btimsah said:
So you are for public hangings, but not war? What if it took a war to enable you to hang those you wish would die?
I am not always against war. The hanging Idea is a halfhearted fantasy that I have in response to the disgust that I feel for the hypocrissy of American foreign policy and it's accompanying propaganda narrative that rewrites history and current events in order to keep the idealism of the American people from clashing with the policy goal of making the American government the puppet masters of the world. I am frustrated the mainstream American media's willingness to diseminate propaganda for the neocons and CFR types, and I am frustrated with the willingness of most of the American people to embrace the story the spin that says that we / our government has been and is the valiant prince saving the damsel in distress from the evil dragon. Why do we have to chose between understanding the truth and being patriotic? Why do some mothers allow their kids to slide into a life of crime because they are unwilling to hear from neighbors that their kid (our government) has been misbehaving and needs to be corrected?
I am not saying that the Neocons can not and have not made a good argument for their belief that America government should use the oppurtunity that the end of the cold war created to attempt to become the global puppet masters for the next century. I wanted a high quality public debate on the future of American foreign policy and what kind of global social structure we want to create for our great great grand children who will be living a century from now; but the neocons though they would loose that debate so they gave us lies about WMD and proceeded with their plans without ever asking for the American people to endorse their plans.
How would YOU have stopped the Rawandan genocide? War?
Yes war. Their was plenty of advance intelligence. 5,000 lightly armed third world soldiers + 500 heavily American troops with helicopter gunships could have stopped the Rewandan genocide. They could have been out after about two years. They would have to set up some radio stations supporting peace. Hate radio was a very important factor in the Rawandan genocide.
He's not intervening in Sudan because we don't have the resources too. Iraq and Afghanistan is more than enough. Secondly, the Sudan is not in the "war on terror". The number 1 reason we removed Saddam from power is because the time was right. Everyone has wanted to do it for years, but President Bush finally did it.
I think we have the resources to dissuade Sudan from genocide. Occupation would not be needed, well placed bombs would do the job. We don't want to be labelled as anti-Islamic but if we talk about inocent Iraqis that Saddam killed and we don't care who dies in Sudan than our hypocrissy is exposed.
The time was right to invade Iraq only because 9/11 created the a willingness among the American people to blindly support any war that the president claims is needed to respond to 9/11. You are right that doing something about Sudan would not be part of the war on terror but doing something about Saddam was also not part of the war on terror. Saddam was evil, but he was also an enemy to Islamic fundamentalist Jihadis. If the war terror is the war against America hating fundamentalist Jihadis then the war in Iraq can not be called part of the war on terror.
The PNAC authors made it clear in the 1990s when the were asking Clinton to invade Iraq that they saw control of Iraq as being the logical first step in part of a larger effort to control the world. The main target of the plan to control the world is to control China. The NeoCons see the use of coercive force to prevent any anti-American alliance (that would most likely include China) from ever being able to challenge American "interests" anywhere in the world as being the necessary job of the American Foreign Policy. The Iraq war is not really abou Iraq at all. The Iraq war is really a premptive strike against China and the world.
I think the neocon approach is wrong. They would bankrupt America; they would create a backlash against America, and they would waste this crucial next century in which the world needs to outgrow national competition and military spending in order to pool our resources to face the problems that come with: rising population growth, the spread of first world wealthy polluting life styles into the third world, the ten billion person global village mutating disease incubating global petri dish germ playground, WMD in the hands of organized crime terrorist blackmail strictly for profit, and global warming.
Do you have proof he used tax dollars to topple a democracy in Haiti? You wish to have Bush hanged and he represents a democracy.
To whom does Bush represent democracy? I do not consider him a friend of democracy. I do not believe he intends real democracy for Iraq or Afghanistan.
http://www.iraq4u.com/forum/m_3740/tm.htm (the link is about the CIA not turning over the Iraqi intelligence infrastructure to the Iraqi government. Iraqis believe that Sistani's threat to put Shiite Iraqis into revolt against America forced the reluctant Bush to hold elections that he could not control in Iraq.
I have spent much time on Haiti but I have no links handy now. If you really really really care about whether or not Bush toppled a democracy in Haiti I will provide links.
First debated question, was Haiti a democracy. I concluded that yes Haiti was a democracy. There was no opinion polling done before or after the coup in Haiti but I think that it is safe to assume that if you count poor Haitians opinions as mattering then 60% or more of Haitians before and now the coup support Aristide. The wealthiest 10% of Haitians would say that it is absurd to consider the opinions of the illiterate poorer half of Hatians who should never be allowed to vote because they are to stupid and would vote for whoever promised hand outs.
