Do you think the US should act in its best interest or act fair?

Exactly. It is often in our best interest to be fair.

The world is getting smaller and smaller. We can't afford to be isolationists. For example, Bird Flu has now spread to western Europe.

Should we:
Sell our CDC expertise and resources to foreign countries to make a profit or should we assist those countries?

It would be fair to assist those countries any way we can ...but it is probably in our best interest to do so to fight it before it reaches our shores.

 

The moderates don’t necessarily have to support Al Qaeda. If they view the US as being no better than Al Qaeda then there is no incentive for them to actively help the US, and this has been one of the biggest problems in Iraq. If the people trusted the US they would be turning in the insurgents and terrorist, but they don’t so they just take care of their own and try to stay out of the way. If the moderates believe in you and trust you and see that what you are trying to do is good for them, then they will become your eyes and ears, thousands upon thousands of them. If they don’t, then they won’t and you’ll be alone on an island, which is what is happening to a significant extent to the US troops there. And this is a chronic problem for your politicians and military strategists. They didn’t understand that the war in Vietnam was a civil war. They didn’t understand the will of the people in Nicaragua, and they don’t understand how to deal with moderate Arabs in the ME. Perhaps this is at least partly due to the fact that the US has had technical superiority in these wars and was tempted to rely solely on that.

See, it’s this kind of twisted understanding/misunderstanding of what’s going that gets your government into trouble. You have to try to look at the world through their eyes. As I said above, if the moderates view the US as just as bad as Al Qaeda then they won’t help the US, and I suspect that many, even Iraqis, think the US is even worse, and with good cause. They do not trust that the US is looking out for their best interests, so they will look out for their own and not have anything to do with the Americans.

I think it’s far more than just getting someone to like you, but I would say that in almost all normal cases being fair with others results in a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s a win win situation, whereas not being fair may result in some short term gain for you, but in the long run will produce a mutually detrimental relationship, a lose lose realatiship.

Make sure that you are considering the majority opinion on these issues. There will always be some people who complain so if you’re looking for absolute agreement you’re not going to get it on anything. I would say that most people think the US did fairly well in a very tough situation in Bosnia and Kosovo. Somalia was bungled (and it was bungled by the Canadians as well, btw. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair ), and in Rwanda it was the UN that took the bulk of the blame.

 

Very well said.

 

Actually there is PLENTY of evidence countering your claim about Iraq. Even the indigenous insurgents are fighting AQ. The view that all violence in Iraq is one homogenous movement is shallow and incorrect. The man fighting because his family was killed in an airstrike is NOT the same as the man fighting because he's on jihad from Saudi Arabia. There are two distinct forms of violence in Iraq - that directed at the coalition and that directed at the Iraqi infrastructure/populace. The man whose family was killed is part of the attack against the coalition. The AQ type insurgent is the one ambushing police trainees and blowing up markets and police stations. There is NO evidence that 'moderate' Iraqis support the latter. Everyday Iraqis may view the US as less benevolent than I do, but that does not mean you can be a 'moderate' and be anything but against AQ.

Actually this is the twisted understanding that I spoke of earlier. You're still trying to have it both ways. The claim is often made that 99.9% of Muslims reject AQ. If they don't reject AQ then how are they 'moderates?' How can a 'moderate' be in the .1% that accepts AQ, lol? That's just silly. Further, since AQ's attacks in Iraq are the only attacks against the Iraqis themselves (as I indicated above), even if you didn't LIKE the US, the US has to be the lesser of two evils in the view of a 'moderate.' This is not like Vietnam where there were two sides fighting each other and the US took one side. There are TWO external forces fighting within Iraq which is fundamentally unlike Vietnam.

The majority opinion, huh? That's interesting because the main reason the US and Britain led intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo was because the 'majority' wouldn't do it. Remember that UN action was prevented by the 'majority' that you claim felt it was a good idea, and the same people who claim we're imperialist monsters in Iraq were protesting with the exact same claims about Bosnia. Clearly your memory of the situation is fuzzy at best.

I disagree. I don't even see how you can argue this point. A simple search online gets you 'The US and the Genocide in Rwanda: Evidence of Inaction;' 'Rwanda Genocide: What the US Knew;' 'US Chose to Ignore Rwandan Genocide' (from everyone's fav the Guardian); 'US Complicity by Silence: The Rwandan Genocide;' and on and on. Further I think you at best you lean way too far to one side in your opinion. The cartoon fiasco is a good example of this. Why are they shouting 'death to America' when we don't even have anything to do with the damn cartoons? Its simply being realistic to understand that we are often damned if we do and damned if we don't. Having said that let me be clear that I am not saying we can't be better in our policy. I am merely trying to show that even if we used being 'fair' as the ultimate criteria for policy, there would be plenty of people who would decry our actions as being something other than what they are. I don't think that's a stretch at all.

