I know you want to sweeten the pot for the politicians a little with the "tax it" business, but please don't give them any ideas. Balancing out a good idea with a bad one is a terrible compromise.
ISTM that from a public interest standpoint they should legalize it and tax it as high as they can without creating a black market.
The guns that fuel Mexico's bloody drug war come from the United States of America, where we are apparently just a little too dumb for sensible gun control.
And the money to pay for them comes from drug sales.
People who pay for dope should realize that they are funding a network of gangs and cartels that murders far more people than the more familiar flavor of terrorist does. Ideally we would decriminalize the drugs and thereby yank the support out from under these people. But that ain't going to happen, so if you happen to use recreational drugs, please do your fellow man a favor and stop.
in a fight we aren't winning, won't win, and can't win.
Sadly, I think immediate withdrawal from both countries - several years ago - is the only sensible strategy.
"Sadly", because I certainly don't expect nice things to happen when we withdraw, but clearly we can't win in any meaningful sense, and staying there just prolongs the misery and postpones the inevitable.
Well, I grew up under US occupation. I get to say what I want when I want. I worship what I want when I want.
But there will be Hell to pay if you want to establish a Muslim community center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero.[*]
A very substantial number of USAians are no better than the Taliban. The people who are quickest to wave the flag and declare their patriotism don't actually subscribe to some of the most fundamental traditional American values.
A War of Aggression is a war waged without any justification of self defense and without being sanctioned by the UN security council. The concept was basically based upon Nazi Germany's expansionist wars, they made no claim to self defense and simply wished to take over the world. The Taliban's unwillingness to deal with an element within it's border's that attacked and killed 3,000 American citizens pretty much covers at least a 'justification' for self defense and the UN Security Council has in fact sanctioned the war. Therefore it cannot be considered illegal due to being a War of Aggression.
Presumably that's why the Bush administration was so intent on convincing everyone that Iraq had WMD: so they could spin it as self defense. (Though they didn't seem much concerned with legality in other domestic or international contexts, so perhaps I'm dreaming.)
For Afghanistan we have a much better case, although it's more than a bit iffy to invade someone who would not extradite one of their residents without seeing any evidence. If we had shown the evidence and they still refused, I would call it a just war.
Though I don't equate "just" with "good" or "smart". Unfortunately the war has killed a lot of people and caused untold misery to many others, and utterly failed to achieve the goal that serves as its only possible justification.
A big problem with the post-WWII American psyche is that deep down not many of us recognize that some problems can't be solved by guns and bombs.
Iraq is an illegal war. Not by any international-law measure, but by American law. It was started by a rogue President who lied to the Congress to get the funding to wage it, and who had already transferred men, money, and material there from the legitimate Afghan conflict without their authority.
Also a serious abrogation by Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility for deciding who we're going to go to war against.
Though that responsibility has already been eroding for decades, and, practically speaking, that part of the US Constitution has been retired.
For the thoughtful, is is a problematic issue. On the one hand it seems unjust to hold country X accountable to some treaty it never signed, but on the other hand, it's beyond absurd to say that if country X invades a neighbor and exterminates the population, it is only a crime if X is a party to a treaty that forbids doing that.
The prevailing doctrine seems to be that if most of the world's nations agree on something like this, then it applies to everyone. (Unless of course you are a superpower or have one in your pocket.) However, according to various relevant Wikipedia articles, the notion has been under continuous debate since the Nuremberg trials.
Sorry mods, but how the fuck is this flamebait? Simply requesting backing up your claims with actual quotes or page and line-numbers, would be something of value to this discussion. Is even/. now infiltrated by the US gov't?
I don't concern myself overmuch with moderation of individual posts anymore. Some moderators obviously have a political agenda, some are apparently insane, and some apparently moderate at random. But ignoring occasional specific posts, moderators do a pretty good job on the overall effect.
So just say what you think needs to be said, and don't worry about how it gets moderated.
