So what do you plan on doing when the economic sanctions (which are already in place) aren't working? Make them feel more heat? And that means ultimately.... invasion. Funny. I'd laugh, if it wouldn't be terrifying to me that people haven't even learned anything from Iraq, Part Deux. First of all the economic sanctions in place are extremely light. Read up on the specifics for more details. They do not impact Iran's economy in a noticeable way at all. They "suggest" countries limit their weapon exports to Iraq but do not enforce it and in fact many countries still sell to them openly, including Russia.
Secondly, if Iraq *does* refuse to halt its nuclear program development and let the IAEA back in then it warrants military action. I understand you don't like war, but would you rather risk the deaths of millions of civilians by putting nukes in the hands of these madmen? Again, I'm referring to the government, not the population. Bottom line is that no country wants to risk that, which is why many countries outside of the US have made noise about Iran.
Economic sanctions are a great way to slow down that threat. Once things slow down they could go one of two ways:
1) Drop the nuclear program like Libya did and get re-accepted by the West 2) Keep on going the same route in which case we need to figure out how to kick their government out of power. If you have a better idea how to achieve this without resorting to war I would seriously welcome it, but I've yet to hear a workable idea.
The fact of the matter is that not all dictatorships in the world, or even the middle-east, have decided to go on a collision course with the West like Iran did. That's *their* choice and there are consequences for that. You can't keep on extending your missile range every three months, develop a nuclear program and openly call for the destruction of your neighbors and expect everyone to sit on their hands because they really dislike the proposition of going to war. Back in the 1930s there was a huge debate in the newspaper about Hitler and Nazi Germany, much like there is today about Iran. Back then we hoped for the best and assumed that "other people's problems are not our own" and look where it got us. Millions upon millions of dead people, and that was before the invention of nukes. Imagine how much worse it could be now and how many lives could have been spared if Nazi Germany would have been stopped before it started its invasions.
I'm a strong believer in disarming these militaristic dictatorships. They can have all the weapons in the world once they moderate there government, but until then... I'm not saying that has to translate into war. We can and should try alternatives so long as it makes sense.
If you get your view of the Muslim world from MEMRI, you are looking at the situation with blinders on.
Not to mention that they are also totalscumbags with a history of bullying their critics. If you go to the bottom of the Guardian article that tries to discredit MEMRI you will that a "correction" at the bottom where they go on to say that MEMRI's article (which they try to discredit above) has actually been verified by other sources and is probably true. In fact, much of the article is FUD and provides no real proof that they do anything wrong.
As for the wonderful other links you posted:
Antiwar.com is obviously not an objective source of information. Their self-professed goal is to prevent wars no matter what. There is such a thing as a justified war, but they'd be against that too. They (or anyone else) has yet to prove that MEMRI has ever a) mis-translated an Arabic media report with obviously malicious intent b) has made up media reports that never happened. Until they do that MEMRI is a valuable peek into what is being said in government-controlled media across the middle-east. When the official mouth-piece of the government runs a 12-episode TV movie about how Jews faked the Holocaust and how they also faked 9/11 then it *does* reflect badly on their government *as it should*.
As for Mr. Finkelstein, I'd hardly call him unbiased. He has a very colorful history as mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein -- In fact the bottom of page reads "In January 2008 Finkelstein made a lecture tour of Lebanon during which he met with high-ranking leaders of Hezbollah and defended the organization saying that Hezbollah represents 'hope.'"
Wow, thank you. That would be Hezbollah, which has been recognized as a terrorist group by many countries around the world outside of the US. His Holocaust-smearing history also does not reflect too well on him.
I was also a bit disturbed that war seems to be the only alternative to sanctions.
That's only the case when the alternative to action would be worse. In the case of Iran, our apathy has already cost the lives of thousands of people and if they get nuclear weapons we're talking both about a huge economic impact on the West as well as the lives of millions of people. I think those two huge issues warrant some action, as do other European and Middle-Eastern countries. Let's just say that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others are not keen on their enemy Iran threatening them with nukes.
If the U.S. didn't routinely traipse into the Middle East and assert itself violently, would we have fomented as much hate as we receive now?
I think so. I think radicalization of Islam would occur regardless of US action. Consider the fact that the Dutch political cartoons are said to have fomented radicalization and there we're being given a choice between our Freedom of Speech and their terrorism. I'm sorry, but I don't believe their violence warrants us dropping Western values in order to join their medieval culture. We have a right to Freedom of Speech and if that pisses them off then too bad. If we were to apply their line of reasoning we would have bombed Hugo Chavez for insulting George Bush, but we did not. And trust you me, Hugo Chavez says a lot of inciteful things. But that's his right, and we shouldn't bomb him for that.
Israel, Desert Storm, the Iraq conflict... it's enough to make Arab states feel pretty threatened. They can't compete with the scale of the United States military, but a nuclear device sure gets our attention and would make us think twice. I'm not necessarily debating the utility of our past military offensives, but to say that outright war is the only alternative to sanctions strikes me as pretty simplistic!
Desert Storm was initiated with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent rape and killings they carried out there. I'm sorry, but diplomatic pressure was not going to help there. Conquering Kuwait provided Iraq with enough oil to offset any sort of economic pressure we could have applied and I believe that a military response was well-warranted (as did the rest of the world).
Israel: our primary crime is supporting the existence of non-Muslims in the middle-east. Trust me, this pisses people off a lot more than any actual financial or operational support the US has given Israel over the years. The "moderate" Palestinian Authority Israel is being forced to negotiate with is still advocating a Jew-free Palestinian state and their official map of Palestine in their charter still covers all of Israel. We should also be clear that we're talking about an Arab-Israeli conflict, not a Palestinian-Israeli one, because if other Arab countries had absorbed Palestinians into their countries like Israel absorbed Jews evicted from Arab countries this conflict would have not lasted this long. It is still illegal for Palestinians to hold a job in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and to a certain extent also in Jordan -- they do this by design.
Iraq: In my view, the primary justification for using the military option in Iraq was to topple a dictator. Any other reasons that were given might be valid but are besides the point for me. We've tried applying diplomatic pressure on them for years in the hopes that the opposition would gain power but that didn't help. The US also got criticized severely for pulling out during the first Gulf war and allowing Saddam to massacre his opposition. My personal opinion is that toppling dictatorships is a good thing, even by military means, but I also feel that in the specific case of Iraq the implementation was badly botched. Too much politics and not enough planning. I'm not saying we should use the military option to topple governments at a whim but I also think it is important to use all resources possible (diplomatic first of course) to topple dictatorships all over the world. Dictatorship
Unfortunately the same can't be said about their military and Islamist government that profits greatly from that wonderful connection.
I can't believe that people are *still* protecting the Iranian government (note I'm not talking about their citizens) after all the crap they've pulled during the last two decades. Just because the US media has tuned into Iran in the last five years doesn't mean this story came out of the blue. Iran has been funding and training terrorist groups and publicly boasting about it for over 20 years now. We've been waiting for their population to overthrow the Islamist government for years yet that hasn't happened either. Just take a look at the kind of things coming out of their government-controlled media: http://memritv.org/
Yes, most Iranians dislike their government but no this won't be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of people die every year because of direct funding by the Iranians to terrorists. Ironically most of the victims are Muslim.
If you want to avoid war with Iran then you should be in favor of diplomatic action to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons which could be a pretext for such a war. By preventing economic sanctions from going through you leave the world no choice but turn to the military option. Also it is worth noting that we've held toothless diplomatic talk with Iran for decades now and that didn't work (if anything, their government got more radical). They need to feel the heat for there to be any change.
I'm calling bullshit. You don't hear Islamists complaining about the 1980s, they're complaining about today. We didn't turn Afghanistan into a bloodbath in 2001, everyone including the UN attests to the fact that the Taliban were pillaging and raping the people and the land. The security situation might suck there now that it's better to have that and hope for a better future than being raped on a daily basis without hope at all. The Afghanistan mission is backed by both the UN and NATO.
All right. You tell me where the Taliban came from. You are totally right that it was *already* a bloodbath before 2001. We put them in power. We pulled out of Afghanistan and left their country in a tailspin it *never* came out of. It was *our* weapons they were shooting at us (mostly). How is that not relevant? Does it "justify" them raping and murdering in their own country? Absolutely not. Is it relevant? Hell yes.
It's been over 20 years and multiple presidents have cycled through. The Taliban is allies with our enemies so that gives people even less of a right to say we are somehow responsible for this. One of our allies messed up the country 20 years after we cut off connections with them. That's hardly directly our fault. If anything we went in to clean up the problem and that should reflect positively on us.
Furthermore, the US is a Democracy with a rotating leadership. It makes as much sense to refer to a 30-year old President as it does treating today's Germany like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Different leaders, different attitudes, different countries.
It's a leadership which, supposedly, we elect. We are all part of the problem. We should be part of a solution. We have had an ongoing attitude of heavy-handed intervention which, if anything, has been getting worse. Besides, from their point of view they should what? Drop all of their grievances and forgive us because we had an election? Would we do that for them? I wouldn't.
There is nothing wrong with intervention so long as it works. Iraq was poorly implemented and was presented under the glare of a super-critical media from day one. And yes, I would expect people to hold Democracies less accountable for the actions of past Presidents then current ones. I didn't say they hold absolutely no responsibility, but definitely less.
I certainly have a problem with Lebanon's actions. I don't think that has any bearing on ours.
The problem is not with collateral damage in our quest to kill terrorists per se, though I think we do idiotic things on that score as well. That ranges from happenstance to stupidity; war is hard; mistakes do happen. The problem is what we are doing which has little or nothing to do with terrorism and a lot more to do with imperialism, putting ourselves in places we shouldn't be in in the first place and then saying "oops" when we kill civilians. That's not collateral damage. That's not accident. It's not even stupidity. It is much worse, and dropping a 500lb bomb on a wedding party and saying "Oh Man!" doesn't seem much different than blowing up a marketplace even if one of the attackers is wearing a uniform and flying an expensive jet. In some totally fscked way, the guy in the market has the high ground since at least he is willing to give his own life for his cause. The fact that we have fallen so far as to fail that comparison is shockingly sad. In some cases (*not all*) our warfare has turned into video games with no connection to people bleeding and dying. The guy living there does not have that luxury and it's not that entertaining to him.
You're drawing moral equivalence between someone who knowingly walks into a wedding party to blow up the crowd (Palestinians have done this in Israel) to a US pilot mistakenly bombing a wedding party based on incorrect intelligence report provided by a local civilian. Horrible mistakes do happen but you can't begin to compare the two.
