virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« on: 2003-03-17 10:00:18 »
We here at the CoV feel eager to the help out the POTUS. Things he may not have thought of yet, just in case he secretly watches our riveting discussions, we need to take this job seriously. Let's help the commander in chief!
Top ten things Bush could have done to get UN cooperation.
I will fight your gods for food, Mo Enzyme (consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
billroh@churchofvirus.com
Guest
Re: virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #1 on: 2003-03-17 11:13:12 »
9) Instructed France to surrender to the US first, and we all know they would, then our Governor of France - Dick Chaney, could have been the decision maker France needs.
> We here at the CoV feel eager to the help out the POTUS. Things he > may not have thought of yet, just in case he secretly watches our > riveting discussions, we need to take this job seriously. Let's help > the commander in chief! > > Top ten things Bush could have done to get UN cooperation. > > 10) Take off shoe and pound on table. > 9)? > . . . > > Love, > > -Jake
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #3 on: 2003-03-17 13:53:12 »
So now the US is a diplomacy spurning rogue nation with the world as its enemy. Frightening thought.
Some possible 100 Million Americans support Dubya (only 23% of the eligible voters supported him, so this is probably an overstatement) against some 6 billion others who do not. So if his appointment had not told us this already, the current situation would have proved that democracy is not important to dubya or, by extension, those in the USA supporting him. In addition, it tells us that the safety of the USA (which according to the CIA (and common sense) will be lessoned by these actions), stability of the world (neither massive bribes nor the application of pressure are stability promoting, while increasing aggression actively reduces it) and state of the global economy (estimated impact of Iraq conflict $1.6 Trillion (for an extended war, which US insistence of territorial integrity will ensure) vs. a total 2003 US budget of $2.25 Billion) are much less significant to Dubya than the neocon/Armageddon/Israeli agenda. Finally, we can see that International law, diplomacy and the UN have been effectively nullified by the actions of the US under dubya, removing the motivation for the world to accord the UN or the US (UK and Bulgaria too) further courtesy or attention. A cost which no doubt has long-term implications that seem not to have been adequately evaluated (what's new?). In that light, and perhaps most importantly for the long term, there is no allowance made for the North Korean situation, where dubya has accomplished one thing not achieved in 50 years, and that is, that he has managed to get N and S Korea to agree that the US is acting irrationally - and made another war there almost inevitable.
What can those in the US do to correct the situation:
Attempt to impeach dubya for breaching the International law and treaties which explicitly underlie the US constitution.
Establish a new political party designed to compete with the existing parties and committed to rectifying the structures which have allowed this situation to develop.
Hunker down for a long period of economic instability.
Attempt to teach those around themselves to think rationally and recognize propaganda, irrespective of source.
Maintain links with like thinking people in other nations.
What the world can do in response that will not hurt the world more than it does the US, and may help the US come to its collective senses. Some thoughts on this follow:
Declaration of the US as a rogue nation in the General Assembly.
Withdrawal of funds from the US by other nations.
Imposition of reciprocal tariffs that will balance those currently applied by the US.
The transference of oil and other settlements from the dollar standard to other currencies or currency baskets.
Withdrawal of scientific, sporting and cultural links.
Development of a space based defense umbrella not associated with the US.
Establishment of a successor International body to replace the UN - which does not include the fatal flaw of a veto for permanent security council members.
More importantly, ensure that this body has access to a military component for the enforcement of its agreements and determinations without reliance on member states. This has the potential of establishing a global superpower-block which would have the capability of maintaining the US in check as its probable disintegration continues, without bankrupting those nations not prepared to spend their way into oblivion by applying 47% of their budgets on "defense".
The above, in total, may have the effect of resulting in a change in the US government, or may assist the US into its chosen path to "irrelevancy" or may even encourage it to re-evaluate its attempt to damage the institutions and agreements developed at such high cost in the past century and which have prevented recent major conflicts.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Eighteen of the 21 EU countries support the US stance on Iraqi regime change, as do Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. The isolanis are France and Germany, and the tiny nation trapped between them, Belgium. When the freed Iraqis are dancing in the streets of Baghdad, publicly thanking the US for their liberation, and pointing out the locations of the chemo and bio weapons caches and mass graves, world opinion will be forced by facts, evidence and testimony to swing behind the US, as happened in Bosnia and Kosovo (actions for which Clinton did not seek UN approval), and in Afghanistan.
