Anti-war argument [Admin Mod says: Target Practice!!!!]

Anti-war website ^

[humblegunner]

Epic Zot!

[Jonah Hex]

I won't throw insults your way. I suggest, however, you look up "Appeasement" in both your dictionary and history books and consider the results.

Failing to confront a demonstrated tyrant with a history of violating his own people's human rights is equivalent to ignoring Kitty Genovese's cries for help. Failing to deal with a demonstrated threat to this country's welfare is to shirk our responsibilities to our people. Failing to enforce the conditions of the 1991 surrender terms is to piss away that victory. Failing to deal with foreign threats to our domestic tranquility is to surrender to petty tyrants and terrorists.

[bobsatwork]

Since you aksed nice:
Point #1 is nonsense. Terrorism increased when we failed to respond in any effective manner to attacks starting in 1993 with tha WTC. Terrorism did NOT increase when the Taliban was thrown out of Afghanistan.
Point #2, Al Qaeda has trained in Iraq, with Iraqs' blessing. That is a link.
Point #3 is the most despicable flat-out lie on planet earth today. Saddam wsed chemical weapons to kill thousands of Iraqi people. What is your point here? Iraqi children starved while Saddam built palaces and armies.
Point #4 ignores the fact that Iraq, and not N. Korea, the US, Britain, etc, was ordered to disarm by the UN. The world recognises the threat even if you don't.
Point #5 is wholly irrelevant to the subject.
BTW, would you support a UN-endorsed war? If so, why?

[LBGA]

I love that pic, too!!! :-)

[LibKill]

Trolls never learn, but they fry up nicely. :)

[Unknowing]

1. Accept no extortion.
2. Hitler didn't light the ovens.
3. Saddam then invaded Kuwait and was subjected to ignominious defeat and U.N. sanctions.
4. >25,000 liters of anthrax and tons of other WMD material ain't no "tiny threat," Sir.
5. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

[Admin Moderator]

Pithy!

[JoeSixPack1]

"Pacifists are among the most immoral of men. They make no distinction between aggression and defense. Therefore, pacifism is one of the greatest allies an aggressor can have!"

by Patrick Henry.

[metesky]

Even though you've been given the old Zot, I know you and your friends are lurking out there looking for help to bolster your cause. Here's one place for help:

Quick and Dirty Leftist's Guide to Arguing against the War on Terrorism

[Destructor]

F.Y.I.:

Michael B signed up 2003-02-19. This account has been banned.

[section9]

1. Such a war can only lead to an increase in terrorism. The Iraqis, arabs and muslims around the world will see such a war not only as a war on Islam, but also for what it mostly is about - an imperialistic grab for oil. Anyone doubting this need only consider Iraq's history. The CIA played a hand in overthrowing the government in Iraq in 1963 which led to Saddam's party and thus Saddam himself coming to power. The reason was that the government had moved to nationalise oil (exactly the same thing also happened in Iran). Going back further also gives a long history of the colonial power Britain treating Iraq atrociously in order to control their oil.

Anyone still doubting that oil is a motive behind the war need only consider the Bush Administration's deep ties with the oil industry, read about the English and US oil companies already lobbying over who gets to drill the Iraqi oil (Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world), or consider that a result of the war in Afghanistan was the US finally getting to build a pipeline through the country, or that high oil prices are currently threatening the US economy and could be reliably kept significantly lower if the US were to control Iraq's oil.

Oh, gee, if we defend ourselves, we might be attacked by terrorists!

Someone might attack the World Trade Center!

Our involvement in a Baathist coup in 1963 (the Baath had already taken over in 1957) is incidental to the present crisis.

In fact, it has nothing to do with it.

BTW, if this were about oil, we would have invaded Venezuela. Oil is fungible and can be had anywhere. This is about Saddam's possession of WMD and his ability to hand them off to Al Qaeda cutouts.

If it were only about oil, we would have made a deal with Saddam a long time ago.