Murdering civilians for no good reason is wrong. We should probably think about that too. We should probably have thought about that before we turned Afghanistan into a bloodbath (in the '80s) and armed bin Ladin. You might remember we turned the whole region into a battleground in WWII as well. Unfortunately, they don't separate us very well from the Russians and the Germans either, so the distrust of us "Westerners" goes rather deep, just in the modern age.
The problem with blaming the victim at this point is figuring out who it is. I'm calling bullshit. You don't hear Islamists complaining about the 1980s, they're complaining about today. We didn't turn Afghanistan into a bloodbath in 2001, everyone including the UN attests to the fact that the Taliban were pillaging and raping the people and the land. The security situation might suck there now that it's better to have that and hope for a better future than being raped on a daily basis without hope at all. The Afghanistan mission is backed by both the UN and NATO.
Furthermore, the US is a Democracy with a rotating leadership. It makes as much sense to refer to a 30-year old President as it does treating today's Germany like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Different leaders, different attitudes, different countries.
Bottom line is that the West does its best to kill terrorists with minimal collateral cost but it's not easy and *everyone* makes mistakes sometimes, including Britain, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. I find it peculiar that a few months ago Lebanon bombed the crap out of their local Palestinian refugee camp, killing hundreds of civilians in the process and not a single person condemned them. Not in the media. Not in the UN. I would go further and say that the media only published the official government version and the UN actually passed a resolution expressing full support of their actions. So apparently it's okay for Muslims to massacre their own civilians on purpose but when someone in the West does it by accident while trying to target terrorists that hide in civilian structures, well suddenly we're evil or something. Give me a break!
The only difference is that people know that they can criticize the West without having their skull smashed open, while the same is not true in Egypt or Lebanon. People are chicken shits that way. For every one thing the West does wrong you could find one hundred things countries in the middle-east do wrong yet you will only see protests against the West. Their action shows that they don't really care about Human Rights.
In the grand scheme of things, you are better off attacking terrorist infrastructure than individual terrorist elements. I'm not talking about Iraq here but rather the general war on terror.
Israel has been fighting terrorism for decades longer than the US and you will note that they don't focus 100% their resources on killing off a single person, even the leaders of these groups. Taking out the leader *is* a great achievement but what it buys you is more time and reduces their sophistication as opposed to ending the war. They eventually get replaced by someone else.
Yes, you want to take out the terrorist leaders, but you gain more bang-for-the-buck by taking out their infrastructure and reducing their capability to small arms fire. For example: you could gain a heck of a lot more bang-for-your buck if you attacks terrorist training camps in say Pakistan, Syria and Iran then going after specific individuals. You could also achieve a lot by cutting off their source of revenue. There is a huge difference between a small terrorist group and one backed by a state such as Iran. A lot of what you're seeing today didn't come out of the blue but rather is a result of years' worth of training in terrorist camps.
Coming back to Iraq, I believe there was that Democracy would defuse the ideological base for radical Islam. Muslims have been complaining for decades now that the US preaches Freedom yet does not help them overthrow their dictators. Democracy is a very difficult form of government to achieve, but it has the huge advantage of the leader cycling every couple years and protection of minorities. Hopefully you can understand why this would have a huge positive impact in fighting the ideological base of the radicals. We're pushing Democracy, they're pushing the Caliphate governmental system. We are no more oppressing their people than the guys pushing the Caliphate on them are. Consider that radical Islamists have tried to surplant the leaders of other middle-eastern countries before (Egypt, Jordan, etc) and replace it with a Caliphate before. So far they have failed, Iran being the exception to the rule. If you were to look at all the countries in the middle-east that had dictators, Iraq was probably the easiest one to overthrow with the most compelling reason to. You have:
Egypt, Jordan: signed peace treat with Iran and are US allies Saudi Arabia, Pakistan: ideological base of terrorism, hard to overthrow, our ally (at least officially) Iran: ideological base of terrorism, might be developing nukes, hard to overthrow, our enemy Iraq: easy to overthrow, might be developing nukes, our enemy
Iraq might have simply represented the easiest way in and the US was hoping for a domino effect: if we do a good job here, people might overthrow their leaders in neighboring countries. I'm also not downplaying the possibility of nuclear weapons in Iraq. For all of the mistakes the US intelligence agencies made, they still did a much better job than the IAEA (the UN's official nuclear watchdog). The US didn't know for sure but given Saddam's bad history they took the chance only to find out they were wrong. Okay, that's too bad but the very least they booted one dictator out.
The US was hoping to transform the middle-east into a Democracy. I think many countries even in Europe were hoping for the same thing. The only difference is that history the US acts on its ambitions whereas Europe sits on their fingers. Sometimes apathy is not the correct approach (note WW2). In any case, the good news is that the security situation is starting to turn around in Iraq (fatalities are down in a big way). The bad news is that no one is doing anything about Iran, not even on a diplomatic level.
PS: I think it's also important to note that rogue state + nuke = potentially millions of dead citizens. Bin Laden is a mass-murderer, but his capability was limited to hundreds at a time, not millions. Iraq might not have had nuclear weapons but their biological weapons allowed them to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people at a time. By that token, Bin Laden is still a small fish.
No, I don't think the attacks on 9/11 were justifiable. No, I don't believe the attacks on Spain & England were justifiable. No, I don't believe the murder of Theo van Gogh was justifiable. But I do know that fundamentalist zealots were able to use our previous actions to motivate some of their people to attack us. That is something that needs to be understood. Trying to explain it away with false excuses isn't going to do anything to improve the situation. As much as you might like to deny it, your answers excuse their behavior. "I'm not saying he should have done it, but I understand..."
Radical Islamists are murdering anyone who does not share their views, including other Muslims. The fact that they do not like their views does not give them the right to try to kill me, nor should I change my views in any way because of their threats to my life.
Your line of reasoning essentially says we should change what we're doing because we're pissing them off. Now, if we're doing something wrong (independently of what they say) and we should improve upon this then fine. But if we're making changes *because* they're murdering our people then it's a mistake.
Who cares who Spain morally supported? Is holding an opinion justification for mass-murder now? The fact of the matter is that we have a heck of a lot more reasons to justify taking out their people than they do to take ours out. If they were to lay down their arms today and promise to stop attacking us then there is a really good chance this war would end. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for us laying down our arms.
I'll throw out some ideas on the table for you:
1) No other major religion protests violently and kills people when people make fun of their religion. Journalists in the west caved and censored itself for fear of their lives. Theo van Gogh got murdered because he did not.
2) Islam oppresses *billions* of women across the world, yet no one says a word.
3) The media gives very terse coverage of the middle-east. The center of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (which is really the Arab-Israeli conflict because it's much bigger than just the Palestinians) is Israel's very existence. The main beef radical Islamists hold against Israel is the existence of Jews *anywhere* in the middle-east. One of the things you never hear about is that more Jews got evicted from Arab lands in 1948 then Palestinians left Israel. Fatah, which is the "moderate" party the US is asking Israel to negotiate with talks about 1967 borders in English but when they switch to Arabic they talk about taking over all of Israel. Their official charter calls for Israel's destruction and their map of Palestine includes all of Israel. I won't even get started on Hamas. No one seems to mention in the media that Palestinians refuse to allow *any* Jews to live on "their" land. Many so-called settlers have offered to relinquish their Israeli citizenship in favor of a Palestinian one. They asked to live peacefully under a future Palestinian state as normal citizens. Palestinians refused them saying they don't accept any Jews on any of their land. Ever notice how they keep on saying that "the settlements are the main barriers to peace?" What they're actually talking about are Jews living on "their land". If that isn't racist I don't know what is.
War was not a last resort in Iraq this time around. We declared war on a country who did nothing to us. But they could have done something to Israel, which I don't understand why we are protecting them. Why do we protect them, they do not give anything in return.
1) A strategic ally: the only democracy in the middle-east, a place that both Russia and the US are trying to get a foot-hold in. 2) Exports tons of high-quality technology: a large portion of Intel CPUs, cell phones, health care products are designed there. 3) Business opportunities: their GDP is through the roof and all major US companies have an Israeli branch. You will find that the vast number of startups that make it big have started in Israel. 4) Security exports: Israel is the #1 exporter of security technologies, ranging from protective vests to anti-missile systems to unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, etc.
I would ask you to compare this to what Britain and France does for the US given their relative sizes. It's pretty impressive.
Cuba is no less of a priority than any other dictatorship. My wife is Cuban, but she was born and raised here. She's visited down there and the majority of people are living under the poverty level, Castro controls everything, including all media. We are the only country that won't trade with them. Other countries are allowed to drill for oil off their shores, but we are not.
Yes, but Cuba is not funding terrorism against the US, nor is it gassing its people. People might be poor but there is no active genocide going on. The same can't be said for other countries around the world.
Our military is shrinking, especially in the upper ranks. People are just enlisting to get the college money and then leaving. After the older people retire, we will be left with a very small military in 10 years.
I can't speak to that. The same is true for the armies of many countries around the world. To a certain degree, technology is stepping in to replace certain positions. Still, you probably know more about this than I do.
I agree that China and India have played a major role in our economic downturn, but if the government would tax the people less, then we could work for less money, and businesses would stay here.
It's not that simple, otherwise other countries in the world would have done the same. India and China is so cheap that even if the tax rate was zero you still wouldn't be able to compete with them on all levels. I think you need to wrap your head around the fact that some of their people work for around $2 an hour. I don't think any American employee wants to lower his standard of living to that.
We may not be strapped for resources now, but we are on the road to getting there in 20 to 50 years. I for one, do not want to leave a crippled country to my kids and grandkids. Too many people vote for what a candidate can do for them right now. We need to vote for somebody who will ensure our country will be here for future generations.
I think each and every one of us has the ability to do exactly that. First, take responsibility for your own actions and clean up your personal debt. Then encourage others around you to do the same. If everyone did that I promise you it would do more to help America's future than anything else. I find it silly that Americans expect the government to take care of problems for them which are completely within their control. I would personally only expect the government to take responsibility for anything *beyond* my personal control and I believe this attitude will lead to a smaller government which is what most people want.
Every empire that has been built throughout history has eventually fallen. Ours will be no different. We need to stop pretending t
You touch upon different points so I'll try answering them one at a time.