The French (who themselves are dictating militay terms in the Ivory Coast without requesting UN permission) veto threat is what has consigned the UN to irrelevancy; it can only be rehabilitated when member nations cease voting on global security issues on the basis of narrow financial self-interests.
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #5 on: 2003-03-17 16:22:35 »
Sent Joe Dees and Hermit to an Isolated Island and let them fight it out for both sides - on worldwide television. Carl can represent Saddam, France, Germany and all those other countries oppsed to action. Joe can represent GWB, the US, GB, AUS, Japan and those that support action.
If Joe Wins, Iraq, it's oil, it's people and the Eifel tower become posessions of the US -and - the US can relocate it's prison population to Paris. If Carl wins, we'll bow down to our great and heroic leader World Dictater Saddam Hussein - and rename all our food to be prefaced with the word "French".
Come to think of it, what's with the surge of anti-France-ism lately? Some of it seems downright ridiculous, like the House's decision to rename "French Fries" "Freedom Fries" (Just for the record, I don't know why you even call them french fries).
BIll Roh <billroh@churchofvirus.com> wrote:9) Instructed France to surrender to the US first, and we all know they would, then our Governor of France - Dick Chaney, could have been the decision maker France needs.
> We here at the CoV feel eager to the help out the POTUS. Things he > may not have thought of yet, just in case he secretly watches our > riveting discussions, we need to take this job seriously. Let's help > the commander in chief! > > Top ten things Bush could have done to get UN cooperation. > > 10) Take off shoe and pound on table. > 9)? > . . . > > Love, > > -Jake
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Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #7 on: 2003-03-17 17:40:55 »
SunTzu:
Quote:
Come to think of it, what's with the surge of anti-France-ism lately
This is not a new thing, SunTzu, just a little more popular at the moment. If you do a check through the logs, you will find years of picking on the French readily available. American men everywhere have been picking on the French since, well longer than anyone is alive to tell us. You can also find years of picking on the French available, in the finest fashion, at The Onion - America's finest news source - Their books are full of it.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --- Norman Schwartzkopf
"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --- General George S. Patton
"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes." ---Mark Twain
"We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." ---- Marge Simpson
Re: virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #8 on: 2003-03-17 17:47:15 »
In a message dated 3/17/2003 3:49:23 PM Central Standard Time, ouri_maler@yahoo.fr writes:
Come to think of it, what's with the surge of anti-France-ism lately? Some of it seems downright ridiculous, like the House's decision to rename "French Fries" "Freedom Fries" (Just for the record, I don't know why you even call them french fries).
[Jake] Probably just a little more subtle UTism at work. I personally plan to get an extra large "french fries" at the nearest McDonalds this evening, as I have been known to do on some occasion. I don't see what all the fuss is about it; but since we are at all this irrational UTism, I guess it should cause little surprise that these stupid little patriot memes might express themselves in gastronomical/linguistic combinations like this. Very kindergarten.
I will fight your gods for food, Mo Enzyme (consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
BillRoh
Guest
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #9 on: 2003-03-17 18:32:39 »
Jake, do a lookup on the first instance of the term UTism here at the CoV.
you're looking, right? See who coined that word here?
Yep, that's me. I've kept my mouth shut while everyone defined or redefined the word I created. If you are gonna toss insults at me, you could at least belch or fart em out!