I do think the moderation system could be slightly improved if there weren't any negative mods - use upmods only, and maybe raise the cap a little. More spread should help the generally good mods rise above the noise.
An overall truthful reporting of the war is what's being revealed on wikileaks. Far more truthful than conventional media are reporting on in any event.
The MSM are barely reporting on the war at all, other than the political fights over surges and withdrawal schedules.
If an alien came to visit and turned on the evening news on a random night, it probably wouldn't discover that we are fighting two wars.
How can the US expect to talk down to countries like Iran and Burma for their human rights abuses when the US is guilty of extraordinary rendition and torture? It's lost the moral high ground with it's hypocrisy and it absolutely must try and better itself to regain that
Alas, we need a leader with vastly higher ethical standards, vastly stronger dedication to the rule of law, vastly more backbone, and vastly bigger balls than "don't rock the boat" Obama does. His "ignore the past" approach is legitimizing every illegal activity ever undertaken under the Bush/Cheney administration.
You'll have to point out to me the treaty all nations signed giving up the right to ever engage in war with another nation thereby making it "illegal".
There's a hell of a difference between "invade and occupy another country" and "engage in war".
And though I don't know what kind of treaties we are party to in this regard, we sure as hell prosecuted the German leadership for invading and occupying other countries in the Nuremberg trials. (The link will show you the four charges brought against the group in the main trial, the first two being of relevance to this thread.)
Notice that a couple of the people who were executed (Keitl, Jodl) were simply military high command, not Nazis. Notice also that Hess was found guilty of the two "Crimes against Peace" charges, but innocent of "War Crimes" and "Crimes against Humanity", and still got life in prison.
Thoughtful readers will want to scroll down and read the sections "Criticism" and "Legitimacy".
One more side note - we often hear the right wingers talk about respecting a nations "sovereignty" - yet the U.S. did not do it to the Afghanis, who had every legal right to wait for legitimate proof before persecuting anyone within their borders.
So much for sovereignty huh?
Yeah, I'm kind of skeptical about the idea that the UN has the authority to authorize one country to invade another. If they authorized someone to invade us or one of our friends we certainly wouldn't sit back and say "OK".
And as you (sort of) point out, the people who are quickest to drag in the UN as a justification for what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan are the people who are quickest to tell us the UN doesn't have any right to tell us what we can or must do.
The rationalizations we hear are so inconsistent, dishonest, or lame, because there isn't any rationalization that will stand up to scrutiny, and the actual reasons would outrage too much of the public if admitted. (The shame being that they don't outrage *all* the public.)
Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda established it training camps and bases, and organized several attacks on the US including 9/11 which killed about 3000 Americans.
But that was only possible because they used box cutters that were made in China. So how come no Chinese invasion?
Or Kansas/Michigan, where the second-worst terrorist attack against the USA was organized?
Unlike many other dictators, Saddam Hussein also built his pissant country's military to the 4th largest in the world, was invading neighboring countries, seeking and using various WMDs (ask the Kurds), and was a real threat to the region and the world.
Back in the 1980s, sure. But not in 2003.
And of course, he was *our* chum back in the 1980s.
It's funny to see how with all this right-wing "holy war against terrorism", "sacred" and untouchable military-industrial complex (and corporations in general), and preference of blind fanaticism over a simple reason and logic, some parts of modern USA are already resemble "religious dictatorship".
Lots of USAians think their religious scruples should be the law of the land. The Republicans have capitalized on this by catering to them (half-heartedly) since around 1980.
When, in the course of the years, we support the brutish and barbaric dictators in one part of the world, but then claim our righteousness against others, declaring they must be taken down " at all costs" we undermine what little support the world general population already has for us.
And probably worse, we have on occasion knocked off a legitimately elected government that wasn't doing what we wanted it to.
Makes our pompous shit about "spreading democracy" sound like... pompous shit.
Alas, while it's still inconvenient as hell, the only part of the Geneva Conventions binding on the USA are the parts we're actually signatory to.
