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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6510)	1/8/2004 8:39:43 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Hawk, I have said in the past that there is no excuse for any society, Arab or US, to kill or maime a human being, no matter what is the crime. Life as well as any part of the human body is something that has been given to us by God. Prosthetics can today mimic the function of limbs. But it can only mimic and not create. And with life it cannot even create least mimic. No mortal human or human society can create life. Based on the fact that since we mortals cannot create these things we have no right to maim or kill anyone. That punishment is best left to the Creator. Hence it is not for the US to criticize the Arabs on that score. Both, to me, follow uncivilized practices. So for you to believe in the death penalty but cry foul of maiming of limbs and killing because of adultery is like what I said earlier "the pot calling the kettle black". The punishment should be proportional to the crime, as you had responded earlier to my reponse, is not a logic I buy fully. It should stop at the taking of life or maiming of the body. The rights of the victims extend only to the gates of the prison not to the gates of heaven or hell. Who goes to those gates can only be determined by you know Who. (Wow, this damn liberal must be smoking something) Now if you did not consider my earlier post as a reply then it is one of two things. Either I am unable to articulate well my viewpoint or you don't understand. I would like to think that both is the case here. And let us leave it at that.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6510)	1/8/2004 12:37:05 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Kofi Annan's amazing analysis January 8, 2004 Kofi Annan recently told a U.S. reporter that any suggestion that the United Nations was anti-American was "unfair" and "unfortunate" – he left out illegal and fattening. "The U.N. is not anti-American at all," Annan told Fox News' Eric Shawn. "When you go back to the creation of this organization, American leaders and American politicians played a very important role and the U.S. and the U.N. for many years and on many occasions have worked extremely well together." Sure Kofi. To prove the United Nations isn't anti-American, all we have to do is look at the past and ignore the present. Annan told Shawn, "It doesn't make me anti-American, it indicates I'm here doing the work I'm here to do. There are many occasions where we see eye to eye but that doesn't make news. It's when you disagree that it gets exciting," Annan said. Ah. It's when we disagree with you. Why didn't you say so? We thought it was you guys who passed all the resolutions and that we were agreeing with your own resolutions. Thanks for clearing that up. Annan tried to explain why the United Nations resisted U.S. efforts to remove Saddam Hussein, framing it in terms of "pre-emptive" war: "What are the rules? Under what conditions? Because if we do not do that and Iraq is seen as a precedent that other governments can use, we will find ourselves in a pretty difficult world and in a pretty difficult environment." Let me see if I can follow this line of reasoning. After Saddam was chased out of Kuwait, the United Nations agreed to a cease-fire provided Saddam gave up his entire weapons program within 45 days. After 10 years and 18 ignored resolutions, the United Nations authorized "dire consequences" if Saddam didn't comply with the 1991 cease-fire agreement. Meanwhile, the United States, which supplied most of the troops and most of the money in the first war, spent billions policing the U.N.-defined no-fly zone, conducting nearly daily bombing raids against Iraqi anti-aircraft sites for almost 10 years. Pre-emptive war? Wasn't it a war all along? Or isn't it an act of war for Iraq to target foreign aircraft, or equally an act of war for the United States and the United Kingdom to blow up Iraq ground targets? What about the United States unilaterally bombing Iraq during Operation Desert Shield in 1998? Nobody at the United Nations was too bent out of shape when that happened. And if those don't qualify as "acts of war," then what does? And if they are acts of war – one that continued for a decade following a failed ceasefire, then what the heck is he talking about by calling the last battle in a 10-year-war a "preemptive war"? When Shawn pressed Annan on this question, Annan replied, "It's a complex situation, this Iraq issue." What the heck does that mean? Annan regularly uses expressions like this to escape asinine positions he can't justify. Shawn also asked Annan point blank "if the fact that Iraqis are no longer being dropped into tree shredders didn't minimize 'America's 'guilt' in liberating Iraq.'" In true diplomatic style, he answered the question with another question that he then failed to answer; "Today, we see the situation where the brutal dictator is gone but we are faced with a very difficult situation on the ground in Iraq, did it have to be that way? Could it have been done differently?" Well, could it? We won't find out from the secretary general. Instead, he questioned the weapons of mass destruction saying, "in the minds of some of the people, it's not so much whether the war should have been fought, or whether having removed Saddam it was worthwhile, for them was the war justified?" (This was another typical Annan ploy to get out of an illogical position he holds. He raises issues that run contrary to the very founding reasons for the creation the United Nations, and then when backed into a logical corner, he throws out some "profound questions" with no answers. Nice going Kofi, you have mastered the art of doublespeak.) It really depends on whether the "minds of some of the people" that questioned whether the war should have been fought belonged to the guy about to be dropped into the tree shredder, or the guy who is holding you over it. In short, "whether you are the 'droppee' or the 'dropper.'" I am sure you can see how there is a world of difference between the two mindsets. Annan closed his interview by suggesting that if the United Nations had been given "a bit more time," they might have been able to settle the issue with Saddam's Iraq peacefully. After all, they only had 12 years, during which time hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were raped, tortured and slaughtered wholesale. But if Washington had given the United Nations "a bit more time," surely Saddam would have seen the light. Or run out of victims. Or something. Annan seems to believe that given enough time plus chance, anything is possible. I am afraid that history consistently teaches us a different lesson about human nature. worldnetdaily.com