OT My Appologies...and the fights that ensued.

[madguy]

The war is just about in full swing, and, just in on CNN, France has surrendered!!!!!

The Bible tells us that the peacemakers are blessed, but too many fail to comprehend that sometimes, in order to make peace you must first wage war.

Saddam and his cowardly sons and aides may not have perpetrated 9/11, but they have provided safe haven to known terrorists, and, when all is said and done the citizens of any given country are directly responsible for their country's government. The cards have been dealt, let what happens happen.

Now France wants to "help" in the rebuilding of Iraq after the war..... to share in the "spoils" of war?

A drone plane was flown into Kuwait and crashed this morning (US time), and it is a well known fact that this is a way of delivering biological and chemical weapons. Were we to sit around another 30 or 60 days as the cowardly members of the UN Security Council wanted us to? I think not!

Anti-war protesters are tying up the streets of Philadelphia this morning, keeping the police from their needed duties, especially now that the threat of terrorist (cowardly) attacks against the US increases. Does this solve or accomplish anything? NO!

Hopefully, the first strikes at the bunker took care of Saddam and his chicken-sh&* sons. Hopefully, this will end soon. Hopefully, the coward members of the UN Security Council who would not support the US will see the errors of their ways.

God bless us all, and may peace come soon.

~Larry

[claudine]

... when all is said and done the citizens of any given country are directly responsible for their country's government.
~Larry

Do you think it is a just cause to kill civilians if they live in a dictatorship? Just like: "kill them all, let God sort them out"?
Do you think the non-respect of other people's lives makes you a hero?

[Jens_Hoppe]

Don't waste your breath on him, Claudine...

[Claus von Weiss]

The Bible tells us that the peacemakers are blessed, but too many fail to comprehend that sometimes, in order to make peace you must first wage war.

I won't comment on the rest of your o so witty post, Larry, but this your abuse of Christ's word is simply obscene.

Claus

[Azalin]

Actually, I'd suggest that Bagfed and Madguy have tea together. I'm sure they'd have a great time. I'm just trying to start some good friendship here

[Zubivka]

Zubivka, that post was very articulate and had many valid points of fact.

My dear Mishiganeh Hick-lander friend... hey, I love such constructive dialog!

I was wondering though, as I read your lustfull account of how anything right of center is just a lesser degree of Fascism and Nazi-ism, how that reflects on your position being just a lesser degree of Communism - Marxism.

See, I’m typical of what French name “radicals”, a strange vernacular term of ours which defines the most meak of all moderates in our panorama, like in the bull’s eye of the center, aka 50 with darts. Left of it you’re getting close to the French socialists, aka pinkos to translate (you know, those who were your allies in ‘91 war), and farther left a few surviving communists we tend to protect as any seriously endangered species. To the right of 50 begins the realm of moderate conservatives, same as us but they’d like more deregulation; then the hard right (like Chirac); then the raving (hee-hee) right with its quite unfocused boundaries with le Pen.

The commie pacifist you think I am is a captain of the French Artillery reserves, served as junior lieutenant.

Now, where would my Gallic “extreme center” be mapped in your Congress? Somewhere in the left wing of your Democrats, i.e. quite “liberal”.

The only thing that keeps Stalin from being used everytime we want to call someone a murderous dictator is that he was OUR (yours and mine) ally in the war.

How many millions did he kill? How many people were worked to death trying to fulfill his 5 year plans?

I’m afraid you’re not the one to teach this to me.
See, I happened to have been vaccinated quite early against any kind of sympathy to the Soviet regime.

The answer will be 6 million Ukrainians alone (minimal figure based on the most optimistic accounting) just for the organised famine and “kulaks” deportations during collectivisation 1931-34. Add the typhus in the 20’s, the war, the massive deportations in 1945-53, and Ukraine alone bears a toll of about 12 million people, i.e. ca. 20% of its population.

