Wow Kerry took the Florida primary!

[Jester]

"Sadam was there primarily because the U.S. put him there."

Kept. Not put.

Jester

[Life]

"Sadam was there primarily because the U.S. put him there."

Kept. Not put.

Jester

Fair enough. I'm done talking. I want to get on with other things. It has been a most welcome and enervating discussion.

I appreciated everyone's thoughts.

Much food for the brain to consider.

Life

[Nystul]

I would like to state, for the record, that, within the context of this "for us or against us" formula...

... I am against you.

So did you go out and party when the World Trade Center went down, or did you just celebrate at home with a good meal and a fine bottle of wine?

[Cybit]

A) Nystul, totally uncalled for.

B) About the entire Bowling for Columbine not being true fiasco, you can actually go to Michael Moore's website where he pretty much destroys the hardy analysis. Pretty much everything in the documentary was true. I mean, dontcha think someone would have actually done something if it wasn't? (This is a major sticking point with me, especially when you can find everything Moore did really easily, and then everyone accuses him of lying, when I could find sources to prove everything he put in there was true...)

C) I just don't think Bush has in any way, the intellectual capacity to be president.

[Occhidiangela]

For as long as I have been an adult, the US spends billions per year on a huge range of foreign aid packages. Since the mid 1990's, to that bill is added -- though the NGO's avoid understanding the cost and the whiners cry about "raw foreign aid" dollars per capita -- an immense, multi billion dollar annual investment in peace keeping, and more importantly peace enforcement, in the Balkans and elsewhere. The multi billion annual bill for Bosnia and Kosovo, alone, is peace enforcement, and is completely ignored as a contribution to preventing war and to slowly but surely trying to put those nations on their feet.

Peace aint cheap, though war is more expensive.

Peace enforcement and peacekeeping risks making a nation a foreign aid junky, like Haiti has been for decades.

Your whole stance on the "either or" approach to "doing good in the world" seems to me a bit myopic. Who defines the real value of any particular action as "helping out someone else?" Well, the commentator, and that seems to include an agenda filter that skews the picture.

Take for example Afghanistan: Part of the side benefit there was the restoration of a modicum of women's rights that the Taliban had suppressed rather handily. How do you put a price on that?

The active engagement of Sec Powell in the last year or so to help out in the Pakistan India issue. I won't say he pulled off any coups, but the active engagement helped the process. I can only salute the leaders of India and Pakistan for taking a step backward from the brink.

I will take a risk here and suggest you look at the Iraqi Constitutional Convention (still a work in progress, I don't believe that an initial agreement is a final agreement, see our own process for an example . . . :) )

The fact that they are going through that process, even with all of the cat fights that go with it, is an immense move forward for liberalism. Yes, you heard that, that is a step forward for liberalism in its truist sense.

Now, is it pure?

Nah, there are political strings all over it, from US, various European nations, various UN agencies, and of course some local players. But its a step forward. The anti liberals in Iraq are bombing folks to use terror to corrupt an attempt to give Iraq a shot at a liberal form of government. (Do they really want one? Well, there are some well run liberal governments in Europe that they can look to as examples of reasonable success, if you think that the US model is poorly suited to Iraq. The multi party parliaments of Germany, England and Italy, for example, where coalition building is necessary for progress, might be a good fit for Iraq.)

Some 2 to 3 billion per year to Egypt to keep the Middle East peace process going on at least one front. Working with other nations to help Lybia come back into the arms of the international community. Projects all over central asia that are aimed at both secutiry and economic development of nations who have been in the international backwater for decades.

I could go on, but I won't. Too much that the US does overseas gets no fanfare. Just what people are pissed about is on a lot of TV screens, and that is due to a personal animus against Pres Bush.

I find that mean spirited, even though I too have reservations in regard to some policies being proposed.

I still think that the UN-US tension last year was clumsily handled, though that was a very tough policy bit in any case.

Occhi

[Occhidiangela]

It matters not to me whether or not you are right, left, or center. What matters to me is that you are involved, that you make your choices based on looking into the facts, and that you vote your conscience. That may mean a vote for Bush, Kerry, Nader, or someone else.

As to your distaste for Republicans, right. Never forget that the Democrats who are in Washington, and Pres Clinton's gang, were also in Corporate America's pocket. :) As many have noted, the differences are starting to blur in a practical sense, particularly on domestic issues, so that we are now seeing differences on issues that are often fringe issues.