I agree with you that the 1st Gulf War was not followed through, just like Korea. If the generals were allowed to handle war instead of politicians, wars would end quicker. We have full right to be in Afghanistan, not to rebuild, but to find Bin Laden. Does anybody remember him? I'm not saying to completely ignore the rest of the world. I believe we should help the less fortunate, but in 20 years, we are going to be one of those less fortunate and who is going to be there to help us? Iraq, Kuwait, Israel? They only care about themselves.
I disagree with this because of what I wrote earlier: other people's problems inevitably become your own. On the flip side, the more democratic countries there are in the world, the more McDonald's we could open up and our economy grows. From a reconstruction point of view, the US is suffering from the fact that other countries chickened out (yet still expect to be awarded lucrative reconstruction contracts). If everyone chipped in then what you wrote wouldn't be the case. Take the prime example of Afghanistan: the invasion was UN and NATO backed and politicians routinely speak about how much they believe in their reconstruction yet they rarely translated words into action. We have to start rewarding countries based on their actions, not their words.
We have so many policies that they conflict with one another. Why do we show leniency to North Korea, but not Cuba? I think Germany and Britain is more than capable of taking care of themselves now, so why are we still there. If we pulled our troops out of most of the foreign countries and station them here, we could get rid of the Department of Homeland Security, since they don't do anything at all anyway.
I agree with this point 100%.
During your two posts, you spoke nothing of how we are going to do it. You just say that we need to. How do we get more people to enlist in the Armed Services and more importantly, keep them in. I know, lets either slow down or stop sending them to the worst places on Earth.
War is never pretty, which is why it should be the last resort. I don't think you need more troops. I think you need more foreign countries to chip in.
If we are so concerned with Cuba, lets invade them. I hear they have great beaches there. I wouldn't mind being deployed there for a year if I was still enlisted. Lets take care of Chavez, isn't he a dictator too? He controls alot of oil too so we would benefit (notice hint of sarcasm). What about Myanmar, wasn't their coup just obliterated? Guess since they aren't in the news anymore, nobody cares. Our problem is we care for the Middle East too much at the expense of the rest of the world. Iraq may be the cradle of civilization, but that's how long they've been fighting, and we cannot stop it, even in 100 years.
I think Cuba should be on a long list of countries we'd like to pressure to improve their government but it is near the bottom in terms of priority because the level of oppression and threat to the outside world remains low. I agree with you that the middle-east should not be the primary focus of international community because there are many other important causes to focus on.
I think all the money that we could save by downsizing our government would be better spent on research and development. Remember when we used to be #1? Our kids are not getting the same education that we all got over the last 60 years. Lets develop technologies to get us off of oil, then we'll see how the Middle East likes us then.
I agree with developing technologies to get us off oil, if only for the sake of political independence. I believe that the recent economic downturn has more to do with China and India then it does with anything else. I still believe that the US should work very strongly to reduce its debt (and reeducate its population in individual debt reduction whi
Look, back in the 1st Gulf War the US got criticized for not staying behind to help the opposition overthrow Saddam. The 2nd time around they actually stuck around and then they got criticized for that. No matter what they do they get criticized.
I am not openly advocating one way or another in the case of the 2nd Iraq war but I am a strong believer that in the case of the 1st Iraq war there was good reason to attack Iraq and push them out of Kuwait. I also believe that "other people's problems" quickly become your own. Everyone ignored Germany in World War 2 because it was "someone else's problem" until it became their own. The same is true in today's global Jihad war. One way or another we're all involved.
Yes I believe there is serious work to be done on the domestic front but I would also point out that the US would be in a much better situation if others in the Western World also pulled their weight. Take a look at what's going on in Afganistan. It was a UN sanctioned mission. Everyone was on board. Yet when push comes to shove the only countries sending any serious troops in are the US and Canada. If everyone else pitched in then I think:
1) Security would be restored a lot quicker with fewer deaths 2) The domestic impact to our countries would be less severe
Instead, we are pulling the weight for other people.
We need to be honest with ourselves: this isn't a foreign policy vs domestic conflict. It's an ideological conflict that we are fighting on both fronts. 20% of Britain's population is Muslim, and poorly integrated at that. If you've followed the news in the past years then you know what kind of a serious problem they're having with radical Muslims. This is a war that must be fought on *both* a domestic and foreign front in order for us to win. Ron Paul is taking the same approach as the NDP political group is taking in Canada: turning a blind eye and hoping the problem takes care of itself. How can those idiots honestly expects Afghanistan to improve if we follow their advice and pulled out all security forces and only left Engineers behind to rebuild? They'd be executed within a week and the Taliban would take over within two. We need to tackle radical Islam ideology both on a diplomatic and military level, both on a domestic and foreign-policy level.
The US might have implemented their foreign policy badly, but at least they're trying! Apathy is even worse in my eyes.
So I take it that you support the use of military force to solve the world's problems?
Good luck with that... you sir, are the one who is a joke. Where did I write this in my post?
I believe Human Rights activists will achieve more if they were to pressure their government to pressure middle-eastern dictatorships. At no point did I say I support the *exclusive* use of military force to solve the world's problems. On the flip side, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and his soldiers began raping the women did you honestly believe that anything short of a military response would stop them? Yes, I support applying military pressure *as part of a total package* applied on abusive governments but not exclusively.
Look, the US tried the diplomatic route by leveraging economic sanctions against Iran instead of trying to bomb it. The Human Rights organizations *still* rallied against them! What's the point of trying to please people who will complain no matter what you do? They should be *supporting* economic sanctions because the alternative are military attacks. By criticizing the government no matter what it does they actually guarantee *more* wars, not less. They also ensure that the massive worldwide abuses of women go unchecked because we are so fixated on splitting hairs. I'm fixated on getting results, not holding hands and holding candle-light vigils will bring world peace. Diplomatic pressure *can* prevent wars, but only if it has teeth!
What I am trying to say is that Human Rights activists should be putting massive pressure on these oppressive governments to change, either directly or by pressuring our government to pressure them through diplomatic and even military means. And yes, I consider military means to be reasonable when a Iranian bomb can wipe out over a *million* people at a time and they've shown they mean what they say by funding middle-eastern terrorist groups for decades now. Iran is already responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the middle-east.
I'll bite, since you're obviously waiting for this...
The only people voting for Ron Paul are internet bots. His rating is so low it could actually be caused by the polling margin of error. The guy is a joke and his platform is a joke. I doubt he could garner more votes even running as a Democrat (which is what he should have done).
As for all the so-called people voting for Ron Paul: his ratings show how marginalized your views are. If you'd spend half the time and money you did on Ron Paul on Human Rights issues in the middle-east you would have actually made more of a difference in the world. Everyone is tripping over themselves trying to show they hate their government more than everyone else (apparently it's the "in" thing to do nowadays), and not just in the US. Meanwhile billions of women are being oppressed in the Islamic world and millions of them are being raped and killed in Darfur. What is being done about it? Nothing. Why? Because it's easier to criticize a government that won't bash your skull in then do the *real* work of criticizing middle-eastern dictatorships and make a difference where it counts. Anti-war activists say they're against war but their actions actually ensure that wars will get worse in the future. Yesterday they were protecting Saddam Hussein's right to torture his people. Today they are protecting Iran's right to wipe out Israel using nuclear weapons. Who knows what wonderful policy they'll dream up of tomorrow:) I'm not necessarily advocating a gun-ho approach to the world, but I note with cynicism that no leftist group has tried toppling these governments before the US did. Like I said, it's much easier for them to criticize governments that won't bash their skulls in.
In 2003, when Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested, raped and then beaten to death in Iran where was the public outcry? How can you spend a week making noise about Zahra Kazemi and *years* making noise about the US government? That's not advocating Human Rights!
You don't compromise with terrorists because history has shown that every single time you give them a finger they want your entire arm...
Oh... so now terrorism is unique? Separate from all other types of war? Just a few moments ago you claimed "terrorism" was just another "war strategy". You can always negotiate with your enemy. You can't necessarily negotiate with the foot soldiers...but that's not the point. Foot soldiers care about their lives and just want to go home at the end of the day. Terrorists in the middle-east are after 72 virgins, not life. You can't negotiate with someone whose ultimate goal is your death (your life is not negotiable). This is like trying to reason with members of a cult. At least when you negotiate with a formal state you can hold them responsible for their actions (if they break treaties you know their address). The same can't be said for terrorists. Terrorism places you in a much more difficult position if you would like to sign some sort of treaty (and practically speaking it simply does not work).
First of all there is a huge difference between Greenpeace activists and a mass-murdering group of people
The point remains that activists are often pulled from the ranks of university students. The form their activism takes may be different, but a willingness to volunteer, to make sacrifices, even to die for an ideal is a trait found strongest in students. The students at least want to live. Most of them at least distinguish the difference between civilians and non-civilians. The ultimate goal of students isn't 72 virgins. It isn't death. Jihad terrorists worship in a cult of death and purposefully attack civilians. You don't negotiate with that.
All Islamic countries I know of violate the Human Rights of women, yet you hear 100x more complaints about America from these groups then the mass-oppression of *billions* of women worldwide!
So? We are far more outraged by what our own governments do then what others do. Why is that surprising? These people are supposed to be represent us. I don't condone torture. So when I find out someone is committing torture on my dollar, in my name, and claiming its for my protection... FUCK THAT.
Cleaning up oppression and corruption in foreign countries is all well and good, but the first order of business is cleaning up our own fucking act. I'll focus my attention on Darfur and Tibet after my own government stops torturing innocent civilians, hell I don't even want my own government torturing honest to god terrorists... we should be better than that.
You're just picking on a strawman. Your government will never be perfect no matter where you live. By focusing most of your energy against decent governments instead of oppressive dictatorships you ensure that the latter ensue indefinitely. You assume that there is such a thing as a perfect government and if you criticize your own enough it'll get there. That's quite impossible. The simple proof of that is that no government in the world is free of black marks in the past decade, including most European countries and Canada. So while you waste your time splitting hairs billions of people suffer abroad. While people on the left yearn for a good Utopian fantasy women are being raped in the millions and no one is doing anything to help them. The left abuses the word Human Rights and made me cynical about their so-called efforts to help people around the world because they do such an awful job at it and they criticize all the wrong people. When Iran arrested, tortured, and killed a Canadian journalist a few years ago people were too busy criticizing the Canadian government for god knows what stupidity instead of mounting a concerted effort to hold Iran responsible.
The fact of the matter is that people on the Left are lazy. They know it's easier to criticize the Western World because no one will bash their skulls in. If they had any sort of backbone they would actually focus their efforts on Middle-Eastern and African leaderships the majority of the time and see how far they get.
