posted
That the conundrum of this entire issue. There are so many versions of what is "right" and what is "wrong" that there will never be consensus on the nation's response to 9/11.
(Hey, I used both "conundrum" AND "consensus" in the same sentence. My teachers would be proud.)
I do think the focus of the discussion is based on "justified" as in do the means justify the end? So many critics have blasted Bush for his decisions regarding Iraq, citing he planned to do this all along. So what is the motive? What end does this action in Iraq supposedly justify?
(And please, none of this "blood for oil" business. The current price of gas proves full well we haven't gained anything by securing Iraq's oil supply.)
Posts: 325 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Well since this war has been started we are going to have to end it. So what will we do once everything ends, probally the same thing we did in Japan after Hiroshima, we'll rebuild them. Now don't get me wrong, we are already doing that, but that goes to show you, that country will become more "civilized". Of course we will get prizes of war. But tell me what makes the attack on pearl harbor different(in metaphorical terms, not that same exact thing.) We saw a submirine in the waters of the harbor but did they do anything. We new of the threats before 9/11. Now America attacked Japan following the attack, hmmm how history repeats itself in this small world of ours.
Posts: 262 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote: Whereas you appeal to your idea of what God is, I appeal to fairly rigorous logic. I submit that mine is in fact the far higher standard, as logic is something that, unlike God, is actually exposed to regular scrutiny and is not permitted to hide behind assertions of ineffability.
Logic by itself is amoral.
"Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge" - Benjamin Jowett.
"Logic: an instrument for bolstering a prejudice" - Elbert Hubbard.
And my favorite: "Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence" - Joseph Wood Krutch.
quote: I believe that something can still be wrong even if it's the least miserable of a bunch of bad choices. There's no need to dignify settling for the lesser evil by calling that "right."
quote: Because it's short-sighted to think of a moral dilemma as existing in isolation, in my opinion. When someone is pointing a gun at you and taking your purse, this has happened for a reason; something turned that person to armed robbery, and something made you a target of that robbery.
A far better way to "solve" this dilemma is to arrange matters in advance so that you are not a target, or -- even better -- the aggressor is not compelled to rob anyone.
You often hear questions like "if a speeding train is careening down a track which switches towards an old man or a pregnant woman, what would you do?" Such questions miss the point -- because the right choice is to keep the train under control in the first place.
I think that this is not realistic. I agree that choices between two bad situations arise because of someone's poor choices earlier, but that's not useful when you are facing the immediate situation. Say you are getting mugged - you don't know the mugger, you have no concievable way of having known the mugger or any reasonable way of having known what to do to "help him" - unless we're omniscient, of course - so you have two "bad" choices - knock him out or let him steal your money. But are they bad for you? How are you responsible for him becoming a mugger?
Your ideas don't account for human imperfection. We're not going to do everything right, no matter how much we know or how well meaning we are. Going by your reasoning, we're wrong no matter what we do - that the only discussion is how wrong we are. That's pretty Augustinian, for an atheist.
Posts: 561 | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:It seems to me like there are people here, very well-spoken, yet with foul beliefs, who follow only idealogical partisanship. Ask yourself - can Bush ever be right? Can he be right and you be wrong? Is there that possibility? If the answer to all three of these is no, and answer honestly - then you are a close-minded idealogical bigot.
Of course he can do things right. He was certainly right in how he handled that huge fiasco with the spy plane going down in China after knocking one of their fighters out of the sky. Thus far his handling of politics with North Korea has been exemplary. 9/11 was certainly not entirely his fault either, the blame on that one falls on Bush Sr. and Clinton as well. His initial handling of 9/11 was the best anyone could have hoped for. There were no instant military strikes, Wall St. was shut down, commercial air travel was halted while security screening took a massive jump. It was all intelligent thoughtful response. Even the initial push to pursue Al Queda in Afghanistan was well done, bringing Pakistan and the US closer, which will invariably end up easing the diplomatic stress between Pakistan and India.
