Resistance against US War on Iraqi is on the rise

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by orange
i almost went to this, but my alarm didn't go off and I overslept. I'm kicking myself for it now.

I tried to get a ride, but the minivan that the students had gotten was filled. They had more interest than they expected, which is good. I'd have liked to go though; I haven't been to a demo in three and a half years.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Lincoln
Do you think that the minority ethnic groups should be oppressed? And the UN "punishments" are a joke and I might say cruel because they cause unending suffering to the people of Iraq. But I agree that the threat is probably not imminent.

How can a punishment be a joke and cruel?

If you want to justify this war as a crusade for human rights for the people of Iraq- go ahead, its a valid point. just be ready to answer why only Iraq and not dozens of more states and regions around the world.

Oh, and to return to a very old point: Syria has no nukes.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The UN also does a lot of good through its NGOs in alleviating suffering in the 3rd world, through food distribution, medical programs, and education. Also, a lot of trade agreements are worked on in the UN. It isn't merely a debating room and Security Council. And as GePap points out, the UNSC is enforcing its will upon Iraq through sanctions.

So the UN is a welfare project? At least it has the red tape to prove it.

So now the UN sanctions are good? Starving the Iraqies is now better than going in and trying to change the situation?

And che, even you must admit that the UN isnt enforcing sh!t.

[tandeetaylor]

Originally posted by GePap
Oh, and to return to a very old point: Syria has no nukes.

Yes I know, I was wrong. I heard it on one of those political debate shows and didn't find out for myself before using it here. sorry

[Lincoln]

It is a joke because it punishes the people and not the leadership. It is cruel because it effects the innocent pawns that Saddam uses and there is virtually no end in sight as the past decade has proven.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


No, what he's saying is that the UN is already punishing Iraq. I don't know what GePap's stance is, but I am opposed to sanctions.

Here's what I think would be a good idea. Turn control over all Iraqi ports of entry over to the UN. Let the UN handle customs, and remove the sanctions.

Hasn the UN tried to control things before? Don't they end up being used as hostages, bargaining chips and such.. To be honest, I woulnt' wish my worst enemy to be under UN authority. You are way too optimistic about the abilities of the UN che.

[Lincoln]

In answer to you second point GePap, I think that it is sometimes better to cut out a cancer quickly even if blood is shed. I really do not think that Bush will oppress the people of Iraq if there is a war. I think they will be dancing in the streets.

[Sprayber]

Those sanctions were a result of people in far away places with no will power and no regard for human life. Fact is, this should have been done a decade ago. But everyone lacked the will and the common decency to finish a job that had already been 95% accomplished. Now we have this mess on our hands.

[DinoDoc]

Now a word from Washington:

No Time To Sleep

By John McCain

Thursday, October 24, 2002; Page A35


I believe it is peace for our time . . .

Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.

-- British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Sept. 30, 1938

As we contemplate preemptive action to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring the world's worst weapons, it's worth understanding how the temptation to go home and get a nice quiet sleep led directly to the inevitable crisis we now face on the Korean peninsula -- where North Korea's acknowledgment of a secret nuclear weapons program demonstrates the perils of entrusting American security to dangerously flawed agreements with rogue regimes.

This crisis first came to a head in 1994 with North Korea's threat to weaponize plutonium from its Yongbyon nuclear facility. After months of American concessions, the Clinton administration agreed to build North Korea two civilian nuclear reactors and provide it with a half-million tons of oil annually until the reactors were built. Totalitarian North Korea became the largest recipient of American assistance in Asia as we propped up a regime that might otherwise have collapsed.

Serious people can differ honorably over the morality of feeding and funding a regime that starves, oppresses, tortures and kills its own people while threatening to destroy its southern neighbor, in order to prevent that regime from developing nuclear weapons. But there is scant moral refuge for those accommodationists who believe even today that we can concede our way out of this crisis. A decade of appeasement and assistance to one of the world's worst regimes provided it the time and the means to develop weapons that now threaten America and our friends.

We had a choice in 1994. We now face a harder choice because we did not then meet our responsibility to end the challenge to American and Asian security posed by North Korea's nuclear program. Similarly, we face a hard choice in Iraq today. But unless we act soon, we will face harder choices later, with costs that could be catastrophic.

