Reply With QuoteWhy not ask Russia or Iran?Originally Posted by MRT144
Again, as much as I am not an OBAMA fan, what's done in public and what's done behind closed doors could be two entirely different things.
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
Baron O RIP.
Why not ask Russia or Iran?
I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator Rubio
Iran obviously doesn't think so otherwise they wouldn't be so antagonistic towards the US.
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
Not sure if serious.
"My nation is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine
"The subject of onanism is inexhaustable." --Sigmund Freud
Hey! HEY! Just because we experimented with syphilis on black people does not make us European Monsters.
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
Not entirely serious. I do contend that the Europeans have done far worse stuff, though.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
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Inarguably yes, they have done worse stuff. Is it possible they learned something along the way and maybe have a better insight into not how to do things? Countries are not tigers - they can change their stripes.
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
Germany and Japan are strong allies of the United States.
If changing their stripes involves blaming the good guys for everything because of some historical thing, then that's not stripes you want to change. My point is that Europe has a larger history of really horrible atrocities. I would guess that this is related to their tendency to Blame Ourselves First, even when doing so is laughably ridiculous.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
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Only after we bombed them to oblivion and back. Is that what it would take to get Iran to change? Now I see why you think we should start full scale war! I think maybe there's something to that!
You're a smart guy, Lori.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
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Hmm, the Europeans have a larger history for everything compared to the US. What's your point?
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
Baron O RIP.
They have more bullshit reasons to engage in cultural guilt.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
My argument is that half measures rarely work. We can turn into total pacifists ourselves, withdraw from international politics, and send trucks full of food to the rest of the world; or we can annihilate our enemies and brainwash them into being our friends. But our current foreign policy of doing terrible things in secret while claiming the moral high ground in public is a stupid half measure doomed to failure.
Part of your problem is that you view countries actions and motivations through a moral lens. The US isn't a good guy. Do good guys napalm civilians?
Maybe if you weren't a case study in self righteous jingoism, you'd have a different perspective.
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
What other lens should I look at them through? I see a country here that is a brutal dictatorship, with obscene human rights abuses and megalomaniacal aims, trying to build nukes after having stated that Israel should be wiped off the map. They fundamentally oppose modern countries with social and political freedom for the simple reason that they have such freedoms--they consider women's rights an abomination and have demanded the death of foreign authors that they disagree with (such as Salman Rushdie). There's no subtlety here about good guys and bad guys. Iran getting nukes would simply be a very bad thing, and if the price of preventing something that bad is an Iranian scientist has to die, so be it.
This isn't jingoism. This is an unambiguous case of good versus bad. It doesn't matter if the US has done bad things, it doesn't even matter that Iran has done bad things. Iran IS doing bad things and WANTS to do bad things with weapons it is trying to acquire, and we are preventing bad things by preventing them from getting nukes. This is not a moral quandary.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Do you have any reason to believe this? I understand your point about half-measures, but in my mind, half-measures are things like international sanctions. Covert activity has done plenty of things in the past to cause dramatic change.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
If having nuclear weapons prevents the death of one Iranian at the hands of Israel they'd be totally justified. Why does your morality trump their morality?
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
Congratulations, you have now become what is known as a "moral relativist". It's okay for them to do what they do, because they have different standards of right and wrong.
I could make my standards of right and wrong whatever I want, and then whatever I do is totally justified.
See, I'm making what Kuci would call a "utilitarian calculation" here when I surmise that Iranian nukes would harm more people in more ways than assassinating a lone Iranian scientist. I think this is a reasonable conclusion. Now, to decide that we care more about the scientist than Iran's many potential victims seems like a pretty simple decision, and it sure as hell trumps Iran's pathetic excuse for "morals".
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Continuing from my previous post...
In particular, the question we are deciding here is whether the right of Iran's autocrats to rule Iran (which the UN would refer to as "Iranian sovereignty") is more important than the rights of anyone Iran would potentially extort or attack with nuclear weapons. I don't care much about the fairly questionable "rights" of dictators to squash their own people, but I care quite a bit about normal everyday folks who would be harmed by said dictator's attempts to squash even more people, facilitated by nuclear weapons.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
Hey, if you weren't one of those daft USians I would explain to you the history of early colonization of the Congo.
Now I just say : we never freaked out over a backwater nation trying to get the a-bomb after we unnecessarily dropped 2 of them on civilian targets.
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Was that before or after the south got kicked in the mouth for slavery ?
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
If you weren't one of those daft Belgians I would explain to you the history of the American Civil War and antebellum period.
Now, I just say: We've never had a king, and if we did, we probably wouldn't have let him use an entire country as a massive personal slave camp.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
:(){ :|:& };:
I cannot conceive of a scenario in which covert action against Iran leads to what our ultimate goal should be: having peaceful relations with the nations of the world. Our foreign policy as it stands in the past fifty years involves doing little things here and there that piss off other countries and eventually lead to all out war. This cycle will only be broken if we drastically change our behavior.
Last edited by Lorizael; January 13, 2012 at 11:30.
Are you talking about the point at which the Belgian parliament confiscated the place from the personal ownership of your King, because millions of native Congolese had died or been brutally maimed in the rapacious extraction of the country's mineral wealth? Yes I'm familiar with the fact that things got better after that point. Soldiers even stopped cutting off people's hands and mailing them to the authorities as proof that they had killed insurrectionists. Belgium also stopped pretending that the project was a grand mission to bring civilization and Christianity to the poor and uneducated Africans.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
What is the case you are trying to make? Show that you can read wikipedia? Or basically saying that your initial remark didn't make much sense.
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
I hold in my hand a copy of King Leopold's Ghost.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
If you weren't such a drooling idiot I might explain you why the Kingdom of Belgium was formed in the first place. However, since this does not include jerking off to images of dead palestinians I just say: no, you had a couple of presidents kill of your native population.
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Good for you. Second option then ey ?
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
Basically I'm saying that lots of countries have bad stuff in their history, even yours, despite the fact that it ceased to be significant nearly 52 years ago. Germany had the holocaust (though fewer people probably died in that than in the violence in the Congo Free State), but today we don't think of Germany as the country of those evil Nazis. Lots of bad **** happened long ago and pulling out the OMG you had slavery etc thing doesn't hold water.
I come from the land of the ice and snow
From the rust belt where industry won't go
Maybe you should go back and read what your first rely was to. Slavery I just put on the plate of Kuci's drooling sibbling.
"Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."
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