Capitalism Forever =
To correct my exclamation: "Oh no, not another anti-American! "
Excuse me, Mr. Rogers. I didn’t know that being pro-American required supporting brutal regimes that indiscriminately kill and rape like the Guatemalan government that was installed after Arbenz was overthrown by the CIA. You know what happened afterwards? They (with U.S funding) went on to kill 100,000 unarmed Mayans.
Since you insist on stupid ad hominems that once again have no basis in reality I’m going to remind you that I’m not anti-American. I consider “American” to be that which is moral such as laissez-fair capitalism and individualism.
I consider the foreign policy initiatives in Latin America and a great deal of the middle east to be decidedly anti-American.
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guatemala/TextforDatabaseCharts.html
Try reading and getting a basic grasp of what our foreign policy REALLY means abroad before you get the balls to call me “anti-American.”
If you think sponsoring Latin American dictators, the Shah of Iran, training and funding Pakistani intelligence (The ISI), sending a nuclear reactor to Iran, etc is “American” then I think you are one dude and I have no reason to further talk to you.
Ex banana eater =
Why do you see that as a conflict? Can’t America have a moral right to attack all of its aggressors?
Of course. Iran and Syria would have been great targets. Iraq wasn’t exactly an “aggressor” but whatever.
You haven’t answered my question. Where is your evidence to say that most people on this forum don’t think Syria and Iran are bigger priorities?
I NEVER MADE THAT CLAIM so why are you asking me to warrant it? SHEESH!
I said that I wonder why given that we invaded Iraq that they think that invading Syria would be a good move.
I’m positing that Syria or Iran was a bigger priority (which most people on this board agree with from what I have read) but now it is a little too late considering how stretched our resources are.
What tactical and military knowledge allows you to state that with full certainty? Do you know the US has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world over many times?
Good straw man. I was talking about U.S capabilities to launch an invasion, but whatever. So we are going to nuke Syria and Iran now, huh? I guess if we want to expose our troops in Iraq and Israel to nuclear radiation poisoning, then sure.
I’m talking military invasion here. We aren’t ready to conduct another invasion, period. I don’t need “military expertise” to say that, sorry. Open your eyes and look at exactly how stable Iraq is.
We don’t have enough troops for Iraq as it is. Are we going to magic some up for Syria or Iran? Not without a draft we won’t and lets see how far that gets through the U.S Congress.
To invade Syria or Iran requires that we withdraw troops from Iraq. Otherwise we have no invasion force. Are we going to nation build there too? If not, we will just end up with the same situation and more anti-American sentiment after the invasion when another dictator steps up to replace it.
We don’t have the resources to nation build (we don’t even have them for Iraq) in Syria or Iran. Invading isn’t an option right now. A nuclear attack means that Israel will be attacked immediately and you will start a world war with the entire Middle East. Then take Pakistan into account which actually HAS nuclear weapons. Do you think Pakistan would be content to watch it’s Muslim brethren be nuked? Their ideology is one of martyrdom so getting nuked in retaliation by the U.S probably wouldn’t be a deterrent. Moreover, if you were Pakistan and Iran/Syria was nuked, what would make you think that you wouldn’t be next? It isn’t like you would have anything to loose from launching that nuclear missile.
So yeah. Way to advocate starting nuclear war. That is REALLY in our best interest…*sarcasm*.
Do we need massive amounts of foot soldiers and armored personnel carriers to destroy Tehran if we’re not going to nation build? I think all we need is a single aircraft carrier, some bombers on it, and complete moral righteousness.
and a death wish…but whatever. If you nuke Iran you had better be prepared to nuke the entire middle east because if you don’t kill every last one of them they will try even harder to hatch terrorist plots against the U.S. Never mind that you still don’t solve the problem of Al-Qaeda by bombing Iran or Syria so you still have them to deal with after the ashes clear. I’m betting that NYC would be nuked faster than you can say “Pakistani nuclear weapons sale to Al-Qaeda.”
A is A=
What has America done that is morally tantamount to such a thing as mass, indiscriminate murder?
I will make a list for you…how about that? I will even be EXTRA nice and include a warrant proving each of these.
- Sponsoring and funding a government that killed 100,000-200,000 unarmed Mayans. How about that?