 

Actually this is the twisted understanding that I spoke of earlier. You're still trying to have it both ways. The claim is often made that 99.9% of Muslims reject AQ. If they don't reject AQ then how are they 'moderates?' How can a 'moderate' be in the .1% that accepts AQ, lol? That's just silly. Further, since AQ's attacks in Iraq are the only attacks against the Iraqis themselves (as I indicated above), even if you didn't LIKE the US, the US has to be the lesser of two evils in the view of a 'moderate.' This is not like Vietnam where there were two sides fighting each other and the US took one side. There are TWO external forces fighting within Iraq which is fundamentally unlike Vietnam.

This is really not much more sophisticated than "wit us or agin us". To the extent that you try to force all Muslims into this simplistic world view reflects your own lack of moderation.

Al Qaeda is opposed to US colonialism in the Arab World. They also oppose the expansion of Israel, whici his backed by the US. The majority of the Muslim world supports this part of the Al Qaeda program. (I know you would define this as a lack of moderation per se). Many do not support other parts of the Al Qaeda program. Is that really that hard to understand? If I am not wrong, while you support the militarism of the Bush agenda, you disagree with it on some other issues.

Actually the United States has made this situation much like Vietnam. We have created an army that is almost exclusively Kurds and Shia, called it the Army of Iraq, and used it to fight the insurgents who are opposing American occupation and who are largely Sunni. The country is in a low level civil war and we are fighting on one side-- at least till the Shia majority has no further use for us and we have to cut and run.

It should be kept in mind that the US forces have killed many times more Iraqis, including innocent civilians, than Al Qaeda. I would agree that both American and Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, which did not exits before Bush's invasion, are both evils.

 

Fair is defined too broadly- What is fair to a republican is unfair to a democrat, what is fair to a democrat is unfair to a republican, what is fair to a Palestinian is unfair to a Israeli, what is fair to a Christian is unfair to a Muslim.

Fair is defined as impartial and un-biased.

Which means that fairness is in the eye of the beholder. Fairness only works when people are in agreement. When everyone agrees what is fair then a standard of sorts is established.

What the United States should do is that which is just and right in God's view; that would always be in the best interest of the nation.

Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.

 

Uh, no. I am taking the claim of the most ardent advocate of Islam, which is that 99.9% of Muslims reject violence and terrorism, and asking for an explanation of a seeming contradiction. That contradiction is that moderate Muslims (using any reading of the word 'moderate') could support AQ.

That's a self serving explanation and it doesn't answer the contradiction I point out above. There is a difference between saying there are issues that cross over between AQ and other Muslims, and saying Muslims support AQ. You explanation doesn't close the gap exposed by this contradiction that IF 99.9% of Muslims reject terrorism and violence, as asserted many many times here and elsewhere, then by definition those who support AQ cannot be MODERATE Muslims. That is not my 'simplistic world view,' it is a logical application of what the concept of being a 'moderate' vs 'extremist' means. Further, to support ANY part of AQ's platform is to support AQ. The totality of AQ is to use violent terrorism to enforce their views on others. They say 'our issues are x, y, & z; we will use terrorism to achieve our desired end to those results.' You cannot support AQ without supporting their stated mechanism to achieve their ends. Your position is akin to saying Israelis who don't want Israel to retain the settlements support AQ.

You make the assertion that it is much like Vietnam and then give no reason why. Nice.

Source?

 

US should of course do what it is best for the US. I believe all the US administrations tries to do that, but what they considers best at the time may turn out to be terrible mistakes but then no one can see the future. I think what many people in the world dislike is this holier than thou attitude, when in fact the US government have many faults of its own. Why do people in the world generally do not have a strong dislike for the Chinese government even though it rules China with an iron fist? Does anyone see Chinese government constantly telling other government what to do? That is why the former soviet union is very much despised by the eastern Europe, it is constantly meddling in the affairs of other nations.

 

Er, or it could be that the former Soviet Union occupied and ruled Eastern Europe with an 'iron fist' for fifty years.

