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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (149770)	8/16/2002 11:50:05 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1579898

I'm not advocating violence as a choice solution but rather saying that violence is not always wrong. More specifically it doesn't demonstrate a sense of entitlement if you use violence in response to violence. You said "the real reason" (for David's support of an invasion of Iraq) "is your tank" (meaning his concern about oil and gasoline supply). If his "tank" is a reason for concern it is because the possibility that Iraq could invade other countries and seize their oil or intimidate them in to letting Saddam control their oil production and sales. If Iraq is actually a threat to do this (and Saddam's invasion of Kuwait last decade combined with its other actions and its WMD program suggest this might be possible) then violence to stop this threat does is not based on a sense of entitlement. I could make a reasonable argument that a violent response to this threat is a good idea, and I could make an argument that it is a bad idea, but either way it doesn't make much sense to talk about it as demonstrating a sense of entitlement. If someone didn't want to sell oil to us and we invaded and seized the oil fields that would be naked aggression and would demonstrate a sense of entitlement (if there were no other good reasons for the invasion), but that isn't part of the current situation. Iraq wants to sell oil more then we want to buy it from Iraq, and even if Saddam decided to stop selling oil (or even if Saudi tried an embargo) we wouldn't invade for that reason. As for the more general question of violence as a solution, its usually better if you can find a non violent solution but sometime there isn't a good non violent solution and sometimes waiting around looking for one just makes the violence worse when it finally happens. Tim