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guatemala/TextforDatabaseCharts.html
While the article doesn’t talk about U.S involvement, it is common knowledge that we gave those guys tons of economic aid and orchestrated their rise to power (the CIA overthrew Arbenz who nationalized United Fruit). The CIA has documented this themselves: http://www.foia.cia.gov/guatemala.asp
- Our U.S funded death squads in El Salvador that indiscriminately killed innocent people and deliberately targeted them.
you want examples of this? Happy to accommodate.
a- El Mozote : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre
or : http://www.markdanner.com/newyorker/120693_The_Massacre.htm
b - The death squads carried out several high profile murders at this time; archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated in 1980 after publicly urging the U.S. government not to provide military support to the El Salvadoran government, and four US nuns were also raped and murdered by members of Salvadoran death squads. <—that seems pretty indiscriminate to me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/137381.stm
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Al-Shifa (already explained and cited).
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The school of Americas which gave us Manuel Noriega and a bunch of other wonderful terrorist thugs.
"The SOA has been attacked for training members of governments guilty of serious human rights abuses and advocating techniques that violate accepted standards. Graduates of the SOA include men such as Hugo Banzer Suárez, Leopoldo Galtieri, Manuel Noriega,Efraín Ríos Montt, Guillermo Rodríguez, Omar Torrijos, Roberto Viola and Juan Velasco Alvarado. For this reason, the school’s acronym is occasionally reparsed by its detractors as “School of Assassins”.
There is usually a demonstration at the gates of the SOA/WHISC in late November. The date for the annual demonstration commemorates the first Latin American massacre linked to the SOA, through its graduates. On November 16, 1989, six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter were murdered at the University of Central America (UCA). Of the 27 soldiers cited for that massacre by a 1993 UN Truth Commission, 19 were SOA graduates. This was the first of many documented linkages between the School’s graduates and atrocities." - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Americas
6)Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? We chose not to attack a military target and instead killed over 250,000 civilians including men, women, and children. Sounds pretty indiscriminate to me. I guess those deaths are also the moral responsibility of the Japanese government who gave the go ahead for Pearl Harbor right? Why is it that the civilians were the target though and not the government or the military?
You can’t just say “You attacked me first so anything I do from that point forward is your fault because you started it and I’m in no way responsible.”
That logic in practice means that because The Alamo was attacked by Mexicans we would have no moral responsibility on our shoulders if we would have gone into Mexico and raped all of their women (or killed every last one of them).
You can place moral responsibility for accidental casualties on those that start wars. When we bomb factories pumping out war materials and civilians die, that isn’t our moral responsibility. If terrorists hide weapons in a school or themselves…then they have those deaths on their head. Not deaths of alternative factions claiming to be better but killing
The U.S deliberately targeted Hiroshima and Nagasaki during a war with the goal of killing as many civilians as possible. The argument was that if we could get a Japanese surrender from doing so that those deaths were for the “greater collective good” in terms of the prospect of a mainland Japanese invasion. The only thing was, we didn’t even bother demonstrating the weapon to the Japanese government as a warning which could have quite possibly forced a surrender without innocent casualties. If the Japanese wouldn’t have surrendered, those deaths would have been on their heads. The fact is, they weren’t given a chance. You can’t even say it was justified because of Pearl Harbor because Pear Harbor was a military attack against a military target.
Bin Laden declared war on the west and our way of life and targeted a population center with the goal of killing as many people as he could for his supposed “greater collective good” as well which he sees as American surrender.
Big difference? Not really.
You asked for an example of indiscriminate murder…well there you go. Those atom bombs didn’t discriminate “good guy” from “bad guy” and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered.
Selling weapons to Hussein – as part of an overall strategy to counter Soviet interests in the mideast – may have been a big mistake; but it does not possibly rise to the level of evil of terrorism.
It sure as hell does if he goes and sells them to Hezbollah or gasses the Kurds with them. Saddamn quashed dissent with weapons. You want to tell me he just didn’t use the ones we gave them?
How about Iran then? Does that rise to the level of supporting terrorism? After all, Kohmeini wasn’t a big pro-U.S guy was he? He was a declared enemy of the United States. We sold him weapons and he held our embassy hostage. What the hell do you call that? You think that the U.S government’s actions weren’t tantamount to sponsoring terrorism against innocent Americans?
Supporting “death squads” whose targets were not innocent civilians does not rise to the level of evil of terrorism, even if some of those death squads did kill innocent people.
Why the quotes around death squads? Squeamish about labeling them for what they were?
I have provided numerous warrants for the fact that the ‘labeled’ targets were leftist guerillas but the real people targeted were the peasant villagers. There is a tangible difference behind what you tell everyone your target is and whom is really targeted.