What is true, however, is that no one ever proved that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the National Security of the United States of America. If every nation that "might have" WMDs should be invaded, our list before Iraq (in order) would have looked like this: 1. North Korea 2. Iran 3. Libya 4. Israel 5. Iraq
If we change this to nations that "might have" ties to terrorist organizations and/or have supported Al Queda: 1. Afghanistan 2. Saudia Arabia 3. Iran 4. Iraq
Once again, these are "might haves" and we shouldn't go to war based on "maybe." The US should not be the world's police force, it simply doesn't make sense for us to do that. In the case of genocide, yes, by all means, intervene. We've got a pretty good track record of doing that. Unfortunately we ignored that whole genocide thing with the Kurds the first three times Iraq tried it. We waited until they invaded a nation willing to pay us money to push them back out before we did anything.
I do tend to sound like my heart bleeds and I hug trees, but the truth is I hate "right" and "left" more or less equally and for entirely different reasons. The most important thing on earth is that we respect each other's beliefs and do not try to inhibit each other's freedom. Neither right nor left has succeeded at holding that true, and frankly that's the whole reason we're in the mess we're in right now. It's ironic that a nation with more freedom than any other nation on Earth doesn't allow other cultures or nations permission to disagree with our views.
The right would call me a terrorist sympathizer for saying that.
The left would call it a right-wing conspiracy.
What I see now is that we've done something that, in the long run, is a fantastic idea. We're committed to it now so we might as well follow through. On the same coin I see our military stretched far too thin, a war started with a country that had no capability to hurt us, and a destabilized muslim nation now full of people who now have reasons to hate America when before they only had hearsay.
It wasn't a good idea, and it wasn't an appropriate response.
Admittedly now all I'm doing is crying over spilled milk, but I feel as if everyone believes that this milk is just supposed to be all over the floor.
Posts: 68 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
You know, there are people, quite a few in fact, who supported the Iraq war and put themselves out there to defend it who have since been outraged to find out the level of deceit, contempt, and incompetence that the Bush administration used in selling it and prosecuting it. I've had to go around and appologize to my friends who I called paranoid because they told me the assurances that we knew that there were WMD's were Gulf of Tonkin-esque bald-face lies. I watched them push the "duck and cover" terror level alerts and duct tape and plastic sheeting bs on the public and was horrified by their callous fear manipulation of the public. I saw that the only reason we had a 9/11 commission, which the President was unwilling to stand before on his own, was that the families of the 9/11 victims used their considerable political clout to force the issue. I also saw, as part of this hearing, that the President did not in fact know, 2 1/2 years after the event, that the FBI's reports of having 70 agents following reports of a possible terrorist plot that involved hijacking American planes were completely inaccurate, which suggests to me that his administration was not all that interested in actually figuring out what went wrong. I watched them cover their asses and deny responsibility and accountability and it freakin scares me. I started a thread on what the case for the war sort of looked like to me. I saw them commit a felony by outing a CIA operative, spread lies about people who disagreed with them, and push Colin Powell, the lone voice of dissent, to the outside. I saw their disdain for the troops in the "Name that tune" style invasion, where Secretary Rumfeld said, "I can win this war in only five notes." and their continuing lies about the level and nature of the resistence.
It's possible that I'm just a Bush hater who only seems these phantasms of my imagination because I'm consumed with rage that he's the President, although I am actually a registered Republican who worked on John McCain's 2000 campaign. Or maybe, I don't actually like President Bush and think he's done a bad job because he's done such a bad job and shown me contempt, lied to me, and put my life and the lives of my people in danger.
---
What would I have liked to have been the response to 9/11? Well, I've already said that there was a tremendous opportunity to bring the nation together, but he and his administration have been dividers and not uniters. I think that we should have been concerned with analyzing what went wrong and how to prevent from happening again as opposed to going into the pre-conceived notions of what some people were looking for excuses (or rather a "Pearl Harbor" type event) to do and claiming that it wasn't my fault and no one could have predicted that people would do something from a Tom Clancy novel or World War II history and use planes as a weapon.
