25th February 2003, 6:14 AM
Quote:Originally posted by A Black Falcon
Ugh... more stupid political views as said by Weltall...
Maybe... but diplomacy and inspections are hardly nothing...
They have amounted to nothing. For twelve years, he's hidden his weapons and kicked out inspectors at will. What has been accomplished in the last twelve years? Nothing. These inspections are just what he wants. It gives him all the time he needs to really get his hands on some working weapons, and what can the UN do then?
Quote:The UN is doing something... its just not what Mr. Warmonger W. doesn't like that policy and wants to go in with the army like his daddy did...Seriously, that sounds weaker every time you say it. The UN is doing nothing of consequence, except giving Saddam more time. Of course, a certain UN member is suspected of giving Iraq a little more than time... and that certain member is very much opposed to us going in there... I wonder why? France's oil contracts with Saddam don't seem to bother you either, although the thought that we might commandeer their oil fields has you scared to death for some reason.
Quote:On this one I hardly know where to begin... First, yes, World War 1 was a very different situation, and the last of the wars between the imperial powers that had happened every so often for a really long time. True. But WW2? You honestly believe a word of that? Insane...Yes, I do. Not only am I right, but it is also proof of the UN's uselessness: Without the United States, there is no hope of a world organization. We ARE the UN's power. They are nothing without us. Europe proved with the League that they are flatly incompetant in handling world affairs, as has been very obvious as of late.
Quote:First, the League of Nations. It was a powerless body... and why? Because we refused to join because isolationists had control of the US government. And without the US, it was doomed to be a failure and prove not very powerful...As is the UN.
Quote:Appeasement of Hitler. Did it work? Nope. But did it hurt? Not really... Hitler was going to have war one way or the other (because he wanted vengeance for Germany's loss in WW1, and the brutal peace treaty imposed on Germany by the victorious European Allies), so appeasement was doomed to failure. But was it worth the effort? Yes... Europe desperately didn't want another major war so soon after WW1, and no sane person should even begin to blame them... but at the time the appeasements were a legitimite thing to try and probably did slow down the start of the war a little. I think it was the right thing to do, even though it was obviously, in hindsight, doomed to failure from before it started... the League of Nations was powerless from the minuite it was created without the US in it and had no chance to be a body like the UN with some vague kind of legitimate power... it couldn't do anything substantial, and what it did do was the right thing considering the situation and what they knew at the time. How you think it had any affect on the war, other than not making Germany invade Austria and Czechoslovakia in addition to the rest of Europe, is beyond me.It may have delayed the immediate war, but what it did is exactly what made the war so much worse than it could have been: They gave Hitler YEARS LONGER to prepare and build his forces, develop new weapons and mass-produce them. Hitler wasn't ready for a fullscale war himself in the early-30's, but he was able to manipulate the spineless French and the similarly spineless Neville Chamberlain into giving him the time to fully become the military juggernaut that the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe was. In the mid-30's there was no way Hitler could sustain a Blitz against France. But by 1940 he had enough power to smash them in six weeks. THAT, my friend, is the crime of appeasement. The British were able to hold out against the Germans because they were an island, and had to be smashed almost exclusively from the air, and that was too hard to do, but even more because Hitler was preoccupied with Russia. Appeasement was a total disaster for Europe. Had France and England begun mobilizing as soon as they saw the threat Hitler posed, they would have definitely had an easier time containing him. That policy delayed the war about five years but allowed it to become so much worse than it should have been. And I've never seen anyone until now say it was a good thing. I know you disagree with practically everything I say but this is insane. And appeasement of Saddam Hussein will give HIM the time to acquire what everyone knows he wants but some refuse to admit he has. And if in four years or so he gets a nuke, as some sources say he might, what then? Was the policy a success because it didn't happen in 2003?
Madness.
Quote:The inspections are working as well as they can be expected to... they have found some things. Have they found it all? Of course not.. .Saddaam is definitely hiding some things. But its not like they haven't found anything... they have, such as those empty shells (that, it seems, they knew about before when they left and found them as they expected to)... and without inspections I doubt that we'd have any way to really see if Iraq does actually get rid of those missiles we know they have that break the maximum allowed range for Iraqi missiles that was imposed on them years ago.