Your raising of the Afghan pipeline issue is yet another canard: the fact that some companies want to build a pipeline in Afghanistan does not deny the virtue of our war on terrorism. Remember, we were attacked.

2. There are no proven links between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda. The best intelligence agencies (those of the US and Britain) in the world have been working flat out to try and find one, yet both reported no link (despite this fact, both Bush and Blair repeatedly cite information discredited by their own intelligence agencies as evidence of a link - if they are so convinced of the case for war they shouldn't need to lie in presenting it). British intelligence reports that even the possibility of a substantial link is unlikely, given that Osama is in ideological conflict with Saddam (in a recent tape Osama termed Saddam and his regime 'infidels').

Don't be a stupid git.

It is in AQ's interest to cooperate with a state. They get more goodies that way. Both Bush and Saddam have indicated extensive meetings between Saddam's Mukhabarat and AQ. You just don't want to believe what is in front of your lying eyes. Stating that its a conflict between secularists and fundamentalists doesn't alter the fact that the two sides have a confluence of interests.

You know, it was rather silly of you to raise this point.

3. Before the UN sanctions Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East. At least for his own people he had thus done a better job than most other Middle Eastern leaders, and now we're supposed to be saving his people from him? I'm not saying Saddam is all good, far from it, but he is far from the evil tyrant Bush depicts him to be (i.e. he did not gas his own people as Bush repeatedly claims).

Worth also noting is that the reason an estimated 5000-6000 children die due to starvation and lack of water and medication in Iraq every week is not Saddam or even the UN sanctions, but the fact that the US and UK have blocked the efforts of the oil-for-food program. The two successive UN leaders of the oil-for-food program resigned due to this fact, saying that Saddam had done his best to provide his people with food, and calling what the US and UK were doing 'genocide'.

I see. The attack on Halabja never occured.

Saddam has built a regime of terror. He attacked two neighboring countries. Over a million of his people have died as a direct result of his rule. Thousands of people disappear in Iraq every year.

The OFF program continued throughout the nineties. I strongly suggest that Saddam, like his contemporary in Pyongyang, uses his resources for palaces and weaponry. His responsibility is to feed his people. He abdicated that in favor of a regime of terror some time ago.

Your defense of Saddam, like you, is beneath contempt. You should be flogged, sir.

4. The threat that Iraq poses to us is tiny. Iraq probably still has some 'weapons of mass destruction' of course, but an insignificant amount which pales in comparison to that of many other countries (including of course the US and Britain, but also less stable places such as Syria and the nuclear states of North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel).

Saddam has never been a threat to or threatened the US. This brings into question not only the motives for the war but also whether there is any right by international law to initiate one. Saddam's army was pathetic in the Gulf War and is much weaker now. Even CIA Director George Tenet's believes that the probability of Saddam Hussein initiating an attack on the United States is low, however 'should Saddam Hussein conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions'.

Saddam gives no evidence to being the irrational madman that Bush paints him to be (except perhaps when pushed into a corner as mentioned above and as evidenced by him firing missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War). His war on Iran was backed by the US, as was initially his invasion of Kuwait. If we are truly concerned about chemical and biological weapons, we might ask why the US has recently undermined the Chemical Weapons Convention by restricting inspections in the US, killed the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to sign an International Treaty banning germ warfare. We might also ask why the US had to edit Iraq's weapons declaration before releasing it to the public, removing 150 American, British and other foreign companies from it who illegally supplied Iraq's WMD in the first place.

What a series of lies and half truths.

First, Saddam can, if he so chooses, peddle WMD to Al Qaeda. This is what this war is about. Your inability to see that has less to do with the facts at hand than your denial of the truth.

