rimbaud, I admit I wasn't able to read booster's posts in their entirety. I just agree with his passionate anti-war stance. Reminds me of that old protest slogan, "Fighting for peace is like ****ing for virginity." On your other point, if a guy who names himself after a bisexual, gun-running poet, decades ahead of his time, is a big enough basketball fan to spend half his time on cc.net, we are a diverse crowd indeed. You ever hear Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go?" There's a line that goes "Situations have ended sad, relationships have all been bad, mine have been like Verlaine's and Rimbaud's." Back on topic now: Bush is a mean dum dum. Carry on...
Actually, doesn't every lawyer? Batman, did you see the picture heypartner found for Rimbaud? Edit: Also, I would consider him homosexual, not bi...sure, he ended up sleeping with North African prostitutes, but that was probably just boredom from the gun-running.
thanks, neville chamberlain!!! now you get to go bring that good news to the Jews of Europe!!! hold on to your ideology real tight when you look them in the eyes and tell them that peace isn't worth fighting for!
Max, contrary to my posts in this thread, my problem with war is that innocent people die rather than the responsible parties. I'd have loved it we'd just put a bullet in Hitler's head instead of killing so many Europeans and losing so many American lives. Not to mention Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It's important to remember here that we didn't get into WWII to save the Jews. (I'm a Jew by heritage, by the way. I'm not ignorant to the Holocaust.) We didn't get in until we were attacked. That may be right and it may be wrong, but it wasn't a case of international policing. And, if you really want to know, neither was the Gulf War. It was about OUR national interests. The stuff about the Jews and the Kuwaitis is smokescreen stuff, designed to make these wars more palatable. Democrats are actually far more likely to enter into military action in order to rescue suffering people around the world (See: Bosnia, Somalia, etc.). Republicans are more likely to only be involved in actions which directly threaten our national interests. In fact, Bush heartily criticized the above actions on the grounds that we shouldn't try to save every suffering person around the world and should only get involved when our national interests are threatened. This divide makes perfect sense when you consider the base ideologies of the parties.
I guess ROCKETBOOSTER was trying to get kicked. He got his wish. Strange because the guy posts nearly 1500 times with little or no incident and, all of a sudden, he becomes a flaming jackass. Wierd. Oh, well. RIP.
I could not disagree more with the last sentence of your post...yes, republicans are all portrayed as mean-spirited jackasses...but it's simply not the case. And Dems aren't the heros you would have us believe either...it just doesn't work that way. Of course we've been involved in wars for our national interests...if you're going to commit the lives of the young people of your nation, you might wanna make sure it involves something they have a vested interest in...and you might wanna give them some clear objectives as well so they'll know they can shoot back when fired upon! WWII...our national interests...hmmmmmm...seems we went above and beyond the commitment solely to our own national interests in that war. above and beyond. The Jews (like the Kuwaitis) weren't smokescreen stuff...we were fighting facism, batman! We were fighting a guy who was invading our allies. Of course we have an interest in protecting our allies that is selfish...but you think they cared? London was blitzed...if we had told Londoners we were joining the war effort in Europe to please our new deity, strawberry shortcake, they would have been just fine with that! This is something I see liberals do here a lot..."well..we only got involved in WWII for our own selfish interests." huh??? do you know how many unselfish men gave their lives? do you know how hard it must be to order men out to die? It's easy to sit back 60 years later and go, "ahhhh..those bastards were only looking after national interests." But it's not reality. But this is wayyyyy off my point...my point is that sometimes you have to fight to win peace...if the bully keeps picking on you everyday, sometimes you have to hit him back to shut him up...and then you've won yourself some peace. Peace is not the absence of freedom...it's not peaceful living under a nazi regime simply because you're not fighting against it. It's not peaceful living under the constant threat of catastrophic terrorist attack simply because you're not fighting to prevent it.
If you had the under, I owe you a beer!! too bad nobody posted over or under! yeah...i wondered if his identity was stolen or something...like someone was using his name or something...
