Thanks for the backup, Death!

As for the "three day war" I never anticipated that...  no one should ever anticipate easy victory, it's jsut stupid.

The way I'm starting to see it all is this:

The stupid war's here, like it or not.  Just quit whining and pray itis over soon.

[shrugs] -- the world sucks sometimes.  Ideally, no one should have to make that choice, I agree.  Unfortunately this isn't an ideal world.

And no, I am not being sarcastic.  If I had to make a choice between thousands and millions of deaths (and thankfully I don't) I think I would choose the thousands.  I would also prefer just killing Saddam, but I don't decide the policy...

Hey, I never said war was pretty.  But I'd rather have the blood of thousands on my hands in one day than the blood of millions built up slowly over the years.  I'm sure the thousands aren't happy about it, and I never said I was either.  But those millions certainly aren't in any case.

Iadoga:  you are taking what I said completely out of context.  I was looking at the UN perspective on Iraq when I said that, NOT the American perspective.

The United Nations ordered Iraq to disarm.  Saddam therefore defied the UN by not disarming.

I agree with you, economic sanctions did not work.  It takes something like a war to remove Saddam.  You have defeated your own argument.

As for Oil:  That argument is overdone, and I'm quite frankly getting sick of it.  If anyone has oil interest in this case it is France and Germany who have very large oil contracts with Saddam's regime.

And finally, as to the 12 year old:  Ask the thousands killed by Saddam what they did wrong.  Yeah, war sucks and people die.  But I'd rather have a thousand die today to remove Saddam than a hundred die each and every day living under Saddam.  (and, yes, those numbers are made up, but they prove my point.)

[/rant]

Death: I tend to agree with you, however I think free speech does have some limits -- to use an overused example, I can swing my fist wherever I want, but my right to do that stops at your face.  I'm not sure whether anti-war protests cross the line or not.  I'm also very glad to see at least one other person in the world who doesn't condemn a group based one one of its followers!  

[sigh...]  People are criticized for speaking, because, in many cases, the criticizer is a twit who doesn't realize that free speech means ALL speech...

As for war protesting, well... there is, in my opinion, a fine line... I agree that it is possible to be against a war and still support the troops.  The problem comes when your anti-war protest (whether meant to be anti-troop or not) lowers morale.  Also, during the vietnam war many of the anti-war protests WERE "anti-troops" thanks to the Viet Cong's tactic of using civilian garb, which led to soldiers shooting civilians... I think perhaps the vocal "anti-anti-war protestors" are still thinking of that, and not realizing that it is a different war... (of course some anti-war protestors have the same problem!)

Well, in all fairness you made yours about 200 years later, when more topics were imaginable and relevant...  and in regards to your question, it appears that you have now...

heh... all in all a very nice post to read... thanks for the enlightenment!  Just a few quick comments before I must go...

Ice hockey: nice metaphor.  I actually get where you two (meaning LK too) are coming from now.

Vietnam: I didn't mean we officially declared war... ever since Korea, US Presidents have blithely (another fun word for you to look up perhaps!  ) ignored the constitutional way to declare war... I mean that we are, in effect, now at war...

LK: Nope, you got it exactly right.

GN: The prohibiton on agressive warfare is interesting... unless I completely misunderstood what you are saying, Germany's "constitution" forbids it from going to war except in self-defense.  (Yes? No?) If this is the (utterly fascinating) case, when did this restriction come about?  Did post-WWII Germany get tired of being slapped down by the rest of the world, or did people like Hitler justify their actions as "self-defense" somehow?  (Also, if that sounds anti-germany it isn't intended to be...)

As for the UN:  Israel can get away with defying the UN because the US lets them.  And here is my conundrum with the UN!  If we are saying that Israel defies the UN that means the world expects the UN's statements to carry weight; ie is has real and legitimate athourity (sp?) over member nations.  This implies, to my mind, that the UN acts as (note that I did not say is) a ruling body.  If this is the case, it needs to enforce what it says.

On the other hand, if we do NOT believe that the UN has real athourity, ie it makes "suggestions" then the opposite conundrum appears -- if it is not acting as a ruling body, then member nations are not in any way bound by it's edicts!  Thus, countries like Israel, the US, and Iraq can do whatever they want, and while it may piss off some nations, the UN can't do anything about it.

Basically, the sticking point for me is this:  Does the UN have real and actual athourity or not?  Should the UN have real and actual athourity or not?  I do not like the current, "in-between" state it seems to operate in.

As a side note, the US declaration of war on Iraq is not inherently related to the fact that Iraq may or may not have been defying UN edicts -- in many ways this is just Bush's excuse to eliminate what he sees as a threat to the US and the Iraqi people.

Okay, here's the part that gets me...

"Not a ruling body..."

"power to enforce its decisions..."