So... if Dictator X isn't a signatory, he can do all the stuff we would normally consider to be war crimes, and they wouldn't be war crimes because he's not a party to the treaty?
Iraq was, with little doubt, producing weapons in violation of UN Resolution 687
And they ate them when we invaded, so we wouldn't find them.
They did have a new model of rocket that exceeded the allowed range (but only without a payload), but you could tune in a corporate-owned television station and watch the UN team running over them with bulldozers a few weeks before the invasion. The inspection team eventually left to avoid being killed by our bombs and missiles.
The Taliban offered to try bin Laden if the US could provide evidence. We rejected the offer, and invaded instead.
Also apparently not commonly known in the USA, Iran offered to help after 9/11, via neutral emissaries since we don't have diplomatic relations. Unfortunately GWB wanted to have an axis of evil more than he wanted to catch the perpetrators, so we not only snubbed Iran's offer, but also chewed out the emissaries for daring to suggest such a thing.
Actually the Germans made the rather absurd claim that Poland had attacked their forces. Just a bit of historical trivia that's rarely published in American history books. Not dissimilar to the sinking of the Maine or the Bay of Tonkin attack.
I've always been astonished that GWB or his cronies weren't smart enough to arrange an "incident" to justify invading Iraq.
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us.
BTW, almost none of our elected representatives have access to stuff that the military marks as secret. A few on committees are told some of it under a vow of secrecy, but then their hands are tied when they find out someone is doing something questionable.
Slashdot Mirror
I know you want to sweeten the pot for the politicians a little with the "tax it" business, but please don't give them any ideas. Balancing out a good idea with a bad one is a terrible compromise.
ISTM that from a public interest standpoint they should legalize it and tax it as high as they can without creating a black market.
Milton fried man in americas drug forum (YouTube for it) said it best: it is prohibition that makes this business so profitable.
You'd almost think we would have learned something from Prohibition.
The guns that fuel Mexico's bloody drug war come from the United States of America, where we are apparently just a little too dumb for sensible gun control.
And the money to pay for them comes from drug sales.
People who pay for dope should realize that they are funding a network of gangs and cartels that murders far more people than the more familiar flavor of terrorist does. Ideally we would decriminalize the drugs and thereby yank the support out from under these people. But that ain't going to happen, so if you happen to use recreational drugs, please do your fellow man a favor and stop.
FYI, George Soros is a liberal, much hated by conservatives.
in a fight we aren't winning, won't win, and can't win.
Sadly, I think immediate withdrawal from both countries - several years ago - is the only sensible strategy.
"Sadly", because I certainly don't expect nice things to happen when we withdraw, but clearly we can't win in any meaningful sense, and staying there just prolongs the misery and postpones the inevitable.
He likes the shock value. He is the type to put something out there because it is dangerous.
Several people have commented on his values and motivations. Do any of you actually *know* any of this?
Well, I grew up under US occupation. I get to say what I want when I want. I worship what I want when I want.
But there will be Hell to pay if you want to establish a Muslim community center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero.[*]
A very substantial number of USAians are no better than the Taliban. The people who are quickest to wave the flag and declare their patriotism don't actually subscribe to some of the most fundamental traditional American values.
[*] Misrepresented by the media as wanting to build a Mosque *on* Ground Zero. Jon Stewart's treatment of the topic a few days ago should be mandatory watching. (Warning: video link)
A War of Aggression is a war waged without any justification of self defense and without being sanctioned by the UN security council. The concept was basically based upon Nazi Germany's expansionist wars, they made no claim to self defense and simply wished to take over the world. The Taliban's unwillingness to deal with an element within it's border's that attacked and killed 3,000 American citizens pretty much covers at least a 'justification' for self defense and the UN Security Council has in fact sanctioned the war. Therefore it cannot be considered illegal due to being a War of Aggression.
