HOME | DD
Latuff2 — Titanic
Published: 2004-09-30 23:42:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 9124; Favourites: 59; Downloads: 401
Redirect to original
Description
"This is all too easily reminiscent of the Titanic heading towards those looming icebergs. Despite warnings of danger, the captain of that doomed vessel chose to stay the course. He stayed the course and the rest is history. If we permit George Bush to stay the course, I fear that this nation, too, will be history."Read article here: [link]
Related content
Comments: 64
Well it's real nice that you wish no American died for this cause. I also wish so many people hadn't been cut down on a sandy French beach in Normandy. But that's what it took to get the job done.
There was a plan for peace. It simply didn't account for the fact that many Ba'athists decided not to fight. They instead distributed arms in hideouts all over the country and decided not to fight the main invasion force.
The rebels have at no point controlled everything and everyone. For a short time after we entered Baghdad and Saddam disappeared, there was looting and violence. Nobody was *in control* at that point. Even still, leaving a terrible Stalinist dictator in power because you want to make sure there's a perfectly formed government ready to take power is foolish. It's never happened. It didn't happen in Germany when we swept the Nazis from power.
By "genocides in Africa" I presume you mean Rwanda (1994, that was Bill Clinton's failure to respond) and Somalia (also a situation that was normalizing until Clinton screwed it up). In Rwanda 800,000 people were butchered in 100 days, quite a few of them killed with machetes. Clinton didn't stop them; instead of bombing the radio tower used to broadcast names and license plates of people to be hunted down and used to coordinate the genocide, or even jam the radio tower at the cost of a few million dollars, we ended up sending hundreds of millions of dollars in practically useless humanitarian aid. Food doesn't bring 800,000 people back to life. Clinton didn't want to risk American lives to stop the genocide, when we could have easily done so with a relatively small force.
Why not bring up the two European genocides committed by the Serbs under Milosevic, in Bosnia and Kosovo? Bosnia felt like something straight out of the Holocaust ("shower rooms" with only one shower head, mass transport out to killing fields and into concentration camps, sweeping through towns on ethnic cleansing campaigns, separating men from the women and children). But Clinton sat back for the longest time and did nothing, mainly because he wanted a pain-free foreign policy that didn't risk any American lives.
Bush hasn't made those mistakes. We risked American lives to liberate two nations comprised of tens of millions of people of oppressive governments. Both of those governments quite publicly harbored and financially supported terrorists. And now we have Iran surrounded.
You said, "the ones who actually have the potential to harm the US are still at large."
Well, 75% of the Al Qaeda leadership has been captured or killed.
Despite an incredible number of threats, many from Osama bin Laden himself, the United States has not suffered any more terrorist attacks on our soil in over three years. The attacks have increasingly been limited to southern Asia, with two notable exceptions: the train bombing in Spain and the recent terrorism in Russia. No attack since 9/11 has killed as many people.
So apparently, there has been a good deal of effect. The great likelihood is that Osama bin Laden is trapped in the mountains straddling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and is not capable of launching large-scale organized attacks on the scale of 9/11.
As for your contention that the "whole point" of this war was WMD's, that's being dishonest. We have many justifications for what we did. Bush only stressed Weapons of Mass Destruction because for over a decade the United Nations would not respond to any other call for action. Saddam walked right through, what, 16 or 17 UN resolutions since Desert Storm? The UN would do nothing about the brutal mass murders and genocides. They continually failed to fully enforce their own resolutions.
As to why Bush didn't do it right when he got into office? Well, it would have been political suicide. I have no doubt Bush would have done it given enough time -- he had personal and moral justification for it and most of his administration are the leading members of PNAC (Project for a New American Century, which had Iraq basically on a hitlist). 9/11 just made it easier to put the war effort together.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That was typically American... Do Iraqi lives count for you? I mean, so far, they don't seem to, as you seem to have forgotten that according to your own numbers, the Coalition has got more Iraqis killed than Saddam does in a year... And from what I know, the "violent death" rates in Iraq are just as high now as the ones estimated during Saddam's rule...
So I guess that, as long as Saddam got them killed, they are victims, and when the Coalition kills, they are "necessary collateral damage for the good of most"... In my opinion, it's just the same indiscriminate death striking.
So much for efficiency and results...
America is so far the only Nation to have used WMDs in a conflict, it is the Nation which kills the most, as they have a very fair amount of blood on their hands, compared to other countries, all the while being the youngest...
Ironic, isn't it, that it pretends to be fighting to stop such things, for "honour"?
Well, if you really want to help out with that, great! Start with yourselves...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Hey sabiss -
Indeed more Iraqis have been killed this year than on the average of Saddam's reign. Of course, they weren't subjected to chemical weapons or a concentrated genocide program, but I digress. Those Iraqis who were killed lost their lives despite the United States taking mroe precautions than *any other warring civilization in history* to protect civilian lives from their own firepower. We called off missions for bombers that had flown all the way aronud the world from Missouri because intelligence reported a probability of civilian collateral. Like I said, no one's *ever* done as much as we have to prevent civilian casualties.