Terrorism is a war strategy, not a form of desperation.
1) Its actually both.
2) And like any war you win it by taking away the reasons to fight, and finding common ground, both sides making concessions. You don't compromise with terrorists because history has shown that every single time you give them a finger they want your entire arm. I don't mean to imply that you reply only on a military level, but "kiss and make up" is just plain ignorant with these people. They say one thing to the media but demand another thing in private. You need to attack them both on a military level and on an ideological level. You don't hold dialog with the groups resorting to violence but rather only talk to the groups that agree to stick to bloodless dialog.
If you actually look into the statistics you will find that the more educated the person (as in University-level education) the more likely they are to become a suicide bomber.
Activists are always generally well educated. This is common knowledge. Look no further than the people spiking trees for greenpeace, blockading roads, protesting at the whitehouse...and not just in the US? Who stood up to the tanks in China? University students are over represented in anything like this.
So how do resolve the problem? You think shooting at them is going to acheive squat? The -only- solution is to talk. And sure, their demands are over the moon unreasonable... 'disband capitalism and convert to islam...' but their real grievances are usually genuine, and often well founded. Absolutely not. First of all there is a huge difference between Greenpeace activists and a mass-murdering group of people. If Greenpeace was blowing up people you can be sure that the government would be hunting them down, down to the land man, and with good reason.
Everyone and their grandmother always has a "genuine grievances" but that doesn't make the world go round. What kind of a message are you sending to the world when terrorists get concessions but poor Tibet monks do not? I am precisely for sending the *opposite* message: you negotiate and empower the moderates and crack down on terrorists without the blink of an eye. It shocks me how many so-called Human Rights activists conviniently turn a blind eye to the Human Rights abuses of these groups and advocate on behalf of psychos such as Saddam Hussein yet they won't spend 1/10th of that same energy helping Tibet monks or the people in Darfur.
These people abuse the term Human Rights by excusing terrorism. They are empowering exactly the wrong people. All Islamic countries I know of violate the Human Rights of women, yet you hear 100x more complaints about America from these groups then the mass-oppression of *billions* of women worldwide! Their silence is deafening.
So what makes Islam different from Judaism? After all the Torah says that we should execute those who plant two crops in the same field or are drunk, enslave those who surrender to us in war, and that slavery is permitted. 1) The written Torah contains phrases such as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" but you've got to remember that Judaism does not interpret the written Torah literally as you have mentioned. The oral Torah serves as an interpretation of the written Torah and things like "a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye" actually mean that one should provide adequate financial compensation for any damage he has caused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Torah
2) In my experience (talking with Muslim friends), Muslims don't have a concept of "interpreting" the Koran. They believe that the Koran is the literal word of God and as such is not open to any form of interpretation. By extension, when some yahoo teaches them the Jihadi interpretation of the Koran they don't understand how one could question it.
What would I do to make america safer? I'd stop fixating on paranoid fear reactions, and spend my time improving relations with muslims, resolving our differences, helping their countries become prosperous, healing the rifts between us. Buhahaha! Smarter people have tried decades before 9/11 and they failed miserably. The leftist media has propagated a false message that desperation breed terrorism. If you actually look into the statistics you will find that the more educated the person (as in University-level education) the more likely they are to become a suicide bomber. Also you will note that many non-Muslim nations have endured much worse than what the Muslim nations are whining about yet you don't hear about people from Tibet or Darfur blowing themselves up.
Terrorism is a war strategy, not a form of desperation. The more people excuse it, the more profitable it becomes, and the more often it will get used.
being a Muslim in the US must be tough And with good reason. They would be in a much better position if they took active measures against extremists in their midst but instead the only time you see their leaders on TV it is to defend those same extremists (think C.A.I.R). I would love to see:
1) Public condemnation of their extremists by community leaders without the simultaneous scapegoating of America and Israel in the same breath. There are poor people all over the world who had worse done to them (think Tibet and Darfur) and you don't see them blowing people up. Excusing terrorism is taramount to advocating it. In the few cases where non-Muslims have committed terrorist acts in the documented past their community has always cracked down on them severely. Tthey ended up in jail with a harsh sentence and children were educated to avoid such a behavior. We should expect no less of Islam.
2) Their community take active measures to educate their children that the Jihad interpretation of the Koran is wrong. What most people don't know is that some Muslims refuse to even consider that there is such a thing as interpretation of the Koran. I was once told by one that what is written in the Koran is the infallible word of God, "how can you interpret that?" Well, yes that's nice and all but then you're excusing mass-murder of non-Muslims. All other major religious are based on texts full of violence yet they *chose* to interpret it peacefully. Islam must do the same or they have no place in the world.
3) Islam must accept other religion's right to exist. Christians tried to mass-convert Jews and look where that got them. There is nothing wrong with the desire to convert people to your religion but Islam goes way beyond that, often advocating violence against anyone who does not convert and death to those who convert out of the religion.
4) Islam must accept criticism from inside and out. Last time I checked people were posting political cartoons about Jews, Christians and Hindus all over the world without any violent protests or death threats. Muslims must grow a sense of humor.
5) The silent majority speak up against extremists. I'm talking about people speaking out in mass rallies and campuses across the world. I've had Muslim friends who were very nice and polite, but the second you mention America or Israel they go ape-shit beyond the norm. It is one thing to criticize a country using the same standards you'd apply to anyone else. It is another thing altogether to apply double-standards to countries you don't like. I'll give you a simple example: Israel withdrew all civilians and military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The Egyptian-Gaza border has been under Egyptian control since June 2007 when Hamas staged a violent coup against Fatah (another Palestinian group). Gaza has since then launches thousands upon thousands of missiles into neighboring Israeli towns. Children's day-cares, civilian schools and houses have all been hit yet whenever Israel hints at responding the world condemns it. Israel tries killing the people launching missiles, it got condemned. It then tried reducing imports into Gaza which pass through Israel, it got condemned. It then tried reducing the amount of electricity they provide Gaza because that same electricity was used to build missiles, it got condemned. What else can Israel do short of committing suicide? What other country in the world would be expected to provide both water and electricity to a terrorist state that was attacking it? Israel has been doing both for years now. You can be sure that if anyone launched missiles against any other country in the world they would be carpet-bombed within a week and no international condemnation would follow. If it's good enough for other countries, it should be good enough for America and Israel. When British trains are bombed it is "inexcusable" but when the same happens in Israel or America it's "understandable". With all due respect, terrorism is *never* understandable.
None of what I advocate above goes beyond what members of other religions are expected to and already do today. I look forward to a world where Islam coexists with others, but if they are unable to take that position then they leave us with no choice but war.
Who cares if you have to take off your shoes before you get on a plane? I'd rather bear with such minor inconveniences in favor of better security. What shocks me is that people don't complain about the obvious problem with flying: the lack of leg room! Leg room has been shrinking for years and for anyone 6 foot or higher it's downright impossible to come out of a plane without back problems.
Airline and airport "fees", on the other hand, have been increasing over the past couple years.
Why don't people stick to *those* important issues and get things done instead of complaining about more controversial issues they might well be wrong about? There is no chance you of you being wrong about wanting more leg-room.
Touche. I *did* write such a thing in my original post but it looks like I took out that paragraph before clicking submit. I apologize would would like to clarify: My intent is *not* to comment on the specific court case in question but rather on the general idea being put forward.
I wasn't saying I'm against live reporting from court cases.
Well, yes, you were, because you said "I think you guys are wrong in suggesting that this [sic] limits Freedom of Speech in some unfair manner.", and "this" refers to what the police chief is suggesting.
I stated somewhere near the top of my post that I wasn't commenting on the specifics of the article's court case, but rather on the general idea of deferring publication of details until the case goes to court.
If the state does anything wrong it will come out once the case goes to court
I wish I had your naive confidence. Maybe it will come out sometimes, when the court and prosecutor are actually doing their job well, but often it won't.
I don't understand... nothing changes. Regardless of how the prosecution and defense lawyers do their job, they will have the same evidence available to them when the case goes to court whether the details get publicized way before or immediately when the case goes to court. From an evidence point of view, nothing changes.
Whether the media discloses that the state did something wrong in advance of a court case or right when it begins doesn't make much of a difference as far as democracy is concerned (as far as I can tell).
It makes a big difference, because once the guy has been convicted, it's very hard to overturn that conviction, even if there is new evidence. I wasn't suggesting that details of the case be published *after* the case is settled, rather when immediately before it *begins*. Once the lawyers are chosen and say about a month before the first court date the media should be allowed to publish their information.
There is no possible justification for the government to stop newspapers reporting on public affairs like lawsuits. The only justification that is even remotely plausible is that reporting taints the good name of the person who has been accused but not found guilty yet, but that's still pretty weak compared with the importance of having the public be able to see what their government and judicial system are doing. In practice, I hear about *a lot* of cases where the media taints a person's good name before his case is settled and I hear of almost no cases where the media exposes some government corruption. Regardless, I wasn't referring to lawsuits here. I am saying this law should only apply to live reporting from war zones or when an important arrest is made involving terrorism charges.
"Whether the story breaks out way before the defendant reaches the court or on the day of he still enjoys the exact same legal rights." "The media doesn't protect people's rights, the courts do."
You have contradicted your own argument, if the media has no effect on a persons rights then it shouldn't matter what (or when) they report. The media could reveal information useful for the defendant's case, but my point is that whether they do it way before the court case or only once it begins makes no difference for his defense.
If you disclose positions and strengths of military forces, the enemy can attack and kill your forces.
If you do live reporting from court cases,... I give up. What bad consequence is going to happen?
I wasn't saying I'm against live reporting from court cases. I was saying I'm against reporters disclosing information about these arrests before they reach court. You don't want to arrest one guy and alert his partners that they should go into hiding so that by the time you interrogate him it's too late to catch them. You still get live reporting from court cases.
All the media does is apply pressure on politicians or citizens which indirectly affects what laws get passed.
Yes, it's called "democracy". You should try it sometime, instead of pushing for fascist "the state can do no wrong and will protect you" ideas. I wasn't making this assumption. If the state does anything wrong it will come out once the case goes to court. And you legislate it must go to court within a certain number of days or the censor is lifted anyway. Whether the media discloses that the state did something wrong in advance of a court case or right when it begins doesn't make much of a difference as far as democracy is concerned (as far as I can tell).