Just talking of my kin alone
(I’ll put it smalltype, since few may be interested in such a personal case; though you Bagfed should be, because it will show you the extent of you preposterous judgments regarding me)
• My grandpa Pavlo which I met several times spent two terms in the Gulag, one before, one after the war.
• He died too early, because of an infection caught at the local hospital where he underwent minor senior surgery (prostatis). In Brejnev’s USSR you lived safer out of the hospitral.
• His wife, as daughter of a “kulak” (=independant peasant) was banned for school and never learnt to read. This wedding also made my grandfather a suspect to the regime.
• My mother saw the Russian and Georgian soldiers searching each house sounding walls for hidden food, saw the armed soldier shooting anyone approaching the grain left rotting in the state farms, saw the bloated corpses of the homeless children left on the sides of the roads, knew that more than one of the valids fed on human corpses
• My uncle Vania got encircled by Germans with his artillery battery in summer 41 Ukraine; escaped back to his lines, was sacked from artillery Captain to plain infantry soldier in a disciplinary storm unit; was captured once by the Germans, escaped, downgraded from sergeant to GI again (having been prisoner of the Germans was according to Stalin’s orders a treason); finished the war with a couple wounds and three medals. He was nonetheless blacklisted and could not work in any state-run company, so he had to reconvert to any private trade allowed. He chose photography.
• My mother, deported in 41 as slave laborer to Germany, learnt in 45 that Ukrainians like her were immediately redeported by Russians to labor camps. She managed to fake and be “repatriated” to France.
• The village where she was born is under water in the huge artifical lake built on the Dniepr, and where life--weeds, fish--is scarce til now because of industrial pollution.
• The town of Alexandria of Kherson where she grew up is a desolate place; last time I visited, most every male in town got drunk til he’d see bats on every saturday, so he could forget about his week as uranium miner if he was lucky enough having a work... This was 25 years ago, but last news I had make it seem worse now.
• These are only a few examples. In winter 1991 after the Moscow coup, I sold everything I could, quit my job and flew to Ukraine with all I could grab and get through customs to help out my cousins. I started losing my hair by flocks that winter, no doubt because of the Tchernobyl effect.
• etc.

However, all this being said, I still consider it right that Russians, Ukrainians, Baltics liberated themselves, not through some self-blessed “Crusade” bombed from abroad.

You were commenting before that, because of my bad syntax, you could see why I was a bush supporter. Actually, that is part of his charm.

I commented on your poor syntax because you had the poor taste to comment on my foreigner’s english. I was just pointing out you were not a person on the board with enough credibility in this matter.

After the slick presentations of our last president, Bush comes off like he couldn't pull off a lie if his life depended on it.

It’s not because he looks stupid that he can’t lie, and blatantly. He’s much better at it than Clinton. He might even get away with it. And Clinton’s lie did not endanger the world. But this is just my opinion. And of most Frenchmen: a president can f... his ears out, it’s his private business. President Mitterand had a hidden daughter; everyone knew it, no-one resented it. The magazines who tried to make it a scandal lost much popularity.

I'm beginning to understand a little about your leader over there too. President Jacques Chirac, how many scandles has he been envolved in? What is his approval rating now? If his opponent in the last election wasn't so horrible, would he still be President?

My, your spelling does not improve, does it?
Many scandals indeed. He had the time to make enemies. He was already Prime Minister in the 70’s, a statesman in the 60's when Mister Prez--sorry George W. Bush, aka “Junior”--wore short pants.
To answer your questions:
1) many
2) between 70 and 75%
3) probably not. See, he seems to loose a bit of popularity after every petty scandal, and gain a lot more in the case of any major crisis. A bit like Churchill, in a way.

People want leaders they can look too and say "He's just like me, only better." Can you say that?

Talking for yourself. I don’t need to relate, to project myself in the shrink's sense. Yes, I want a President to be better than me, but first of all more apt to govern, with proofs and experience beforehand. We don't extend Presidency to newbies like you do.

It's funny, you are fond of calling me an armchair warrior.
Perhaps you are an armchair intellectual?

