And again I see you are digging into a pointless detail with your last post rather than address the issue it was illustrating.

YES it was laughable they wanted to ban Playstation 2s from going into Iraq! But what was the mindset that cause concern over that in the first place? Why do you have to dig into the particulars of a small illustrative point rather than the argument it was helping to flush out?

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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I mean I don't know why [Bush] would [make claims about WMDs] when it would obviously come around to bite him if he found nothing. Even if what he said were true he'd be hung if nothing was found by making that so much of his case for going off to war.

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But still he'd have to deal with the backlash and maybe get kicked out of office. I'm not saying what you said his reasoning was isn't true, I'm saying if it was it seems like a poor trade-off I wouldn't make on purpose.

It's not like Iraq had 4 different administrations since then. And they were constantly testing our no-fly restrictions. The crisis of leadership and political will in Iraq wasn't changed after the first Persian Gulf War, it was just frozen.

quote:

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Did you miss the part where we (not the UN) were the ones who came up with the no-fly zones? So you're saying the fact that we imposed no-fly zones constitutes evidence that Iraq was threatening us and we had no choice but to invade? Well, gosh, how could the world fail to be persuaded by logic like that?

And of course I never called Iraq a "nation of peace." More bollocks from you.

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Seeing as how it took the Supreme court, his brother's political office, his old man's ex-CIA spook status and enough post-election spin to make a dervish dizzy just to wipe his ass with the electoral process long enough to get into office, I would hope that his subsequent trip back to Texas is already booked.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

I can hope - and encourage everyone to vote.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

"the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership." Bush must be insane.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

I thought maybe I could defuse some of the ring-around-the-rosie by trying to frame (what I believed to be) MaKK's point into some sort of consistent thesis but it appears to have had little good effect. I thought it was worth a shot. I'll just go back to being the usual philosophical wet noodle that I am...

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

I thought it was a nice articulation of some pro-war arguments. I enjoyed the chance to respond to them. But I like wet noodles too. Generally with shrimp, sprouts, cilantro, and a side of spring rolls. Mmmm.

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What others say about boorite!

So you are finally giving up then.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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But still he'd have to deal with the backlash and maybe get kicked out of office. I'm not saying what you said his reasoning was isn't true, I'm saying if it was it seems like a poor trade-off I wouldn't make on purpose.

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They gave up the rights to manage their own airspace --along with losing any presumptions of their peaceful nature-- when they invaded Kuwait and later lobbed missles towards Israel.

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It doesn't. You said, if Iraq wasn't a threatening country that needed to be invaded, then why UN sanctions, why no-fly zones? Seems to me you are saying the very fact that no-fly zones exist points to a need to invade Iraq. The fact that we alone imposed them (which I get the impression you may not have known) is pertinent to that, I think.

So. If the real issue is not the fact of no-fly zones but the reasons for them, I'd like to hear those reasons, and why they point to a need to bomb and invade. (I happen to think the no-fly zones were yet another thing that made Iraq Not A Threat. We had that bastard so screwed to floor, he couldn't even look at his own feet.)

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Why would Saddam want to attack the US? He was in power in Iraq, and as long as the status quo remained he'd probably have stayed in power. Attacking any other country, not least the US, would have been political suicide.

I addressed this point a long time ago. You are like a child wandering into a conversation.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Not much point in arguing international law with someone who thumbs his nose at it.

As for the technology inside Playstations, and the use to which it could have been put in military UAVs: There is none. I don't care what you do with the guts of a Playstation-- they are not anywhere near up to specs for that application. Not sure how much clearer this needs to be. I'm also not sure what I was supposedly wrong about on that score or what I was "called" on. Seems like you're the one who got called. The fact that you offered it up as evidence of the awesome Iraqi threat shows just how dry the well is.

I think it's pretty clear you don't know a whole lot about this topic, on which you have formed such heartfelt opinions. I think you've also made it clear that you don't really care to know about it. It's all just details and justifications and international laws anyway. Who cares?

I think that as long as you don't agree that things like evidence and international law are important, there's nothing to talk about. But again, thanks for those chuckles. You cheered me up immensely.

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What others say about boorite!

(I'm pretty sure Makk is having me on. I mean no one could seriously.... could they? Well, I've had fun with it anyway.)

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What others say about boorite!

Why do you suddenly stop arguing when I ask you to legitimize your international rules of law?

Give me a reason not to then!

