haven: It's that "no matter the consequences" part that gets me. I see a revitalized Iraqi army in possession of nuclear weapons - and with Saddam at the helm - as too much of a threat. The consequences could be more dead than with the sanctions... If he tried to take over the ME (and that has always been his goal), how many deaths do you think would result? He's already gotten over a million people killed with his wars against Iran and Kuwait. Now, consider if he had had nukes back then... The course that presents the smallest loss of life should be taken, IMO, and that course is clearly (clearly to me, at least) removing Saddam. Take him out, and the sanctions are gone, the WMD are gone, and Iraq can rejoin the community of nations. Leave him there and you either have A) sanctions killing innocent Iraqis, or B) an emboldened Saddam threatening the entire ME (not to mention us) with potentially catastrophic loss of life. The choice is easy.
Let's see....he's paranoid, he's an egomaniac, he steals other people's ideas, he's irrelevant... How are those not ad hominem attacks? The fact that his article is well thought out and that it makes sense would refute your contention that his theoretical perspective is out of place in today's conflict. In fact, I'm not sure how you come to that determination in the first place. The debate between guiding our foreign policy by national interest or by moral imperatives is just as important and relevant in the post-Cold War world as it was during it.
I Have never felt sanctions will force any sort of positive change on a dictatorial-type regime ala Saddam. Pre-1990's Hussein was a better ruler in the Middle East and was very anti-extremist and if not for the war would have probably been a strong ally of the US today in the fight against religious extremism at all levels. Alas, with the destruction of Iraq, he is just hell-bent on revenge and must be taken out. Hussein still lives in comfort, and looks though he hasn't missed a meal lately. The sanctions will not hurt him, only his people. He needs to be taken out more as a favor to the Iraqi people for our knocking their country back to the stone age. Also, Saddam with his hatred, defiance and goal of revenge is a dangerous prospect with any sort of powerful weapon. I think his comments about the WTC were more about that type of destruction of the WTC happened to his whole country, then sanctions were placed which debilitated the nation. I feel the better thing to have done would have been to have taken out Saddam in 1991 and replaced him with a Pro-US ruler, this would have limited the innocent deaths since then. For now though, I feel treeman is right in that an efficient operation to take him out of power and install another government that can help that country get on the right track is necessary. As for Glynch's Sharon at Hague, and then Rocketman Tex's Arafat response. I think they both deserve time there!! Arafat has committed terrorist acts, and Sharon's are very well documented. Of course with the IDF behind him, Sharon blows Arafat away in terms of sheer numbers.
1. Ad hominems are an argumentative tactic. I had no interest in disparaging the argument. Therefore, it is not an ad hominem. Get it? 2. I've come to this conclusion by studying for 4 years as an honors student in one of the better political science departments in the country. In fact, the department I'm in is even conservative, and nobody takes Kissinger's brand of straight realpolitik seriously anymore. Not even the staunchest Neo-Realists. 3. The question isn't of the significance of the conflicting values of morality versus the national interest, but rather how one concieves of the international system itself. Trust me, one can believe moral questions are completely irrelevant and still think Kissinger's hardcore Realism is irrelevant. 4. Some of what Kissinger says makes sense, but his detailed arguments are either: A. frighteningly obvious or B. based on a philosophy that isn't really used anymore. Kissinger represented an important evolution in international political thought. Now, though, the field has evolved beyond what he brought to the table. He's sort of the elderly uncle that embarrasses you by slurping his soup, but whom everyone wants to treat with respect because they remember when he used to carve them neat little toys.
And Arafat blows Sharon away in terms of sheer terror. Let me ask you a question: Do you think the Israeli army would be killing Palestinian civilians if Palestinian terrorists hadn't killed Israeli civilians first? Sharon is no angel, I grant you that. But every Israeli raid against the Palestinians has been a response to Palestinian terror. Are you unable to grasp this fact?
