who won - the hardliners on both sides got (temporarily) more support because:
if you have a enemy of your people they support you even if they don't share your oppinion
and.. they can say "as i said you can't talk with them, the only thing they understand is force.

terrorism which will NEVER achieve any of their goals. They then need to form institutions of law and

Sad but true - only Terrorism brought (back) international attention to that problem

Klaus

 

[Not George Lucas]

Evidently, I forgot to click the submit post button yesterday.

Here's a few random thoughts I've been having recently.

1. The United States does not need war right now. The country is pretty much split down the middle, and unless the president can get the whole nation to back him, any war against Iraq will fail.

2. What the country does need, if, indeed, Iraq really is a threat to us (of which there is still no real hard evidence), is not war, but the very real threat of war to the point where they back down. If there really is a threat, Iraq will respond to violence with violence. They would more likely respond better to immense pressure.

3. If the United States does invade or strike Iraq, there are only two possible results. If they turn out to have weapons, they will strike back. We have no way of knowing, at this point, what, if any, weapons they have, and, should we find and destroy any, there would be no guarantee we got them all. If Iraq ends up not having any weapons, the United States, no matter what our intentions are, will be the international bully, and everyone will see us as the bad guy.

4. Ever since Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States has flat-out refused to perform any pre-emptive strikes. The goevernment had the attitude that such an act is uncivilized, unjust, and beneath us. We're better than that.

5. The president needs to look to his predecessors for inspiration. It is obvious to me that he knows nothing about the presidential legacies before him, he has no understanding of his role, and he's entirely incompetant for his office.

6. The president wants war by any means necessary. There is nothing Saddam could do, short of killing himself and his entire family, that would give teh president second thoughts.

7. One thing I think a lot of people are overlooking is the potential loss of innocent individual lives. Right now it's all political, but I don't believe it is right for anyone to watch a bullet tear through his best friend simply because of the baseless hunch of some Texan thousand miles away.

8. On a completely unrelated note, Israel needs to pull out of Palestine. They have no right to be there.

 

[ultraviolet7]

In response to Sting2

In the case of aid to the Mujahadeen, I still think it was the right thing to do, because while it might not have contributed to the formation of democracy immediately in Afghanistan, it did contribute to the long range goal of containing Soviet Communism which was threatening the very existence of democracy on the planet. The building of democracy today in Afghanistan would not be possible without the democracies of the West. The democracies of the West exist today because the Soviet Union was successfully contained. It is not immediate nor is it direct, but nearly all actions by the West(including Afghanistan) to contain Soviet Communism in the Cold War contributed to the eventual victory over that Global threat to democracy, and there for contributes to all democracy then and in the future anywhere in the world, including Afghanistan where a democracy is currently being built.

I see the point of communist containment as I've already stated in my previous post. However, while the countering of communism is undoubtedly beneficial to allow for the spread of capitalism, it doesn't in any way guarantee the spread of democracy. I've already stated on previous posts that dictatorial regimes are perfectly well suited to develop capitalist economies. The triumph of capitalism isn't necessarily the triumph of democracy. In fact capitalism and democracy shouldn't be considered as inseparable partners because they are clearly not.

On another account, you seem to believe that fundamentalism, in its role to counter communism, was a completely innocuous weapon which could be easily disposed of leaving behind almost no side-effects after the main objective was reached. While the original idea must have certainly been such, it's undeniable that fundamentalism gained considerable power in the area as a result of its role in the Afghanistan episode against the Soviets. This is because a great part of the victorious mujahedeen were actually fundamentalist (not all of them, it's true) and radical individuals such as bin Laden and others, now members of Al-Qaeda, were undoubtedly empowered by leading them to victory. It may be conjectured that they might have been anyway even if the US had refrained from backing their operations, but that is something we cannot state our opinion on since it was not what actually happened. My point is that while the western system might have globally triumphed (partially - let's not forget China) with the fall of Soviet communism, at the same time it began to become jeopardised by radical Islamic groups - the same helped previously to eradicate communism. Such jeopardy, embodied by more than actual attacks on western countries, can be hardly denied in view of the current "security measures" applied in the western world and in particular the US. In fact, such measures designed with the idea of containing the terrorist threat precisely originated in the action of fundamentalist groups who were in the first place empowered by a US-backed operation and whose presence in the area is mainly US responsibility, are actually curtailing basic freedoms that democracy is supposed to guarantee. Note that I'm not saying that capitalism is under threat but rather that democracy is.