The spending in support of the coup on "group of 184" and other semi-bogus "astroturf" organizations by the IRI with money from NED that NED got from the US State department is undisputed public knowledge. I am part the camp that believes that NED and the IRI might as well be part of the CIA. I don't consider them to be real NGOs and I don't consider them to be real friends of democracy. They spent money trying to influence the Iraqi election also. USAID also spent US taxpayer money setting up the civil side of the coup.
The pro-Aristide frindge media in America alledges that US taxpayer dollars paid writers to write the anti-Aristide stories that apeared in the US mainstream media in the year leading up to the coup. They claim to have evidence of the US State department paying to fly some hired anti-Aristide journalists around America to meet with the foreign editors at american big city newspapers. There is touble all over the world all the time. It seemed a little strange to me how much coverage the anti-Aristide stories claiming he was thwarting democracy was getting in the big american newspapers in the year prior to the coup when you consider that other nations were not being covered.
The "rebels" claim that drug trafficking paid for their heavy weapons and their two helicopters. I don't believe them. They trained in Equador and then were based in the Domincan Republic for a year or two prior to the invasion. There were a few reports from people in the Dominican Republic that said American military people were with the rebels in while they were in the Dominican Republic.
One thing I saw for myself on a US government web site was the gift of 20,000 M16s and other equipment from the US government to Dominican Republic a year before the coup. I wondered if the M16s were sold into a war zone like Congo in order to raise the money for the helicopters and heavy weapons. Recently the US government that would not give Haiti aid because Aristide was not democratic enough gave the US government chosen violent dictatorship in Haiti financial aide with which they turned around and paid each "rebel" I believe $5,000 each towards the back pay they claim for all the years that Aristide was in power and the Haitan Army in which they were formerly employed was disbanded.
Aristide and American employees of the Steel Foundation, a American Security firm say that the US military obeying the orders of ambassador Foley abducted them from Haiti, kept them incommunicado, and dropped them in the Central African Republic without telling them were they were being taken to. The Bush administrations swears that Aristide is lying but I believe Aristide more than Bush because the Bush administration has repeatedly proven that they are about as credible as Baghdad Bob.
The rebels while heavily armed and trained were probably less than 500 people. To enter Port-Au-Prince they would have to defeat a pro-Arstide mob of about 50,000 (mostly unarmed) people who were manning barricades. I believe it was US armored vehicles that cleared the baricades cleared the mobs and allowed the rebels to slip into the city without a showdown.
You can Google Guy Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain to learn something about the "rebels".
CARICOM will not recognize the current Haitian government.
The UN and Brazil are carrying out US policy in Haiti but I think they were coerced or bribed into doing that. Even my local government does sleazy deals with developers. It is the nature of governments to become sleazy so I take the UN and Brazil's participation as normal dirty deals rather than a sign that the coup was inocent.
I don't hate Bush, I just think he should be hung. I think Bush represents Hypocrissy not Democracy. I love America, I just wish my fellow Americans did not think it disloyal for citizens to be able to see when our government have behaved sleazily or foolishly.
Again, you seem to wish them to intervene in the Congo, but NOT INTERVENE IN IRAQ. Which conflicts should they have been involved in, and which ones should they have avoided? From what you have written I would think if they HAD intervened in Rawanda and the Congo then you'd be saying they need to hung for that.
In my opinion the Iraq intervention is based on a foolish set of theories. The USA is a democracy, and we give money to thugs around the world. Why do we think that a democratic Iraq would not give more money to Palestinian "freedom fighters" than Saddam ever did? I like the idea of spreading democracy and I don't object to the use of US tax dollars and troops when a low cost war could spread democracy or save lives. I just it is naive to believe Bush when he claims to represent democracy.
Clinton in Yugoslavia was probably like the Iraq war, a strategic war dressed as a something that it was not. In that case it was dressed as a humanitarian war.
If we are going to fight an optional strategic war like Vietnam I want the theories behind the stategy to be correct theories. NeoCon theories are probably incorrect. I want corporate welfare /constituent services to be given no consideration and not be considered "American interests". We should fight wars to spread or defend NeoLiberal economic models. Also before entering into an optional strategic war like the Vietnam War we better be sure we have a correct understanding of the probable outcome of the war.
Congo / the "African World War" is more complex than Rawanda or Sudan. I don't know if a low cost solution would have worked there. Two+ million inocent noncombatant people in Congo have been killed by the war in Congo over the last fifteen years. So Congo needed saving more than Iraq or any other place in the world did.
I would never think that someone should be hung for killing people to save more people if their basis for thinking that they are trying save more people is not a highly debatable theory.
You really confuse me! :confused
Still confused?