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #10 on: 2003-03-17 18:41:54 »
10) Take off shoe and pound it on table. 9) Requested France's surrender prior to security council vote. 8) Resigned 7) Hired Bill Clinton as Head of State department 6) Stage a nuclear attack on Las Vegas by Iraq (but it narrowly misses and explodes harmlessly in the Nevada desert) 5) Invited Saddam to a conference at the White House where he could have been bribed to depart for Libya. 4) Reichstag (verb) the UN itself 3) Told the truth about reasons for war (they are convincing enough - oil, regime change, protect Israel, disrupt terror, stabilise region,test weapons, send out message to other tyrants etc etc. rather than terror and humanitarian - clearly bunk. ) 2) Charged the UN with complicity in war crimes - Rwanda, Srebrenica, Iraq - and offer a plea bargain type out for them via vote to "stop this one" i.e. Iraq. 1) Admitted that the rantings of every fevered Islamist and radical liberal leftist are in fact true: His satanic majesty George Bush is Prime Evil and IS was about to attack the Arch-Angel Saddam simply to buy Oil at a higher price than it is now and to enjoy the spectacle of dead Iraqi babies and the scorn of the morally superior worldwide but now he has decided NOT to attack, will with draw all US troops and enter into an age of complete US isolationism...no more intervention regardless of how urgent or just.
The UN will have a resolution within hours denouncing this brutal abandonment of its (US) duties and INSIST the US must INVADE all brutal regimes NOW starting with IRAQ now.
Last resort... -1 announce "Iraq 2003" the movie and offer parts to the UN representatives.
As I wrote before:
False idealists like Hughes articulate romantic delusions and receive in return what they hunger for most: acclaim. That it is the acclaim of the ignorant , the uncomprehending and the collusory does not matter. When the delusory nature of their hopes is revealed and the deadly consequences of their idealism expounded - they accuse you of attacking the hopes and principles themselves.
It is the perennial problem when dealing with idealists (or false idealists) who are addicted to the mind killing toxic air of their imagined moral high ground: How can you make them see the link between what appears to be harmless prating about peace/rights/fellowship/decency etc and the consequences of actually acting on their proposal? Does one unfurl the long scroll listing grim unintended consequences and the annihilation of the naive? Does one ignore and wait for maturity to set in?
These false idealists may or may not misunderstands the constraints on their (sham) noble ambitions (and the dangers they create). The dishonest known the ruinous consequences if their proposals, but speak out anyway to harvest praise and acclaim. The honest are simply deluded or foolish - believing their own exhortations and naive pronouncement. Both can be deadly if they are persuasive.
History and the truth are no defence against them: They appeal to an otherwhere where an ideal set of circumstances makes an ideal set of men. They sell a dream - knowingly or not the half realisation of which is ruinous.
This reminds me of a rather macro level prisoners dilemma. If prisoners cooperate it is best for them both. If one betrays the other then one co-operating is doubly punished. An idealist - ignoring all evidence of man's self interest - would have you wager the future on an experiment in containment and the hoped for beneficence of a mass murderer.
I know it sound like insanity. That is because it is.
This is just another expression of the battle between naivety and experience, wisdom and folly, youth and age, reason and madness. It is of course easy to preach peace, tolerance, brotherhood, fellowship of man, equality, fairness etc. One is likely to get much approval and ego stroking for endorsing such goodness. It is an entirely different matter taking realistic measure to protect yourself from the intolerance, enmity, envy, violence, inequality and unfairness.
Idealists hope their own fairness will be a talisman to ward off the brutality of others or perhaps they hope that they will be taken seriously enough to be universally praised for their goodness, but sufficiently ignored for their suggested actions never to be carried out.
I am reminded of the person who loudly harangues the lifeboat crew to return to the site of sunken ship "for the others". It is an ostensibly noble sentiment but such an action would be suicide for those in the lifeboat. The haranguer has lifted the guilt of survival but is secretly grateful that he is ignored. "But I tried" he will say to themselves, "those brutes refused to go back". Win:win for the haranguer - he gets the moral praise, to ease his guilt and survive.
The nightmare, of course, is to be a sane person on boat where such a silly notion takes root, where the meme spreads and the boat is turned around.
I liken anti-war protestors to dogs chasing cars.
They know they will never succeed (and neither do they want to). The fun is in being seen to be fierce/good/morally right. It would be a tragedy if the war was actually called off. What would the dog do if he caught the Volkswagen?