I hope Booster will send a really nice apology about the bad day he was having and be reinstated. It really was out of character. Max: I'm not here saying Dems are angels and Repubs are devils. I'm pointing out a basic difference in foreign policy ideology. And I'm not even officially favoring one policy over the other. I point this out because I know you lean to the right and you mistakenly use the Holocaust as justification of war, when your party does not share that philosophy. For me, the Jews WERE the reason to get into WWII. But we let them languish in concentration camps for a while and didn't get involved. We got involved after Pearl Harbor. On Iraq, I could go on and on about the cynicism of the Gulf War and why we were there, but I'll try and keep it simple. Running out of bbs time today. Don't know if you'll remember, but there was a pretty good shell game going at the time about why we were there. Different reasons would be presented, shot down and replaced. In a rare moment of honesty, Sec. of State Baker said we were there for three reasons: "Jobs, jobs, jobs." I guess he thought that would go over well, given the high unemployment rate. That war wasn't about our "allies" the Kuwaitis. It was about oil. In fact, Saddam and Iraq had been our allies almost right before the invasion of Kuwait. We gave and/or sold them the weapons of mass destruction we were so worried about during their war with Iran. If you really want to get into this one, I'm game. It'll have to be later as I gotta split for a while, but I love talking about this one. I'll leave you with three words that were prevalent around that time in protest circles, but are hardly heard these days: "Where's April Glaspie?" Try to answer that question and see how deep this thing runs. Later y'all...
I don't know where April is...but tell her she betta have my money!!!! (i realize that may be extremely insensitive if she was a victim of something awful...i certainly don't mean it to be anything other than a typical MadMax smartass statement) I don't know that I'm willing to go down the road of this argument....I was a senior in high school at the time of the Gulf War and I can tell you that it really bothered me that I perceived it to be fighting for oil. Having said that...oil isn't merely money...oil is a resource that runs our country. the soviets had some real neat goals about seizing oil but were kinda headed off by those pesky Afghans. by the way....total side note...remember how the russians kept warning us about afghanistan after 9/11...."you don't know what you're getting yourselves into! you can't win that war there!!"...similar to saddam's claims about how strong his forces were and how it would be the mother of all wars. yeah...maybe not.
<b>.......by the way....total side note...remember how the russians kept warning us about afghanistan after 9/11...."you don't know what you're getting yourselves into! you can't win that war there!!"...similar to saddam's claims about how strong his forces were and how it would be the mother of all wars. yeah...maybe not.</b> Winning the war in Afghanistan was not a problem, but moving that <i>country</i> forward will continue to be trying.
Batman-- I agree that we didn't get into WWII until we were attacked. But wouldn't that be for the very reason that people were saying we had no business getting into that war? Isn't that the same thing you are advocating here? Isn't it also true that once we were in that nobody from Europe attacked us and that we used Pearl Harbor as an excuse to get into Europe as well? Hmmmm.... Also what business did we have in Vietnam? What direct attack was there against us? That is the misconception. We are the policeman of the world...have been for decades. That's not going to change. For what? They have proven totally ineffective at everything they try. If it were not for us there would be no UN. They make Lee Brown look like the model of effectiveness and efficiency. The UN is ludicrous. As always I mean this in the most respectful way possible.
There is one huge difference. Hitler was setting about to take over all of Europe if not more. Saddam's effort at invasion has already been turned away. Right now he isn't trying to take over anything. Much like that war, however, American coprorations were continuing to do business with Hitler. Of course Haliburton under Cheney circumvented U.S. law, and used subsidiaries in England to continue to sell spare parts to Saddam Hussein.
And that was a direct threat to the US exactly how? That was the argument...that only when the US is directly threatened should we get involved.