I share some of your distatse for some of the Republican agenda, at least that of the "righter" sort, in that I find the support for NAFTA bad, I am not a believer in "tax cuts solve all problems" approaches, I am concerned that the American response to Globalism is short sighted, I am very disturbed by both parties and their political appointees who have been overlooking white collar fraud and corruption for decades, and a few other issues, to include the idiocy of American Energy policy for about the past 20 years.

Now, who do I trust? None of them. Who will take care of a couple of things external to the US better? At present, one party, in my view, but neither, in the past 12 years, has impressed me as having the magic answer.

Both muddle through, but one tends to do less to hamstring America's efforts than the other.

Lesser of two evils. That's as good as it gets.

Remember, I am still, long after it is fashionable, a rather serious anti-communist. I don't want them to come back, anywhere, ever, and I want communism to erode in time in such places as it still hangs on.

Occhi

[Occhidiangela]

He and his administration virtually cut off all negotiation with the U.N. on invading Iraq and decided to go into Iraq with out U.N. security council unnaimous approval

Those two statements are a weird juxtaposition. The negotiation never stopped, but the US disagreed with the UN, and for better and worse, the US Made A Decision, which the UN rarely does in any case. :) We are still in the UN, still in the Security council, still working with Kofi on a UN role that is supportable and viable, still doing UN work and stuff all over the world.

Just because the US does not consider the UN superior to its own sovereignty does not mean that we "stopped all negotiations" it means that negotiations came to an impasse, and hence stopped. You ever heard of the Paris Peace Talks? Impasses there as well. SALT talks? Impasses aplenty.

US and NATO acted without UN sanction in Serbia. It's not as though there was NO precedent. ;)

[Occhidiangela]

For Jester:

You are, within that context, for Islamist terrorism.

Hmmmm, I suspect that you are more likely on a third side . . .

Like I used to tell people in re the Cold War when I heard that China was on "the Russian's side" or "On the American's side"

No, China is, and always has been, on China's side. :D

[Occhidiangela]

Dennis Leary for President!

He's a guy who would break the stranglehold that psychiatrists have on the US penal system.


"Whining f***ing maggots!"

Yes, I have a pack of cigarettes, the Tumors brand . . . :D

[Occhidiangela]

Jester, that was imprecise.

Kept. Not put.

Saddam put himself in power. You got that part right. He took on Iran, cleverly figuring that he could probably, given the US being pissed off at Iran over the hostage bit and the complete "we hate yer guts" get our aid or at least our forebearance while he tried a land grab.

"The enemy of my enemy can be my friend."

He took a calculated risk, but

He Kept Himself In Power.

Both internal and external influences on his reign trumped anything the US did, or did not do, for him.

His friends in Russia, France and Germany, not to mention England and anyone with a desire to buy Iraqi crude (that's a big world wide market) kept the money coming to allow him to stay in power. You might want to look into some of the commentary in the 80's and ealry 90's regarding the checkbook diplomacy that the various emirs and sheiks of the Persian Gulf conducted to keep him fighting Iran so that

The Iranian Islamic Revolution would not get exported to their feudal lands. :lol:

Some will argue that he rolled into Kuwait when the Sheik there stopped writing checks and failed to respond to some behind the doors saber rattling. I am not sure how close to exactly true that is, but I've read any number of articles over the years that imply that as the cause of the 1990 rolling of the Iraqi tanks.

During the 70's, he was NOT on the US State Departments "he's a nice guy" list, thanks partly to his Stalinist methods. But, like many assholes the world over, you have to deal with who is there, not with who you wish was there. See also Franco, Pinochet or even a Chretien . . . (Crap, did I spell that wrongly?)

For you to try to blame the US for keeping Saddam in power is not just imprecise, it is historically inaccurate.

Bordering on grossly so.

THose who charge that assume a single cause and effect relationship on a single country's foreign policy. That is so far from the truth, particularly in the Mid East, as to be laughable. What isn't funny is how dimwitted on has to be to actually buy into such a simplistic explanation for Saddam's political success. Saddam was not, and is not, stupid, nor was he a politically inept weak sister who needed propping up, like the old Shah of Iran. He was just ruthless.

Occhi

[Sourskunk]

(The rise of Buchanan, Perot and Nader make for obvious exceptions to the "two party" formulation, just to get that on the table.)

