Forum
  Classifieds
  News
  Localband
  Shows
  Show Pics
  Polls

  OT Threads
  Other News
  Movies
  VideoGames
  Videos
  TV
  Sports
  Gear
  /r/
  Food

  New Thread
  New Poll

E-mail

New site? Maybe some day.

Username:

SPAM Filter: re-type this

(values are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E, or F)

Message:

UBB enabled. HTML disabled Spam Filtering enabledIcons: (click image to insert) Show All - pop

b i u add: url image video(?)

:	post by ShadowSD at 2006-03-29 14:12:13

PatMeebles said:

That's one of the worst things about war. People have to die. But leaving Saddam in power would have killed much more innocent civilians. Over 75,000 would be dead according to UNICEF (I think it was that organization), where 25,000 civilians have died since the invasion, mostly from insurgent attacks directly on the population. So while I think it's a tragedy that so many people had to die, I have to take into account that the situation is better than the alternative.

Unfortunately, far more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died since we invaded; the number surpassed 120, 000 a long time ago. (Source: McLaughlin Group)

Therefore, more innocent people have died because we invaded than would have otherwise. It should be no surprise: internal civil wars result in civilians enlisting as soldiers and making the choice to risk death for their country, whereas externally affected civil wars contain complexity and chaos that lead to those civilians more likely to be butchered in cold blood. There's no running away from this simple fact, which has repeated itself consistently for all of human history. We should try to base our foreign policy around facts, not momentarily convenient reasoning.

PatMeebles said:

Given that the cities we bombed were strategic positions that were part of the war industry, and given the prosperity and advances in Japanese society, I'd say it was worth it.

Had Japan found it's own way to democracy and capitalism, there would have been far less innocent lives lost (by the reasoning I offered above). There is no way to measure the societal impact of the loss of that many lives, but the loss itself is undisputed, whereas a hypothetical comparison of how societally advanced Japan would have been had they not been nuked is just that: hypothetical. You have at best a hypothetical assumption (that the Japanese are more advanced now because of WWII) weighed against a documented truth (the vast loss of civilian life in the atomic blasts), all in order to prove an end-justifies-the-means argument about killing civilians. Meanwhile, the terrorists use an end-justifies-the-means argument about killing civilians to murder Americans every chance they get. In a "hearts and minds" war against terrorism where we are losing neutral Muslims every day, maybe we need to reevaluate our moral thinking to purge any ambiguity that might validate the reasoning of our enemies, ultimately increasing their ability to recruit suicide bombers trained to kill American civilians.

PatMeebles said:

However, these two entities saw in each other a means to achieve the ultimate short-term goal: Bringing America to its knees. I'm begging you to check out the conservative blogs like powerlineblog.com, captainsquartersblog.com, and the weekly standard. These guys are keeping track of all the new documents that are being released, and so far those documents aren't boding well for the idea that Saddam and OBL could never work together.

I am very up to date with what conservatives have to say on the Iraq issue (in fact I've spent more time listening to them than anyone else, since you learn more listening to your rivals in politics, and particularly in this decade I listen more to conservatives since they are the ones with all the power). I've watched several hours of Bill Kristol (editor of The Weekly Standard) over recent years during television news debates and analysis, and find nothing new in these blogs that I haven't already heard.

I know that Bush apologists have done everything to try to scrape together evidence to justify the war after the fact. What should be a warning flag to you is the fact that neo-cons have been acting as if they're pulling teeth trying to justify Iraq ever since it happened.

And yet if such exalting evidence had existed sooner, it would have already been released to the media by the Bush Administration, as this government's main focus from 2002 to present has been pulling teeth to justify the invasion, and so they wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to offer evidence that backed them up as soon as they had it. Again, common sense test. Just look at the strain of those trying to make the case, balanced with how long it has taken for supportive evidence to dribble out, and something is clearly fishy.