I would have liked the U.S. to capitalize the enormous goodwill we received from the rest of the world after this tragedy to lead a world-wide hunt in breaking down terrorist organizations instead of lying to and spitting in the faces of the rest of the world (and I don't think they're all that great either). We didn't need to attack Iraq. It was unrelated to 9/11 and to terrorism as a whole. It didn't make us safer and main connections to terrorism it had and has is that terrorists poured into the country to fight us and that our actions created more terrorists. And, although I still believe that we had a legitimate case for bringing military force to Iraq, the way this case we made was abominable. So, I would have hoped that if we were going into Iraq, we'd have done it much differently. I also would have hoped that contrary to the President statements, that had we done so, capturing the leaders of al-Queda, including Osama bin Laden, would have remained a top priority.
I'm ambivilent to theoretical invasion of Iraq as am I to the pre-emptive war to spread democracy prardigm they've been selling. However, both of those would require leadership who were relatively honest, trustworthy, and competent, none of which describes the actions of a president who couldn't even run for re-election on his past record.
edit: Here and here are some of the posts that more fully flesh out what I was saying here.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Also, there are two separate things that we could be memorializing with say a Twin Towers garden. It could be in memory of the people who died or it could be the fact of a wide-scale foreign terrorist attacks on American soil. If it's the first, then it's sad that so many died needlessly, but this is year that saw an order of magnitude (I think) more die in a tsunami.
If it's the second, that's more of a ongoing piece of something and also one that has been used for so many self-serving purposes that it's hard to know what we'd be taking out of it. The clear lessons are, to me, that our intelligence services were unprepared and full of systemic problems and that the nature of offensive versus defensive war is heavily tilted towards the offensive side. However, the "lessons" people often seem to be pushing is that we need to engage in pre-emptive wars and that all people we think are bad are on the same team (oh and Freedom 1) means whatever the President says it means and 2) solves everything), none of which are at all clear.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote: our list before Iraq (in order) would have looked like this: 1. North Korea 2. Iran 3. Libya 4. Israel 5. Iraq
I couldn't take your post seriously [signine] because of this list. Israel is our ally and we provide them with most of their military equipment, including nuclear technology, there is no way we would ever attack them.
Posts: 2 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Jimmy, At one point, Iraq was our ally who we provided with most of their military equipment, including chemical weapons. While our relationship with Israel is significantly different, I think saying we'd never attack them is a bit overbold.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Surely. But so is faith. Both are merely ways of reaching a conclusion. And both are capable of producing both moral and immoral behaviors, depending on rationale.
Logic relies on deduction for its conclusion; faith relies on appeals to authority. I prefer the former.
There's nothing wrong with the latter, I believe, except that it's going to be inherently unconvincing to someone who doesn't share the same precepts -- whereas I believe most people are capable of following deductive logic, something that makes it sort of a lowest common denominator for human behavior.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I couldn't take your post seriously [signine] because of this list. Israel is our ally and we provide them with most of their military equipment, including nuclear technology, there is no way we would ever attack them.
Iraq was once our ally and we provided them most of their equipment. The Taliban were once our allies and we provided them most of their equipment. Israel is not officially a nuclear power, and in fact is a signator on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yet everyone knows they have nukes, and they built them on their own. We did not provide them with the technology. Israel is also in the unfortunate position of being a nation highly likely to use nuclear weapons in combat, so if we were going to go after nations with unregistered WMDs, Israel would top the list.
Sorry you can't take that seriously.
I know, I can't let a bad thread die.
Posts: 68 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
There's a difference between an ally and the 'lesser of two evils'. In a war between Iran and Iraq, the Taliban and the Soviets, we sided with the enemies of our enemies not our allies. ( Quite a difference from our long standing relationship with Isreal ) Yes, maybe someday our relationship with Israel may go sour, just as our relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated after World War II. My point was, given the present climate of the world, I find it hard to believe that we would attack Israel.
And since we sell them our planes and guns, is it so hard to believe that we would sell them our nukes?