 

Interesting thread and excellent point. "Fair" is a very relative term and to determine it as Rhester state's requires agreements on standards but also objectivity. The US being the most powerful nation standards are already greatly skewed, from an American perspective, what is fair is very different from that of another countries. For that matter even in the US there is a difficult time establishing what is fair. For instance in regard to debating tax policy those on the Left will argue for a progressive taxation since its fair that those with money should pay more taxes while those on the Right will argue that its unfair to penalize those who are more successful through higher taxes.

Ideally acting fairly should be in the US interests but again a lot of this depends upon one's POV and how long or short that POV is. My own opinion is that if the US takes a much longer and broader view of US interests they will find that acting fairly will be more in their interests which is why I caution against mostly unilateral interventions or actions and also with the US taking on the majority of the burden for providing for European defense.

 

Good post. We probably shouldn't be paying for Europe, S. Korea, or Japan's defense. I certainly not an isolationist but I wonder often about the 'fairness' of our defense/policing burdens.

 

Hayes, the last round I play.

I gave a reason why Iraq is now like Vietnam. We have created our side that we are fighting with. Nice that you did not note this.

You for instance don't reject violence by Israel or the US to achieve their goals, yet you I guess consider yourself somehow "moderate". Nice that you define the Muslims as extremists for doing the same thing, but when you and the Bush Adminsitration back violence, you are not extremists. Easy to win arguments if you just self servingly define the terms to your advantage.

 

They don't have to actively support AQ. They can have nearly the same net effect by ignoring AQ activities or anything they might suspect as such. This certainly doesn't rise to the level of "support," but if those eyes and ears were reporting their suspicions, as they might if they felt that we were on their side rather than using them, we might be making more progress.

Patently false.

I believe that we should be more vigilant when it comes to environmental issues, but since I disagree with the major Socialist planks (100% taxation of income over $1M/yr), I will never support the Green Party. I also believe that drugs should be regulated and taxed, but since I also believe that some regulation of corporations is necessary, I cannot support the Libertarians.

The people of Iraq can share the AQ belief that Americans should not be occupying Iraq without sharing the belief that terrorism is the appropriate means to get Americans out of Iraq.

Really? I clearly saw the reason. He said that we are supporting one side of a civil war just as we did in Vietnam.

 

No, I freely admit I'm a hawk not a moderate re: foreign policy.

Not the same thing at ALL. First, our international system is built for states to do the engaging, not supranational groups of whoever feels like blowing stuff up. Second, even if you were correct (which you obviously are not) about me, that does not answer my question re: muslim moderates supporting terrorism.

I have no idea why that doesn't equal support and your explanation fails miserably to make any such distinction. When the James Gang was roaming around they were said to have avoided law enforcement because of local support. That support constituted both being tipped off when LE was around, supplies, and lack of cooperation by locals. If a bank robber is hiding in the apartment next to mine, I know it, and I am not turning him in because I don't like the police, I am supporting the bank robber. Its pretty simple.

Uh, no.

Again you miss this distinction as I've already addressed it. Israelis who don't want Israel to maintain settlements may have a belief in common with AQ, but that is a far cry from 'supporting' AQ. In fact your example serves to show this well. You would never SUPPORT the Green Party despite having some belief crossover. However, the original claim in this thread where I started was that MODERATES might SUPPORT AQ. THAT is not a cross over of beliefs, but an active decision to side with the organization.

Oops. Sorry. I missed the brilliant analysis that since we are supporting 'one side' of a civil war its just like Vietnam. I guess every intervention where there is strife is 'just like Vietnam' then, lol. Aside, of course, from the fact that the insurgency is LESS THAN 1% of that population which is radically different from Vietnam among a million other distinctions.

 

I don’t think you’ve understood my claim. I’m not saying that the moderates aren’t significantly or even completely against AQ. (Some may well be sympathetic to the general idea of setting up an Islamic theocracy, but few that I’ve heard of are sympathetic to AQ.) I’m saying that they don’t trust the US so they are not going out of their way to help the US. They don’t feel the US is acting fairly or in their best interests. I believe they feel they are in the middle of two sides who are both trying to exploit them.

There are many ways that a moderate end up having some degree of acceptance or ambivalence toward an extremist position even if it is wrong by their own moral standards. Take radical environmentalism or animal rights as an example that’s relatively neutral to this discussion. I would say that moderate environmentalists would not be in favour of spiking trees and endangering the safety of loggers, but some may feel enough sympathy for the cause in general to allow someone they thought might be a radical environmentalist to live next to them without notifying the police. This happens all the time in various similar situations. There are all kinds of excuses people can make up for not taking action against an extremist if they are somewhat sympathetic to the general cause. Are you following my point? I can provide some other examples if needed.