The actual leftist guerillas actually did pretty well and weren’t really killed en masse. Despite the American government’s meddling, the guerillas were pretty successful at what they did and weren’t really affected by the death squads.
The purpose of the death squads was the crush popular support for the leftist guerillas, not target the perpetrators (the guerillas themselves).
Your sarcasm aside, the responsibility for civilian casualties rests with those that started the conflict.
I addressed this earlier in this post.
And in any event, past American actions are completely irrelevant to whether our current actions are moral.
Horse puckey.
The same people (in large degree) with our Latin American blunders are now involved in Iraq.
Many of GW’s political team is from the Reagan era (like John Negroponte who was heavily involved in Honduras during the 1980’s).
Warrant that assertion.
Warrant the fact that the U.S broke treaties and murdered Native American women and children?
Are you kidding me? Did you um…ever make it past 4th grade history?
http://www.people.memphis.edu/~kenichls/2602NatAms.html
It is easy from our current perspective to look back and ridicule the fear of communism. But you are ignoring the fact that the Soviets had an explicit plan for world domination. They intended to bury us, and they said so openly and explicitly.
They brutally crushed dissent in eastern Europe. They attempted to sneak nuclear tipped medium range missiles into Cuba. They invaded Afghanistan. They took over North Vietnam and launched a war of aggression against the South.
There was every reason to fear the Soviets. The fact that we opposed them by engaging in war-by-proxy state was a reaction to the fact that they possessed a nuclear arsenal that could annihilate us.
Once again, my argument is going over your head here.
I’m not saying that Communism wasn’t a viable threat or that it was just silliness. We had VERY good reasons to be scared of the Communists. Look at China under Mao, Russia under Stalin, or the Cambodian killing fields.
How much better were we when we adopted terrorist tactics and killed as many people in Latin America as the leftist guerillas ever did?
Does responding to Communists or Islamic terrorists now require that we adopt their tactics? If so, how exactly are we morally superior to them in actions?
Moreover, Latin America wasn’t really threatened by Soviet involvement.
The USSR wasn’t really involved in El Salvador or most of Latin America. Where it wAS involved was Nicaragua, Cuba, and South America.
Honduras, El Salvador, and Panama weren’t pro Soviet. Nicaragua was a trading partner of The Soviet Union and bought arms from them, but any country is going to buy weapons for national defense purposes. It isn’t like they could have bought the weapons from the U.S. So they went to the next global superpower. Doesn’t mean that they were buddy buddy with the Ruskies just planning to make “Red Dawn” a reality instead of a bad Patrick Swaze movie.
Now, if you wish to argue that there was a better strategy, fine. But your after-the-fact attempt to smear America with these accusations is completely off base.
Uh…Objectivists still bash the USSR and the evil it represented long after the fact.
Pointing out failures in our foreign policy or showing that we have a history of bad foreign policy isn’t “off base.”
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It doesn’t help that another Bush is in the Whitehouse when Bush I was in the CIA during the Reagan years when all of the Latin American blunders happened. It doesn’t help that we once again have John Negroponte involved in shaping our foreign policy in Iraq and now in the area of intelligence oversight.
There was definitely a better strategy.
Here is my proposition:
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Kill communist guerillas
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Don’t have communist guerillas killed by death squads who are made up of brutal murderers. If you want to get a job done, do it yourself or make sure the people you are working with aren’t worse than the group you are trying to suppress.
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Don’t send Iran nuclear reactors!
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Don’t give Pakistan friggin money to train Islamic nut jobs in Afghanistan. Why? Because the enemy of your enemy does NOT equal your friend.
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Don’t sell weapons to Iran and Iraq. They are known to have anti-American sentiment and are also known to be brutal regimes.
I can keep going, but I don’t really need to. It isn’t that hard. Honestly.
You are not offering any facts that I can see, just unsupported assertions delivered with a tone of hostile superiority that implies that anyone who disagrees is ignorant or evasive – in other words, the argument from intimidation.
A is A, buddy.
If the people disagreeing with me ARE ignorant don’t bitch at me for calling it as I see it. It doesn’t change the content of my argument.
If that argument goes unrefuted and undaddressed, then that can be characterized as evasion.
Don’t get on my case for pointing out the fact that people ARE evading my actual arguments. You are a prime example of the evasion I’m talking about when you say I’m making unsupported assertions.
Go back to my original post where I site Professor Thomas D. Tullius, chairman of the chemistry department at Boston University who categorically rejects the U.S government’s assertion that there ever were chemical weapons being made at Al-Shifa before you start claiming I don’t support my assertions. There were numerous studies done from western countries and independent groups (many of them credible like the Boston University one) that all came back saying that there was no way that there could have been chemical weapons being produced.