I think you guys are wrong in suggesting that this limits Freedom of Speech in some unfair manner. How is this any different from preventing live media reports in the middle of a war-zone? Does it really make sense to broadcast live reports of the exact positions and plans of your armed forces?
In my view, this is a very reasonable limitation of Freedom of Speech and more to the point it simply *delays* when you may report on the matter. If you believe that this delay hampers the rights of the defendant in an unfair way then that is worth discussing, but I don't see this as being the case.
It doesn't help the cops torture anyone or pull any dirty tricks because whether the media reports on it right away or when the case reaches court it amounts to the same thing: cops that abuse the rights of the defendant will be punished by having the evidence revoked and/or the officers themselves punished. Whether the story breaks out way before the defendant reaches the court or on the day of he still enjoys the exact same legal rights.
If you are afraid that defendants will be tortured then laws should be passed to punish the offenders once the case reaches court and laws should be passed to ensure such cases *must* reach the court within a reasonable period of time. This way anyone who abuses their power won't get off easy.
The media doesn't protect people's rights, the courts do. All the media does is apply pressure on politicians or citizens which indirectly affects what laws get passed. The media has a very short attention span. Their stories are controlled by a spin factor more than anything else, as opposed to courthouses that take the necessary time to study the case in great detail. I wouldn't want to live in a court where a person's guilt is determined by the media, if you know what I mean, because popularity and justice are two different things altogether.
Everything that touches China gets reserve-engineered in a matter of months. Try getting the government to crack down on such clones and you'll find out how useless it is.
I would think twice before storing *any* valuable information on China-based servers.
Slashdot Mirror
Secondly, if Iraq *does* refuse to halt its nuclear program development and let the IAEA back in then it warrants military action. I understand you don't like war, but would you rather risk the deaths of millions of civilians by putting nukes in the hands of these madmen? Again, I'm referring to the government, not the population. Bottom line is that no country wants to risk that, which is why many countries outside of the US have made noise about Iran.
Economic sanctions are a great way to slow down that threat. Once things slow down they could go one of two ways:
1) Drop the nuclear program like Libya did and get re-accepted by the West
2) Keep on going the same route in which case we need to figure out how to kick their government out of power. If you have a better idea how to achieve this without resorting to war I would seriously welcome it, but I've yet to hear a workable idea.
The fact of the matter is that not all dictatorships in the world, or even the middle-east, have decided to go on a collision course with the West like Iran did. That's *their* choice and there are consequences for that. You can't keep on extending your missile range every three months, develop a nuclear program and openly call for the destruction of your neighbors and expect everyone to sit on their hands because they really dislike the proposition of going to war. Back in the 1930s there was a huge debate in the newspaper about Hitler and Nazi Germany, much like there is today about Iran. Back then we hoped for the best and assumed that "other people's problems are not our own" and look where it got us. Millions upon millions of dead people, and that was before the invention of nukes. Imagine how much worse it could be now and how many lives could have been spared if Nazi Germany would have been stopped before it started its invasions.
I'm a strong believer in disarming these militaristic dictatorships. They can have all the weapons in the world once they moderate there government, but until then... I'm not saying that has to translate into war. We can and should try alternatives so long as it makes sense.
Not to mention that they are also total scumbags with a history of bullying their critics. If you go to the bottom of the Guardian article that tries to discredit MEMRI you will that a "correction" at the bottom where they go on to say that MEMRI's article (which they try to discredit above) has actually been verified by other sources and is probably true. In fact, much of the article is FUD and provides no real proof that they do anything wrong.
As for the wonderful other links you posted:
Antiwar.com is obviously not an objective source of information. Their self-professed goal is to prevent wars no matter what. There is such a thing as a justified war, but they'd be against that too. They (or anyone else) has yet to prove that MEMRI has ever a) mis-translated an Arabic media report with obviously malicious intent b) has made up media reports that never happened. Until they do that MEMRI is a valuable peek into what is being said in government-controlled media across the middle-east. When the official mouth-piece of the government runs a 12-episode TV movie about how Jews faked the Holocaust and how they also faked 9/11 then it *does* reflect badly on their government *as it should*.
As for Mr. Finkelstein, I'd hardly call him unbiased. He has a very colorful history as mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein -- In fact the bottom of page reads "In January 2008 Finkelstein made a lecture tour of Lebanon during which he met with high-ranking leaders of Hezbollah and defended the organization saying that Hezbollah represents 'hope.'"
Wow, thank you. That would be Hezbollah, which has been recognized as a terrorist group by many countries around the world outside of the US. His Holocaust-smearing history also does not reflect too well on him.
I was also a bit disturbed that war seems to be the only alternative to sanctions.
That's only the case when the alternative to action would be worse. In the case of Iran, our apathy has already cost the lives of thousands of people and if they get nuclear weapons we're talking both about a huge economic impact on the West as well as the lives of millions of people. I think those two huge issues warrant some action, as do other European and Middle-Eastern countries. Let's just say that Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others are not keen on their enemy Iran threatening them with nukes.
If the U.S. didn't routinely traipse into the Middle East and assert itself violently, would we have fomented as much hate as we receive now?
I think so. I think radicalization of Islam would occur regardless of US action. Consider the fact that the Dutch political cartoons are said to have fomented radicalization and there we're being given a choice between our Freedom of Speech and their terrorism. I'm sorry, but I don't believe their violence warrants us dropping Western values in order to join their medieval culture. We have a right to Freedom of Speech and if that pisses them off then too bad. If we were to apply their line of reasoning we would have bombed Hugo Chavez for insulting George Bush, but we did not. And trust you me, Hugo Chavez says a lot of inciteful things. But that's his right, and we shouldn't bomb him for that.
Israel, Desert Storm, the Iraq conflict... it's enough to make Arab states feel pretty threatened. They can't compete with the scale of the United States military, but a nuclear device sure gets our attention and would make us think twice. I'm not necessarily debating the utility of our past military offensives, but to say that outright war is the only alternative to sanctions strikes me as pretty simplistic!
Desert Storm was initiated with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent rape and killings they carried out there. I'm sorry, but diplomatic pressure was not going to help there. Conquering Kuwait provided Iraq with enough oil to offset any sort of economic pressure we could have applied and I believe that a military response was well-warranted (as did the rest of the world).
Israel: our primary crime is supporting the existence of non-Muslims in the middle-east. Trust me, this pisses people off a lot more than any actual financial or operational support the US has given Israel over the years. The "moderate" Palestinian Authority Israel is being forced to negotiate with is still advocating a Jew-free Palestinian state and their official map of Palestine in their charter still covers all of Israel. We should also be clear that we're talking about an Arab-Israeli conflict, not a Palestinian-Israeli one, because if other Arab countries had absorbed Palestinians into their countries like Israel absorbed Jews evicted from Arab countries this conflict would have not lasted this long. It is still illegal for Palestinians to hold a job in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and to a certain extent also in Jordan -- they do this by design.
Iraq: In my view, the primary justification for using the military option in Iraq was to topple a dictator. Any other reasons that were given might be valid but are besides the point for me. We've tried applying diplomatic pressure on them for years in the hopes that the opposition would gain power but that didn't help. The US also got criticized severely for pulling out during the first Gulf war and allowing Saddam to massacre his opposition. My personal opinion is that toppling dictatorships is a good thing, even by military means, but I also feel that in the specific case of Iraq the implementation was badly botched. Too much politics and not enough planning. I'm not saying we should use the military option to topple governments at a whim but I also think it is important to use all resources possible (diplomatic first of course) to topple dictatorships all over the world. Dictatorship
Unfortunately the same can't be said about their military and Islamist government that profits greatly from that wonderful connection.
I can't believe that people are *still* protecting the Iranian government (note I'm not talking about their citizens) after all the crap they've pulled during the last two decades. Just because the US media has tuned into Iran in the last five years doesn't mean this story came out of the blue. Iran has been funding and training terrorist groups and publicly boasting about it for over 20 years now. We've been waiting for their population to overthrow the Islamist government for years yet that hasn't happened either. Just take a look at the kind of things coming out of their government-controlled media: http://memritv.org/
Yes, most Iranians dislike their government but no this won't be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of people die every year because of direct funding by the Iranians to terrorists. Ironically most of the victims are Muslim.
If you want to avoid war with Iran then you should be in favor of diplomatic action to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons which could be a pretext for such a war. By preventing economic sanctions from going through you leave the world no choice but turn to the military option. Also it is worth noting that we've held toothless diplomatic talk with Iran for decades now and that didn't work (if anything, their government got more radical). They need to feel the heat for there to be any change.
I'm calling bullshit. You don't hear Islamists complaining about the 1980s, they're complaining about today. We didn't turn Afghanistan into a bloodbath in 2001, everyone including the UN attests to the fact that the Taliban were pillaging and raping the people and the land. The security situation might suck there now that it's better to have that and hope for a better future than being raped on a daily basis without hope at all. The Afghanistan mission is backed by both the UN and NATO.
All right. You tell me where the Taliban came from. You are totally right that it was *already* a bloodbath before 2001. We put them in power. We pulled out of Afghanistan and left their country in a tailspin it *never* came out of. It was *our* weapons they were shooting at us (mostly). How is that not relevant? Does it "justify" them raping and murdering in their own country? Absolutely not. Is it relevant? Hell yes.
It's been over 20 years and multiple presidents have cycled through. The Taliban is allies with our enemies so that gives people even less of a right to say we are somehow responsible for this. One of our allies messed up the country 20 years after we cut off connections with them. That's hardly directly our fault. If anything we went in to clean up the problem and that should reflect positively on us.
Furthermore, the US is a Democracy with a rotating leadership. It makes as much sense to refer to a 30-year old President as it does treating today's Germany like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Different leaders, different attitudes, different countries.
It's a leadership which, supposedly, we elect. We are all part of the problem. We should be part of a solution. We have had an ongoing attitude of heavy-handed intervention which, if anything, has been getting worse. Besides, from their point of view they should what? Drop all of their grievances and forgive us because we had an election? Would we do that for them? I wouldn't.
There is nothing wrong with intervention so long as it works. Iraq was poorly implemented and was presented under the glare of a super-critical media from day one. And yes, I would expect people to hold Democracies less accountable for the actions of past Presidents then current ones. I didn't say they hold absolutely no responsibility, but definitely less.
I certainly have a problem with Lebanon's actions. I don't think that has any bearing on ours.