I would go through your catalogue of lies, but let me cite two that are manifestly not true:

1. There remains vast quantities of unaccounted for WMD that Saddam produced in the nineties. We've only been told about the stuff that Saddam admitted to the inspectorate back in the nineties.
2. We did not approve of the invasion of Kuwait. It was April Glaspie's mistake not the warn Saddam off, but it was not our "plan" to have Saddam conquer Kuwait. This is a lie. You know it's a lie, but you peddled it anyway.

5. The US has a deplorable record of foreign intervention over the past 50 years. One need only look at all the well documented case of democratic governments that have been overthrown by CIA covert action and replaced with dictators (i.e. Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia), or the US's blatant ignoring of the World Court (i.e. in the case of the World Court's ruling of $17 billion in damages to Nicaragua for damages incurred in the US's illegal war on it) and other world organisations' rulings or treaties. Such a country has no right to be playing global cop, and when it does we all end up worse off.

Pardon me, but so the f$#k what?

Whatever we did in Guatemala or Iran has nothing to do with this conflict, save in your addled mind.

You don't want us to see to our national interests? Okay. Maybe you should wish away the results of World War II. Then go practice your German.

You on the left disgust me. Your appeasement of evil is grounded in a hatred of America. You only love America when you rule America, and that will not be happening for a very, very long time.

Now go back to DU and play in your intellectual sandbox. It's all you deserve.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[galt-jw]

they normally censor anything but the groupthink view, or it will be moved into the backroom.

Target practice? yeah, that's it.

anybody remember the name of the nearsighted clown on F Troop who couldn't hit the side of a battleship with a bb?

[E Rocc]

3. Before the UN sanctions Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East.

At least in part by invading and pillaging a small neighbor. Before the Allied "sanctions" Mussolini made the trains run on time.

-Eric

[at bay]

Saddam has never been a threat to or threatened the US.

Chowderhead, the act of publicly enumerating (Whoops, better use smaller words for you) paying terrorists' families tens of thousands, to, of course, promote terrorism, is a threat to any thinking person on the face of this planet. Wish away unpleasant thoughts, spend a Saturday or Sunday in a park in concert with others hating america, and chant over and over "No blood for oil" until you are sure it must be the truth.

[section9]

Besides needing a proofreader, might it be advisable to bring back the Dead Indian Test Pattern when doing a zot?

Thanks for considering. I know that our friends at DU have no lives, and live vicariously through this website.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Vermont Lt]

I am not the biggest fan of this war, or any war for that matter. War should always be the last action. Always.

That said, the comment about Saddam building a great society in the middle east reminds me of the stories my mother in law tells me about some of her Itlaian neighbors who went back to Italy in 1930 because Mussolini finally had the trains running on time. Those that survived, could not get back here fast enough after the war. Of course, only about half of them lived through the war.

Yeah, he's a great chap.

[Rudder]

1. Such a war can only lead to an increase in terrorism.

This approach at first blush seems to be cowardly and, even if it isn't what it seems, as a principle it makes us defenseless. It plays right into the hands of terrorism. So, if someone murders your family you will do nothing for fear of making their attackers even angrier. You're losing credibilty fast with your first premise.

2. There are no proven links between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda.

I don't care, Saddam is still a huge menace and a resource for all manner of terrorists. What is it about his WMD that you missed? You wait until its proven and the world will be a happier place---not really.

3. Before the UN sanctions Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East.

Before attacking Kuwait Saddam had created a country with the one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East. Such are vicissitudes of making war...Saddam has brought ruin upon his country.

4. The threat that Iraq poses to us is tiny.

We should wait until it gets larger, such as when he nukes Israel.

5. The US has a deplorable record of foreign intervention over the past 50 years.

No it doesn't. You omitting all the good we do daily and have done since WWII. We are the world's largest benefactor, by far. Name one country that has approached the level of our foreign aid program.

In sum, your five points are cowardly, unrealistically idealistic and based upon dangerously false assumptions which do not look at the big picture.

Give war a chance!

[BlueLancer]

"anybody remember the name of the nearsighted clown on F Troop who couldn't hit the side of a battleship with a bb?"