In the case of "Fundamentalist" in Afghanistan its easy I suppose to generalize. The Mujahadeen was composed of members who did believe in womens rights and were open to some for of democracy without sacraficing many of their religious beliefs. Members of the Mujahadeen many years later would become members of the Taliban and to a lesser extent Al-Quada, but a large portion would also become members of the Northern Alliance. There was a huge degree of difference between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban/Al-Quada on many issues. Its not really correct to say that in supporting Fundamentalist we were not supporting any groups or people that might be interested in a western style democracy. The problem is there is not actually a single definition of a Fundamentalist and political and social views among them can vary. Maybe many that most might mistake or consider to be Fundamentalist are in fact not. What we do have is certainly a society of tribes where religion is strong and there is no history of democracy. But that in of itself does not mean we should not support them when they are attacked by a foreign power that threatenes us as well.

I'm aware of the differences between the Taleban/Al-Qaeda members and some of the more moderate Northern Alliance ones. Nevertheless they were all part of the force helped to reject the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and some others - future Al-Qaeda members - were, as it is noted, actually pulled in by the CIA to lead the resistance movement. What amount of power the actual factions did finally retain is entirely another story. What's certain is that the more radical groups seemed to be more organised and clear in terms of political system desired and ideology sustained. In contrast, the more in general moderate Northern Alliance has been notably divided since its very inception because of its multiethnic conformation which included groups with deep ancestral differences as well as confronting Islamic fundamentalists and other members who weren't. As I said before, it was a force with which no solid-based agreement could have been reached regarding the direction the new Afghanistan was to undertake. This and the fact that albeit "having done nothing against but rather in help of the west" no support at all was provided to prevent their overthrow on part of the Taleban back in 96 is really something to think about.

On another account, the fact that some of the Northern Alliance members were not fundamentalist does not necessarily mean that they would be proclive to applying western systems. In fact many of them actually defended a strong nationalistic ideology rather left-wing oriented, though not particularly pro-Soviet, since they saw the Soviet intrusion as another form of imperialism. Such a situation would not leave much room for the development of a capitalist system in the lines the global powers desire, neither it would probably promote a democracy in the western pattern considering their lack of democratic tradition and their otherwise strong tribal organisation. It is more than obvious that the situation with the Northern Alliance is different now than in the early 90s, since the aid they received from the US to unseat the Taleban last year forces them to accept certain conditions from the west if they expect to retain power in Afghanistan. In addition, it must be noted some of their stronger national leaders such as Abdul Haq are no longer around.

Al-Quada came from outside of Afghanistan and could have been based in other countries. The Northern Alliance has never threatened any western democracy and has only helped the West. The Taliban was supported by Pakistan in 1996 to combat their enemies in the Northern Alliance. In hind site, leaving the region so quickly after the Soviets did may not have been in the immediate interest of Afghanistan, but it was not necessarily a long term threat to US interest since Al-Quada's main base could have been located in a large number of other countries not even in the immediate region.

It's true that Al-Qaeda came from outside Afghanistan and that it could have been harboured by governments like Sudan's or Libya's, but let's not forget that bin Laden himself and some of his most conspicuous cronies in Al-Qaeda were, as I've already mentioned, actually planted in Afghanistan by the CIA during the 80s. After their participation at the lead of the resistance against the Soviets, they were obviously seen as heroes by the people in the area. It's not too hard to imagine that they would try to cash in on such success by basing themselves where they had already gained a good deal of credibility and popularity by fighting "for Afghanistan".

It may be Israely policy to bulldoze the houses used by terrorist, but its not policy to bulldoze houses with people inside. I'm not saying this did not happen as I'm sure it did. Certainly there may be members of the IDF that took criminal action.

I did not say that it is Israel's policy to bulldoze houses with innocent people inside, but rather that they are stopping at nothing in their operation to capture terrorists. This could be considered on superficial analisys a legitimate intention but it actually can't in view of the way it is causing scores of victims (and not particularly by accident) among the Palestinian civilian population. I mean that Israel is perfectly entitled to go after terrorists but it is certainly not entitled to systematically murder Palestinian civilians in such operations. What I'm trying to say is that in their legitimate fight they are using illegitimate methods which are comparable to what the Palestinian terrorists use. On another account I've never heard of Israel's government ever acknowledging the fact that IDFmembers at Jenin might have incurred in criminal action and much less issuing a mea culpa for it. Such a fact implies that they do endorse such methods.