Ref: There are two lines of debate going here now. That's the source of the confusion. One is regarding whether or not we should attack Iraq for the express purpose of removing Saddam, whether or not we have evidence tying him to 9/11 or a future attack on us (the pursuit of nuclear capability doesn't count -- I mean a specific attack). The other has to do with the major parties' varied ideology on rules of engagement. I've spoken enough on the first one I think, but I'll address the comparison to WWII and Hitler. Saddam did not invade Kuwait out of expansionist desire. He invaded because they refused to pay promised war reparations from Iran v. Iraq. And if you believe the stories about April Glaspie (our former ambassador to Iraq), he was even led to believe that we would support him in that venture. There ARE documents, known as the April Glaspie papers, which are rumored to contain correspondence letting Saddam know we'd support the Kuwait invasion. They are sealed. This came up during the 92 prez debates. Perot said they should be revealed to the American public. Bush refused. The "Where is April Glaspie" stuff came up because she virtually disappeared when we apparently changed our policy re: Iraq. Hitler on the other hand was committing genocide and attempting to expand throughout Europe. Very different situations. Calling Saddam "a Hitler" as Bush did insults Jews everywhere and demeans the memories of those who died in the Holocaust. Saddam had a legit beef with Kuwait, though he handled it in a deploreable manner. Hitler just hated Jews. On the second branch of this discussion: I brought up the difference in party philosophy because MadMax used the Holocaust as a reason we should go to war, when his own party does not subscribe to that philosophy. As recently as the 2000 debates, Bush is on record saying we are NOT the world's police force and that, under him, we would not engage a country in combat for human rights violations, however heinous. As for what business we had in Nam, we had none. As with Cuba, we were playing out our Cold War scenario in what was thought to be a manageable situation. It was a mistake and a big one. As for the UN, when that doesn't work, we form a coalition, as Poppy did. This whole thread was started to point out the fact that even some of the most hawkish public figures have a huge problem with this unprecedented battle plan. People have posted to this board in recent weeks saying that we would have strong support for such an action. I started this thread to put the lie to that idea. Re: The myth of Iraq's power, back in '91, since you brought it up... Bill Hicks said it best: "First they were the 'elite Republican guard.' After weeks of bombing the hell out of them, with no response from them, they became simply the 'Republican guard,' not so elite as we may have led you to believe. A few weeks later, they went from the elite Republican guard to the Republican guard to the Republicans made this **** up about there being guards out there. I hope you've enjoyed your little fireworks show. It was so pretty, and it took our minds off domestic issues..."
This has been an interesting debate and I'm enjoying reading it.. Very informative. But I have a question to pose to yall... It is being said here that we got into WWII to save the Jews...well..considering at the time of the war, noone knew what was happening to them, how is that true? The true atrocities that Hitler was responsible for were not documented until after the war in Europe was over.. Am I remembering my history wrong? ps.. Man, what was the deal with Booster? I've never seen him post like that.. I hope we find out someone else was using his account...
Hey... I totally understand refman, but weren't you giving me crap about ripping someone's head off the other day? I just told that guy I was going to kick his ass (along w/ a cordial shove or two). I never said I was going to shoot his ****ing dog. LOL p.s. Jeff, I fear you may have gotten swept up in the emotion, just like RocketBooster. Listen to some Hootie and chill out dude. These are emotional issues.
Fair point. The difference is that some guy cut you off. In my case this dog attacked my dog and could well have gone after my Mom. Sometimes you've got to defend your family like a man.
Batman-- Hitler was expansionist and destabilizing Europe, so we got involved. Saddam is going after nukes and destabilizing the region...so we do nothing? I understand your point, I think we just have a philosophical difference here. No worries. There is a thought in my party that does not support this. I agree with Republicans more often than not, but there are times I disagree with them wildly.
MadMax, Don't misss this article about Afghanistan. <A HREF="http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2002/0809/p01s01-wosc.html">Al Qaeda massing for new fight</A>
Well when the U.S. got involved against Hitler, there were allies UNDER ATTACK by Hitler. Saddam isn't attacking any of neighbors. The argument for going against Hitler could be said we were defending other countries from ongoing invasion. Saddam isn't invading anyone. I do understand that much of the argument is that he isn't a threat to the U.S. But for it would be somewhat more justifiable if it was a case of the U.S. coming to the aid of another country under attack. That's not the case either. I don't see Iraq as a threat to the U.S. nor are we defending other countries from Iraqi invasion.
