I too am an american, in the genuine sense of the term, 'of and pertaining to the Americas' ... just to be clear about that first
You make many fine points here, hank, i agree with several of them ..... Yugoslavia, Ruanda, definitely more could have and should have been done, Lewis and Dallaire were not impressed with the powers that be, in those cases, for good reason .... Lithuania, well it would have been difficult for canadians to do anything there while it was under russian rule ... much like trying to check israeli expansion, when it is supported so heavily by the US .... the french in Cote d'Avoire, well they do have old ties there and i did hear some news on what they were doing that made it sound reasonable under the circumstances, much like the brits did in Sierra Leone, a police action .... don't know details though .... Afghanistan, yes i supported that, it was clearly a legitimate move on terrorist bases by a genuine coalition with the broad public support of their populations ... we're still involved in that, by the way, it's our navy in charge of the straits of Hormuz
You're responding as if i said 'we must support the UN security council' .... not so, i carefully chose the words 'a reasonable quorum of democracies' .... quite distinct from the other, i agree the UNSC is flawed, with any member having veto over others, also there are only fifteen votes at any given time, so it's far from full representation, and on top of that there are many UN seats held by other than democracies or close equivalents .... and the one nation one vote thing, which means India and Nauru have equal weight in decisions, this makes no sense
But in the present case, there are only two nations whose populations support this invasion in the manner it is being executed - the US and Israel .... majority of brits were not with Blair, so counting the UK in the 'coalition' is what i mean by 'faux', the other thirty or so are even more faux, some to ridiculous extent, their leaders were merely coerced and/or bribed into lending their names ..... there is a message in this refusal of the populations to submit to pressure, not that the neocons are listening now, but they will one day
You may view the US as invariably benign, well that likely means you don't have neighbours in forestry here, you haven't yet come to know the machine as brutal and corrupt, capricious at times and quite deaf to all outside its internal propaganda ..... you probably have never met widows of its eighties adventures in Nicaragua either .... it's not always benign hank, nothing that size ever could be, it's too big a hammer to hit every nail just so .... sure it does good as well sometimes, coming in and helping out on both wars, then the Marshall plan, those were fine things and much appreciated .... but it cannot be good nor evil, it simply is .... for the rest of us outside its control centres, the question is how can we survive on the same planet with it
Not through getting it in the habit of us taking its orders, i think .... the interests of your Average Joe US National are not served by a complete lack of checks and balances either, and if he's fairly smart and lucky enough to live that long, he'll realise that's the case ...... Lord Acton's aphorism still holds true, and it will in an hundred years ... anyway, it is inhuman to submit, i do not want my country to do so .... things like invasions of sovereign nations should not be decided by little groups in back rooms, but rather by debate and reasoning in an open parliament
I'd have been for it then, for what it's worth, an invasion if necessary, yes .... but not this way, because of the precedent set, there is far greater evil coming, from concentration of power and hubris |