If the IDF had the goals and aims of the terrorist they are fighting, everyone in the West Bank and Gaza would have been murdered decades ago. While the IDF has the power to do this, they have not done so. IF the Palestinian terrorist had the power of the IDF, they would not even hesitate to do this to the Jews in Israel.

They haven't had the need to, but anyway I did not say that Israel's policy is to wipe out Palestinians, though Sharon personally and others in his line of thought would probably wish to. The difference here compared to the Palestinians is the wider control opposing forces within Israel can exert due to its democratic stability. That is the reason why Israeli governments led by extremists like Sharon have refrained from wiping out Palestinians. If Palestinian terror had the power the IDF does there certainly would be no more Israel, since their goal is to wipe out Jews, but again such a goal is the exclusive priority of Palestinian terrorism and not of the bulk of the Palestinian people.

I find Palestinians resort to Terrorism because of the failure to comply with a signed treaty on time an absurd action for them to take. Clearly they have benefited from working with Israel and the USA on eventual statehood. When has violence of any type benefited Palestinians in the last 55 years? The process was working, most Israely troops had withdrawn from the West Bank. Their violence only helped to elect Sharon. The Palestinians failed to crack down enough on terrorist before the 2nd intifada but still Israel was committed to the peace process and working out the final details. The best peace deal the Palestinians would ever get was handed to Arafat and he rejected it. Their reasons for supporting the terrorist stem from a lack of education and the understanding of Law/Government. If your a Palestinian and believed to have aided Israel, you are not given a trial, but are instead beaten to death by a street mob. In Israel, there is the rule of law and a trial for those that are accused of acting against the state. The 2nd intifada has only made things worse for Palestinians. Clearly their choice to give more support to the terrorist was not at all intelligent when they had gained so much by working with the USA and Israel. If Palestinians want to have a State, they need to disengage from terrorism which will NEVER achieve any of their goals. They then need to form institutions of law and government and show responsibility in those area's before Israel can seriously consider leaving the area thereby allowing them to form a state. The only way the Palestinians will ever have a state is if they work with the Israel and the USA to achieve that. Its unfortunate that Palestinians fail to realize this, but it does not take a genious to do so.

It is an absurd action from our western point of view. Not from theirs since in view of actual facts they were entitled to legitimately doubt Israel's and US' intentions. Let's not forget that this was a very delicate peace process because there was mutual mistrust from day one, in addition to the fact that it was the US, Israel's perennial mentor, to become the tutor of such negotiations. To make matters worse, the most inflexible factions on each side (Israel's more extreme right wing and Islamic fundamentalists from Hamas on the other) were never in agreement with these negotiations. It was then more than predictable that if conditions weren't respected to the last comma it was calling for trouble. Even if the peace process was taking place in part, the fact that Israel had reinforced settlements in areas they had to evacuate, that they refused to hand over control of water supply and access routes to the West Bank and Gaza and on top of that the Palestinians were asked to postpone their lawful right to statehood in 1999 in exchange for the promise of the completion of the process within 2000, which did not happen, didn't certainly contribute towards Israel's and the US' credibility regarding the actual intention of completing this process in compliance to what was accorded. Conversely, as Klaus rightly says, it gave arguments to more extreme organisations like Hamas to justify in the eyes of Palestinians the need to engage in the second Intifada and naturally to the hardliners on the other side who had not been favourable to negotiate with the Palestinians in the first place to justify in turn their access to power in order to go back on what had been signed and strengthen their aggressive policies regarding Palestinians on the excuse of countering terrorism.

It is more than clear that Palestinians have to disengage from terrorism to conform a stable state, but then there must be also true will on part of Israel to allow them to have this state on the agreed conditions. The problem rests in my view on the fact that there are strong factions on both sides which don't really wish for peaceful cohabitation. As it may be true that Palestinian terrorists wish to wipe out the Jews it is also true that many Israelis don't want a Palestinian neighbour state. It is wrong to say that everything is the Palestinians' fault, mainly when such conclusion derives from the sole consideration of the Palestinian reaction rather than including the origin of such a reaction, which is related to the fact that they were kicked out of their soil in the first place to allow Israel to exist. In this context the claim that "Palestinians need to show responsibility before Israel can seriously consider leaving the area thereby allowing them to form a state" should be really thought over.

