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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (198860)	8/23/2006 4:29:04 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

1. I did not say that I did not have the time, I said that I was pleased that YOU had the time. Oh. 2. If you are complaining that Lebanon doesn't control a militia within its own borders, how can you justify Israel trying to do that to a sovereign state? Trying to do what? They were responding either to an act of war on their state (if we assume that Hezbollah was acting in a wink-wink kind of way toward Israel as a proxie for the Lebanese state--an assumption that I do NOT make, or was acting independently of the Lebanese govt, in which case the Lebanese govt should have dealt with them by disarming them. I disagreed with Israel's tactics--they should have gone to the Lebanese govt first, then to the UN and stated how the act was intolerable, that the Lebanese should disarm Hezballah and get the kidnapped soldiers back, and if they didn't do that, then there would be serious consequences. Only after some extensive diplomacy should they have bombed (if at all). But however stupid Israel's tactics were, that doesn't change the fundamental fact that the military apparatus in southern Lebanon should have been dismantled. And Lebanon didn't or couldn't do it, then it should be done for them. In fact, Israel's latest meddling weakened the government of Lebanon just as Israel's meddling with the Syrian military in Lebanon probably allowed Hezbollah's influence to grow. When did Israel "meddle" with the Syrian military? 3.Do you justify the US invading the sovereign state of Iraq which presented no threat to us? The US, supposedly in some kind of control of Iraq, allows the Shiite militia to flourish. Why is that? I can't believe that you ask me if I "justify the US invading the sovereign state of Iraq." I have never supported it, not now, and not before the war. I have argued strenuously against it. Aside from that, you second is absurd--obviously the US does not control Iraq at this point. There is effectively no government of Iraq, as there is no party that can claim to control the legitimate use of violence within its borders. That said, both the US and the putative govt of Iraq have both said that private militias need to be disarmed. The problem of course is, no one has the power to do it right now. 4. If you take this definition of Westphalia, your point makes no sense. "The Treaty established a framework of international law through binding treaties between states, intended to establish a durable peace between the parties involved. This was revolutionary at the time, because it relied on international agreements between sovereign states rather than military strength." --- wikipedia Actually, what I said makes perfect sense in that context. The Treaty did indeed try to make international agreements the foundation of relations between states, and further, articulated a notion of state sovereignty that was indeed revolutionary. It said that no state had the right interfere with the domestic relations of any other state except under certain specifiable conditions, most notably self defense. 5. If you take this further definition, it says exactly what I SAY ALL THE TIME. Elephants need to find another way. Bombing another country into smithereens, making tactical nukes and grinding armies to oblivion in the desert is ineffective. "It is often said that the Peace of Westphalia initiated modern diplomacy, as it marked the beginning of the modern system of nation-states (or "Westphalian states"). This interpretation comes from the treaty's role as the first acknowledgment of each country's sovereignty. Subsequent European wars were not about issues of religion, but rather revolved around issues of state." ---- also from wikipedia I don't disagree with the above statement, either yours or the one in Wikipedia. However, you should take Hezbollah to task as well as Israel--they started this particular fight. Which does NOT say that Israel was right to do what they did in the way they did it. One of the few things that I think the Bush admin did right was the diplomacy they used vis a vis Afghanistan just after 9.11. Israel should have learned from that, in the way I suggested above, IMHO. All that said, while the above definitions and the little blurb I gave in the prior post about Westphalia are OK as far as they go, it was more complicated than that. And more complicated than I have time or desire to write here. I've already spent more time on this than I intended. I have to get back to work. 6. Are you talking about something else? No.