DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Religious Dick on January 28, 2007, 12:18:27 AM
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January 11, 2007
As I watched President Bush Tuesday night, for the first time I felt pity for him, in the same way you can’t help feeling sorry for any man at the end of his rope, even if he has brought it on himself. It isn’t a matter of desert; it’s beyond that.
I felt a similar emotion when Saddam Hussein was hanged: A man was finally being crushed by the natural result of his own acts. He was cornered at last, with no way out. It was painful to witness.
For once Bush spoke without conviction. He was trying to salvage a desperate position. The message was no longer that we are winning in Iraq; it was that all is not quite lost.
Which way is the wind blowing? In controversies like the debate over this war, I have a simple rule of thumb: I step back and ask which way the conversions are going. The war has been losing supporters; it has ceased acquiring them. You might expect the Democrats to solidify against it, but the really telling fact is that the Republicans who used to back it are scattering.
After the severe shock of the 9/11 attacks, our natural impulse was to strike back. But at what? At the killers who had killed themselves along with their thousands of victims? That was obviously impossible, but we were so outraged that we were disposed, like a lynch mob, to take revenge on the first plausible suspect presented to us.
And while we were in that mood — after all, the lynch mob may be sincerely indignant about a crime — some men around Bush and in the media saw their opportunity. They had been waiting and planning for years for a new war on Iraq, one that would “finish the job†they felt Bush’s father had left incomplete in 1991. All that remained was to connect Iraq, in the public mind, to 9/11.
Over the next few months, a concerted effort was made to shift public attention from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. For a while the War Party tried to find, or at least posit, ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, as if the terrorism of the one had something to do with the tyranny of the latter. The hypothetical nexus was Saddam’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction,†which, we were told, he might hand off to al-Qaeda, which actually regarded him as an apostate, a traitor to Islam.
Many Americans, mostly Bush voters, couldn’t distinguish clearly between bin Laden and Saddam; some thought the two were the same man. This made them receptive to the administration’s warnings that an even greater shock than 9/11 might be forthcoming, in the form of “a mushroom cloud.â€
Bush made another false connection when he asserted an “axis of evil†comprising not only Iraq and Iran — which, in truth, were bitter enemies — but also, absurdly, North Korea. Far from being a working alliance, this was a mad miscellany. More recently Bush has been blaming the chaos in Iraq on Iran and Syria. Now Iran is said to be the great threat to American security.
Meanwhile, of course, the United States has become almost isolated in the world. Our traditional friends in Europe have resisted Bush’s attempt to rope them into backing his war. He has indeed spent the political capital he boasted of having after the 2004 election. His most reliable ally, Britain’s Tony Blair, is finished, along with Bush’s own Republican majority at home. Has any president ever gone so swiftly from seeming invincibility to near-disgrace?
And does anyone still think our freedom depends on military victory in Iraq? Bush got the “regime change†he coveted, but what has it gained us? Those who doggedly support the war are now reduced to vain recriminations against the liberal media who have been skeptical of it, though many conservatives are (at last!) just as skeptical.
Bush’s dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East now seems as insane a misreading of history as the old Marxist dream of a Workers’ Paradise. He sounds like an arsonist trying to convince us that the blazing city can still be saved. Has he forgotten who lit the match?
Joseph Sobran
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070111.shtml
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq were not all that bad, why would the UN Security Councl vote sanctions against them?
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq are that bad, why hasn't the UN Security Coucil called for military action against them?
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq are that bad, why hasn't the UN Security Coucil called for military action against them?
Please present us the times and scenarios that the UN Security council HAS called for military action, against anyone
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq are that bad, why hasn't the UN Security Coucil called for military action against them?
Please present us the times and scenarios that the UN Security council HAS called for military action, against anyone
No examples yet? Perhaps RD missed this question the 1st go around
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq are that bad, why hasn't the UN Security Coucil called for military action against them?
Please present us the times and scenarios that the UN Security council HAS called for military action, against anyone
No examples yet? Perhaps RD missed this question the 1st go around
No, I just ignored it because it's a stupid question. First, because the entire reason the UN was established was to prevent wars, secondly, if we're to assume the Security Council is competent enough to call for sanctions or not, there's no less reason to believe it's equally competent to authorize force or not. In short, what's the relevance of the question?
But, for the record, (which, btw, is public and easily enough looked up by anyone who cares to know) the Security Council has in fact authorized force at least several times I'm aware of:
1950 Korea
1966 Southern Rhodesia
1977 South Africa
1990 Kuwait
The fact that it may not have authorized force on a sufficient number occasions to satisfy patrons of the Red State Welfare System in no way reflects on it's competence, or lack of it, to make such determinations.
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If Iran, North Korea and Iraq are that bad, why hasn't the UN Security Coucil called for military action against them?
Please present us the times and scenarios that the UN Security council HAS called for military action, against anyone
No examples yet? Perhaps RD missed this question the 1st go around
No, I just ignored it because it's a stupid question. First, because the entire reason the UN was established was to prevent wars, secondly, if we're to assume the Security Council is competent enough to call for sanctions or not, there's no less reason to believe it's equally competent to authorize force or not. In short, what's the relevance of the question?
The relevence was in recipricating an apparently equally stupid question, in asking for why hasn't the UN facilitated military intervention in Iran, NK, & Iraq. If the answer is as you've described it, then your question apparently was also stupid, if you declaring mine as such
But, for the record, the Security Council has in fact authorized force at least several times I'm aware of:
1950 Korea
1966 Southern Rhodesia
1977 South Africa
1990 Kuwait
Now, was that so hard, you couldn't have provided it minus the snide insult? Apparently helping to "elevate the debate" isn't one of your objectives, here in this debate forum
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1990 Kuwait
What did Kuwait do?
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1990 Kuwait
What did Kuwait do?
Good catch, Plane
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1990 Kuwait
What did Kuwait do?
Silly question.
The use of force was not authorized against Kuwait, but in Kuwait against the Iraqia who had invaded Kuwait.
Now, was that so hard, you couldn't have provided it minus the snide insult?
Hahahahahahahahaha.
That's a yuk, coming from the master of snide.
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1990 Kuwait
What did Kuwait do?
They got invaded by Iraq. Or don't you remember?
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Now, was that so hard, you couldn't have provided it minus the snide insult?
Hahahahahahahahaha. That's a yuk, coming from the master of snide.
Naaa, that'd be Xo. I'm the fella with the condescending responses when I'm responding to folks who think they know it all