Presumably that's why the Bush administration was so intent on convincing everyone that Iraq had WMD: so they could spin it as self defense. (Though they didn't seem much concerned with legality in other domestic or international contexts, so perhaps I'm dreaming.)
For Afghanistan we have a much better case, although it's more than a bit iffy to invade someone who would not extradite one of their residents without seeing any evidence. If we had shown the evidence and they still refused, I would call it a just war.
Though I don't equate "just" with "good" or "smart". Unfortunately the war has killed a lot of people and caused untold misery to many others, and utterly failed to achieve the goal that serves as its only possible justification.
A big problem with the post-WWII American psyche is that deep down not many of us recognize that some problems can't be solved by guns and bombs.
Iraq is an illegal war. Not by any international-law measure, but by American law. It was started by a rogue President who lied to the Congress to get the funding to wage it, and who had already transferred men, money, and material there from the legitimate Afghan conflict without their authority.
Also a serious abrogation by Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility for deciding who we're going to go to war against.
Though that responsibility has already been eroding for decades, and, practically speaking, that part of the US Constitution has been retired.
the treaty all nations signed
For the thoughtful, is is a problematic issue. On the one hand it seems unjust to hold country X accountable to some treaty it never signed, but on the other hand, it's beyond absurd to say that if country X invades a neighbor and exterminates the population, it is only a crime if X is a party to a treaty that forbids doing that.
The prevailing doctrine seems to be that if most of the world's nations agree on something like this, then it applies to everyone. (Unless of course you are a superpower or have one in your pocket.) However, according to various relevant Wikipedia articles, the notion has been under continuous debate since the Nuremberg trials.
Sorry mods, but how the fuck is this flamebait? Simply requesting backing up your claims with actual quotes or page and line-numbers, would be something of value to this discussion. Is even /. now infiltrated by the US gov't?
I don't concern myself overmuch with moderation of individual posts anymore. Some moderators obviously have a political agenda, some are apparently insane, and some apparently moderate at random. But ignoring occasional specific posts, moderators do a pretty good job on the overall effect.
So just say what you think needs to be said, and don't worry about how it gets moderated.
I do think the moderation system could be slightly improved if there weren't any negative mods - use upmods only, and maybe raise the cap a little. More spread should help the generally good mods rise above the noise.
An overall truthful reporting of the war is what's being revealed on wikileaks. Far more truthful than conventional media are reporting on in any event.
The MSM are barely reporting on the war at all, other than the political fights over surges and withdrawal schedules.
If an alien came to visit and turned on the evening news on a random night, it probably wouldn't discover that we are fighting two wars.
How can the US expect to talk down to countries like Iran and Burma for their human rights abuses when the US is guilty of extraordinary rendition and torture? It's lost the moral high ground with it's hypocrisy and it absolutely must try and better itself to regain that
Alas, we need a leader with vastly higher ethical standards, vastly stronger dedication to the rule of law, vastly more backbone, and vastly bigger balls than "don't rock the boat" Obama does. His "ignore the past" approach is legitimizing every illegal activity ever undertaken under the Bush/Cheney administration.
1) Invade and occupy another country
[...]
You'll have to point out to me the treaty all nations signed giving up the right to ever engage in war with another nation thereby making it "illegal".
There's a hell of a difference between "invade and occupy another country" and "engage in war".
And though I don't know what kind of treaties we are party to in this regard, we sure as hell prosecuted the German leadership for invading and occupying other countries in the Nuremberg trials. (The link will show you the four charges brought against the group in the main trial, the first two being of relevance to this thread.)
Notice that a couple of the people who were executed (Keitl, Jodl) were simply military high command, not Nazis. Notice also that Hess was found guilty of the two "Crimes against Peace" charges, but innocent of "War Crimes" and "Crimes against Humanity", and still got life in prison.
Thoughtful readers will want to scroll down and read the sections "Criticism" and "Legitimacy".