It was offered up as evidence to show to what extreme it was thought the country was a threat. AGAIN my argument was not "Playstation 2s are dangerous" and AGAIN it was not "Iraq is seeking Playstation 2s and therefore they are dangerous".

I think it's funny that I ask you to offer legitimacy for an international dictate in the same vein you argue for me to supply legitimacy for American actions abroad, and suddenly you shut up, say that I know anything, and cease to argue.

I think as long as you cannot offer legitimacy to the international law you are talking about, and cannot exercise some simple common sense when identifying a potential threat to the world, you have plenty of nothing to talk about.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Yes, international law is illegitimate. Ho ho ho! Had me going there for a minute. You joker you.

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What others say about boorite!

Please give me some reasoning as to why it is legitimate. I'm serious. And I will seriously entertain any argument you give with no dirty wordings.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Give me a reason not to then!

How about the belief that a world ruled by law rather than self-interested bullies would be a better place?
And the principle "lead by example"?

Or would that be too simple?

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Absorbed directly through the skin.

And who exaclty are the self-interested bullies? Are you suggesting that by somehow combining into one body, nations that are run by dictators and oppresive theocracies become peace loving nations?

And I'm sorry, I live in reality. Laws are only as good as the people who enforce it. If you've ever been hassled by the cops you might have an idea of what I mean.

Please clarify what you mean.

Also I'd really like to hear from boorite on this. After entertaining his many questions about what forms my point of view, he is curiously quiet.

Why must I go out of my way to provide proof that Iraq was a hostile nation, and when I ask you to prove that the UN is a legitimate governmental body, it is a different story? You seem to suggest that it is just obvious they are a legitimate body. But you balk at my assertion that it was obvious Saddam was a threat. If I must back up something I claim is so obvious, I think you should have to do the same.

But DMSO I agree that a peaceful world is preferable to one that is at war. But preventing the erosion of the security of the nation that is largely responsible for that order is worth some momentary turmoil (in my opinion). I don't want to harp on what I have already said, but if you want to read back on what I said about this and call me out on something, please feel free to do so.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

I think Makk would really get a chuckle out of having us argue about the legitimacy of international law. Or else he really is making a serious pitch for lawless violence. My money's on "troll." Either way, it's not serious.

Makk, if you really are serious, here's a nice website on the Charter of the United Nations, to which the US is a signatory state. The Preamble and Chapter 7 are particularly relevant.

Here is the "Declaration on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations", which was adopted by the General Assembly. Yes we signed this.

I agree with most of the remarks in that Declaration. I think respect for the aims of the Charter comes from first principles, ideas like, "life is better than death, and order is better than chaos, and so peace is to be preferred over war when possible." Ideas like, "no state has the right to impose its will on another state through violence." I may be articulating these first principles poorly, and I would be hard pressed to present some "argument" for them, holding them as I do to be self-evident.

The Charter emerged from the hideous experience of WWII and a desire to never repeat it. And not since the fall of the Axis powers has a state shown such a willingness to exercise international violence in defiance of the world's will and international norms of conduct. This is not "global order" but the collapse of global order. The result is not security but increased danger, as any idiot can tell simply by conducting a body count. Worst of all, the US is going back on its word, abrogating its most solemn obligations. This violence in the name of America is a blasphemy against our most sacred founding documents. How can you hold up the Declaration and the Bill of Rights and then justify bombing and invading countries on such flimsy pretexts?

OK, if you're still not sure why lawless war is not "legitimate," I'm not sure I can help. Sorry.

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What others say about boorite!

No, laws are only as effective as the degree to which those who agree to live within them actually do so. To dismiss the rule of law as inconsequential is to deconstruct the very basis of civil society. We have created laws and rules within which society must operate for mellennia upon mellenia, so as to outline a set of boundaries for acceptable behaviour that would strengthen the fabric of society. Laws are what allow us to live together, and the need to enforce them arises from the fact that some sectors of the populace will always try and circumvent them for personal gain as opposed to adhering to them for the greater good.

Law is, at it's finest, an outline for conscienable behaviour amongst civil people that offers protection and redress for all of the citizens whom it governs. Not just the strong or the aggressive. It speaks directly to the notion that the inalienable rights of man are, truly, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The subtext that is inherently imbedded in these notions - and the constitution that assures them - is "without some random sonofabitch sticking his foot up your ass and taking those inalianble rights away from you with impunity."