On another account, violence has indeed benefited Palestinians in the last 55 years! Do you think anybody would be even considering granting them anything near statehood if they hadn't resorted repeatedly to violence as the powerful method it is to draw attention on their cause? Not certainly that I approve of such a method, but if something's certain is that nobody was paying attention to their claims until they engaged in this modus operandi, which has certainly succeeded in putting their case under the noses of those responsible of ignoring them for so many years.

Sorry but I never said that the attack was impending or about to happen at any minute. Were acting because of the possibility of this in the future, and Saddam's violations of the agreements he signed. In addition, any large scale invasion of Iraq requires the deployment of large numbers(250,000) troops many from the continental USA itself. This is not like Afghanistan! All of the support element for such a force are in the US reserves and would have to be called to duty, which requires congressional approval, which the President is trying to get. Bottom line, we could not invade Iraq tomorrow even if we wanted to. Its going to take several months to position the forces that would be required to take over a country the size of Iraq half away around the world. While we prepare to position forces to possibly do that, we are trying to seek support from other countries for rebuilding Iraq after a possible invasion. Until any invasion force for Iraq is ready, we will continue to hunt for Al-quada using special forces and other intelligence organizations.

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted you regarding the immediacy of the threat posed by Iraq - my bad. In any case it's me who is saying that if the threat the US claim exists regarding bio/chem weapons is as real as they say, Hussein could provide such weaponry to terrorist groups any minute now. There's no logic in saying that an enemy is armed to his eyeteeth with WMD and because of it is subjecting an important part of the world to a bio/chem hazard at the same time of claiming that he is not going to carry out his threat immediately! If he is posing a threat because of present armament he can put such armament to use whenever he decides to which could very well be right now.

 

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In response to Klaus:

It is true that "Duel Use Technology" went to Iraq in the 1980s but also to dozens of other countries around the world. Unless there were already sanctions on a particular country at the time, "duel use technology" would be approved. In addition, Iraq recieved most of its duel use technology from other countries besides the USA. Germany in fact not only sold "duel use techonology" but military weapons to include The Milan Anti-Tank Missile, The Roland Anti-Tank Missile, and various armored vehicles which I don't recall at the moment but could look up if need be. This is military combat equipment with only ONE use! The USA never sold Iraq Military combat equipment. Its true that we contributed to Iraq's Bio/Chem program because of lax import/export controls and the "duel use" factor. But the US aid given to Iraq had no relevant effect on the Iran/Iraq war or the conflict with the Kurds. Even if the USA had not given the permission for the shipment of "duel Use Technology", the Iraqi's would have recieved what they needed from Europe which was already directly selling them Military Combat Equipment. But even Western Europe's role is minor when compared to the Soviet Union's sales and support for Iraq. In fact, Iraq really did not need support from anyone else but the Soviet Union. I have the Military Equipment table for Iraq posted on one of these pages for 1989, the massive support from the Soviet Union and China is self evident. Their support of Iraq was really the only one that was substantial enough to matter and be relavent.

As far as Iraq, we have done nearly everything we can short of war to get them to comply with the resolutions and ceacefire they signed. From a purely legal standpoint, the UN should be and is legally at war with Iraq already. If Iraq would be willing to agree to coercive inspections, which involves the deployment of US military forces with the weapon's inspectors in Iraq, then I think we could for the time being hold off on regime change and see if it works. Anything short of that won't work as the past 11 years has proved. If they don't agree to it, then regime change is the only option left.

Iraq does not have to have Mig-25s over New York or troops in Miami to threaten the USA. This the 21st century not the 16th century. Our security is hurt and threatened any time a country that has a large trading relationship with us is attacked or stability in an economically important region of the world and there for the USA is upset. Its an economic fact. You don't need to cross a single countries border to hurt and threaten that country, they are many other ways.

It is never unlawful to prevent the slaughter of thousands of people. It is in fact immoral to not prevent such slaughter from happening. But in Iraq, it is really about Iraq's unlawful invasion and anexation of Kuwait in 1990 and the ceacefire agreement of the 1991 Gulf War which they have been in open defiance of since 1998. We are legally and morally bound to enforce the ceacefire agreement. Again from a legal standpoint, we have been at war with Iraq since 1998.

The Germans didn't use chemical weapons in WW II because their military usefullness was in question since proper use relies on so many variables(example:Whether, othersides protective measures, etc.) when attacking another military force. In addition, the use of such weapons would simply bring retaliation in kind from the Allies. Bottom line, Chemicals were not used on a large scale because it was not clearly defined from a military standpoint that it would give either side an advantage. Attacking and killing civilians is a different matter all together though. Its far easier to kill unprotected, unknowing, civilians going about their business in a small area, than to attack a fully protected, armored mobile unit, that is prepared to respond in kind if need be.