If it is not a ruling body, it should have NO power to enforce anything, just as we here on this board have no say in the process of porting UQM.  (gah, just realized the pun...)  And yet, people act like it has athourity.  It either is or it isn't; you can't have it both ways.

Lukipela -- remember also that Saddam has repeatedly ignored the UN.  I'm telling you, the UN only has the athourity (sp?) that a country lets it have -- both the US and Iraq have repeatedly proved that.  And that is the biggest problem with the UN.  If they cannot back up what they say, then they are defunct as a ruling body.  And if they are not a ruling body, what are they doing telling Iraq to disarm and telling the US to join the world court?

If all we want from the UN is a "country club" (pardon the pun) then it needs to stop telling people what to do.

If we want a ruling body, then we need to have a NEW body, which countries join voluntarily, a la the EU...

Oh wow, I totally forgot about intelligence agents!

ummm.... lessee... they're spying, not killing people... yeah, that's it!  

I think maybe we are also missing a key question in our definition here:  what is the intent behind the action?

Basically I consider anything that answers yes to "using civilian disguise" is terrorism.  Now, interestingly enough, it is STILL debatable wether the Shofixti Nova was terrorist!  Clearly they hid their intent, but one can hardly say that they "disguised" an entire planet...

"targeting civilians" does not, in and of itself, make something "terrorist."  Such an attack must be very carefully considered, and must be necessary and part of a declared war between two nations, or I would argue that it is terrorist.

To me, "suicide attack" or not has no bearing whatsoever on wether the attack is terrorism.

I agree with Ereklich on gun control, although probably from the other angle.

I find both of my "angles" to be equally acceptable, actually.  Glad you agree, though  


On the UN. What surprises me in this is how most people just say that the UN is turning into "the league of nations", and we should just ignore it. Surely it would be better to sit down and work out how it could be improved, and bettered, instead of bashing it and going our own ways. Do we really want to go the way of anarchy here?

IMHO the way to "improve" the UN is to scrap it, and start over with a governing body that functions more like the EU.

Ereklich, you may be overlooking a slight fact here. The reason one of your hospitals is doing so much better is because they only take people who can pay.

Actually this is not true.  St Joesephs is a Catholic hospital and does not turn away those who cannot pay.  They try very hard to get you to pay, even offering long-term payment plans etc, but they do not turn away someone who needs treatment.

the UN ispections worked

What do you mean by "worked"?  If you mean they were able to disarm Saddam, you are incorrect.  If the UN wants to be treated as an athouritative world body it should enforce its own edicts, not make the US do it for them.  Saddam admitted, publicly, that he had disregarded UN edicts.  Also, lets face it the sanctions did nothing but hurt the Iraqi people.  That is part of why I think the UN is defunct.

On the electoral college -- just go to computerized voting!  It should have happened years ago!  That would've prevented the entire Florida fiasco.  (The EC itself is still debatable, however.  I personally am against it.)

I actually disagree with you about Socialized medicine.  I think the horror stories about waiting lists are far worse than anything wrong with private practice.  We have two hospitals in my city:  The MedCenter (gov't subsidized) and St. Josephs (privately owned and run).  By far the more sucessful is St Joesphs.  St Jospehs is buying the land nearby to expand while the Med is looking for ways to cut costs.  But enough ranting aobut socialism.

"..there has to be better men for the job!"

I AGREE!  The main problem with any seat of power is that those who want it are exactly the ones who should not have it, and those who don't want it are the ones who should.

I also agree wholeheartedly that America should help pay for rebuilding Iraq.  We have already shown concern for the rebuilding when we took out a staging area from which we think Saddam was going to destroy an oil field.  Those fields are the lifeblood of Iraq's economy, and contrary to what Anti-American hatemongers say we are not in this to take that oil for ourselves.

Gun control -- let me clarify my view a bit.  Gun control must be all or nothing.  Either NO ONE but police or military can own a gun, and anyone else who does, for ANY reason, suffers severe penalties, or EVERYONE msut be able to own one.

Ah... I was not aware that "no public humiliation" was part of the GC... [shrugs] apparently it is.

Also, I can see both sides of the prisoner-of-war thing.  Since they are not members of a formal military force, one can say they are not prisoners of war.  On the other hand I can see the argument that they are.  [shrugs again] I deal with what is...

On the other hand, they are unequivocally NOT American citizens and as such DONT have any expectation of constitutional protections.

[soapbox]
This whole thing aobut war... good or bad... every single idealist I have ever met my reaction has been "maybe in a perfect world..."   But we don't live in the idealist's world, we live in the real one.  Earth.  And humanity is just as evil as it is good.  I prefer non-realities like UQM, roleplaying games, and such.  But when I do deal with reality, I gird my haunches and DEAL with it.  I just wish everyone could accept that reality is what it is, and that simply wishing it were better will not make it so.
[/soapbox]

This has been a rant by ErekLich.  Feel free to disregard.