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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (1233)	3/12/2003 8:51:06 AM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7936

I think it is accurate to say you have missed the point. Which is usually what you do before you descend into name calling. If one country attacks another country, does a third party have the right to go to war against the attacker? If yes - If that war is ended by a cease fire agreement, and the agreement is violated by the original attacker how does the resumption of the conflict violate the sovereignty of the original attacker? Those were questions posed to you. You haven't directly answered them (another habit of yours I've noticed, as have others). Another twist on that question would be, "If that war is ended by a cease fire agreement, and the agreement is violated by the original attacker repeatedly, and the original attacker's violations continue in the face of twelve years of diplomatic effort, is resumption of the conflict ever appropriate?" I don't believe it is "degradation" or "a thin straw" to observe that there can be a point at which sovereignty, not of the country itself but of a particular government, has been forfeited. I think that at a minimum the world currently has two such governments, North Korea and Iraq. It had a couple in the 1930's, and diplomats believed force was the wrong response. In the 2000's, the preferred means of threatened attack has changed from conventional armies to weapons that can wreak mass destruction on civilian populations (though Ethiopia suffered some horrific attacks, which prompted Haile Selassie to plea with League of Nations I for help). I don't think it is degradation for League of Nations II (the UN) or, alternatively, a coalition of willing nations to enforce agreements in the context we presently find ourselves.

To: thames_sider who wrote (1233)	3/12/2003 11:28:13 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

I must have missed the point at which Iraq went back into Kuwait... No you didn't. That wasn't part of the argument, but rather a straw man that you found convient to knock down. c'mon, it's rather a thin straw and it doesn't make it legal, moral or honourable. Its not that thin at all. We stopped the war under the understanding that Iraq would have to live up to certain obligations. Enforcing the agreement isn't a violation of Iraq's sovereignty. Iraq ceeded that much of its sovereignty when it made the agreement. Now if removing an agressive dictator was an immoral and dishonorable act, this technical pseudo legal justification (I say pseudo legal because there is no real law between nations, but if there was the agreement would be the legal justification) would not make it moral and honorable. If for example Iraq was a peace loving democracy that posed no current or likely future threat to anyone then the war would be immoral even if it was technically justified. Tim