It was Brendan O'Neill who alerted me to something I have been thinking for a while. "Talking to the protesters, it soon became clear that many are resigned to the war taking place. 'I know there will be an invasion of Iraq and I know there isn't much I can do about it', said one. 'But what should I do - stay at home and say nothing? I can still add my voice to the protests.' Others pointed out that the government 'would probably ignore' the protests and get on with their wars anyway, 'because that is what governments do'." I suspect that opposing the proposed war on Iraq know it will happen anyway, and can have both the moral goodfeel of opposing war as well as the security and safety of knowing that grown-ups and realists are dealing with the situation.
Rudy Giuliani touches in this subject in his book "Leadership". During the 1972 presidential race between Nixon and McGovern, Giuliani - then a Democrat - voted for McGovern "only because I knew he was going to lose". He found himself agreeing with Nixon on almost everything. Luckily he could avoid cognitive dissonance by voting for McGovern who he knew would lose. There was no danger of McGovern getting in. If he there had, I suspect Rudy would have voted for his ostensible political opposition.
It is easy to posture when there is no real threat.
I suspect this is the case with most of the anti-war the protesters They can feel good about themselves and be secure knowing Saddam is about to be dealt with.
These faux-anti war types (inevitable there are decent principled people who actually oppose the war and have reasons for doing so) display remarkable moral cowardice and wilful ignorance about the state of the world. Their actions are dishonest than hypocritical. Luckily, they are not too dangerous.
They ought to be pitied more than anything. They are, after all, the awkward idiot children of our society. Reduced to never ending infantilism of late capitalist society, desperate for reassurance and stability. The poor sods are unable to face reality, preferring instead to believe stupefying fairy tales about the goodness of all people rather than deal with the bogey man outside.
That is best left to grown-ups.
It is chilling to think of what the consequences might have been if people like this had actually succeeded in their efforts!
Million of Afghans starved to death under the Taliban in 2002. A series of 9/11 scale spectaculars devastate America and the UK. Emboldened by Western cowardice and infighting, a Muslim coalition attacks Israel. Iraq uses WMD (refined since its successful and unopposed capture of Kuwait in 1990) to attack Israel. Israel responds with nuclear weapons destroying 11 Arab capitals. India and Pakistan exchange nuclear fire after Pakistan threatens to attack Israel in defence of its co-religionists....
You get the picture. The modern, uniquely Western way of war (minimize civilian casualties, slaughter opposition military) is about saving lives. In the last 10 years every Western military intervention has been humanitarian or self-defensive in nature. Millions would be dead if it were not for those interventions - most of them aiding Muslims.
Kuwaitis, Bosnian Muslims, Kosovan Albanians, Somalis... And the thanks? 50 years of protecting Europe from Soviet invasion...and the thanks? Deafening sound of silence.
The American falcon no longer heeds the UN falconers. The game is over. Big boys are stepping in to sort this. Night night children......
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #11 on: 2003-03-18 09:59:01 »
[Jonathan Davis] 10) Take off shoe and pound it on table.
[Hermit] Apropos of something, before Khrushchev, in a debate over colonialism, pounded his shoe on the lecturn at the UN, the tactic was used to indicate the highest degree of obstruction by British Parliamentarians. He was advised to use the tactic by his protocol department. The idea that this was done in a fit of rage was established by US propaganda. So it would perhaps be more apposite for the tactic to be used by somebody opposing the smirking chimp.
[Jonathan Davis] 9) Requested France's surrender prior to security council vote.
[Hermit] Nice insulting propaganda. If France had not helped to give the US time to prepare for war, not once but twice, the US might today be a German speaking Nation - or it might not exist at all, given that it was the French who enabled the US revolution to succeed. The US would also be bereft of her most visible symbol, the lady at whose feet stand the lies (we have discussed US immigration policy before):
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
[Jonathan Davis] Resigned
[Hermit] I guess the smirking chimp, having "won" the position he holds by virtue of there being no effective remedy for electoral theft, might suspect that an he relinquishes it, he would never achieve such heights again - and would therefore be coy about considering such a move. Besides, it might be construed as being honorable, and that would cause a constitutional crises - for dubya if not for the USA.