The feckless pursuit of accommodation with regimes that scorn our reasonableness and revile our purpose is no substitute for a policy that matches the menace posed to America with the means and the will to confront it.

Iraq demonstrates that American resolve elicits a different response. Although no more than a ploy, Baghdad's professed openness today to renewed weapons inspections after years of defiance is made possible only by the compelling threat of military force. Our determination to confront Saddam Hussein openly and with all necessary means demonstrates a freedom to act against an enemy that does not -- yet -- possess nuclear weapons.

Rather than asking why we do not pursue the same strategy toward Iraq and North Korea, the American people understand we are confronting Saddam Hussein today because we cannot kick the can down the road, as the Clinton administration did with North Korea, waiting until he possesses nuclear weapons, as North Korea now does, thereby constraining our ability to respond to a developing danger. We cannot allow Iraq to become the North Korea of the Middle East.

America's options in North Korea are limited because we did not take action a decade ago to permanently end Pyongyang's nuclear program. Certain options once open to us are now foreclosed because we dozed while this threat gathered.

Our current predicament in North Korea could portend our future with Iraq if we do not use every means available to us to end the threat it poses while we still have the freedom to act.

Credibility is a nation's greatest asset in international affairs. It is the hardest to earn and the most difficult to maintain, but once possessed it makes it possible to compel changes in behavior. Credibility exists only in the eye of the beholder.

The Clinton administration's lack of credibility in dealing with North Korea emboldened the regime to defy America. The Bush administration's credible threat of force against Iraq is rallying American and international opinion in our favor, and has put Baghdad on notice. Pyongyang is watching.

The dangers posed by Iraq and North Korea are different, but as any surviving member of the Taliban will attest -- and as Saddam Hussein may soon learn -- in this new era, rogue regimes that openly defy and gravely threaten the United States put themselves in peril when they doubt our resolve to end challenges to our security. If we had met the North Korean nuclear challenge with resolve rather than accommodation a decade ago, we would be more secure now. North Korea teaches us that if we sleep in the face of the Iraq threat today, we may be sleepless tomorrow.

The writer is a Republican senator from Arizona.

[tandeetaylor]

Everytime I lay down to go to sleep, I worry that North Korea or China or Pakistan or Russia is about to send a nuclear weapon my way. Once again, it's not our respoonsibilty, nor is it our problem, to make sure that no one has (as Dubya likes to say) nucular weapons.

John McCain never said or did anything good except making fun of John Ashcroft on Saturday Night Live.

[GePap]

The old 'appeasement' bull****.

One day i shall write a 10000 character tirade against this oldest, most folish, useless, and intellectually bankrupt of diplomatic cliches.

On the UN and its actions: since the UN was created to limit as greatly as possible the use of military force to settle disputes, no one should be surprised that ti frowns upon the use of military force. Spraybear: don;t underestimate the good that the UN has done in alliviating human suffering.

The reason Bush I didn't go after saddam at the end is that they ahd no roadmap for a post saddam iraq, just like us, ad they were not traumaized by 9/11.

As for an invasion: all I want from this admin is an honest argument about why they will (and they will) invade Iraq. it goes something like this:

"The US is the sole superpower, and since we are fundamentally a force for good, we need to remain unenqualed, with no limits or deterent on our power. Any state or group that seeks to revise the current world system, with the US as global hegemon, must be eliminated,and the US must be firm in this goal. 9/11 shows us that our enemies can and will strike at us, so deterrance no longer works. The US must use force if necessary to enforce the world system which we rightfully seek to extend worldwide, as it is the most moral and beneficial system ever created by mankind. Iraq is a threat to his system, a violator of it, and thus, it must be dealt with immidiately."

I fundamentally disagree with many of the assumptions the admin makes, but at least if they came out honestly about their intellectual groundings, we would be able to have a serious debate baout it, and not argue about the facade of arguments they put out now.

[Saint Marcus]

Gepap

[SlowwHand]

There is going to be war with Iraq, of that there is no doubt.
My only question is why action against Korea is more accepted than against Iraq ?

Regardless, in a perfect world, there would never be another war, anywhere.
It's our misfortune to live in this world though.