PatMeebles said:

That article doesn't give support of the study. You might want to look into the arguments for and against this paper a little more.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013517.php

That article just proves my point. What Allen Dershowitz wrote to suggest the paper's writers are Anti-Semites simply because they criticized Israeli foreign policy is just unbelievable and reprehensible. (I say this as someone who generally agrees with Dershowitz and thinks he made several brilliant points in an eloquent debate of secularism vs. religion that I watched in its entirety; compared to this matter though, he was doing a better job convincing me OJ was innocent.) Dershowitz wrote:

"The wrenching out of context is done by the hate sites,and then [the authors] cite them to the original sources, in order to disguise the fact that they've gotten them from hate sites."

Dershowitz is suggesting that the fact that certain arguments and figures exist on Neo-Nazi hate sites as well as in the paper automatically means the paper got its information from those Neo-Nazi sites, and implies that the paper condones all the attitudes of that site.

Meanwhile, many critics of illegal immigration use arguments despite the fact that the same arguments are also exploited by white supremacists; not all critics of illegal immigration are white supremacists, nor do they get their arguments from white supremacist sites. Many of the corrupt and rich have for years used the same tax cut arguments word for word still used by honest fiscal conservatives; not all supporters of tax cuts are rich and corrupt, and not all fiscal conservatives get their arguments from the rich and corrupt. Someone who likes Korn may use the exact same argument for liking heavy music as the people on rttp (getting your aggression out, for example); does that mean that people here are going to stop using "getting out aggression" as a reason just because they hate Korn with a passion? Not all metal fans who enjoy getting aggression out like Korn, nor do they get their arguments from nu-metal fans simply because both groups used "getting out aggression" as their reasoning. There are always people you find reprehensible who may end up using the same arguments as you, but if the specific argument you are both saying is ultimately true, then you shouldn't distance yourself from that fact, because the many huge differences between you and said reprehensible people LIE ELSEWHERE and deserve no minimizing (by stressing differences that don't exist). To silence yourself in order to distance any and all of your beliefs from someone revolting may be politically correct, but it is intellectually repugnant.

Meanwhile, the piece by Caroline Glick gets angry, attempts to discredit the study without presenting a shred of objective evidence, and finally only challenges one point about the Harvard paper intellectually:

"The paper's first footnote maintains,'The mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest to bring it about.' Every semi-sentient person with even an incidental knowledge of American politics knows that there is no area of human endeavor that is not represented by a lobby in the US."

Which is absolutely true. But read that again. It's entire logic in terms of discrediting the paper is based on a semantic slight of hand that hopes you won't have the patience to give it a second look.

There are two ways the phrase "the mere existence of the Lobby" can be interpreted: 1) The Lobby existing only as a yes or no question, or 2) The Lobby existing as defined by a particular set of terms.

The paper's intent was 2, and that is quite clear in context, but when the phrase is isolated, 1 is obviously a case of better writing because it is more on the mark as a phrase. In otherwords, the Harvard paper was being written to define what it alleged this lobby was, and what it alleged the lobby had done, and was thus making a declaration about it's "existence" under that definition. Anyone can figure that out if they actually read it (or even click on the link to the summary that I posted), but most people don't take the time, and Glick's article is aimed at those people.

In otherwords, it's like if I wrote a paper about the Nazi atrocities, and my first footnote said "The mere existence of this government suggests that absolute power can cause incredible suffering", then some neo-Nazi idiot dismissed all the findings of the paper by saying said "Every semi-sentient American knows that without government, there would be anarchy." Obviously, I was not criticizing the Germans merely for having a government at that time, but rather referring to "government" under the definition supported by the rest of my paper; so ultimately, this person would be trying to use a semantic slight of hand to discount all the facts the paper presents.

The only reason that he will fail while people like Glick and Dershowitz will succeed is because the Neo-Nazi is absolutely on the wrong side of sympathy, and they are completely on the right side of sympathy. Zionists bank on the fact that a knee-jerk disgust based on sympathy will allow semantic hat tricks to obscure actual debate, and unfortunately, they usually win the bet. The sad irony is that Zionist policies have harmed Americans and Israelis instead of protecting them, anatogizing and isolating us into a foreign policy corner, and this sad trend only shows signs of continuing...

[default homepage]

[print][

10:59:22am Apr 30,2024
load time 0.01114 secs/10 queries]

[search]

[refresh page]