[Jonathan Davis] 7) Hired Bill Clinton as Head of State department
[Hermit] Now this might be appropriate. Clinton didn't do badly at killing Iraqi. Then again, Clinton might have looked at the state of the economy - or the interns, and noticed their drooping tendencies. And that would never do.
[Jonathan Davis] 6) Stage a nuclear attack on Las Vegas by Iraq (but it narrowly misses and explodes harmlessly in the Nevada desert)
[Hermit] Unless it were a really dirty bomb, it would hardly add more radioactivity to Nevada than the Administrations brilliant nuclear waste dumping program.
[Jonathan Davis] 5) Invited Saddam to a conference at the White House where he could have been bribed to depart for Libya.
[Hermit] But that would not gain the US control over the Gulf (and thus the ability to control oil prices in Europe or China). So it would not meet the prerequisites of the ever present "insane" plan to take over Iraq developed while Kissinger was responsible for ensuring the USA's place in the sun. So it wouldn't do.
[Jonathan Davis] 4) Reichstag (verb) the UN itself
[Hermit] Why resort to physical actions which might leave fingerprints, when rhetoric and sabotage will do? Since 1976, when Moynihan's (US Ambassador to the U.N.) responsibility was to render the U.N. "utterly ineffective" in anything it might do, and he claims to have "carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." it seems that the conclusion that this has remained US policy is inescapable.
[Jonathan Davis] 3) Told the truth about reasons for war (they are convincing enough - oil, regime change, protect Israel, disrupt terror, stabilise region,test weapons, send out message to other tyrants etc etc. rather than terror and humanitarian - clearly bunk. )
[Hermit] I suspect that none of these are the "real reasons" as they all embody "fatal flaws" other than perhaps the Israel assertion, and even that seems at least linked to dreams of Armegeddon (Iraq is Babylon, you know) and more importantly, the neocon agenda. Which isn't hidden. Their policy institutes have repeatedly advocated this as a way of controlling the Gulf - and thus the cost and availability of oil to China and Europe. Perhaps those advocating this have forgotten why Japan finally entered WW II.
[Jonathan Davis] 2) Charged the UN with complicity in war crimes - Rwanda, Srebrenica, Iraq - and offer a plea bargain type out for them via vote to "stop this one" i.e. Iraq.
[Hermit] No. This is not the US style at all. Have you forgotten the "Invade the Hague" policy, authorizing the US military to use all necessary force to free any US citizen arrested to be placed on trial for war crimes? I'm sure that the US would be very reluctant to attempt judicial action against anyone, just in case others evaluated her actions in the same light.
[Jonathan Davis] 1) Admitted that the rantings of every fevered Islamist and radical liberal leftist are in fact true: His satanic majesty George Bush is Prime Evil and IS was about to attack the Arch-Angel Saddam simply to buy Oil at a higher price than it is now and to enjoy the spectacle of dead Iraqi babies and the scorn of the morally superior worldwide but now he has decided NOT to attack, will with draw all US troops and enter into an age of complete US isolationism...no more intervention regardless of how urgent or just.
[Hermit] A field full of strawmen perhaps? For example, I don't think anyone imagines Saddam to be an angel, by any standards. And everyone with any knowledge of economics is aware that unless dubya can establish a perpetual state of war, people will start looking at the depression and track record of the Republican Government (in House Senate and Whitehouse) and begin to make unflattering noises.When Clinton was in difficulties with attention he discovered the distractive properties of missiles. While dubya is less intelligent, even his microscopic simian awareness surely noticed this.
[Jonathan Davis] The UN will have a resolution within hours denouncing this brutal abandonment of its (US) duties and INSIST the US must INVADE all brutal regimes NOW starting with IRAQ now.
[Hermit] I suspect that overall judgement is likely to be similar to mine. That this is both too simplistic and to close to the bone to be really amusing.
[Jonathan Davis] Last resort... -1 announce "Iraq 2003" the movie and offer parts to the UN representatives.