I also suspect that most Iraqi’s view the US as the greater of the two evils. In fact, the only reason AQ is there is to attack the US, directly and indirectly. Yes, AQ is attacking Iraqis who they view as US sympathisers or just US pawns (largely the police), but their objective is to cause the US action in Iraq to be a failure. They weren’t there before the war and they wouldn’t be there now if it wasn’t for the war. The US should surely have known that dropping thousands of troops on the ground in an uncontrolled part of the ME would bring every terrorist within 1000 miles running to take shots at them, so they knew they were putting the Iraqi population in harms way by doing this, and the Iraqi population knows this too. Saddam was a first class b*stard, but he was one most Iraqis knew how to manage. As long as you didn’t cross him you were relatively safe. People lived their lives and went to school and came and went from Iraq. I had an Iraqi prof (a Christian Assyrian), for example, whose family still lives in Bagdad, at least last I heard. They didn’t like Saddam by any stretch of the imagination, and they would have been very happy to see him gone ... as long as what replaced him was a better situation. That’s not what they got, and it’s not what they believe the US’s intention was when they started the war. What they got was something that was much worse for most people than Saddam ever was, and so they see this US administration as at least as evil, and with good cause.

The point of my Vietnam example was that the US misunderstood the context the war was happening in and the will of the people. The US thought they were fighting the spread of Soviet style communism, but the Vietnamese were fighting off the imperialistic oppression of the French, who were later supplanted by the Americans who even broke a promise to the Vietnamese to hold free and democratic elections in the process.

You’re confusing a number of things here. First, you have to differentiate between public support and the support of various governments. The public by and large wanted someone to go in and try to stop what was going on if they could, and most governments didn’t think it could be done. It was a very complicated situation involving many different sides and armed groups. Nonetheless, the US went in and did a fairly good job.

Romeo Dallaire has always blamed the UN, (and himself. Given that he was the commanding officer on the ground he believes the buck stopped with him and that it was his responsibility to find a way to stop what happened, and he couldn’t do it, and his failure to be able to do that almost drove him mad.) Taking one sept higher up he blamed the group of power brokers at the UN for being afraid of another Somalia, and yes the US was a key figure at this level, but only one of several he has mentioned.

Again I think we have to take this apart a bit to see what’s really happening. Some people no doubt are trying to use this to drum up anti-American sentiment in the ME, and those chanting such things are either the ones trying to do this (who probably know how to find and get in front of a camera) or those they have influenced. As I recall, however, it was the Danish embassies that were being attacked. Even this, I suspect, was a symbolic mob response. I suspect that if you spoke to these people a week later over a coffee they would agree that the real culprit was the author of the cartoons. There have been many other peaceful demonstrations even here in Canada but the images of the angry mobs torching the Danish embassy are the ones that seem to stick in people’s minds giving a skewed impression of the response overall.

I agree that the US is sometimes placed in a damned if you do and damned if you don’t position. I don’t think that this is a catchall excuse though. I think you have to look at it on a case by case basis. I think most people around the world supported the US’s intervention into Afghanistan, and the way it was done giving the Taliban every oportunity to hand Bin Laden over. Even then there were critics, but I would say that they represented a small portion of the population. The Iraq war is an entirely different matter where most of the world views what this administration did as wrong, unfair and worse.

 

It would be in the US best interest to drop a few bombs on all these cartoon protesters, but it wouldn't be fair.....



DD

 

No actually it wouldn't be in US interests to do that, I don't think it's in US interests to bomb civilians, there's nothing to gain from it and everything to lose.

I am guessing you're kidding...

 

Well duh !!

Winky guy, winky guy ....please notice the winky guy...he looks like this

 

I think fair is the better possible alternative. It actually might give a good image to the rest of the world. But, it's not one without the other. We need to watch our own ass.

Acting in our own best interests usually gives a bad image of Americans.

 

Iraq's catalogue of death

By Robert Greenall
BBC News


There has been no bigger grey area in the Iraq conflict than the number of ordinary Iraqis killed and injured.
More than 1,700 US and dozens of other coalition troops are known to have died. But the figures for civilian dead had never been more than rough estimates, ranging wildly from 10,000 to 100,000.

Figures for the injured and for people killed in what has been described as a surge in criminal activity since the invasion were simply unavailable.