The problem is not with collateral damage in our quest to kill terrorists per se, though I think we do idiotic things on that score as well. That ranges from happenstance to stupidity; war is hard; mistakes do happen. The problem is what we are doing which has little or nothing to do with terrorism and a lot more to do with imperialism, putting ourselves in places we shouldn't be in in the first place and then saying "oops" when we kill civilians. That's not collateral damage. That's not accident. It's not even stupidity. It is much worse, and dropping a 500lb bomb on a wedding party and saying "Oh Man!" doesn't seem much different than blowing up a marketplace even if one of the attackers is wearing a uniform and flying an expensive jet. In some totally fscked way, the guy in the market has the high ground since at least he is willing to give his own life for his cause. The fact that we have fallen so far as to fail that comparison is shockingly sad. In some cases (*not all*) our warfare has turned into video games with no connection to people bleeding and dying. The guy living there does not have that luxury and it's not that entertaining to him.
You're drawing moral equivalence between someone who knowingly walks into a wedding party to blow up the crowd (Palestinians have done this in Israel) to a US pilot mistakenly bombing a wedding party based on incorrect intelligence report provided by a local civilian. Horrible mistakes do happen but you can't begin to compare the two.
The problem with blaming the victim at this point is figuring out who it is. I'm calling bullshit. You don't hear Islamists complaining about the 1980s, they're complaining about today. We didn't turn Afghanistan into a bloodbath in 2001, everyone including the UN attests to the fact that the Taliban were pillaging and raping the people and the land. The security situation might suck there now that it's better to have that and hope for a better future than being raped on a daily basis without hope at all. The Afghanistan mission is backed by both the UN and NATO.
Furthermore, the US is a Democracy with a rotating leadership. It makes as much sense to refer to a 30-year old President as it does treating today's Germany like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Different leaders, different attitudes, different countries.
Bottom line is that the West does its best to kill terrorists with minimal collateral cost but it's not easy and *everyone* makes mistakes sometimes, including Britain, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. I find it peculiar that a few months ago Lebanon bombed the crap out of their local Palestinian refugee camp, killing hundreds of civilians in the process and not a single person condemned them. Not in the media. Not in the UN. I would go further and say that the media only published the official government version and the UN actually passed a resolution expressing full support of their actions. So apparently it's okay for Muslims to massacre their own civilians on purpose but when someone in the West does it by accident while trying to target terrorists that hide in civilian structures, well suddenly we're evil or something. Give me a break!
The only difference is that people know that they can criticize the West without having their skull smashed open, while the same is not true in Egypt or Lebanon. People are chicken shits that way. For every one thing the West does wrong you could find one hundred things countries in the middle-east do wrong yet you will only see protests against the West. Their action shows that they don't really care about Human Rights.
In the grand scheme of things, you are better off attacking terrorist infrastructure than individual terrorist elements. I'm not talking about Iraq here but rather the general war on terror.
Israel has been fighting terrorism for decades longer than the US and you will note that they don't focus 100% their resources on killing off a single person, even the leaders of these groups. Taking out the leader *is* a great achievement but what it buys you is more time and reduces their sophistication as opposed to ending the war. They eventually get replaced by someone else.
Yes, you want to take out the terrorist leaders, but you gain more bang-for-the-buck by taking out their infrastructure and reducing their capability to small arms fire. For example: you could gain a heck of a lot more bang-for-your buck if you attacks terrorist training camps in say Pakistan, Syria and Iran then going after specific individuals. You could also achieve a lot by cutting off their source of revenue. There is a huge difference between a small terrorist group and one backed by a state such as Iran. A lot of what you're seeing today didn't come out of the blue but rather is a result of years' worth of training in terrorist camps.
Coming back to Iraq, I believe there was that Democracy would defuse the ideological base for radical Islam. Muslims have been complaining for decades now that the US preaches Freedom yet does not help them overthrow their dictators. Democracy is a very difficult form of government to achieve, but it has the huge advantage of the leader cycling every couple years and protection of minorities. Hopefully you can understand why this would have a huge positive impact in fighting the ideological base of the radicals. We're pushing Democracy, they're pushing the Caliphate governmental system. We are no more oppressing their people than the guys pushing the Caliphate on them are. Consider that radical Islamists have tried to surplant the leaders of other middle-eastern countries before (Egypt, Jordan, etc) and replace it with a Caliphate before. So far they have failed, Iran being the exception to the rule. If you were to look at all the countries in the middle-east that had dictators, Iraq was probably the easiest one to overthrow with the most compelling reason to. You have:
Egypt, Jordan: signed peace treat with Iran and are US allies
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan: ideological base of terrorism, hard to overthrow, our ally (at least officially)
Iran: ideological base of terrorism, might be developing nukes, hard to overthrow, our enemy
Iraq: easy to overthrow, might be developing nukes, our enemy
Iraq might have simply represented the easiest way in and the US was hoping for a domino effect: if we do a good job here, people might overthrow their leaders in neighboring countries. I'm also not downplaying the possibility of nuclear weapons in Iraq. For all of the mistakes the US intelligence agencies made, they still did a much better job than the IAEA (the UN's official nuclear watchdog). The US didn't know for sure but given Saddam's bad history they took the chance only to find out they were wrong. Okay, that's too bad but the very least they booted one dictator out.
The US was hoping to transform the middle-east into a Democracy. I think many countries even in Europe were hoping for the same thing. The only difference is that history the US acts on its ambitions whereas Europe sits on their fingers. Sometimes apathy is not the correct approach (note WW2). In any case, the good news is that the security situation is starting to turn around in Iraq (fatalities are down in a big way). The bad news is that no one is doing anything about Iran, not even on a diplomatic level.
PS: I think it's also important to note that rogue state + nuke = potentially millions of dead citizens. Bin Laden is a mass-murderer, but his capability was limited to hundreds at a time, not millions. Iraq might not have had nuclear weapons but their biological weapons allowed them to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people at a time. By that token, Bin Laden is still a small fish.
Radical Islamists are murdering anyone who does not share their views, including other Muslims. The fact that they do not like their views does not give them the right to try to kill me, nor should I change my views in any way because of their threats to my life.
Your line of reasoning essentially says we should change what we're doing because we're pissing them off. Now, if we're doing something wrong (independently of what they say) and we should improve upon this then fine. But if we're making changes *because* they're murdering our people then it's a mistake.
Who cares who Spain morally supported? Is holding an opinion justification for mass-murder now? The fact of the matter is that we have a heck of a lot more reasons to justify taking out their people than they do to take ours out. If they were to lay down their arms today and promise to stop attacking us then there is a really good chance this war would end. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for us laying down our arms.
I'll throw out some ideas on the table for you:
1) No other major religion protests violently and kills people when people make fun of their religion. Journalists in the west caved and censored itself for fear of their lives. Theo van Gogh got murdered because he did not.
2) Islam oppresses *billions* of women across the world, yet no one says a word.
3) The media gives very terse coverage of the middle-east. The center of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (which is really the Arab-Israeli conflict because it's much bigger than just the Palestinians) is Israel's very existence. The main beef radical Islamists hold against Israel is the existence of Jews *anywhere* in the middle-east. One of the things you never hear about is that more Jews got evicted from Arab lands in 1948 then Palestinians left Israel. Fatah, which is the "moderate" party the US is asking Israel to negotiate with talks about 1967 borders in English but when they switch to Arabic they talk about taking over all of Israel. Their official charter calls for Israel's destruction and their map of Palestine includes all of Israel. I won't even get started on Hamas. No one seems to mention in the media that Palestinians refuse to allow *any* Jews to live on "their" land. Many so-called settlers have offered to relinquish their Israeli citizenship in favor of a Palestinian one. They asked to live peacefully under a future Palestinian state as normal citizens. Palestinians refused them saying they don't accept any Jews on any of their land. Ever notice how they keep on saying that "the settlements are the main barriers to peace?" What they're actually talking about are Jews living on "their land". If that isn't racist I don't know what is.
War was not a last resort in Iraq this time around. We declared war on a country who did nothing to us. But they could have done something to Israel, which I don't understand why we are protecting them. Why do we protect them, they do not give anything in return.
Israel gives plenty in return. For a quick overview you should visit http://www.israel21c.net/
Allow me to list a few:
1) A strategic ally: the only democracy in the middle-east, a place that both Russia and the US are trying to get a foot-hold in.
2) Exports tons of high-quality technology: a large portion of Intel CPUs, cell phones, health care products are designed there.
3) Business opportunities: their GDP is through the roof and all major US companies have an Israeli branch. You will find that the vast number of startups that make it big have started in Israel.
4) Security exports: Israel is the #1 exporter of security technologies, ranging from protective vests to anti-missile systems to unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, etc.
I would ask you to compare this to what Britain and France does for the US given their relative sizes. It's pretty impressive.
Cuba is no less of a priority than any other dictatorship. My wife is Cuban, but she was born and raised here. She's visited down there and the majority of people are living under the poverty level, Castro controls everything, including all media. We are the only country that won't trade with them. Other countries are allowed to drill for oil off their shores, but we are not.
Yes, but Cuba is not funding terrorism against the US, nor is it gassing its people. People might be poor but there is no active genocide going on. The same can't be said for other countries around the world.
Our military is shrinking, especially in the upper ranks. People are just enlisting to get the college money and then leaving. After the older people retire, we will be left with a very small military in 10 years.
I can't speak to that. The same is true for the armies of many countries around the world. To a certain degree, technology is stepping in to replace certain positions. Still, you probably know more about this than I do.
I agree that China and India have played a major role in our economic downturn, but if the government would tax the people less, then we could work for less money, and businesses would stay here.
It's not that simple, otherwise other countries in the world would have done the same. India and China is so cheap that even if the tax rate was zero you still wouldn't be able to compete with them on all levels. I think you need to wrap your head around the fact that some of their people work for around $2 an hour. I don't think any American employee wants to lower his standard of living to that.
We may not be strapped for resources now, but we are on the road to getting there in 20 to 50 years. I for one, do not want to leave a crippled country to my kids and grandkids. Too many people vote for what a candidate can do for them right now. We need to vote for somebody who will ensure our country will be here for future generations.
I think each and every one of us has the ability to do exactly that. First, take responsibility for your own actions and clean up your personal debt. Then encourage others around you to do the same. If everyone did that I promise you it would do more to help America's future than anything else. I find it silly that Americans expect the government to take care of problems for them which are completely within their control. I would personally only expect the government to take responsibility for anything *beyond* my personal control and I believe this attitude will lead to a smaller government which is what most people want.