But that ignores the fact that Israel treats Palestinians worse than the US treated blacks before the Civil Rights movement. I, too, believe that their terrorism is unjustified. But it's not unprovoked. (unprovoked is *not* a synonym for deserved)
Arafat the Angel: Arafat’s Martyrs, Bush’s Terrorists: PART 2 Next Terror Wave Just Beginning 15 January: Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, Romanian intelligence chief under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, wrote an article entitled “The Arafat I Know” in the Wall Street Journal of January 10. The occasion he marked was Israel’s capture of the Karin-A arms ship. Pacepa describes his involvement with Arafat in the late 1960s “in the days when he was being financed and manipulated by the KGB,” and comments: “I am not surprised to see that Yasser Arafat remains the same bloody terrorist I knew so well.” The former Romanian spy chief’s revelations once again raise the question: What do the Americans expect of Arafat? Don’t they know what he is? To show how Arafat feels about Americans, Pacepa points to his personal order to kill the US Ambassador in Khartoum, Cleo A. Noel, in 1973, after taking him hostage, commenting. “His broken record was that American ‘imperial-Zionism’ is the ‘rabid dog of the world,’ and there is only one way to deal with a rabid dog, ‘Kill it!’.” ”Arafat has made a political career by pretending he has not been involved in his own terrorist actions,” Pacepa writes. At a private dinner with Ceausescu, when Arafat bragged about his Khartoum operation, former Romanian prime minister Gheorghe Maurer advised him to be careful. “Who me?” said Arafat. “I never had anything to do with that operation,” winking mischievously. After the murder of the PLO representative in London in January 1973 for which Abu Nidal was blamed, Arafat’s liaison officer Ali Hassan Salameh admitted: “That wasn’t a Nidal operation. It was ours.” Why kill your own people? Arafat was asked. The answer, according to the former Romanian intelligence director: “To mount spectacular operations against the PLO, making it look as if they had been organized by Palestinian extremists groups that accuse the chairman of becoming too conciliatory and moderate.” Pacepa concludes that the Arafat he knew in the last quarter of the last century has not changed. Three days after the Pacepa article appeared, The Washington Post analyzed the dangers posed by al Qaeda today. Its writers pointed out that, while there is no conclusive evidence of the shoe bomber Richard Reid’s connection with Osama Bin Laden’s networks, what is certain is that “One of the explosive chemicals found in Reid’s shoes is commonly used by the Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel.” On December 31, 2001, DEBKAfile revealed that Reid was handed those explosives for blowing up an American Airlines passenger plane before Christmas in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya by Nabil Akal, a man close to Arafat’s most trusted lieutenants. Arafat, whose purpose in life was to kill Americans and Israelis in the 1970s remains dedicated to the same goals up to now. One day only after The Washington Post disclosure, three Israelis were dead at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. On January 9, four Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian policemen on the Israeli side of the south Gaza Strip border. Since the capture of the Palestinian smuggling vessel on January 3, Palestinian terrorists have killed a total of seven Israelis. Avi Boaz, 71, an American citizen living in the West Bank town of Maale Adumim, was lynched Tuesday afternoon at Beit Sahur near Bethlehem by four members of Arafat’s own Fatah. They snatched him under the noses of Palestinian policemen, who stood by. Tuesday night, two gunmen sprayed Yoela Chen and her car with bullets while chatting to her as she filled her car at the Givat Zeev gas station. Her elderly aunt was badly injured. The two gunmen ran off to the nearby Palestinian village of el-Jib. Israeli chief of staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz warned of worse to come in his briefing Tuesday to the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee in Jerusalem. His disclosure that an unnamed external body had given the Palestinian Authority its directives to revert to major terror operations confirmed DEBKAfile’s report on Monday, January 14, that Israel was braced for a Baghdad-instigated wave of terror. Mofaz added that the Palestinians were close to operating Qasem-2 surface rockets from the West Bank. With a range of up to 8 kilometers, these weapons would bring most of Israel’s main population centers and international airfields within Palestinian range. Tuesday night, as the word went round of an impending Israeli retaliation for the latest murders, Arafat instructed his men to detain Ahmed Saaadat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian in Ramallah. Saadat ordered the two men whose extradition Israel has demanded to assassinate cabinet minister Zeevi last October. Also on the United States list of wanted terrorists, he most probably ordered the murder of Yoela Chen at Givat Zeev. Arafat’s actions are par for the course, exactly the same as the old days described by the former Romanian spy chief. His move against his fellow-terrorist is designed to look conciliatory to the West, while at the same time signaling his following that he is placing the targeted man in protective custody so that the Israelis cannot get him. This week, a group of pro-Oslo peaceniks got together to set up a new Israel-Palestinian Coalition for Peace. Its members hoped to lift the popular standing of