You want the actual citation? Thomas D. Tullius makes his claim in a New York Times article called " Experts Find No Arms Chemicals at Bombed Sudan Plant " on February 9, 1999, Tuesday, Late Edition. The article was written by James Risen and David Johnston.
If you want a whole run down of the issue (from The University of Illinois Chicago’s webpage) =
http://www2.math.uic.edu/~takata/WorldTrad…Sudan_1998.html
No warrants? Are you kidding me?
Mixed in with this is a healthy dose of the straw man argument in the form of questions like: Do you think land mines are a joke?
Erh…that was in response to “Rational_One” who not only has repeatedly misinterpreted me (he that I was making the claim that America was worse than the terrorist which is a lie), but went on to accuse me of context dropping when he is the one refusing to deal with my examples.
The only way you can really deny historical fact (like the mining of Managua harbor) is if you are being evasive. That is why I asked him if he thought the land mines were a joke. He doesn’t care to address them though they are a perfect example of our indiscriminate killing. Does he think hey just didn’t happen or what? I honestly want to understand his motives for lying about what I post, misinterpreting what I post, and just being a general doofus.
If you have a problem with me wanting an actual argument instead of his vague and unspecified assertion that I’m “context dropping” coupled with a blatant misinterpretation of what I said…that is your problem, not mine.
Don’t bother labeling it a straw man because you obviously don’t even understand what that is.
“As a rhetorical term, “straw man” describes a point of view that was created in order to be easily defeated in argument; the creator of a “straw man” argument does not accurately reflect the best arguments of his or her opponents, but instead sidesteps or mischaracterizes them so as to make the opposing view appear weak or ridiculous.” -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
For me to mischaracterize “rational one’s” argument he would have to HAVE an argument in the first place. He doesn’t. You can’t build a straw man from nothing. Moreover, I’m never sidestepped his claim that I was dropping the context (which was a vague assertion that wasn’t ever really elaborated on, but whatever) or mischaracterized anything.
Before you try using smart people talk like “Straw man” understand what the term means and what it looks like in application, ok?
If you did, you would have recognized that Rational_one was the one putting the straw man up.
America fought, and won, WWII on multiple fronts with supply lines that spanned the entire planet.
Your continued lame efforts at the argument from intimidation (“.. it doesn’t take a military genius to figure things out…”) do not advance your cause.
We also had a draft in WWII well. Congrads! You ignored one more argument of mine. As I said in the post RIGHT ABOVE YOUR OWN: "Moreover, more soldiers were deployed in WWII because of the draft.
We don’t have that now. You are comparing apples to oranges."
You say that I’m making lame arguments from intimidation. You want to understand what I’m really doing? I’m getting tired of people who can’t read or comprehend simple sentences and I’m making fun of you for it while continuing to point out your bad arguments. It is getting old though.
I’m not getting anything from this involvement and have actually probably lost 5 I.Q points from this whole endeavor.
Hindsight is wonderful, is it not? It is utterly preposterous to use facts discovered after the invasion to discredit decisions made before the invasion.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/09/…ence/index.html
"WASHINGTON (CNN) – In a highly critical report issued Friday, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA’s prewar estimates of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence. "
Read the rest of the article. You can thank me for your elucidation later. When the Senate Intelligence Committee says that the case for war was overstated based on available evidence at the time the case was being made to the American public and Congress, I consider that pretty damning.
That is going back and reviewing what we had in terms of intelligence at the time and coming to a conclusion. Kind of like a parent taking into account all the information their child had when making a decision and saying “That was stupid and illogical given what you had to work with.” Not really preposterous at all. I would say it is kind of logical.
Where are the WMDs now? Syria, possibly.
Have you read the 9/11 Commission’s report which says that there aren’t any WMDs and never were?
How about this? "
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/…port/index.html
So is it or isn’t it? The CIA has changed positions on this repeatedly if you haven’t noticed. Since you think you are the expert on this subject, how about you address Richard Clarke or the CIA report that I just posted since you know for a fact that these non-existent WMD’s existed.
Go ahead. These so called WMD’s might be in Syria. They might be on the moon. The truth is you can’t prove they ever existed and if you think you can I would like to see you try to cite some evidence instead of blathering on.
This is just plain silly. Most intelligence services agreed at the time that Hussein probably did have WMDs. The debate was over what to do about it, not whether or not it was a fact.