True, but ours never have any long term stability and usually end up as protest votes against the two main parties meant to get them to pay more attention to their agenda.

But if I understand you correctly, yes you have multiple parties but nothing that much farther on the right than the Republican party in the US?

[Sourskunk]

That's a fair answer. It's annoying the public discussion is usually not civil enough to ever even reach that point.

[Sourskunk]

You misunderstood me which I don't blame you for since I was getting a bit miffed and stopped trying to make total sense for the audience, sorry about that. You can here seeking honest reasoning and I've jumped down your throat. I've been arguing with a few too many partisans lately. I apologize.

Our problem is that we believe our former allies are actively trying to undermine our security for their own self interests, namely money and a hope they will be immune from terrorist attack.

Here's the deal. At least to us Americans, we've been sensing a growing anti-American sentiment growing in other countries, which has been present long before Bush, although he did further enflame it. Because we are the remaining superpower (and I give no apologies for that) from the Cold War and because we don't embrace socialist ideaology (see Jester's comments), the aggression has been growing and is showing in the policy of foreign politicians. We had to even convince France and Germany over Afghanistan which alone shows the problem. Kyoto and the ICC are largely designed to damage American soverignty rather than help the enviroment of global justice. And now we're finding out (although we suspected for some time) about the Iraqi oil bribes across the world (including Britian's George Galloway) as well as continued illegal deals with Iraq post Gulf War I. America made a poor Cold War decision to give support to Iraq in its fight over anti-American Iran but they were not made with knowledge that our support of Iraq at the time would be a risk to our allies. We were wrong and I don't mean to condone it. However, following Kuwait and the push to disarm Iraq, the usual suspects were helping Iraq knowing it put us at risk. It's hard to consider them allies when that happens.

If when unhamped, our "allies" are going to be complicit in the support of our enemies, then we can't stand by and let it happen.

By the by, about the UN, we did give them an opportunity to help us in Iraq but the first time they got attacked, they picked up and ran to Cyprus. We have a hard time taking the UN seriously when they keep adding on to their rather instable record.

[Vandiablo]

But, like many assholes the world over, you have to deal with who is there, not with who you wish was there.

Until recently.

-V

[Sourskunk]

What on earth did you mean by that?

[Vandiablo]

Which do you mean "what did you mean"?

This?

But, like many assholes the world over, you have to deal with who is there, not with who you wish was there.

Until recently.

I was meaning that if you go and change "who is there" yourself, as the U.S. did with Saddam, there is no longer any need to "deal with who is there", except for a brief time to enforce the change.

Or this?

A toast from the Side Bar

The Side Bar is the part of the Lounge that I sit in. "A toast" is the only way I could accurately portray throwing two words into the fray.

oh, might as well do this one, too:

And, say, Cheese!

i said toast, you said ham, so what comes next??? mmmmmmm

[Sourskunk]

Now you have me hungry for a sandwich =[.

I was meaning that if you go and change "who is there" yourself, as the U.S. did with Saddam, there is no longer any need to "deal with who is there", except for a brief time to enforce the change.

Ah ok, I get it. Funny.

[Jester]

Well, we certainly have a couple of rather bizarre variations, like the Prairie Populist "Social Credit" party, now largely dead in the water, but historically a force to be reckoned with. They certainly were pretty far right, at least in the "bible" sense.

But no, we don't have anything much farther right than the Republican party in the US. But, then, I don't recall the US having any party of particular concequence to the right of the Republicans...

Jester

[Jester]

"So did you go out and party when the World Trade Center went down, or did you just celebrate at home with a good meal and a fine bottle of wine?"

Actually, I went to school, where everybody mulled around in mournful silence or wide-eyed shock.

You'll note the President's "For us or against us" formulation is predated by 9/11 by quite some time, and a lot of very controversial actions...

Jester

[Jester]

"You are, within that context, for Islamist terrorism."

Yes, exactly.

Within a context so boneheaded, so narrowminded, so *stupid* that it cannot incorporate even my views without assigning me support of Islamist terrorism (as per Nystul's rather off-colour comment), that is precicely what I am.

Some observers, yourself included, might wonder about the diplomatic fallout of consistently making statements alienating every potential third side in the world. Others seem to feel a sufficiently belligerent machismo will excuse any diplomatic failing.

Jester