Private Vanderbilt

[ArtDodger]

Does Iraq have the same determination war making capability inherent in the German demeanor?

PEACE FOR OUR TIME

Alistair Cooke


...I promised to lay off topic A - Iraq - until the Security Council makes a judgment on the inspectors' report and I shall keep that promise.


But I must tell you that throughout the past fortnight I've listened to everybody involved in or looking on to a monotonous din of words, like a tide crashing and receding on a beach - making a great noise and saying the same thing over and over. And this ordeal triggered a nightmare - a day-mare, if you like.

Through the ceaseless tide I heard a voice, a very English voice of an old man - Prime Minister Chamberlain saying: "I believe it is peace for our time" - a sentence that prompted a huge cheer, first from a listening street crowd and then from the House of Commons and next day from every newspaper in the land.

There was a move to urge that Mr Chamberlain should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Parliament there was one unfamiliar old grumbler to growl out: "I believe we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat." He was, in view of the general sentiment, very properly booed down.

This scene concluded in the autumn of 1938 the British prime minister's effectual signing away of most of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The rest of it, within months, Hitler walked in and conquered. "Oh dear," said Mr Chamberlain, thunderstruck. "He has betrayed my trust."

During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought occurred to me --every single official, diplomat, president, prime minister involved in the Iraq debate was in 1938 a toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful scene I've just drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners.

Hitler had started betraying our trust not 12 years but only two years before, when he broke the First World War peace treaty by occupying the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. Only half his troops carried one reload of ammunition because Hitler knew that French morale was too low to confront any war just then and 10 million of 11 million British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot. It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms, it simply counted the numbers of Britons who were "for peace".

The slogan of this movement was "Against war and fascism" - chanted at the time by every Labour man and Liberal and many moderate Conservatives - a slogan that now sounds as imbecilic as "against hospitals and disease". In blunter words a majority of Britons would do anything, absolutely anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him.

At that time the word pre-emptive had not been invented, though today it's a catchword. After all the Rhineland was what it said it was - part of Germany. So to march in and throw Hitler out would have been pre-emptive - wouldn't it?

Nobody did anything and Hitler looked forward with confidence to gobbling up the rest of Western Europe country by country - "course by course", as growler Churchill put it.

I bring up Munich and the mid-30s because I was fully grown, on the verge of 30, and knew we were indeed living in the age of anxiety. And so many of the arguments mounted against each other today, in the last fortnight, are exactly what we heard in the House of Commons debates and read in the French press.

The French especially urged, after every Hitler invasion, "negotiation, negotiation". They negotiated so successfully as to have their whole country defeated and occupied. But as one famous French leftist said: "We did anyway manage to make them declare Paris an open city - no bombs on us!"

In Britain the general response to every Hitler advance was disarmament and collective security. Collective security meant to leave every crisis to the League of Nations. It would put down aggressors, even though, like the United Nations, it had no army, navy or air force.

The League of Nations had its chance to prove itself when Mussolini invaded and conquered Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The League didn't have any shot to fire. But still the cry was chanted in the House of Commons - the League and collective security is the only true guarantee of peace.

But after the Rhineland the maverick Churchill decided there was no collectivity in collective security and started a highly unpopular campaign for rearmament by Britain, warning against the general belief that Hitler had already built an enormous mechanized army and superior air force.

But he's not used them, he's not used them - people protested.

Still for two years before the outbreak of the Second War you could read the debates in the House of Commons and now shiver at the famous Labour men -Major Attlee was one of them - who voted against rearmament and still went on pointing to the League of Nations as the savior.

Now, this memory of mine may be totally irrelevant to the present crisis. It haunts me.

I have to say I have written elsewhere with much conviction that most historical analogies are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is different and it turns out to be the crucial one. It may well be so here.

All I know is that all the voices of the 30s are echoing through 2003...

[JoeSixPack1]

Trooper Vanderbilt!