Posts: 2 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Jimmy M<, I'm afraid you've missed the point. The point was that if we were to choose a country that is likely to have illegal weapons of mass destruction and would be likely to use them, Iraq would have been at the bottom of the list, and even Israel would have made a better target.
Additionally, there's a huge difference between selling a country an export-grade F-16 and selling them a 9megaton thermonuclear warhead. For one, it would violate at least five non-proliferation treaties that the US has signed, and second, intelligence dated back to the 60s indicate Israel had a very successful nuclear program of its own. Why wouldn't it? Most of the scientists on the Manhattan project were refugees from Germany, and many were Jewish.
Plus, if we keep making decisions based on the lesser of two evils, all we're going to end up netting is evil. We need to start making decisions based upon good outcomes, and not which outcome is less terrible.
Posts: 68 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
We weren't choosing a country based on suspected posession of WMDs, we were choosing a country based on proven willingness to invade others, defy UN sanctions, and as an afterthought a possibility of WMDs. But our press turned it into being all about the WMDs.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
yes, you are correct Mothertree. Just like most people have forgotten that we declared war on Terror, not bin laden. Iraq defied 16 UN resolutions, constantly shot at planes enforcing the no-fly zone, and successfully kept out UN weapons inspectors. The UN should have allowed use of force years ago.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Come on. I know you've got to twist things around to remain republicanly correct, but seriously. Leaving aside the fact that I do actually have memories of the last 4 years and I know you're lying, consider what you're saying.
In the midst of acting out against terrorism and al-Queda, the President brought invading Iraq to the number one spot. Do you seriously think that people would have accepted this on the basis of them invading Quwait and not listening to the UN? "Oh yeah, he's right. Let's stop concentrating so much on the terrorists and focus on Iraq because, although they don't endanger us, they're not being good sports." The idea's absurd.
The case for the war was based on the fact that Iraq was the greatest threat facing us as opposed to not a threat at all the way you are characterizing the situation. The central claims of this case were that they had active WMD programs that they were hiding from the inspectors and that they were deeply involved with terrorism (and linked to 9/11), both of which were lies.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I hear too much of this "Iraq was our ally at one time, so this is our fault." Great! They were our ally! So now that they're not, we're just going to have to grit our teeth and take it!
Or not. Hey, things change. What worked twenty years ago doesn't now. Gotta adapt, ya know.
Posts: 561 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
errr...Where do you hear people saying that tern? I've never heard anyone say that because we supported Saddam Hussein and are partially responsible for his actions, that we should have let him do whatever he wanted to. Most of the time, it's been an indictment of often short-sighted and dishonorable interactions in the Middle East and a reminder that using simplistic "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." logic is a really bad idea.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Actually, the Bush administration NEVER said that Saddam was directly linked to Al Qaeda or 9-11. He WAS giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and aiding other terrorists when he could.
The reason that we went in to Iraq is that they had 1) Repeatedly flaunted UN regulations (16!)and refused to let inspectors in. (Which begs the question, why? Either Saddam was extremely moronic, he had a suicide wish, or he actually had WMDs and was stalling to give him time to hide them) 2)Saddam was the symbol of Anti-American power in the Middle East and had a powerful image of someone who could taunt the West with impunity. (Now we know why France, Russia and Germany were against going in to Iraq dont we! They were on Saddams pay roll!! The oil-for-food scandal is the most under-reported story of the new millenium by far, it is the biggest case of financial corruption in the history of the world.)
3) President Bush and many others believed that the best way to rid the world of the terrorists and their culture was to attack one of those peoples heroes: Saddam. The best way to get the world to stop hating us is to show them what we are all about: freedom, democracy, hope, safety and education. What better way to do that then to free an oppressed people and show them and all their muslim neighbors what their dictators or theocracies were/are doing to them and what they are missing.
This is a war on Terror and the culture of Terror, the biggest benefits of the Iraq war is the increased cooperation of every surrounding nation in helping us round up international terrorists and in increasing attention to the radical leanings of their citizens.
