Brian has learned a lot about the ideas of freedom (as discussed here) in a short time, and has been very thoughtful taking on these topics. Please give him the benefit of the doubt.
Btw, it is intervention even if it is on an individual level. We knew what he was talking about.
If I see a crime happening in front of me, I’m going to try to stop it. Always have, always will. So, as an individual, I have no problem getting in the way/stopping crime. It’s a far more tenous line on a society level, but I feel (subjective of course) that invasion at the least is justification for intervention.
But as was said above. If people would grow up and govern themselves, this would never be a problem (the best intervention is a people against their own government).
What a silly question to ask. Of course, not!
This is not imperialism, but rather bringing liberty to the oppressed and a known tyrant to justice.
… And I never said any such thing. I am merely showing much of the deaths occurred after the war.
With respect, I am starting to get the impression you don’t know what you’re talking about. The US and British forces were deployed to deal with a man who was warned of these consequences if he continued to lie, deceive and work against the UNMOVIC in Iraq on a subject as important as WMDs. He was given to his own people and their courts to judge him and they see fit.
I am trying to understand where you’re coming from and what argument you’re trying to make.
You’re going to have to explain what that means. You can’t just throw a word by the allegation of “mass murder” and hope I am just going to node and go “yeaah”. Fallujah was an insurgent ridden city which they tried gain control of. Insurgents were everywhere - underground, on rooftops, alleyways etc … US & British Marines sustained some of their heaviest casualties there. Also, you do realise this was after the Iraq War.
This is the problem with users on internet forums cutting up each sentence and trying to dispute them individually. They tend to fail at getting the big picture. If you read what I said below you’ll see that David Cameron is an atrocious - almost laughable - comparison.
American forces discovered around 55 gallon drums of cyclosarin, a blister agent, and Danish forces discovered 120mm shells with of a WMD - in liquid form - that initially tested as a blister agent (a WMD). Three tons of “Yellow Cake” purchased from Nigeria and 1.7 metric tons of enriched uranium. Oh, and 17 chemical warheads [containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent five times more powerful than sarin]. So, yes he did have WMDs. Do you suspect there is something under David Cameron’s bed?
As to “what was his crime?” You do realise he used chemical weapons on the defenceless Kurds, starved them, cut of their water supply and shot them. Do you not consider this a crime? Do you think he should be able to get away with it - which, of course, he would in your world?
Most people are ignorant of the numerous violations of UN Resolutions that Saddam Hussein agreed to (on very serious issues) and refused to comply with. In 2002, UN Security Council Res. 1441 was passed. This resolution was Saddam’s ‘FINAL’ warning to comply - a point that was made many times. He was asked to comply with, amongst others, Res. 660, Res. 661, Res. 678, Res. 686, Res. 687, Res. 688, Res. 707, Res. 715, Res. 986, and Res. 1284. Or do you not mind having the Saddam Hussein’s of the world do as they please - on issues such as WMDs?
It is almost laughable that amidst all of this, you expect a Prime Minister to pretend Saddam wasn’t a threat, or pose a reasonable one. A man who made arrogant claims of having these weapons, had sheltered terrorists (even those linked to 9/11), had bombed Iran for 8 years and various other countries and his own people … and you’re just going to hope he doesn’t have WMDs?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
They were expelled and kicked-out of Iraq, so they couldn’t do their searches. He lied to them, moved his weapons around before they arrived at sites and was caught doing so. He gave them false information almost all-the-time. Or do you think this is acceptable (on issues like WMDs)?
Of course it was a cheap ad hominem.
You’re asking me what I did when I was 14-years-old. That has nothing to do with the actual argument regarding the Iraq War, but is an attempt to attack me for - as you put it - “I was inquiring as to the strength of your convictions”. I have been debating this war for three years now, and although I have come across all-the-counter-arguments, people can’t help attacking the person then the actual argument - even, supposed, moderators!
I was actually asking Brian - not you - an opinion on something that I have been trying to understand for some time. Namely; how AC fits in with interventionism. I wasn’t actually debating the Iraq War. That was merely a side-remark. So I don’t know why you’re persisting with this?
Which post? After having thought about this, it seems it would be very difficult for a single person to arrange mass killings. I can’t invisage that happening without some form of coersion - which is not possible in an anacrhic society. But even if he did, the chap would get away with it in an anarchic society - I think. I am trying, very hard, to become an anarcho-capitalist but the transition isn’t easy. I am an interventionist at the moment, where a governments exist (and probably always will) and since it exists, it might as well do the moral and right decision to deal with dictators who try to mass exterminate their own people, and torture them etc … I am also an interventionist in the individual sense. So, if someone is getting raped down an alleyway, I wouldn’t just walk past.
Actually, you very much did start this.