War can be very effective in preventing terrorist attacks. One only wonders if an invasion of Afghanistan in 1998 would have prevented 9/11. It is not the only tool in general, but it may be the only tool especially when terrorist are in route to their objectives. It also may be the only tool that will successfully prevent Saddam from transfering large quantities of WMD to terror organizations in the future.

 

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In response to Not George Lucas:

1. Most opinion polls I see show that there is strong support for a war against Iraq. Just watch the Senate and House votes this week. It is expected that 75% of the Senate and 75% of the House of Rep. will vote for the Presidents resolution. It is a fact that there is more public support for action against Iraq today than there was in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

2. Iraq has never responded to immense pressure in the past. They have only substantially altered their behavior when military force was involved. If Iraq agrees to COERCIVE inspections with US military forces in Iraq to ensure there is no obstruction and the UN inspections team can go anywhere and inspect anything, then we may be able to temporarily hold off on regime change and see how it goes.

3. Certainly Iraq will try to strike back with these weapons, but by striking first the odds go up that we will be able to neutralize many of the delivery systems that would be used to spread these weapons around the battlefield or an attack on Israel. An invasion and regime change in Iraq have far better odds of achieving disarmement of Iraq than the old UN inspections regime.
Even if Iraq does not have weapons, we will simply be forcing compliance with the UN ceacefire agreement which calls for Iraq to be completely disarmed. Again the last time UN inspectors were in Iraq, even Scot Ritter himself said(1998, the last time he was in a position to know something) that Iraq still possesed significant amounts of WMD capability and was still a threat to the world comunity.

4. Actually the USA has acted perhaps pre-emtively several times after WW II, Panama and Cruise Missile strike in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 just to name a few. Quicker Pre-emtive action in Bosnia could have saved thousands of lives.

5. You have to realize that presidents are not kings and have large numbers of advisors around them. Bush is not making US policy on his own, he is consulting with perhaps the best Foreign Policy team this nation has ever had with Colin Powel, Condelleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

6. "The President wants War by any means necessary" Clearly that is not the case. The presidents wants to protect the world community from a grave and growing threat. He wants to prevent the slaughter that we saw on 9/11. He currently has the support of the Congress and the American people. He is working with the UN, but will not rely solely on the UN to defend US and other countries citizens lives.

7. This is not simply the "Baseless Hunch" of some "Texan". The US military and intelligence community in addition to former UN weapons inspectors, plus Iraq's UN and ceacefire obligations provide all the basis the USA and Allies need to take action.

8. Israel has every right to defend itself from Palestinian terror or invasion from Arab countries which has happened multiple times in the past 50 years. Israel will withdraw once there is a peace agreement and Israel's security concerns have been solved. It would behoove the Palestinians to adopt a course of action that actually has a chance of achieving their goals which terrorism will never be able to.

 

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In response to Ultraviolet7:

The US did not empower Al Quada because a decade before we provided 1/3 and I underline 1/3 of the material support for a different group called the Mujahadeen. This support was cut off in 1989, and the money and small amount of weapons were already used up by the time the Taliban took power. Bin Ladin already had his own money and supporters without any aid from any country. After 1991 Afghanistan fell into a period of ethnic conflict which was a natural part of its history for thousands of years until the Taliban siezed power and pushed the Northern Alliance into the mountains. Democracy is NOT in jeopardy in the USA because of support for the Mujahadeen in the 1980s nor is any democracy in jeapardy because of that support. Nor was Fundamentalism really used in a significant way as a bulwark against Soviet Communism. Yes there was some material support (1/3 of which came from the USA) for the Mujahadeen in the 1980s, but much of that was already used by the time Al-Quada became active on the international scene in a major way. Most Al-Quada members today never fought in the 80s against the Soviets and Bin Ladin's true role in that war was mainly support for the Mujahadeen with money. Its true that US withdrawel from the region allowed Al-qauda to later set up an impressive base there, but that could have been done in several other countries so it can be seen as empowering them.

The Northern Alliance were not supported because the USA did not feel the region of a great enough importance to warrent major support, especially with the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe needing aid quickly. Money is limited and nation building was seen as being more important elsewhere than in Afghanistan.