A report by the UK-based group Iraq Body Count (IBC), in combination with the Oxford Research Group, says it aims to remove some of the uncertainty by producing the most detailed picture yet of civilian casualties in the two years since the 2003 invasion.

The goal of the IBC is to fill the information vacuum, it says, with a comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 press and media reports.

It describes the death toll as the "forgotten cost" of the decision to go to war.

But some critics have questioned the groups' methods of compiling statistics, and indeed the ability to produce reliable data. The Iraqi government has already responded by describing the report's results as "mistaken".

The US and UK governments, meanwhile, have always maintained that chaos in the war-torn country has made it impossible to gain accurate information.

'Few excuses'

Middle East analyst Toby Dodge told the BBC that reports like this were bound to be sketchy. "It's on the conservative side, if anything it underestimates the casualty figures," he said.

The report attempts to show that Western governments are at least partly wrong in their assertion that counting bodies is futile.

"Our data has been extracted from a comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 press and media reports... Our accounting is not complete: only an in-depth, on-the-ground census could come close to achieving that."

"Nearly two-and-a-half years on, neither the US or UK have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed," Professor John Sloboda, one of the authors of the report, said. "Our report has shown that what is lacking is not the capacity to do this work but the will."

The internet has proved an essential tool for the research, Professor Sloboda adds.

"This is in fact a new type of research on war and its effects, research which would have been impossible to conduct without the World Wide Web and search engines," he said.

The report - A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005 - provides a grim catalogue of death and injury.

A total of 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first two years of the conflict, beginning with the invasion, almost 20% of them women or children.
This means approximately one in every 1,000 Iraqis has been killed since March 2003.

The report's assertion that 37% of deaths were caused by the US-led forces may cause dismay among Western governments, especially as only 9% are attributed to insurgents.

But even if another 11% attributed to "unknown agents" is included in the second figure, the report says coalition forces are still the main cause of death.

The US-led coalition maintains that it has never targeted civilians, while insurgents quite clearly do.

Professor Sloboda accepts this argument, but says the dossier's data proves that precision-guided weapons - even if targeted elsewhere - do far more harm to civilians than hand-held firearms.

"Shock and awe invasions using massive air power and overwhelming force caused a far higher concentration of deaths, injuries and child fatalities than even the intense insurgency we are experiencing now," he said.

"This is a fact which must be taken on board if hearts and minds are ever to be won back."

Child victims

The report builds up a picture of who the victims were - where and when they were killed or injured, what weapons were used against them and by whom and - where known - what their names, professions, genders and ages were. The result suggests that no sector of Iraqi society has escaped violent death.

Some conclusions make especially sober reading - for instance that children made up almost half the victims of air attacks, but only 6% of those from small-arms fire.
Unexploded ordnance such as cluster bombs have proved the most lethal for children, because of their curiosity about foreign objects.

The report also details the media which reported the casualties and the sources they used - from eyewitnesses to mortuaries - all, it says, rigorously checked by the project's 20-odd volunteer staff.

Injuries

And while the dossier obviously records well-reported deaths like those from suicide attacks or roadside bombs, it also covers a less-known source of violence - criminal killings.

Only reports of mortuary records have allowed the IBC to reveal the "extraordinary levels" that this form of violence has reached, it says.

Around 14 people died every month in criminal-related violence before the invasion - over 372 more have died every month since.

The dossier has recorded 42,500 wounded (the actual count, not an estimate), but this is based only on reports of deaths where the numbers of injured could also be determined.


It estimates that approximately 12,500 more injuries have gone unrecorded.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4694123.stm


Hayes, you may want to be less hasty tossing away Glynch's statement about who has caused the most casualties among civilians.

Something mentioned in this article a well, and overlooked by most, is the huge increase in civilian deaths and injuries caused by criminal activities. Saddam, like most dictatorships, keep a tight lid on criminal activity (excepting his own state-sponsored criminal activity). The lid has blown off. It is similar to the amount of crime, especially organized crime, in the former Soviet Union having a huge increase in Russia and the other nation-states created after it's fall.

That's one of those unintended consequences of going to war. Wars have unintended consequences, many of which those deciding to go to war find hard to digest. Going to war should be the action of "last resort," because of a clear and present danger to your country. Iraq did not fit that description by any reasonable standard. It's citizens have suffered terribly since the invasion, from causes that should have been foreseen, and from those that "came out of left field," with no end in sight.

That doesn't touch upon the consequences in our own country that affects our citizens, and those in other parts of the world, because George W. Bush wanted to wage war on Iraq, come hell or high water.



Keep D&D Civil.