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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (78752)	8/2/2006 11:52:50 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 81568

Gee, that sounds like the whole case for the invasion of Iraq. Not exactly. There was real evidence. Maybe it was portrayed as proof when it wasn't, but the argument was more reasonable even in hindsight than the argument AS was making. Then again a less extreme version of the same problem can still be a problem and obviously the stakes are much higher in Iraq than they are on Silicon Investor. Do you think we also have the right to attack those who haven't attacked us, but we think may do so at some point in the future, or possibly assist someone else in doing it? Do you mean this as a general comment, or are you referring to Iraq? I guess the simplest way to deal with it is to answer both. General - Depends on how sure we are that they will attack us, how reasonable it is to be so sure, how far in the future the attack will be, how destructive the attack will be, how destructive the pre-emptive attack will be, how effective the preemptive attack will be etc. If someone says "I'm going to kill you" and reaches for a gun they technically may not have attacked you yet but you would be justified in shooting them. If someone says "I'm going to get a baseball bat and beat the crap out of you", and starts walking towards the room where the bats are stored, you would be withing your rights to attack/restrain them, esp. if you can't run away or get help. To move this to the international arena, if we had a submarine near the Japanese carrier group while they where getting ready to launch Pearl Harbor, it would be justified in trying to sink a carrier or two, even though they had not yet attacked us, or declared war. IMO en.wikipedia.org and fas.org were justified. Iraq - Iraq attacked Kuwait. We smashed Iraq's army. Iraq violated the ceasefire rules. There's a bit more to the situation than "attack those who haven't attacked us, but we think may do so at some point in the future, or possibly assist someone else in doing it."