[Hermit] I'm sure that Bush would like nothing better. From asserting that he woulc call a vote, that he had the support that he needed for a war, to discover that only his poodle in the UK, and the Spanish and Bulgarians would hold his hand in the Security Council, to denouncing diplomacy and the renunciation of US treaty obligations in under a week, to the general denunciation of all the world that wasn't already bought, must make him terribly nervous of the UN passing resolutions along the lines of "The US is a Rogue Nation" and blotting his copybook almost as thoroughly as he has done for himself.
[Jonathan Davis] As I wrote before:
[Hermit] Indeed. And ignoring the counterarguments which were drawn by your original assertions.
[Jonathan Davis] False idealists like Hughes
[Hermit] Nice attempted smear job. How do you know who is a false idealist and who is not? For that matter, how do you know who is an idealist at all? The birds?
[Jonathan Davis] articulate romantic delusions and receive in return what they hunger for most: acclaim.
[Hermit] How do you know what others seek most? Special messages from god, whispered into your ear over a beer?
[Jonathan Davis] That it is the acclaim of the ignorant , the uncomprehending and the collusory does not matter.
[Hermit] Next attempted smear. A (false - determination process unknown) idealist can only be "acclaimed" by stupid and dishonest people. Nice one.
[Jonathan Davis] When the delusory nature of their hopes is revealed
[Hermit] Innuendo too. Why should hopes be "delusory"? Is this inevitable, or because only the "ignorant , the uncomprehending and the collusory" may hope?
[Jonathan Davis] and the deadly consequences of their idealism expounded
[Hermit] So is idealism always followed by "deadly consequences" or is it only "false idealism" that attracts this? For myself, I'd suggest that warfare is usually more deadly than idealism (although I grant that one may lead to the otrher).
[Jonathan Davis] - they accuse you of attacking the hopes and principles themselves.
[Hermit] Yet another smear attempt? Or did I misread you here? How do you know what other people are going to do?
[Jonathan Davis] It is the perennial problem when dealing with idealists (or false idealists)
[Hermit] Ah, so you see no difference between the two? Seeing as you assert there are no differences between the consequences or the forms they may take.
[Jonathan Davis] who are addicted to the mind killing toxic air of their imagined moral high ground:
[Hermit] So while I loath hypocricy (and most claims to "moral high ground") as much as the next Virian, I think your link between "mind killing toxic air" and "imagined moral high ground" is tenuous at best and a very visible smear at worst.
[Jonathan Davis] How can you make them see the link between what appears to be harmless prating about peace/rights/fellowship/decency etc and the consequences of actually acting on their proposal?
[Hermit] So "harmless prating" (nice attempted trivialization) about "peace/rights/fellowship/decency etc " is based on "Naive", "immature" (forward reference) "idealism" which is indistinguishable from "false idealism" and results in "deadly consequences" and is only supported by the "stupid and dishonest." If I may venture some advice, don't leave your dayjob in response to an offer of a position as a propaganda writer. I suspect that you are too transparent even for American tastebuds. After all, our palettes are surely sharpened to a fine discrimination, through a neverending diet of propaganda from real masters of the art.
[Jonathan Davis] Does one unfurl the long scroll listing grim unintended consequences and the annihilation of the naive? Does one ignore and wait for maturity to set in?
[Hermit] I left this in to justify the forward reference. At the same time, it does rather raise the question as to whether "harmless prating about peace/rights/fellowship/decency etc " is more or less likely than war and destabilization to result in "grim unintended consequences", and even whether "unintended consequences" are always grim, or not.
[Jonathan Davis] These false idealists may or may not misunderstands the constraints on their (sham) noble ambitions (and the dangers they create). The dishonest known the ruinous consequences if their proposals, but speak out anyway to harvest praise and acclaim. The honest are simply deluded or foolish - believing their own exhortations and naive pronouncement. Both can be deadly if they are persuasive.