One more side note - we often hear the right wingers talk about respecting a nations "sovereignty" - yet the U.S. did not do it to the Afghanis, who had every legal right to wait for legitimate proof before persecuting anyone within their borders.
So much for sovereignty huh?
Yeah, I'm kind of skeptical about the idea that the UN has the authority to authorize one country to invade another. If they authorized someone to invade us or one of our friends we certainly wouldn't sit back and say "OK".
And as you (sort of) point out, the people who are quickest to drag in the UN as a justification for what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan are the people who are quickest to tell us the UN doesn't have any right to tell us what we can or must do.
The rationalizations we hear are so inconsistent, dishonest, or lame, because there isn't any rationalization that will stand up to scrutiny, and the actual reasons would outrage too much of the public if admitted. (The shame being that they don't outrage *all* the public.)
Afghanistan was where Al Qaeda established it training camps and bases, and organized several attacks on the US including 9/11 which killed about 3000 Americans.
But that was only possible because they used box cutters that were made in China. So how come no Chinese invasion?
Or Kansas/Michigan, where the second-worst terrorist attack against the USA was organized?
Unlike many other dictators, Saddam Hussein also built his pissant country's military to the 4th largest in the world, was invading neighboring countries, seeking and using various WMDs (ask the Kurds), and was a real threat to the region and the world.
Back in the 1980s, sure. But not in 2003.
And of course, he was *our* chum back in the 1980s.
It's funny to see how with all this right-wing "holy war against terrorism", "sacred" and untouchable military-industrial complex (and corporations in general), and preference of blind fanaticism over a simple reason and logic, some parts of modern USA are already resemble "religious dictatorship".
Lots of USAians think their religious scruples should be the law of the land. The Republicans have capitalized on this by catering to them (half-heartedly) since around 1980.
When, in the course of the years, we support the brutish and barbaric dictators in one part of the world, but then claim our righteousness against others, declaring they must be taken down " at all costs" we undermine what little support the world general population already has for us.
And probably worse, we have on occasion knocked off a legitimately elected government that wasn't doing what we wanted it to.
Makes our pompous shit about "spreading democracy" sound like... pompous shit.
Alas, while it's still inconvenient as hell, the only part of the Geneva Conventions binding on the USA are the parts we're actually signatory to.
So... if Dictator X isn't a signatory, he can do all the stuff we would normally consider to be war crimes, and they wouldn't be war crimes because he's not a party to the treaty?
Iraq was, with little doubt, producing weapons in violation of UN Resolution 687
And they ate them when we invaded, so we wouldn't find them.
They did have a new model of rocket that exceeded the allowed range (but only without a payload), but you could tune in a corporate-owned television station and watch the UN team running over them with bulldozers a few weeks before the invasion. The inspection team eventually left to avoid being killed by our bombs and missiles.
The Taliban offered to try bin Laden if the US could provide evidence. We rejected the offer, and invaded instead.
Also apparently not commonly known in the USA, Iran offered to help after 9/11, via neutral emissaries since we don't have diplomatic relations. Unfortunately GWB wanted to have an axis of evil more than he wanted to catch the perpetrators, so we not only snubbed Iran's offer, but also chewed out the emissaries for daring to suggest such a thing.
Actually the Germans made the rather absurd claim that Poland had attacked their forces. Just a bit of historical trivia that's rarely published in American history books. Not dissimilar to the sinking of the Maine or the Bay of Tonkin attack.
I've always been astonished that GWB or his cronies weren't smart enough to arrange an "incident" to justify invading Iraq.
By exposing how one has acted and reacted in the past, it makes it easier for one to predict how one will act and react in the future.
Are you supposing that the documents revealed anything along this line that the Taliban didn't already know after fighting us for eight years?
The elected representatives are elected to be our representatives so they can know for us.
BTW, almost none of our elected representatives have access to stuff that the military marks as secret. A few on committees are told some of it under a vow of secrecy, but then their hands are tied when they find out someone is doing something questionable.