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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (21582)	4/13/2003 1:27:59 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 206223

OT Bearcatbob, I agree with much of what you say. It's a world turned upside down when politicians such as Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld portray themselves as nation-building champions of the oppressed people of the world to cheers from conservative talk show hosts and liberals express reservations about the removal of an oppressive dictator like Hussein. The world turns back rightside up when you consider, however, that the end of removing Iraq was planned and promoted by those same conservatives for reasons that had literally nothing to do with liberating the Iraqi people. And when you consider that those same liberals that would have liked to see the Iraqi people liberated, couldn't condone the liberation when it occurred at the onset of a doctrine they see as imperialistic and accomplished through the means of aggressive, American military might in violation of the will of the U.N. and international law. I think that you will always have a certain percentage of people that will march against anything that has two sides, particularly if there are deaths in the balance. Many of the people that marched against war in Iraq, before the war began, however, were everyday Americans who felt we needed the majority approval of the world before invading another country. Especially when at that time our stated reasons were the need to rid them of wmds and the inspection process was yielding some results. RE: "As a simple question - we have all heard for years how we have starved children in Iraq. Does not the visuals of the huge amounts of weaponry and presidental palace granduer not say volumes about why the Iraqi people suffered?" In some ways it does. I don't know when the palaces were built but the spending on Iraqi weapons didn't stop at the time of the sanctions. On the other hand most countries in the world, including ours, have some starving children, a pressing need for money for education and health as well as other pressing needs, and much of their budget is spent on defense. We can't paint all the blame on their spending decisions, particularly as it turned out they had reason to believe that weakness invited invasion. In addition, most countries in the world would probably view the poverty that resulted from the sanctions as resulting from two sources; the sanctions and the spending decisions of the regime. I read an interesting article today. The point made was that the neo-cons aren't actually conservatives at all. The author's point was that they are nation-building, government-intervention. deficit spenders with intrusive agendas that rival those of the old, tinker-with-society liberals, at least that was my take. If your interested I could find it again. I think that freedom did make this country great. But it went beyond that. It was a respect for the courts that protected that freedom, even when the decisions were unpopular with the majority. It was the use of discourse and debate to intelligently protect that freedom. It was an understanding and fear of the threats to freedom that government ALWAYS poses to individual rights and it was respect for the right of those that thought differently here and in other countries to, within boundaries of civilized behavior, live their own lives. The direction we may now be moving erodes respect for the courts, has little tolerance for differences and sometimes seems to treat individual rights with careless disregard. All this with little debate and a growing belief in many that those that disagree are somehow less patriotic or less American. In view of the great efforts and sacrifices of the many that came before us, this would be a great waste of privilege. Ed