Hence, the law.

At it's worst, the law can be a set of opressive and autodidactic codified restrictions that benefit only those who drafted them.

We get some of that, too.

To abandon the higher and more globally salient constructs of good laws, laws that protect and offer sanctuary from man's inhumanity to his own kind - simply out of a bellicose sense of self-interest - is to undermine the very rule of law and the degree of civil, social and economic stability that they have brought the world over the course of their development and implementation.

It's shitting where you eat.

In other words, if you'll screw me for a penny, you'll screw me for a pound. The scope and scale the arenas in which laws must, sometimes, operate does not mean that they can be arbitrarily dismissed or circumvented, due to the fact that there is little opportunity to fairly address the results of such curcumvention, due to the ponderous amount of activity necessary to do.

If you rob a bank and get away with it because you lose them in the traffic jam, you're still a fucking thief.

It is, IMHO, especially on the grand scale of international law that those whom we send up to manage the affairs of entire nations must be at their most conscienable, and in their highest state of lucidity and mindful of the ideals that the law has proffered mankind, because they are there to enforce them and adhere to them, and find purchase upon the reason of other men to agree to do so for that all important greater good.

When we abandon that, the hope we have for the world that can be created by the decrees set forth in that constitution that we, ostensibly, so rigorously defend and promote, is just another trough of hogwash.

And we have failed.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

That's a lot of lofty language, boorite. But agreeing to be civil loses meaning when other governments in your body seem to have no concept of what civility is.

bunner I hope this is the thesis for you 72 page essay because I don't have time to read all of that. That still makes my point, whether or not it is true: if an international body cannot police it's own laws then it is not legitimate. If there is no public backing behind the laws they enter into, then nations will not have the political will to meet their agreements. (And hence they cannot be enforced. Just a semantical difference not really worth a whole diatribe over.)

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

The fact that you dismiss my writings out of hand as being too time consuming to actually read doesn't detract from the validity of the statement. The notion that I put forth was not a different way of saying that "if an international body cannot police it's own laws then it is not legitimate", it was - rather - saying that the legitimacy of the law is something in and of itself, and that the adherance to those laws are for the greater good, and the enforcement of them - when necessary - offers proof that the people who endorse the organisation that drafted them, and approve of the enforcement of those laws, offers them validity and legitimacy, Q.E.D.

As for public backing of the laws pertinent here, I do not see the preponderance of the UN member nation's citizenry storming the doors of the UN demanding a repeal of international law. Therefore, some degree of consensus must be assumed regarding their acceptance as usful laws.

Standing there saying "Yeah? Well, fuck you! What are you going to do about it?", does not invalidate the law. It makes the person or body doing so a bully and -should, at least - place them squarely outside of it's protection and benefits. I heartily endorse the review and subsequent alteration of the law when circumstances dictate. The law must evolve. Wholesale dimissal of the law is not a useful course of review, however. That's is why wholesale dismissal of the law is generally referred to as "crime."

Then again, I confess that I have no good argument to offer to anybody who would admittedly not even bother to read something pertinent to a debate and then respond with: "That still makes my point, whether or not it is true."

As far as I can see, you advocate a world where the largest and strongest nation with the most swords are naturally allowed to do as they please.

This scenario might make for an interesting video game, but I highly doubt that you would enjoy the world which would be created by such reasoning.

It has taken centuries for the western world to slowly crawl out of that insufferable mode of behaviour, and the struggle continues, obviously, as we speak. It is my assertion that the rope that we pull ourselves up with is the law.

Then again, I am quite convinced of boo's notion that you are not so much interested in the issues being debated here, as you are interested in simply arguing for the sake of whatever sense of self-assurance that belligerance may offer.

I shall retire from this forum and take my apparently ponderous and overblown assertions with me.

I see no point in wasting your time.

Thank you.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

My point was that these "laws" are the end result of negotiations between parties with drastically conflicting politics and governments. They are agreements made contingent on many variables -the most important being that the people of the governments making the laws even agree with them- and it is a farce to call such a thing "a rule of law". Saddam used this semblence of law to stutter our attack. It was not in anyone's best interest but his own, he wasn't playing by the book, he was offering only the least and last-ditch action that would further stall an attack on him.

Saying a law is legitimate because it fits the definiton of law isn't a satisfactory argument to me: you cannot define a word using itself. And you took a lot of time to do that, I might add.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008