For liberals and other southpaws - your opinion on the Euston Manifesto

true, but i think it safer, for all parties concerned, if dubya just went ahead and got a vasectomy.

 

You consider thinking a silly game do you?? Well I’m glad a neocon has finally come out and said it. You think you should be able to just do whatever you please without having justify it or to give any thought to anyone outside your tribe, right? This is pretty much the mentality of all racists and bigots before you, so you’re carrying on in the tradition of your moral kinfolk well.

 

I defined what I and treaties signed by the U.S. believe torture to be. I don't know of any cases where the allies used torture in WWII. It may have happened. If it did, then torturing was absolutely wrong, and anyone who was guilty of it, should have been held responsible. I don't care what uniform they were wearing. Torture was wrong.

But if two groups commit the same atrocious act, that doesn't mean they are equal in all respects. That is the same fallacy you attempted to argue in the Bin Laden tape thread.

Japanese, and Nazis were guilty of torture, if the Allies were as well, then they should be held equally responsible for those particular acts.

However the allies did not invade Manchuria, did not try and kill off native populations by poisoning food, and then handing it out. The Allies did not try and commit genocide. In those respects they are not equal. But for each act of torture they committed, they are equal to other acts of torture committed.

Torture is wrong. Why are you arguing for relativsm in some cases, but not in others? Either you are for moral relativsm or you are against it.

 

If Bush lied about WMDs, then doesn't it change the reason for many Americans? It was a strong sell by the President and several high ranking members of his cabinet.

While we shift the goal posts, the true reason for continued involvement lies in public debate while our trust for the administration is damaged. The whole issue of morale in this war lies solely in the leadership and the results they have failed to promise.

 

I think that is certainly a valid point and I think that many are dismissing that point out of hand. That said though the reasoning behind the invasion does matter in regard to considering whether we stay. The point of any undertaking is that there is a percieved benefit that outweighs perceived costs. For the most part the perceived benefits have failed to materialize while we have mounting costs so there is a question of what is the purpose of remaining if most of our goals haven't panned out. The next issue why the past does matter is that we can't just start from zero because previous planning has direct affect on what is happening now for instance the failure to adequately prepare for the chaos of post war Iraq has greatly complicated things. At the same time the rhetoric and intransigence of the Admin. has also greatly complicated getting more international help in Iraq and also US credibility.

So yes we shouldn't dwell on the past but at the same time you can't ignore that the past has a direct bearing on what is happening now.

 

How does Bush lying or not lying about WMDs affect anything now? That still gets thrown out all the time. Would things in Iraq change right now if it could be proven beyond doubt that Bush knew or did not know that there were WMDs in Iraq? That is important to know if you want to talk about impeaching Bush, or if you are choosing who to vote for in the 2004 presidential election. It has absolutely no bearing on the situation in Iraq today. If Bush thought they knew where to find WMDs or he knew there were no WMDs where they were claiming WMDs to be, the fact is they were not there. We have not found any. To argue about Bush's knowledge of their non-existance solves nothing WRT the war in Iraq.

Harping on the fact that the plan (or lack of a plan) for post war Iraq solves nothing. The focus should be on what can be done now to help the situation in Iraq, not what could/should have been done 3 years ago, unless that some thing can be done now.

Looking at the same cost/benefit analysis used before the war and plugging in the new information we have now makes no sense. We cannot now decide that it was not worth it to go to war and make it so that we didn't. We can do a new cost/benefit analysis to decide if we should stay or go, but that has nothing to do with pre-war perceived benefits. We need to evaluate what benefits there are to staying and what costs, and the same for leaving, not leave because the past costs are more than some are willing to pay for the past benefits. That is like owning a stock and selling it because it has gone down; you need to sell only if you think it isn't going up from this point, because you have already incurred the costs in the past.

 

It affects US credibility which translates into the amount and quality of support that we can get worldwide. It also affects how willing the Iraqis are to trust our motivations and cooperate with our efforts. When I posted what I think would be a solution the first part of that was that GW Bush admit that they badly miscalculated, and if not admit to outright lying, that they gravely miscalculated their perception of a threat and failed to engage in due dilligence. A mea culpa like that would greatly improve US credibility and help our efforts in getting more help in Iraq.

As I said it does because of US credibility. The original costs benefits do matter since there is no reason to proceed with a policy that is producing none of the original benefits and all costs therefore it is important to consider why we went in there in the first place and what sort of goals we are meeting. What you are essentially saying is that we are in a quagmire and that justifies itself.

As far as stocks you hang onto a stock if you think it is going to go up beyond what you originally paid for it. If you bought it at $10 per share and it drops down to $3 you're not going to hang on hoping it gets back to $5 10 years from now. You got into the stock to make money on your original investment not to lose money.