It seems to me that you and GST are making a mistake that is grounded on your political predilections.
And no offense taken, except that I believe you have mistaken my devil's advocate approach with GST for some political bias. I may vote Republican most of the time, but I'm a principled pragmatist, not an extremist, when it comes to political issues. And there's certainly a fare share of extremist bluster on the part of certain Republicans..
For me, the invasion of Iraq was a principled pragmatic approach aimed at removing a tremendous source of regional instability in the Mid-East, while ensuring the UN remained a viable organization for preserving peace and international order (as well as advancing personal and political rights for the whole of humanity).
At the same time, the overthrow of Saddam's regime posed the promise of providing enough discomfort for the cabal of intransigent dictators in the region to coerce, political or physically, to restructure the nature of regional and international relations. The overthrow of Saddam inserted a "wedge of freedom" right into the heart of the Arab world, leaving many regimes isolated and feeling vulnerable..
And that's why I believe we're seeing nations in the region finally reading the hand-writing on the wall and realizing that they might wind up like Saddam if they refuse.
And btw, I concur with your post. However, I might take issue with calling deliberate deception on the part of Saddam, with resultant misperception by the world of his capabilities and intentions, to equate to a mistake.
Weapons are merely tools of destruction and deterrence wielded by those who have the will to use them for that purpose. Saddam expended his goodwill with the world (apart from France, Germany, and Russia.. :0) and was required to create an atmosphere of transparency and confidence related to his military capabilities.
As an example, if I'm a police officer and you put your hand in your jacket and create the impression that you have a gun, when I tell you to "freeze", then shooting you would fall under self-defence, because you have reasonable expectation that bodily harm might befall you. That's the extreme case of split second decision making in the case of imminent threat.
The more pertinent example would be a criminal with a history of extreme violence and anti-social behavior who, whole on parole has been instructed to surrender and never again possess certain weapons. We search his house, confiscating whatever weapons we find, checking his arsenal against a list he provided at the beginning. But then we find out that, not only has he been constantly uncooperative and evasive, but we find a receipt that indicates that he has more weapons than he claimed to possess.. And not only that, he grabs that list from the hands of your officers and shoves them out of the front door, refusing further cooperation.
Under such circumstances, it's hard to claim that the police would be making a mistake in perceiving that the criminal has something to hide and that he is in violation of his parole, punishable by removal to prison..
They would take him into custody under very reasonable suspicion, as well as criminal parole violations (which require cooperation with the authorities).
That's my perspective Carranza...
As for moving on, I think that should be a no-brainer.. But we constantly have people like GST trying to make outrageous claims that just don't fit the facts.. And he's getting this kind of perspective from people who could, god forbid, become the next president of these United States.
Which is why I feel compelled to continue discussing the facts.
Hawk |