What do we need to start finding more things that Sadaam is hiding? First, much tougher inspections and a lot more inspectors... that is the logical next step. Keeping some kind of military force in the region, to be able to threaten Sadaam if he slips any more than he already is into not cooperating, is probably smart too... but threatening on the level Bush is is completely irresponsible and doesn't take notice of what the situation is. Tougher inspections can work, if given time, a chance to work, and constant diplomatic pressure on Sadaam to comply... with the use of force only as a absolute last resort that we are nowhere near thinking about yet.
But my whole point is that we shouldn't NEED inspectors. Iraq should be fully compliant without making us going in there and searching under every rock. They were beaten in a war and one of the terms of their defeat was to destroy all of these weapons and deliver proof of it. They refuse to do that. We should not even bother inspecting at all, as it is Saddam's duty to offer proof to the UN, NOT the UN's duty to find the proof. THEY were defeated in the war. Not us. The hell with extra inspectors and inspections. If they want to thumb their nose at us, let them pay the price for it.
Quote:Well... getting rid of all nukes is obviously a fantasy that will never happen in the real world. We do need them for deterrance...Oh yes they did, do not fool yourself into thinking that. The Japanese were hard at work at their own atomic program, as was just about every nation involved in the second World War. They understood perfectly what was coming, and they defied us anyway. Not to mention, the initial test explosion in New Mexico was filmed and proliferated to America's enemies, to show them that we had this huge new weapon and exactly what it was capable of.
Did we warn Japan? Yes... but NO ONE, least of all the Japanese, had any conception of the full scale of what was meant... so you can't honestly and truthfully say they were really warned...
Quote:[/b]Oh, and if we're so stable and sane, how come we've got this guy as president?[/b]
Oh, I might have forgotten, but did Bush's rise to power follow a bloody revolution, a military coup or assassination of the previous president? Non? Oh, that's right, he was elected by due process. Silly liberal. Don't be sad just because your ideology puts out some of the most worthless presidents in American history :)
Quote:Yes, the UN has no power to get any government to do anything, no army... not much at all. However, it is a powerful diplomatic force and if the US acts on its own, while it won't be technically illegal, it will be extremely irresponsible to the international community in this day and age when we want to think that we can work together more... (oh, sorry, forgot that that idea was completely alien to Bush...) Bush of course has always disdained the international community and doesn't care in the least about them so I'm hardly surprised that he'd do something as rash as starting a war. But it IS irresponsible... the international community, in the form of the UN, is the power that works like the police do... and us going in alone (Or with the British, Austrailians, and Spanish) is equivilant to the man going and getting personal revenge instead of going through law enforcement. I don't see how you don't see that...Easily: If the UN is a police force, about 90% of the cops come from America. We are the UN's enforcer because almost every other UN member has no military power whatsoever. And if the administration of the Police Force is trying to keep the police from enforcing the law, it is for the good of everyone if the police force defies the administration and enforces the law anyway. If the administration refuses to do it's job, then it has no use and does not need to be acknowledged. Getting out of the metaphors, there is little reason we should concern ourselves with international opinion either. There is no reason at all we should make sure everyone approves of us in order to protect our own interests. If the rest of the world is okay with Saddam getting his weapons, then the hell with them. We're not okay with it, because we have more at stake then they do. And we're perfectly capable of fixing that problem without anyone's help. It's just stupid to put ourselves at risk just to mainain the charade that other nations actually deserve to have a say in our affairs.
Quote:As far as I know, the government (Bush and Ashcroft...) do want something along those lines passed.
Hey, we've already given up some of our constitutional rights... why not more? Who cares about 'freedoms' anyway? Blind patriotism and the pursuit of phantom terrorists are far more important!
What a crock. The whole thing is being overblown by the same pacifist liberal crowd who wants to eliminate freedoms themselves, the second amendment being the most famous but certainly not the only one. The only way those extremes would ever even be considered is if there were massive terrorist attacks constantly happening within the United States, and anyone with half a brain knows that. But, a liberal is a master at scare tactics, if nothing else, and has the misinformed scared to death that we're two steps away from being a police state.