The fact is that Saddam is *gone* now. This war will end long before Saddam would have quietly passed away, leaving one of his brutal sons in charge. There is no statute of limitations of genocide or other mass murders or "disappearing" political dissidents and their families.
You mentioned that the US is the only nation ever to use WMD's in a conflict -- assuming, I guess, that you discount Iraq's consistent use of chemcial and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War. When Iran used human wave tactics, Saddam rewsponded with mustard gas. Iraq even developed their own bomb specifically for the purpose of carrying a chemical or biological payload. Look it up, it's calledthe R-400 and it's the only chemical weapon we actually found in Iraq before the war started. The ones the UN weapons inspection team found were filled with intact VX warheads. (by the way, a fifth of a raindrop will kill 50% of people exposed to that amount, that's how deadly VX is)
Funny thing, that: would you trust any other great power in the history of mankind to use that sheer mind-numbing advantage to *PREVENT* casualties? We dropped those bombs to ultimately reduce total casualties on BOTH sides of the conflict and to reduce the damage to Japan -- a levelled country is much harder to rebuild into a future ally.
We refrained from using the weapons on Communist China and the Soviet Union even though we had an extreme military advantage over them. We had several more atomic weapons within a few months of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we practiced great restraint.
I never mentioned "honor" or anything of the sort. You placed those words in my mouth, and straw men are fairly easy to beat up.
nuka-t -
They didn't have to change course. The Ttianic would not have sunk if they had simply continued straight into the iceberg (ripping open no more than two compartments) instead of letting it rip hundreds of feet of the hull open. Of course, the argument can also be made that if the Titanic had not waited 30 seconds before it started turning, it *might* have escaped enough damage to stay afloat. Kerry simply assumes, after years of being on the short end of the foreign policy stick, that he'd be the best captain for this boat, that he would retroactively respond faster and better. Or maybe he'd just ignore the next iceberg and hope it goes away.
And finally, I don't think anyone takes illusions667 seriously, so responding to him would only encourage more oversimplified diarrhea.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Aye, right, sorry, you didn't say anything about honour, someone else did...
You know when it comes to biological weapons, every big war has seen use of those, I mean, I personally consider phosphorus bombs and flamethrowers just as cruel than any other "chemical weapon"... Plus, Agent orange has been used during Vietnam, chlorine gas has also been used during the 2 World Wars by both sides... Thing is, with "progress", those weapons end up deadlier and deadlier, and even more impressive, and that's without speaking of nukes...
I don't think wars have changed in brutality, it's just that modern "laws of war", like not having collateral damage are only compensating the devastation power of modern weaponry... I mean, in antiquity, they used swords, with that thing, you can only kill those you want to kill: no collateral damage... Of course, the mentality of warriors back then was to kill everyone. But as time went by, weapons were more devastating, less precise. More collateral damage, but soldiers had more "discipline", and were taught to spare civilians more and more. In the end, the numbers of people dying (relatively to the population of the time) must have been about the same... The army is still responsible for the deaths, wether they like it or not.
Saddam's gone now, but I have doubts on the fact that it needed an entire war. Especially one that has been conducted this "badly". Disrupting the way a sovereign country works is always a bad idea, and the reaction will ultimately bad, until one side stops the violence (which doesn't seem to be happening)... Try reading "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu or "The Project of Perpetual Peace" by Kant, if you haven't already, they're very good, and I mean, the situations they describe are no different than now, an the after effects and reactions aren't either... It's really enlightening...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
oops. forgot to address that reply to you sabiss. Go ahead and read it above.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
What's really hilarious about that quote from Kerry is, that the Titanic wouldn't have sunk if the captain HAD kept on course and just slammed into the iceberg. Only one or two of the compartments would have been ruptured.
Instead they tried to change course at the most critical moment and the underwater portion of the iceberg ripped open a lot more of the vessel than necessary. As such, several more compartments ruptured and the unsinkable sank.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
wow, youre so wrong.
they had to stear it, and change the course. but they should have done it without lowering the speed. by setting hte motors in reverse, the ship was unable to turn in time. if they had let it go at full speed, htey would have been able to change the course in time.
so latuff is hereby "unowned"
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
And that, people, is how you shut someone up.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Possibly even the world if that dipshit decides he wants to use a nuke or two.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Kinda ironic that in history, the U.S happens to be the only nation to use "Weapons of Mass Destruction" on true forign soil. Lets just see what the future holds. My prediction is that yet again, Bush will find his way to office for another term. (Although I would rather see him not in this position)
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
<= Prev |