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 : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (3252)	8/20/2003 9:26:58 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

I like to kick the can rather than walk away from it Presenting only two options and choosing one is of the most basic logical fallacies. One of these days, you might learn there are other options. Such as picking up the can and placing it in a carefully chosen location. That is much better than "kicking" it. That is exactly what Bush et al have done with Iraq - they have kicked it. Without adequate planning, through misguiding their own people, and with the most superficial of ideas about what to do with it afterwards. You might yet live to regret that choice. I would describe the French position as spineless Their position has been consistent and reverent to international law and custom. Everybody protects their own interests and those of their own people. France is no exception and of course they had their own interests to protect in this case, just like did the US. However, they have tried to uphold international law, which for me merits a far more respectable position than that of the US, which was based on no more than lies and half-truths and zero respect for law. I understand you are a nice person who is happy to see a tyrant go. Where we disagree is the price to pay for this, not in terms of human lives, but also in terms of shattered international cooperation and discredited law and organizations, not to mention loss of legitimacy for US leadership in the world. I don't know how much you travel or what the level of your conduct with the world outside the US is. I don't think you realize the level of damage done to the world AND to the US in the international arena in the past year or so. The issue is "Saddam was a tyrant and so good riddance" only on the simplest, Fox TV level of reality. The world is an interconnected beehive of relations, power structures, cultures, tensions, and vendettas, some of them controllable, others not even rational. So if you want to change "status quo", you'd better have a better plan than "kicking the can" about. One look at Iraq, and you should understand what I mean.

To: E. T. who wrote (3252)	8/20/2003 12:42:59 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

I like to kick the can rather than walk away from it Like when Israel "kicked the can" in 1981, thus spawning Saddam's nuclear weapons program? <<< So in the long term, the Israeli attack did not delay the nuclear weapons program - it accelerated it by stimulating a sense of domestic political urgency. As a country living in an anarchic international system and facing an intense security dilemma, Iraq was compelled to expand its program and to identify Israel as a direct threat. Although United Nations weapons inspections following the Gulf War of 1991 did find evidence of a nuclear weapons program, they found no evidence that this program pre-dated 1981. >>> ssc.upenn.edu Or like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 to get rid of the Polish military junta and its concentration camps? zum.de Tom