Posts: 201 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Odd that none of the reasons you put forward were major planks of, say, Bush's State of the Union address in which he made the case for war to the American public. Do you think we the public would not have accepted them had he used them?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yes, partially, I think that is the reason that he emphasized the possibility of WMDs. The public, he believed and I believe, would only support the war in Iraq if they believed that they had WMDs. To his knowledge and the worlds intelligence community Iraq did, or very likely did. That is why he emphasized that aspect of it.
What I stated before I believe is what the Administration is really pushing for, and what they have emphasized since. But do you think that the public would have supported the war had the stated justification been "a domino affect that increases cooperation in the surrounding muslim countries and will help free an oppressed people"? No, the public would have responded with the fact that Iraq is not the only country with oppressed people or WMDs and the advancement of freedom and peace in the Middle East could have been stalled forever.
That is why the controversy over the missing WMDs and its negative impact on the Administration is a little ironic, if Bush and his administration had just been more clear about what they felt would be the real lasting reasons for invading, they would not have been as damaged as they were.
Posts: 201 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: But do you think that the public would have supported the war had the stated justification been "a domino affect that increases cooperation in the surrounding muslim countries and will help free an oppressed people"?
So, to clarify, you believe it is justifiable for the government to lie to its people when it sees the need for war?
Do you believe there are other issues about which a government should lie to its people? Is war uniquely exceptional in this regard, or might a president be justified in lying to the people about, say, his economic plan if he really believes it's for the best?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
President Bush never said that Iraq and 9/11 were linked. Instead, he gave speeches that alternated the two topics like: "We were attacked on 9/11 and it's now a new world. Because we're in this new world, we need to invade iraq. The terrorists struck right at the heart of our country. And we're going to defend ourselves by striking at Iraq." and so on for 10 minutes. 9/11 then Iraq then 9/11 then Iraq.
Vice-President Cheney, and other members of the administration, on the other hand, did in fact explictly say that Iraq had a hand in 9/11.
Again, if you're going to tell me things that aren't true, try to make them not so obviously not true.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Im gonna go back to the beggining post i made, about the memorial garden for those who lost their lives on 9/11. Well it seems our school is cleanin up some little things here and there, but like i thought, the memorial garden hasnt been touched. The school is worrying about the entrance more than any thing else. It just gets me furious, like i said, i think some people just forget. Posts: 262 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I would love to clean it up, not joking, but the "student concil" has it "under control". Today as one of the teachers that help run Student Concil walked by, i tried to tell them the condition, i did even volunteer to clean it up. But she said they'd get around to it, i doubt it, but if they do ill be sure to post it.
Posts: 262 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
I'm not clear on how that prevents you from cleaning it up. Would you actually get in trouble for voluntarily cleaning up the grounds? That would be a bizarre parent-teacher conference.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
No, I do not think that the President should lie to the American people and I did not say that he did so. It is very normal for people to hold different reasons in their mind for doing something and yet only emphasize one as the main reason.
As I said above, the Bush admin. did this with WMDs, they were not the only reason, but they were a good one and so he used it.
The ironic part is that WMDs were probably not the top justification in the Administrations mind, and so after compromising their judgement to make the public happy and emphasizing the role of WMDs (which definitely had a real role, Im not saying they didnt, Im just saying they were one of many), when that reason was held up to be a failure, it hurt them more.
More broadly, the President's first and only job is to defend the constitution. That means providing for the common defense, and so on. It is not the Presidents job to tell the public every piece of information that he knows and ask their opinion on it, its his job to make the decisions. So when Bush told the public the aspect of the war that they wanted to hear, he stopped doing his job of decision-maker and took on the job of crowd-pleaser. That was a mistake.
In the long run, being open and honest is the best policy. But that doesnt mean telling us everything.
Posts: 201 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
The News Hour lists the names of sevicemen killed in action as the Pentagon releases the names to the press for publication and broadcast, after family notification, and possibly investigations. This causes a delay between the date of death and public notification.
If there are no names released on a given day, for whatever reasons, there is no honor roll that day, AFAIK.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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