the pro-Oslo faction, including elements of the Labor party and Meretz, out of the pit in which it has been cast by the outrage and grief engendered by the unrelenting succession of Palestinian terror atrocities. The voices coming from this group tried to relate the latest upsurge in Palestinian killings to Monday’s death of Fatah-Tanzim military chief of the West Bank town of Tulkarm in a roadside explosion, as well as to Israeli actions in razing houses in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, under which ran 30 arms smuggling tunnels, and in knocking down illegal structures in the Arab village of Issawiya in north Jerusalem, the hidden location of a vast arms dump rivaling the Karine-A’s cargo. Former leader of dovish Meretz, Shulamit Aloni, whipped up her old stridence to brand Israeli ministers and generals war criminals. Transport Minister Efraim Sneh (Labor) urged clinging to even the tiniest remnant of Arafat’s willingness to halt the violence. The Iranian arms cargo loaded aboard the Karine-A has show these sentiments up as vain. In any case such voices are fated to be silenced again as so many times before by the savagery of Arafat’s next round of violence. Karmi, had he lived, would have been a front-runner in Arafat’s coming campaign of terror. The Palestinian leader’s hell-raising plans were plainly laid well in advance of the Tulkarm killer’s death. His goal is simple. To raise the flames of the Palestinian-Israel conflict high, in order to upset the Bush administration’s plans. He knows that Washington needs quiet on his front in order to focus on its global war against terrorism and deal effectively with Iraq, Somalia and the Lebanese Hizballah. Arafat is determined to deny them this luxury. DEBKAfile has repeatedly pointed out that the Palestinian leader is capable of outdoing all his European and Israeli fans in peace talk, while in action, he rivals the most radical Muslim extremists, including Osama bin Laden. Arafat is undoubtedly striving to show the Muslim world that he can beat bin Laden at his own game of killing Americans and Zionists. Retired General Pacepa knew what he was talking about. http://www.debka.com/ There’s lots of other interesting info at this site, as well as Part I of this story…
Perhaps if the Palestinians stopped blowing up Israeli school buses they wouldn't be treated like second-class citizens? But I guess they're just blowing up Israeli schoolbuses because they're being treated like second-class citizens... Chicken, meet Egg.
Hmmm, the premise of my posting his article is that he's qualified to speak on the issue of how we handle international issues. You've disputed that premise by attacking the source. That is an argument. An ad hominem is an attack on the person not on the intellectual idea, and calling him paranoid, a thief, an egomaniac etc is an attack on Kissinger himself, not his intellectual writings. Therefore, you've made an ad hominem retort to my posting of his article, get it? Ooooooooh, look at the big brain on Haven. I guess four whole years of undergraduate study makes you an authority......in the 'honors' program no less...ooooooooh. Most impressive. This assumes that Kissinger's understanding of the international system is stagnant, and unchanged since his administration days, which is not the case. And far be it for me to suggest that academics are insulated and outrageously territorial with whatever their pet theory of the day happens to be. Hmmmm, so it must be (a) frightfully obvious that we're going to have to invade Iraq and take out Saddam? If that's true then I wonder why there is so much debate about what to do next? It cannot be (B). Its fact that ideas consistent with his writings are being debated TODAY in CONGRESS, and championed by minor figures like Senators such as Lieberman and McCain who just ran for Vice President and President from the two ruling parties in this country, and the current President, and the current Sec State, and the CIA, and the former heads of the CIA and on and on. Another interesting intellectual argument (or is it is a thinly disguised ad hominem). It sounds vaguely similar to Ross Perot talking about the crazy aunt that you have to lock up in the basement.
hayesstreet: Screw it, you're taking this too personally. Although, it's absolutely impossible for me to be using an ad hominem, since I essentially agree with the claims. But take it as you will...
Iraq is a threat to our economy because he ould try and take out the Saud's and then we go bust and THAT'S why our national security is at stake
Haven, I'm just messin' around. I get into a lot of these just for the sport of it, whether it be an intellectual exchange (hopefully I contribute as much as I pick up) or just plain ol' smack talkin'... The way you've gone about this is interesting however, in relation to what an ad hominem is: you attack Kissinger personally (the first step of an ad hom), but then you say two things (a) that you are not making an ad hominem since you're not disagreeing with his conclusions, but that you are striving towards an alternate goal of reducing his credibility, and (b) that his thinking and ideas about international relations are outdated, unrespected, and simply out of touch with the current geopolitical situation. Now to me, (b) would seem to be the second and final part of an ad hom, which is to declare the speaker/author's writing/ideas incorrect/flawed. (a) Kissinger is an idea stealing egomaniac that no one listens to anymore. (b) We should not consider him credible in discussions of international relations. He is irrelevant. I think this is an ad hominem attack. But its not important enough to get frustrated about.