Every empire that has been built throughout history has eventually fallen. Ours will be no different. We need to stop pretending t
I agree with you that the 1st Gulf War was not followed through, just like Korea. If the generals were allowed to handle war instead of politicians, wars would end quicker. We have full right to be in Afghanistan, not to rebuild, but to find Bin Laden. Does anybody remember him? I'm not saying to completely ignore the rest of the world. I believe we should help the less fortunate, but in 20 years, we are going to be one of those less fortunate and who is going to be there to help us? Iraq, Kuwait, Israel? They only care about themselves.
I disagree with this because of what I wrote earlier: other people's problems inevitably become your own. On the flip side, the more democratic countries there are in the world, the more McDonald's we could open up and our economy grows. From a reconstruction point of view, the US is suffering from the fact that other countries chickened out (yet still expect to be awarded lucrative reconstruction contracts). If everyone chipped in then what you wrote wouldn't be the case. Take the prime example of Afghanistan: the invasion was UN and NATO backed and politicians routinely speak about how much they believe in their reconstruction yet they rarely translated words into action. We have to start rewarding countries based on their actions, not their words.
We have so many policies that they conflict with one another. Why do we show leniency to North Korea, but not Cuba? I think Germany and Britain is more than capable of taking care of themselves now, so why are we still there. If we pulled our troops out of most of the foreign countries and station them here, we could get rid of the Department of Homeland Security, since they don't do anything at all anyway.
I agree with this point 100%.
During your two posts, you spoke nothing of how we are going to do it. You just say that we need to. How do we get more people to enlist in the Armed Services and more importantly, keep them in. I know, lets either slow down or stop sending them to the worst places on Earth.
War is never pretty, which is why it should be the last resort. I don't think you need more troops. I think you need more foreign countries to chip in.
If we are so concerned with Cuba, lets invade them. I hear they have great beaches there. I wouldn't mind being deployed there for a year if I was still enlisted. Lets take care of Chavez, isn't he a dictator too? He controls alot of oil too so we would benefit (notice hint of sarcasm). What about Myanmar, wasn't their coup just obliterated? Guess since they aren't in the news anymore, nobody cares. Our problem is we care for the Middle East too much at the expense of the rest of the world. Iraq may be the cradle of civilization, but that's how long they've been fighting, and we cannot stop it, even in 100 years.
I think Cuba should be on a long list of countries we'd like to pressure to improve their government but it is near the bottom in terms of priority because the level of oppression and threat to the outside world remains low. I agree with you that the middle-east should not be the primary focus of international community because there are many other important causes to focus on.
I think all the money that we could save by downsizing our government would be better spent on research and development. Remember when we used to be #1? Our kids are not getting the same education that we all got over the last 60 years. Lets develop technologies to get us off of oil, then we'll see how the Middle East likes us then.
I agree with developing technologies to get us off oil, if only for the sake of political independence. I believe that the recent economic downturn has more to do with China and India then it does with anything else. I still believe that the US should work very strongly to reduce its debt (and reeducate its population in individual debt reduction whi
I am not asking the US to babysit the world.
Look, back in the 1st Gulf War the US got criticized for not staying behind to help the opposition overthrow Saddam.
The 2nd time around they actually stuck around and then they got criticized for that. No matter what they do they get criticized.
I am not openly advocating one way or another in the case of the 2nd Iraq war but I am a strong believer that in the case of the 1st Iraq war there was good reason to attack Iraq and push them out of Kuwait. I also believe that "other people's problems" quickly become your own. Everyone ignored Germany in World War 2 because it was "someone else's problem" until it became their own. The same is true in today's global Jihad war. One way or another we're all involved.
Yes I believe there is serious work to be done on the domestic front but I would also point out that the US would be in a much better situation if others in the Western World also pulled their weight. Take a look at what's going on in Afganistan. It was a UN sanctioned mission. Everyone was on board. Yet when push comes to shove the only countries sending any serious troops in are the US and Canada. If everyone else pitched in then I think:
1) Security would be restored a lot quicker with fewer deaths
2) The domestic impact to our countries would be less severe
Instead, we are pulling the weight for other people.
We need to be honest with ourselves: this isn't a foreign policy vs domestic conflict. It's an ideological conflict that we are fighting on both fronts. 20% of Britain's population is Muslim, and poorly integrated at that. If you've followed the news in the past years then you know what kind of a serious problem they're having with radical Muslims. This is a war that must be fought on *both* a domestic and foreign front in order for us to win. Ron Paul is taking the same approach as the NDP political group is taking in Canada: turning a blind eye and hoping the problem takes care of itself. How can those idiots honestly expects Afghanistan to improve if we follow their advice and pulled out all security forces and only left Engineers behind to rebuild? They'd be executed within a week and the Taliban would take over within two. We need to tackle radical Islam ideology both on a diplomatic and military level, both on a domestic and foreign-policy level.
The US might have implemented their foreign policy badly, but at least they're trying! Apathy is even worse in my eyes.
Good luck with that... you sir, are the one who is a joke. Where did I write this in my post?
I believe Human Rights activists will achieve more if they were to pressure their government to pressure middle-eastern dictatorships. At no point did I say I support the *exclusive* use of military force to solve the world's problems. On the flip side, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and his soldiers began raping the women did you honestly believe that anything short of a military response would stop them? Yes, I support applying military pressure *as part of a total package* applied on abusive governments but not exclusively.
Look, the US tried the diplomatic route by leveraging economic sanctions against Iran instead of trying to bomb it. The Human Rights organizations *still* rallied against them! What's the point of trying to please people who will complain no matter what you do? They should be *supporting* economic sanctions because the alternative are military attacks. By criticizing the government no matter what it does they actually guarantee *more* wars, not less. They also ensure that the massive worldwide abuses of women go unchecked because we are so fixated on splitting hairs. I'm fixated on getting results, not holding hands and holding candle-light vigils will bring world peace. Diplomatic pressure *can* prevent wars, but only if it has teeth!
What I am trying to say is that Human Rights activists should be putting massive pressure on these oppressive governments to change, either directly or by pressuring our government to pressure them through diplomatic and even military means. And yes, I consider military means to be reasonable when a Iranian bomb can wipe out over a *million* people at a time and they've shown they mean what they say by funding middle-eastern terrorist groups for decades now. Iran is already responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the middle-east.
I'll bite, since you're obviously waiting for this...
:) I'm not necessarily advocating a gun-ho approach to the world, but I note with cynicism that no leftist group has tried toppling these governments before the US did. Like I said, it's much easier for them to criticize governments that won't bash their skulls in.
The only people voting for Ron Paul are internet bots. His rating is so low it could actually be caused by the polling margin of error. The guy is a joke and his platform is a joke. I doubt he could garner more votes even running as a Democrat (which is what he should have done).
As for all the so-called people voting for Ron Paul: his ratings show how marginalized your views are. If you'd spend half the time and money you did on Ron Paul on Human Rights issues in the middle-east you would have actually made more of a difference in the world. Everyone is tripping over themselves trying to show they hate their government more than everyone else (apparently it's the "in" thing to do nowadays), and not just in the US. Meanwhile billions of women are being oppressed in the Islamic world and millions of them are being raped and killed in Darfur. What is being done about it? Nothing. Why? Because it's easier to criticize a government that won't bash your skull in then do the *real* work of criticizing middle-eastern dictatorships and make a difference where it counts. Anti-war activists say they're against war but their actions actually ensure that wars will get worse in the future. Yesterday they were protecting Saddam Hussein's right to torture his people. Today they are protecting Iran's right to wipe out Israel using nuclear weapons. Who knows what wonderful policy they'll dream up of tomorrow
In 2003, when Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested, raped and then beaten to death in Iran where was the public outcry? How can you spend a week making noise about Zahra Kazemi and *years* making noise about the US government? That's not advocating Human Rights!
Oh... so now terrorism is unique? Separate from all other types of war? Just a few moments ago you claimed "terrorism" was just another "war strategy". You can always negotiate with your enemy. You can't necessarily negotiate with the foot soldiers...but that's not the point. Foot soldiers care about their lives and just want to go home at the end of the day. Terrorists in the middle-east are after 72 virgins, not life. You can't negotiate with someone whose ultimate goal is your death (your life is not negotiable). This is like trying to reason with members of a cult. At least when you negotiate with a formal state you can hold them responsible for their actions (if they break treaties you know their address). The same can't be said for terrorists. Terrorism places you in a much more difficult position if you would like to sign some sort of treaty (and practically speaking it simply does not work). First of all there is a huge difference between Greenpeace activists and a mass-murdering group of people
The point remains that activists are often pulled from the ranks of university students. The form their activism takes may be different, but a willingness to volunteer, to make sacrifices, even to die for an ideal is a trait found strongest in students. The students at least want to live. Most of them at least distinguish the difference between civilians and non-civilians. The ultimate goal of students isn't 72 virgins. It isn't death. Jihad terrorists worship in a cult of death and purposefully attack civilians. You don't negotiate with that. All Islamic countries I know of violate the Human Rights of women, yet you hear 100x more complaints about America from these groups then the mass-oppression of *billions* of women worldwide!
So? We are far more outraged by what our own governments do then what others do. Why is that surprising? These people are supposed to be represent us. I don't condone torture. So when I find out someone is committing torture on my dollar, in my name, and claiming its for my protection... FUCK THAT.
Cleaning up oppression and corruption in foreign countries is all well and good, but the first order of business is cleaning up our own fucking act. I'll focus my attention on Darfur and Tibet after my own government stops torturing innocent civilians, hell I don't even want my own government torturing honest to god terrorists... we should be better than that.
You're just picking on a strawman. Your government will never be perfect no matter where you live. By focusing most of your energy against decent governments instead of oppressive dictatorships you ensure that the latter ensue indefinitely. You assume that there is such a thing as a perfect government and if you criticize your own enough it'll get there. That's quite impossible. The simple proof of that is that no government in the world is free of black marks in the past decade, including most European countries and Canada. So while you waste your time splitting hairs billions of people suffer abroad. While people on the left yearn for a good Utopian fantasy women are being raped in the millions and no one is doing anything to help them. The left abuses the word Human Rights and made me cynical about their so-called efforts to help people around the world because they do such an awful job at it and they criticize all the wrong people. When Iran arrested, tortured, and killed a Canadian journalist a few years ago people were too busy criticizing the Canadian government for god knows what stupidity instead of mounting a concerted effort to hold Iran responsible.
The fact of the matter is that people on the Left are lazy. They know it's easier to criticize the Western World because no one will bash their skulls in. If they had any sort of backbone they would actually focus their efforts on Middle-Eastern and African leaderships the majority of the time and see how far they get.