Your continued attempt to ridicule America for her lack of omniscience is ridiculous.
Call me stupid, but I see going to war as a pretty serious thing. I don’t think it is a trivial endeavor. If you are going to put our soldiers at risk, it had better be for a REASON.
If our reasons are wrong or if there is a lot of doubt about how good the intelligence is, when why the push to ramrod an invasion of Iraq into the agenda?
The Senate Intelligence Committee said that based on the evidence the CIA had at the time (not what they were telling us he had…anyone up for a little Nigerian yellowcake?) they overstated the case for war and didn’t have the evidence needed to make the assertions they are making (kind of like you).
So most intelligence agencies agreed that they had WMD’s huh? The agreed wrong.
Funny how that happened to fall in line with the agenda the administration wanted to push before they were even elected.
Ever heard of Project for a New American Century? It had Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz on it
They argued that we should oust Saddam from power in 1998 = http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
In 1997, Leonard Peikoff was making the argument that Iran was the real target and that Iraq was a dumb target = http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?news_iv_…Article&id=5277
See a bit of of a descrepancy?
Care to tell us all how members of a right wing think tank didn’t push the agenda of the Iraq war when there is openly documented evidence tying them to an obsession over Iraq going all the way back to 1998?
This is Paul Wolfowitze and Donald Rumsfeld for reason’s sake. You don’t think they could have possibly been warping the facts to fit their agenda?
If you don’t believe they had an agenda…the evidence (their PNAC membership and letter) is right before your eyes.
Speaking for myself, I believe that once our forces have been commited – even if we didn’t go after the best target – we must support them until we are victorious.
Even though the evidence that supposedly gives us a moral right to be there doesn’t exist?
And it is a non-sequitur to say that since previous American military action has not worked well, no one should advocate additional American military action.
Come again? Last time I checked if you do the same equation twice, the answer doesn’t change unless you change a variable or two.
What has changed? We are engaged in another war in a crappy third world country that doesn’t pose a threat to us.
If military policies don’t change from “then” and “now” it isn’t a non-sequiter at all. It makes perfect sense.
If your military policy is to attack with spears and blow darts and you loose a major battle…you probably need to change your policy or else the next time you go into battle with your blow darts you will loose AGAIN.
If we take that our past military involvements have been failures (like Vietnam for example?) and our military policy hasn’t changed, how is it a non-sequiter to suggest that further continuation of the same bad policy is a bad idea?
You proceed from a false premise. We need to destroy the threatening regimes. We do not need to rebuild them.
And we have the air power to utterly annihilate every one of those regimes with little loss of American life.
However, I do not think we have to annihilate them all. If we just annihilate one – Iran is my preference – then tell the others we will do the same to them if they do not cease all terrorist support, they will fall in line. What they most desperately want is to remain in power, and once we demonstrate a willingness to destroy them, they’ll do what is necessary to avoid that.
You assume they value their own life enough and that the world wouldn’t erupt into global terrorism and or a free for all. I think that is a pretty big stretch, but we are both speculating here.
Rebuilding the regimes is the only way we can really protect our interests unless we really want to put more lives as risk from another regime springing up that is no different then the one we anhiliate. The only other tangible option is just nuking the entire region.
Unfortunately, Bush has bought into the notion that if you break it, you must fix it. That false premise has led us to waste much blood and treasure trying to save Iraq.
If you break it, should you just leave it broken to repair itself? When there is a political vacuum, there WILL be someone that fills the opening. Just destroying the entire government doesn’t really address the mullahs, the kurds, or a whole host of other issues.
I’m willing to bet that even more blood would be wasted if we simply destroying the government, the military and their economic power.
Destroying the military leaves them open to attack and conquering by another country or such political instability that even MORE terrorists would get to use Iraq as their own little Mos Eisley.
Destroying their economy means that they all starve and we fill Al-Qaeda’s ranks immediately. You also probably loose any motivation for American Muslims to not wage a domestic war against this country.
Destroying their government = leaving them open to outside influence.
Putting in a puppet government creates resenment and more terrorists because at that point we are occupying an Islamic country and subjegating them to our Western will (or some other such bull). A puppet government wouldn’t probably last long.
So how is just leaving them broken an option? I mean…anything is technically an “option” but it doesn’t make it a GOOD option.
edit = It appears that I’m not able to effectively quote (maybe a mod has disabled that ability I’m using the quote button correctly…ah well).
Ah well. If no one wants to read my response, I don’t really care. I got about ZERO from this debate anyways. So unless someone actually says something intelligent, I’m dropping this debate.
