Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (4317)	2/18/2003 9:38:12 AM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Here's a good one from a European "intellectual." "They (would-be EU members) missed a good opportunity to shut up," Mr. Chirac said. ... He said the 10 candidate nations have threatened their own entry into the European club by aligning with the U.S. That's a laugh, "missed an opportunity to shut up."

To: zonder who wrote (4317)	2/18/2003 11:04:18 AM
From: lorne	Respond to of 15987

THIS IS ALL INSANE, FOR PIETY'S SAKE Feb 17 2003 SATURDAY was one of those special days when you feel like you are watching history in the making. One of those epoch-defining moments when you know that the world can never be quite the same again. Yes, when Ryan Giggs put the ball over that yawning open goal, the planet seemed to shift very slightly on its axis. Everything looked suddenly different. All at once, that world-beating crop of Manchester United youngsters looked middle-aged. Poor Giggs - so many times Arsenal's chief tormentor - held his head in his hands and it was like seeing the Roman Empire at the very second it began its decline. An era was over. Meanwhile 200 miles away they were marching for peace and perhaps that will turn out to be history in the making, too. But only if it stops an attack on Iraq. Estimates of the number of marchers vary from 750,000 to two million. I wasn't one of them and not just because Manchester United were playing Arsenal. I agree with all the basic principals of the march. I can't see the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. I believe that war will inflame the Muslim world against us. And I am unconvinced that Saddam Hussein poses a genuine threat to this nation. THE reason I didn't march was that some of the peace marchers disturb me as much as the warmongers. I have lost count of the number of times that I have heard sentiments like, "War is never the answer," and, "War solves nothing." We are lucky indeed that previous generations did not share the same smug conviction. If our fathers and grandfathers had believed that "war is never the answer" then the number of people marching for peace on Saturday would have been zero. This is what terrifies me about the masses marching for peace. The unthinking glibness that can trot out a line like, "War solves nothing." Tell that to a survivor of the Holocaust. Tell that to an elderly Pole who remembers the Nazi occupation of his country. Or indeed to a Londoner who remembers the bombs falling night after night. Tell them that, "War solves nothing." Tell them that they would have been better off turning the other cheek. And it is not just the pacifist tendencies of the marchers that disturbs me. I can go along with so much of what they were marching for on Saturday. But I recoil at the piety, the self-righteousness and the sheer ignorance of the banners they were marching behind. WANTED FOR MURDER - BUSH AND BLAIR, was a popular and completely moronic, sound bite. Bush and Blair need restraining. They need reminding that we voted them in and we can kick them out. Above all, they need telling that a war with Iraq would be a self-destructive act that would reverberate for generations. But the mass murder is all on the other side. How many of those peace marchers have heard of the Kurdish town of Halabja? If the name is not immediately familiar, the photograph of a gassed Kurdish baby is perhaps easier to recall. Saddam's forces unloaded chemical bombs at Halabja in 1988, killing thousands of innocent Kurds in a few hours. Who will march for that dead Kurdish baby? Why can't the peace marchers shed a few pious tears for her? If Bush and Blair are mass murderers, then what language do we use to describe Saddam Hussein? Blair was right about this point - if you add up the Kurds killed in northern Iraq, the prisoners tortured to death in Saddam's jails and 200,000 Iraqis who died in the pro-democracy uprising of 1991, the figure is horribly close to the number of peace marchers in London on Saturday. A parallel march of around one million ghosts. And I doubt if one of those murdered Iraqis would say that, "war is never the answer", or have the temerity to call Tony Blair a mass murderer. NONE of which justifies a war with Iraq. I remain convinced such a war would echo through our lives long after Blair has buggered off to write his memoirs and tour the lucrative lecture circuit of the United States. But some of those good-hearted, decent people marching through the capital on Saturday are guilty of the same self-righteousness, piety and sheer ignorance of which they accuse Bush and Blair. War with Iraq would be insanity. But one day, almost certainly in our lifetime, some wild-eyed nutjob from Asia or the Middle East will really be waving around a nuclear weapon. And perhaps then we will realise that piously simpering, "War solves nothing," is really just another form of insanity. mirror.co.uk