I know you can do better. Not that I ever resented being called an intellectual, if you please so. And not that an armchair would not fit the purpose, or just pose. However...

O armchair warrior
An outdoors intellectual
Gathers twice more light

[Bloomfield]

I think she was just resenting tinuviel's horrible lumping, and not telling you something about the USA's position. But even so, I don't think I would have corrected Walden if it hadn't been for his calling for touchy-feely unity one day: "Let us work, not toward trying to make one another look bad, but toward peace one with another, regardless of how international tensions are developing." And the next day he posts this:

Not a cultural elitist, are you?

Our Cherokee, and other American tribes, were put into boarding schools and punished for ever speaking anything but English. The snobbery, that would imply that anyone who is monolingual is an idiot, is difficult to ignore.

Why didn't you say that? You might actually find that Claudine's and your position are compatible. The fact that you need to speak more than one language to function in certain places (where does the "anyone" enter into it?) is like needing to drive a car in Montana. How do you feel about someone who fails and fails to pass the driver's test? Instead making a valid point, you are putting Claudine in the same spot as cultural surpressors. Are you telling us that someone is a snob because they are not from the US? Because things work differently there? If you are motivated by anger of the treatment of the Cherokee, why didn't you resent the statement "I don't speak more than one language because I don't have to" made by the very people who forced the Cherokees to abandon their language?

This kind of thing is percisely why I think you should just can those ambiguous, accusatory one-liners. If it's worth saying at all, say it in such a way that it doesn't say more than you want it to say. Or did you mean to just take a stab at Claudine that was fuzzy enough so that you could disclaim it afterwards?

[madguy]

I didn't misuse Christ's words, at least not intentionally. And, in past times, countries whose citizens finally had enough of the abuses and crimes of their leaders finally managed to dispose of them.

I didn't intentionally mean to offend, i just spoke my mind, as every one else here has.

~Larry

[Bloomfield]

I didn't misuse Christ's words, at least not intentionally. And, in past times, countries whose citizens finally had enough of the abuses and crimes of their leaders finally managed to dispose of them.

I didn't intentionally mean to offend, i just spoke my mind, as every one else here has.

~Larry

"Just speaking your mind" doesn't seem to quite justify your kind of post, and I think just about everyone else has intentionally not spoken things here that were on their minds---in the interest of the discussion.

And as for those times past: True enough that the citizens of some countries have disposed of their criminal leaders in the past. Not quite as many, however, as were "liberated" and "pacified" by helpful outsiders, whether they wanted to be or not.

[jim stone]

There is considerable indication that the Iraqis
want to be liberated. Typical is this statement:
'We have lived in a dark
future ever since Saddam has come to power.
Our morning is very near. We are waiting for this
moment.' Most of these statements don't come from
inside Iraq, of course--but probably that is because
the result of expressing anything political other than
adoration for Saddam results in one's being
returned to one's family hacked to pieces in
a body bag.

If Iraqis could speak to the people protesting the
war, I daresay that many would ask them
whose side they're on.

[herbivore12]

If Iraqis could speak to the people protesting the
war, I daresay that many would ask them
whose side they're on.

Maybe, Jim, maybe, though they might also be asking, "All that power, all that influence, and you couldn't come up with a way to do this thing without all the missiles?" Or they may be asking different questions of the winners once it's over: "You're going to do *what* with our oil? What does 'trickle-down effect' mean?"

Or maybe not. I think any speculation on what Iraqis may ask any of us probably will only serve our own positions, while the actual Iraqis in Iraq are hiding in their homes, or dying with their mates, hoping for the best no matter who wins or who was protesting. I hope that things get better for them sooner rather than later.

It seems that nobody here is disagreeing that Saddam must go, that Iraqis would be better off without him, though there's considerable difference of opinion as to how that might have been handled.