Me : I am not sure about X. How does that fit-in with AC? I happen to think Y was right, and want to understand how that links with AC.
You: OMG! You think Y is right!!!1
What do you mean you’re not an interventionist? So, if you see someone getting tortured and killed, you’ll just walk on? Christ!
Arh! Now you’re reverting away from interventionism, and to the Iraq War uniquely. As if the Iraq war = interventionism. I like how you switch between the two.
Before I start on this point, I do love how you refer to “the bad he did”! Lol! As I see it, loss of life happens all-the-time and I think fighting to liberate people, removing a tyrannical dictator who forced 4 million Iraqis to flee the country, is the only noble (and a necessary) war. The nature of war is going to involve loss of life, and I can’t say that pleases me, but what kind of world would we live in, if dictators who committed crimes against humanity and knew that nobody would stop him or help the future (and previous) victims. Since you’re talking about Saddam, what about his victims? How many more people did we save by removing him? What if we did it a decade-ago, perhaps we could have saved the Kurds from having to die horrible poisonous deaths? Oh wait, those lives don’t involve British or American lives? Right? Because we don’t mind what he does, as long as no English and Americans and their precious lives are spent doing something decent in the world. I can’t help but feel anti-interventionism is morally dysfunctional.
I never saw you ask me something. What’s AC?
The weapons inspectors couldn’t find the weapons BECAUSE THERE WERE NONE. It’s hard for an innocent man to prove his innocence, which is why the standard for conviction is proof of guilt from the accuser, not proof of innocence by the accused.
From the Dave Chappelle Show:
Audience Member: Negrodamus, why is President Bush so sure Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?
Negrodamus: Because he has the receipt.
It’s popular in well-educated communities to trash high school teaching. While high school teaching is often terrible, I’d point out that there also are certain limits to what we can accomplish. Students don’t have the background that college students do, because we give them that background. They don’t have the maturity to handle certain topics well, and part of my job is teaching that, and study skills, and so on. The criticism that high school history is ‘comic book caricature’ seems to assume that students ought to come out of high school understanding the full complexity of all of human history, without any training in historical method, research methods, or economics. It’s an absurd assumption.
Hey Joe, the french resistance was half assed. French civilians never got along with guns.
I’ve returned to lurking for a while, but this topic roused me to post…
Holocaust or not, didn’t FDR deny Jews leaving Germany access to the US because they threatened his chances at a third term? Please, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
What he thought he was talking about.
@Fluke, who is that on your avatar anyway?
Comrade, the war is not over. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
The rest of your response is a testament to propaganda and progressive nationalism. You’re not even able to answer about Fallujah, which was a wholesale mass murder of thousands of civilians, who were defending their own city against foreign invaders. Saddam was not in Fallujah. Saddam was not in Abu Ghraib, where the white knights of western imperialism were committing atrocities like this;
http://www.americanprisonsystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Abu_Ghraib_prison19.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/f2/20080408052912!Abu-ghraib-leash.jpg
That’s the moral reality of the sort of people who were sent to get rid of that real bastard Saddam. That’s what war and interventionism and imperialism creates. You can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, and that you parrot propaganda back at me, oblivious to how the west created and supported Saddam at his worst, turning a blind eye to him for decades, and mass murdering Iraqi civilians through acts of war throughout the 90s.
When you resolve your ignorance and question what you’re told on the telly and down at the pub, when you reach beyond the mindless repetition of well marketed and rehearsed narratives and actually question why it is necessary to invade a country to catch one man, who wasn’t running from anyone, then maybe, you will be able to fashion a morality which is consistent with the actions used to carry it out.
@Fluke, who is that on your avatar anyway?
A guy in a SS uniform.
So you opposed the U.S. policy that supported Saddam during Iraq’s war with Iran?
Or the 1953 Iranian coup d’état?
Or when the U.S. backed a military coup that overthrew President Carlos Prio Socarrás and placed Fulgencio Batista in 1948?
Or he 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala overthrew President Jacobo Arbenz?
Way to build extremists like Che and Castro.
Brian,
I think that is the short list. Intervention in foreign policy really is no different than intervention in the economy. The consequences are not those that are originally advertised.
Fluke,
Up until about three years ago, I held views that were identical to yours. Your description about the justification for the '03 Iraq War is identical to what I would have said back in 2003. Your long list of rebuttals to Liberty Student could have been written by yours truly, until about three years ago…
Once I began to understand the nature of interventionism, in both the economy and foreign policy, my paradigm shifted.
Back in 2003, I would have disregarded people like myself as merely “pacifist” or “isolationist” or “naive” or you name it.
Now that the economy has imploded as a direct consequence of interventionism, and U.S. foreign policy has created an unsustainable empire, my views, and understanding, has changed from what it once was.
Still waiting…
google image: ralph fiennes amon goeth
from schindlers list. classic film