1) Its actually both.
2) And like any war you win it by taking away the reasons to fight, and finding common ground, both sides making concessions. You don't compromise with terrorists because history has shown that every single time you give them a finger they want your entire arm. I don't mean to imply that you reply only on a military level, but "kiss and make up" is just plain ignorant with these people. They say one thing to the media but demand another thing in private. You need to attack them both on a military level and on an ideological level. You don't hold dialog with the groups resorting to violence but rather only talk to the groups that agree to stick to bloodless dialog. If you actually look into the statistics you will find that the more educated the person (as in University-level education) the more likely they are to become a suicide bomber.
Activists are always generally well educated. This is common knowledge. Look no further than the people spiking trees for greenpeace, blockading roads, protesting at the whitehouse...and not just in the US? Who stood up to the tanks in China? University students are over represented in anything like this.
So how do resolve the problem? You think shooting at them is going to acheive squat? The -only- solution is to talk. And sure, their demands are over the moon unreasonable... 'disband capitalism and convert to islam...' but their real grievances are usually genuine, and often well founded. Absolutely not. First of all there is a huge difference between Greenpeace activists and a mass-murdering group of people. If Greenpeace was blowing up people you can be sure that the government would be hunting them down, down to the land man, and with good reason.
Everyone and their grandmother always has a "genuine grievances" but that doesn't make the world go round. What kind of a message are you sending to the world when terrorists get concessions but poor Tibet monks do not? I am precisely for sending the *opposite* message: you negotiate and empower the moderates and crack down on terrorists without the blink of an eye. It shocks me how many so-called Human Rights activists conviniently turn a blind eye to the Human Rights abuses of these groups and advocate on behalf of psychos such as Saddam Hussein yet they won't spend 1/10th of that same energy helping Tibet monks or the people in Darfur.
These people abuse the term Human Rights by excusing terrorism. They are empowering exactly the wrong people. All Islamic countries I know of violate the Human Rights of women, yet you hear 100x more complaints about America from these groups then the mass-oppression of *billions* of women worldwide! Their silence is deafening.
2) In my experience (talking with Muslim friends), Muslims don't have a concept of "interpreting" the Koran. They believe that the Koran is the literal word of God and as such is not open to any form of interpretation. By extension, when some yahoo teaches them the Jihadi interpretation of the Koran they don't understand how one could question it.
Terrorism is a war strategy, not a form of desperation. The more people excuse it, the more profitable it becomes, and the more often it will get used.
1) Public condemnation of their extremists by community leaders without the simultaneous scapegoating of America and Israel in the same breath. There are poor people all over the world who had worse done to them (think Tibet and Darfur) and you don't see them blowing people up. Excusing terrorism is taramount to advocating it. In the few cases where non-Muslims have committed terrorist acts in the documented past their community has always cracked down on them severely. Tthey ended up in jail with a harsh sentence and children were educated to avoid such a behavior. We should expect no less of Islam.
2) Their community take active measures to educate their children that the Jihad interpretation of the Koran is wrong. What most people don't know is that some Muslims refuse to even consider that there is such a thing as interpretation of the Koran. I was once told by one that what is written in the Koran is the infallible word of God, "how can you interpret that?" Well, yes that's nice and all but then you're excusing mass-murder of non-Muslims. All other major religious are based on texts full of violence yet they *chose* to interpret it peacefully. Islam must do the same or they have no place in the world.
3) Islam must accept other religion's right to exist. Christians tried to mass-convert Jews and look where that got them. There is nothing wrong with the desire to convert people to your religion but Islam goes way beyond that, often advocating violence against anyone who does not convert and death to those who convert out of the religion.
4) Islam must accept criticism from inside and out. Last time I checked people were posting political cartoons about Jews, Christians and Hindus all over the world without any violent protests or death threats. Muslims must grow a sense of humor.
5) The silent majority speak up against extremists. I'm talking about people speaking out in mass rallies and campuses across the world. I've had Muslim friends who were very nice and polite, but the second you mention America or Israel they go ape-shit beyond the norm. It is one thing to criticize a country using the same standards you'd apply to anyone else. It is another thing altogether to apply double-standards to countries you don't like. I'll give you a simple example: Israel withdrew all civilians and military personnel from Gaza in 2005. The Egyptian-Gaza border has been under Egyptian control since June 2007 when Hamas staged a violent coup against Fatah (another Palestinian group). Gaza has since then launches thousands upon thousands of missiles into neighboring Israeli towns. Children's day-cares, civilian schools and houses have all been hit yet whenever Israel hints at responding the world condemns it. Israel tries killing the people launching missiles, it got condemned. It then tried reducing imports into Gaza which pass through Israel, it got condemned. It then tried reducing the amount of electricity they provide Gaza because that same electricity was used to build missiles, it got condemned. What else can Israel do short of committing suicide? What other country in the world would be expected to provide both water and electricity to a terrorist state that was attacking it? Israel has been doing both for years now. You can be sure that if anyone launched missiles against any other country in the world they would be carpet-bombed within a week and no international condemnation would follow. If it's good enough for other countries, it should be good enough for America and Israel. When British trains are bombed it is "inexcusable" but when the same happens in Israel or America it's "understandable". With all due respect, terrorism is *never* understandable.
None of what I advocate above goes beyond what members of other religions are expected to and already do today. I look forward to a world where Islam coexists with others, but if they are unable to take that position then they leave us with no choice but war.
Who cares if you have to take off your shoes before you get on a plane? I'd rather bear with such minor inconveniences in favor of better security. What shocks me is that people don't complain about the obvious problem with flying: the lack of leg room! Leg room has been shrinking for years and for anyone 6 foot or higher it's downright impossible to come out of a plane without back problems.
Airline and airport "fees", on the other hand, have been increasing over the past couple years.
Why don't people stick to *those* important issues and get things done instead of complaining about more controversial issues they might well be wrong about? There is no chance you of you being wrong about wanting more leg-room.
Touche. I *did* write such a thing in my original post but it looks like I took out that paragraph before clicking submit. I apologize would would like to clarify: My intent is *not* to comment on the specific court case in question but rather on the general idea being put forward.
Well, yes, you were, because you said "I think you guys are wrong in suggesting that this [sic] limits Freedom of Speech in some unfair manner.", and "this" refers to what the police chief is suggesting.
I stated somewhere near the top of my post that I wasn't commenting on the specifics of the article's court case, but rather on the general idea of deferring publication of details until the case goes to court. If the state does anything wrong it will come out once the case goes to court
I wish I had your naive confidence. Maybe it will come out sometimes, when the court and prosecutor are actually doing their job well, but often it won't.
I don't understand... nothing changes. Regardless of how the prosecution and defense lawyers do their job, they will have the same evidence available to them when the case goes to court whether the details get publicized way before or immediately when the case goes to court. From an evidence point of view, nothing changes. Whether the media discloses that the state did something wrong in advance of a court case or right when it begins doesn't make much of a difference as far as democracy is concerned (as far as I can tell).
It makes a big difference, because once the guy has been convicted, it's very hard to overturn that conviction, even if there is new evidence. I wasn't suggesting that details of the case be published *after* the case is settled, rather when immediately before it *begins*. Once the lawyers are chosen and say about a month before the first court date the media should be allowed to publish their information. There is no possible justification for the government to stop newspapers reporting on public affairs like lawsuits. The only justification that is even remotely plausible is that reporting taints the good name of the person who has been accused but not found guilty yet, but that's still pretty weak compared with the importance of having the public be able to see what their government and judicial system are doing. In practice, I hear about *a lot* of cases where the media taints a person's good name before his case is settled and I hear of almost no cases where the media exposes some government corruption. Regardless, I wasn't referring to lawsuits here. I am saying this law should only apply to live reporting from war zones or when an important arrest is made involving terrorism charges.
"The media doesn't protect people's rights, the courts do."
You have contradicted your own argument, if the media has no effect on a persons rights then it shouldn't matter what (or when) they report. The media could reveal information useful for the defendant's case, but my point is that whether they do it way before the court case or only once it begins makes no difference for his defense.
If you disclose positions and strengths of military forces, the enemy can attack and kill your forces.
If you do live reporting from court cases,
I wasn't saying I'm against live reporting from court cases. I was saying I'm against reporters disclosing information about these arrests before they reach court. You don't want to arrest one guy and alert his partners that they should go into hiding so that by the time you interrogate him it's too late to catch them. You still get live reporting from court cases. All the media does is apply pressure on politicians or citizens which indirectly affects what laws get passed.
Yes, it's called "democracy". You should try it sometime, instead of pushing for fascist "the state can do no wrong and will protect you" ideas. I wasn't making this assumption. If the state does anything wrong it will come out once the case goes to court. And you legislate it must go to court within a certain number of days or the censor is lifted anyway. Whether the media discloses that the state did something wrong in advance of a court case or right when it begins doesn't make much of a difference as far as democracy is concerned (as far as I can tell).
I think you guys are wrong in suggesting that this limits Freedom of Speech in some unfair manner. How is this any different from preventing live media reports in the middle of a war-zone? Does it really make sense to broadcast live reports of the exact positions and plans of your armed forces?
In my view, this is a very reasonable limitation of Freedom of Speech and more to the point it simply *delays* when you may report on the matter. If you believe that this delay hampers the rights of the defendant in an unfair way then that is worth discussing, but I don't see this as being the case.
It doesn't help the cops torture anyone or pull any dirty tricks because whether the media reports on it right away or when the case reaches court it amounts to the same thing: cops that abuse the rights of the defendant will be punished by having the evidence revoked and/or the officers themselves punished. Whether the story breaks out way before the defendant reaches the court or on the day of he still enjoys the exact same legal rights.
If you are afraid that defendants will be tortured then laws should be passed to punish the offenders once the case reaches court and laws should be passed to ensure such cases *must* reach the court within a reasonable period of time. This way anyone who abuses their power won't get off easy.
The media doesn't protect people's rights, the courts do. All the media does is apply pressure on politicians or citizens which indirectly affects what laws get passed. The media has a very short attention span. Their stories are controlled by a spin factor more than anything else, as opposed to courthouses that take the necessary time to study the case in great detail. I wouldn't want to live in a court where a person's guilt is determined by the media, if you know what I mean, because popularity and justice are two different things altogether.
Everything that touches China gets reserve-engineered in a matter of months. Try getting the government to crack down on such clones and you'll find out how useless it is.
I would think twice before storing *any* valuable information on China-based servers.