Bret Callentine wrote:wow, miss a day, miss a lot.
just a thought...
a man walks into a bank, pulls out an AK-47, shoots the teller and takes several thousand dollars. the man gets caught, prosecuted and sent to jail. Before the conclusion of his prison stay, he's given the option of parole that includes terms allowing local police to search his house and his car randomly for the next five years. the man accepts the terms of the parole and leaves prison. for the next year he allows the cops to search his property whenever they arrive, but in year two, he begins to deny them entry. At first the cops are casual and don't press the issue, but after awhile, even the threat of returning him to jail does not sway his resolve. rumors start to circulate that the man is up to no good, yet still when the cops come to his door the next time and are denied entry.
My question, at what point do the Police kick in the door?
Do the results of the concluding search even matter to the overall justification in this case?
the point is this, everyone has a different idea of when or if force is justified.
This is an invalid analogy. the bank robber doesn't have 20 million people living at home. the police aren't responsible for keeping stability of the people in the home. even if they were, they got no magic democracy stick to wave and turn things all western.
As it is, the first thing the provisional government of liberated Iraq did was reinstate the Sharia! During Saddam Hussein's tenure Iraq was one of the best places in the middle east for muslim high school kids to sneak beers and go on dates. Now they would have to grow up more like Saudi Arabians.
I think it was that Ambassador to the U.N. John bolton who said something like, "That U.N. legal stuff only matters when it let's the U.S. do what it wants. The U.N. exists to legitimize U.S. policy, because we won World War II. We're the sole SuperPower in the world today, even though I don't want to pay WWII taxes, Eisenhower era taxes, or even Nixon era taxes. The Japanese will always loan us a few hundred billion dollars a year at low interest, and China will too so they can compete with Japan. I believe in small government".
Historically there are two reasons to go to war. To defend yourself, or to take someone else's stuff. The latter generally falls under the category of voiding or "renogotiating" treaties. Treaties are sort of like Laws, only it is more acceptable to try to find ways to break them. Of course today things are more complicated: we've got multi-national corporations, complex currency trading, dick cheney, and the need for massive quantities for oil and the ability to pay for it.
Renegotiating treaties is complicated. Before the American Revolution we paid lower taxes and had a higher standard of living than Britain or any of its colonies. But the british had some treaties with the native Americans. Native Americans had the rights to the Northwest Territories. They weren't using it for anything cool like farms, barrel making, whiskey making, mining, or anything. They weren't even very good at fishing from boats, and they probably didn't even want to be Americans. So we cobbled together the arguments for the Revolutionary War. George Washington was a genius: he realized we didn't have to beat the British, just keep an army in the field and occasionally harass the British until they got frustrated and left to concentrate on fighting france and taking over central asia and africa. This is a strategy the insurgents employ today.
After Iraq spent 8 years defending the middle east from Iran all their creditors were after them. After the Gulf War many nations were paying the expenses of the U.S. led multilateral coalition.
The motives of launching a preemptory war are less important than the question of what you can accomplish or get away with. The chaos and sectarian strife following Saddam's ouster has killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did, and may destabilize the entire region.
It is a conservative region. After the provisional government reinstated the Sharia we send over Condi Rice to supervise them. It isn't hard to imagine how Iraqis feel at having to negotiate for U.S. handouts with an american woman. It must be a den of cooperation over there.
It is the middle east. You've got to have balls in the middle east. When you do everything the U.S.tells you your rivals will feel bolder, and so will neighboring nations. The cable news can't distinguish between basketball court trash talk and real threats. Otherwise your nation might descend into chaotic sectarian violence.
So, our nation is probably stuck there for a while. The only important thing to do here is vote every one in and affiliated with the Bush administration, and their descendants, out of office for the remainder of human history.