[Hermit] I'll stop here. Your propaganda op ed is trivial to deconstruct, but it still takes time I do not have to demonstrate why your pen is poisonous. And to the true believers, nothing I say will lesson their agreement with you, to those sufficiently rational to be able to see that how you assert what you seem to is invalid, a few clues is surely sufficient for them to grasp the technique. After all, you have only one, and you do use it so blatantly.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
I have been lucky enough to travel across most of the states of America. I have sat with old men on their porches in Tennessee, and ridden with young wranglers in Montana in the mountains of the Great Divide. As a politician, I have visited schools in New York, retirement homes in Florida and technology firms in San Diego. And I have to say that it would be hard to come across a nation of people less imperialist by culture, temperament and inclination. America was forged in the first place by the families of Protestant settlers who had a work ethic, a strong sense of right and wrong, and a hostility to governmental power and royal authority. They went to a new land in order to be away from wars, taxes and kings. Their attitudes, reinforced by the waves of dispossessed people who have joined them in succeeding centuries, remain the central characteristics of America today. Americans are still by nature disrespectful of authority, deeply democratic by instinct, very conscious of their freedom, and particularly happy to live in a vast and beautiful land which is free from external threats.
Such people are difficult to rouse to war. If Americans are insular — and many of them are — they cannot be imperialist at the same time. In British and French eyes, their sin over much of the last century has been isolationism: ‘too proud to fight’, as Woodrow Wilson said. Americans have always hated joining in other people’s conflicts. Only unrestricted submarine attacks off their west coast brought them into the first world war, and only a direct attack on American soil in Pearl Harbor brought them into the second, even Churchill’s brilliant eloquence having made little progress with them until then. Once roused, however, they have responded with a mixture of determination, loyalty and generosity that no other nation has ever matched. Without America, France would have lived in a dark age of dictatorship for decades. Without America, Germans could not have rescued themselves from a racist ideology. And without America, Europe’s only alternative to Nazi tyranny would have been communist tyranny. American troops left behind them an independent and democratic Japan, and brought Europe the Marshall Plan — both supreme acts of enlightenment in foreign policy. They share with Britain, but not with other European powers, the distinction of leaving democracy and freedom in their wake wherever they can.
We are the good guys. Saddam Hussein is a genocidal fascist. Never forget that.
You may think this war is a mistake. You may be opposed to it for reasons I don't share. That's fine. There are honorable reasons to dissent.
But no one can tell me America is fascist and imperialist. It is a lie, and it is not honorable.
If George Bush lines the Democratic Senators up against a wall and has them machine-gunned by the Army, let me know. I'll join in calling America fascist.
If we conquer Iraq, enslave its people, and rape it of its resources, shoot me an email. I'll agree America is imperialist and stand corrected in public.
We are about to kill a lot of people in Iraq. I feel awful about it, even though I think the cause is just. It brings me no happiness that a war I've long supported is finally about to begin. When the shooting starts, I will sit and watch it on War-TV and bury my head in my hands. I'll feel a lump in my throat and a clench in my stomach. I will mourn the dead on both sides.
I am not bloodthirsty. I don't like war, and I don't hate the people of Iraq. Not even the soldiers in Saddam Hussein's army. I won't enjoy the sight of falling bombs, knowing human beings are being killed in those explosions.
But I will enjoy seeing an enslaved country liberated from a tyrant. I will sleep a little better knowing those genocide weapons will be disposed by army inspectors. I will smile as aid workers pour into the country to rescue a long-suffering people.
And I hope to see our fiercest critics shamed. We are not the "real axis of evil." We're about to prove it by freeing and rebuilding what Saddam Hussein spent three long decades destroying.
Re:virus: On this last day of diplomacy
« Reply #13 on: 2003-03-18 16:22:16 »
Hermit,
I was going to pay you the respect of a comprehensive reply but I really could not be bothered now. There is nothing to reply to, just abuse and squawking about "smears".
I chuckled at your claim that I have only one "technique". A comment I consider ironic but with a crispy hypocritical batter.
Your "technique" is summarised easily: Bombard with irrelevance whilst nit-picking about incidentals and attacking the man. I am delighted to see you think I might be deploying this technique against you. But I am not.
Regards
Jonathan
« Last Edit: 2003-03-18 16:46:26 by Jonathan Davis »
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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