To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (1548 ) 7/1/2004 3:54:58 PM From: epicure Read Replies (1) | Respond to Most people who oppose the Iraq war do not oppose war generally, they oppose this war specifically. While you may think international law allows one country to determine when another country ("parent") is not taking care of its kids, many people are not willing to use that as the basis of international law- and you probably wouldn't like it as the basis if a bunch of countries decided that the US government was a "bad" parent for allowing its children to be obese, and implementing the death penalty against some of its children. Who is in charge of removing a "bad" government? The citizens of the country. That is what happened here, during our revolution. "Regime change" imposed externally does not have good precedents. It is too quick, and the populations who experience it, rarely are prepared for it, and experience it more as something done to them, than something they participate in. WWII is often given as an example (foolishly, imo) since Japan and Germany were destroyed, their populations utterly worn out and disillusioned, and they had both surrendered after a gruelling drawn out war. There was no significant resistance or violence during the occupations of those countries, because the destruction had been so total, and the defeats of both countries to total. Only a draconian power could take a population to the level of destruction those two countries faced, and the US is not the kind of country to do that. I know you are frustrated by the "bad parents" out there- and there are a lot. But you can't go around changing them, because 1. it's too expensive, in capital and human life 2. it's too iffy and 3. it's too subjective.