Even if at this point most of us are left with little practical alternative to moving into some category of support for at least the best outcome to the war (this war isn't going to stop now, of course, no matter who protests), plenty of people will have a long memory for how we got into this war. The unprecedented, concerted opposition and negative reaction of most other major countries to this war, and of other folks' opinions on this board, and the breakdown of the UN process, serve as a cross-check for me of my own reaction to Bush's cram-it-down-your-throat approach to this conflict. Others see it clearly, too. I resent it. I resent being presented with a fait accompli. He's taking this approach all across the board, by the way, (witness, e.g., drilling in ANWR and the systematic dismantling of environmental regulation), not just with Iraq.

Even if, at the end of the day, Iraq did pose a threat and armed
conflict was ultimately necessary to remove it (which while
conceivable, I hold as not the only option), the Bush administration took, in my view, an indefensibly bad route to get there. By short-circuiting the public and international debate, or more accurately, by making plain that the UN inspection process and debate was an empty exercise, a meaningless farce, from the outset, Bush has rankled a lot of people. Let's face it, Bush knew all along exactly where he was going, and that he was going to do it anyway, no matter what anyone else said or thought. He just payed lip service to the process and this war was a foregone conclusion. Nothing could have stopped it. The massive troop buildup in Kuwait long before the UN process was finished made Bush's modus operandi as clear as day to everyone everywhere. The fact that Bush was willing to ride roughshod over our most important strategic alliances and world opinion, and squander American goodwill, makes it even more scary.

We may have little choice but to go along with the war now that it
has begun. But I am keenly aware Bush has a pattern of pursuing
some highly debatable policy goals in a relentless, even ruthless, way. Jim's argued in the past, and not without merit, that sometimes leaders like this are just what's needed. However, I'm worried that Bush's style of leadership, and his goals, may cause irremediable harm to foreign relations, to ecologies, to the economy, and leave all of us to clean up messes for years to come. Iraq is an important issue, and I hope the Iraqis really are better off in a year than they are now, but I'm afraid our President's leadership style may leave many of the rest of us worse for his administration. To that end, I hope the protestors continue to speak out where they see fit, and that somehow some of it might sink in enough to bring this administration back into public debate, rather than roughshod action. Even if it seems futile, as protests against war now certainly are, it may -- may -- help force our leaders to once again seek to really engage the public, and other nations, in discussions about the future of the world.

Thanks goodness for the first amendment.

--Aaron

[Bloomfield]

Thanks goodness for the first amendment.

--Aaron

Enjoy it while it lasts...

[jim stone]

As to getting Saddam out, no, this was the only way.
The alternative approaches offered, inspections wouldn't have
done that even if they had worked.

No, we weren't determined to got to war from the beginning.
The troops were in place because we thought they might
well be necessary; also because only that sort of
pressure would have made Saddam disarm, not to
mention let inspectors back in. If Saddam had
credibly disarmed within the time frame after
which we could not fight, we would not have fought.
If the British compromise proposal had been
accepted by the UN, with a three week deadline
and clear benchmarks for what counted as
disarming, and Iraq had complied, we would not
have fought.

As you say, the war is happening. I support it for
the reasons the administration gave; I appreciate
that you don't (and I do agree about our
clumsy diplomacy).

But this is something I think we can agree upon.
As we speak a captive people, millions of them,
are being liberated
from an utter son of a bitch, who has accounted for
about a million of them in the last 20 years, who has
made their lives a living hell since 1979.

How important is that?
I don't know about you, but I am very, very glad.
When they say to us that their nightmare is ending
and the day they have awaited has arrived, I
am moved deeply. The people who are lamenting
and getting arrested protesting seem to me to have
missed something of extraordinary moral importance.
If I were on the other side of this issue, and thought
we should not have gone to war, I would still be
very glad.

Down with Tyranny!

[claudine]

jim stone, why do you always use the word "we" with such self-confidence? do you write the same kind of epistles for the government?

[jim stone]

No, I don't write epistles for the government--of which
I've been strongly critical in these threads (e.g. Israel-Palestine).
Think I should ask for a job? Best wishes, Jim