There are all kinds of places around the world in which democracy has developed without there being a long history of democracy prior to it. Anyways back to the original point, I see US aid to the Mujahadeen as being clearly justified from the point of 1. Self defense against an invader 2. Helping to contain an enemy that threatens the vary existence of democracy worldwide.

The CIA did not plant Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, he planted himself and others. Many people in the Mujahadeen back then did not even know who Bin Ladin was. Bin Laden and Al-Quada operated largely outside of Afghanistan before the Taliban came to power there. The only thing comparable to a hero was the leader of the Northern Alliance who was murdered by Bin Ladin on Sept 10, 2001.

It is not clear nor has it ever been proven that any member of the IDF intentionly killed an unarmed civilian that was known not to be a terrorist. Most likely what happened is simply what always happens when urban combat occurs. Civilians get caught in the crossfire or are killed in structures that collapse. First the Palestinians claimed thousands were dead, then they claimed hundreds. Finally it was found that 48 civilians had died. A very small number considering the intensity of the fighting. The only guilty party here is the terrorist themselves who decided to use the urban environment to hide among the civilians to make their stand against the IDF.

Israel's slowness to comply with certain resolutions does not change the fact that continueing to cooperate with Israel on these matters resulted in a major net positive for the Palestinians and they were well on the way to a peace agreement and withdrawel of Israely forces. Its not simply rational for them to stop cooperating and resort to terrorism because of Israel's failure to yet comply with a few conditions here and there. Clearly the process was moving forward and despite the setbacks, it was a net positive. Terrorism will never help Palestinian achieve any of their goals. It only ensures that the IDF will never leave the West Bank.

There is a common view among many people that in 1947, Israel was created when a large number of Jews from Europe moved in and kicked Palestinians off their land. That is not what happened. First, there had been a Jewish community(however small) living in the area on a constant basis for thousands of years. Jewish emigration to Israel started to grow in the late 1800s with the approval of the Ottoman Empire which owned the area. There was no Palestinian State and the area only had 400,000 a tiny number of which were Jews that had lived there for thousands of years. Most area's were basically unoccupied. The Jews from Europe settled in unoccupied area's. As Jewish emmigration increased some people became concerned by the Ottoman Empire continued to allow it.

At the end of World War I the Ottoman Empire was defeated and dismantled and the British and the French began to build independent states in area's where no states had existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Of course the Jews wanted a state as well as the Palestinians wanted a state. The Palestinians would not except any Jewish State. The UN plan in 1947 allowed for a Jewish State that was divided into 3 parts while the much larger Palestinian state was fully connnected. The UN plan did not require the removal of anyone.

In 1948 when Israel accepted the plan, it was attacked by 5 Arab nations which attempted unlawfully to destroy it. Israel defended itself and in the ensueing military operations came into possession of more land than it had been given in the original agreement. MOST Palestinians fled these new area's Israely military units moved into the area. SOME were kicked out by Jews by they are the minority. Most fled or actually stayed. One out of every 5 Israely's is a muslim.

The formation of Israel did not cause anyone to be kicked out of their home. But the fighting started by the invasion of Israel by 5 Arab countries did. If the Palestinians and the Arabs had simply accepted the UN plan offered in 1947, the Palestinians would be in a far better position today and would have their own state, plus no one would have been kicked out of anywhere.

In light of the fact that the Palestinians could of had everything they wanted and more in 1947, I do not know how you could say the violence has helped the Palestinians cause. It certainly did not improve their situation in 1948 or in any of the Arab/Israely wars that followed. Palestinian violence has only produced negative effects for them. The USA would be far more likely to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza if the Palestinians were engaged in passive resistance. Israel is a democracy and a nation of a laws. In such a situation, passive resistance like that of MARTIN LUTHER KING can produce a positive result. Israel never annexed the West Bank and Gaza and was always willing to talk about resolving its disputes. Israel is not a dictatorship and there for a passive form of resistance can effect it just as the US civil rights movements of the 50s and 60s brought about better equality for African Americans in the USA. Violence has only made things worse for the Palestinians and brought Israely soldiers in large numbers back to the West Bank. It has only increased support among American voters for strong military response to terrorist actions. The US does have strings it can pull with Israel, but its never going to pull them as long as Palestinians try to use terror to achieve their goals. Violance has been an utter and complete failure for Palestinians over the last 55 years. Its time they adopt a new strategy that does not involved terrorism and actually has a chance of achieving their goals of statehood.