Mr. Bush should be proud

[banjo_boy]

Originally posted by Cat Instead of bombing them, you could try to build them schools, instead of destroying their electricity and water supply, you could try to help them, instead of leeting them remain poor and misguided and victims of religious fundamentalism, you could try to educate them.

You too are misguided since your childhood in believing that the way you view the world is the good one. So do I. But at least I try to overcome my limits, while you seem just comfy inside them. Don't american children get brainwashed too from their early childhood, by letting them sing nationalistic songs and swear undying loyalty to their homeland? Where's the difference? [/b]

They have to want to learn first. You can not teach something without a want to learn.

Also, there is a HUGE difference between Country loyalty and fanaticism. To be proud of your country is one thing. To be proud and to WANT to kill people who don't believe what you do is another.

I don't want this war as much as anyone else. My question still is: Why are we so gitty with the idea of gloabalization and "everyone getting along" , but if someone is in trouble we "should keep to ourselves".

If all the anti-war, UN loving people have their way, guess what? 9-11 is going to happen again and it will be worse than before just because the world didn't keep everyone else in check. I do not want this war at all just because my neighbors in Iraq and elsewhere, fellow humans, will get hurt or die. Guaranteed there will be civilian deaths. Why would anyone want it? But, why would we not want to protect innocent lives from future dangers? We can not sit down and tell Sadddam that he is wrong and should be educated to do right. We also can't sit around singing Kumbya thinking that just because we are doing that, Saddam is going to stop funding terrorism and his own weapons.

So if all of us were misguided as children, how do you know you are pursuing the "right" ideals. If we were misguided by our parents and teachers, who misguided them? Their parents. Domino effect! Everyone in the world, from the very beginning, is then misguided! And we are just plodding along in this thing called time and space trying to make sense of what life is for. So, it looks like we are pretty limited because there is nothing else outside of being misguided.

Also, our society now could care less about educating the mind about math, literature, reading, and especially history. But they are concerned about the latest movie or newest CD. And yes, other do understand what I am talking about.

It has become very obvious also that the tolerance level became very intolerant when it came to jeb1138's comment.

BTW, think globally! That "type of thinking" has also been the reason for the rise of many countries and laws. Yes, the wars and cursades were stupid (the stupidest thing in Religious history), but you tell me what is bad about the education of the lower case when the Protestant Reformation happened. Education was only for the rich and clergy. Religion, Christianity especially, has done more for the world that most could even imagine.

Well, Jeb! Let's pick up our "Middle Age thinking" and move on. I guess the "enlightened" folk want to be alone in "their misguidedness".

[AdmiralAK]

Originally posted by edX
there are many of us who would argue that Bush wasn't elected - he took control in the midst of scandal and confusion over our voting processes. it's fact that the majority of americans did not vote for him.

This is a big thread, sorry if I am repeating a point, however there are 3 points I want to make here (about my friend Ed's comment and the thread).


1) The voting system in the US does not take into account majority vote. The electoral college has power to elect when all is said and done. The democrats in my view tried to twist the process that has been in place since the founding of our republic to get his way. That is wrong.


2) The two party system sux big time. we, as the american people, need to create more parties that represent US (us not U.S.) the people who vote. All too often we compromise because there are only two choices and we do not vote our conscience but we vote for either of the lesser of 2 evils, or to spite someone. -- We as americans have sooooo much choice as consumers, but when we go to vote there are only two choices.



finally
3) what I am saying might be controversial but here it goes, I am FOR the war. I am for the war as a last resort. Saddam must be kicked outta there and never come back. Period. I do not support inspections. We had inspections during the clinton years and what did it get us? Almost no where. With a decade to conceal any weapons that they might have, inspections are even more useless, and to consider that inspections are being held up because "someone doesnt have a key" --- that my friends is a load of bull --- Diplomacy should be first and foremost, however the option of war should not be discounted.




Admiral

[toast]

My own words were:
"War is a primitive, pre-Cold War means to win primitive domination. I understand African nations can still use war, but I don't understand post-industrial countries can still consider it as an option."

Satcomer: Be careful! Your statement looks like a very subtle form of racism.

Must be a VERY subtle form of racism then, 'cause I jus't figure out what's racist in my post. African people are just our equals (if not our superiors according to some anthropologists), while African states are politically speaking primitive. This is debatable, if you want to launch the topic start a thread and tell me by PM. Be ready to defend your point, though.

mdnky: The way you talk Toast you would rather them use a WMD (biological or nuclear) on another country before anyone takes an action to stop it.

Yes. That's justice. If you want to write theory of justice again, take some time to do it. Don't you understand 'pre-emptive strike' is nonsense ? If pre-emptive strike policy was applied, the US would be immediately bombed, just after Pakistan and India. This makes no sense.

Again, this is the same carelessness that led to WWI, and WWII.
No, you are wrong again. WWI and WWII have much older factors than 1911 and 1933 events. And Iraq is certainly not starting WW3 tomorrow, that's US propaganda which shows a complete ignorance not only of contemporary history (starting from 1900 to nowadays), but also of immediate recent actuality.

I'll repeat again: parallels between WWars and Iraq are what is to be called propaganda. Do I need to explain that ?

[Cat]

So if all of us were misguided as children, how do you know you are pursuing the "right" ideals.

In fact, I don't. But I try to check whether they are right. I call them in question. I debate them. I try to overcome my limits, and do not simply acceptem as dogmatically given. Thus I strife to improve my opinions and actions.

If we were misguided by our parents and teachers, who misguided them? Their parents. Domino effect! Everyone in the world, from the very beginning, is then misguided!

ROFL! The funny thing is, you are right! Everything you were taught created prejudices in you. They are not necessarily false or wrong or bad, but they are prejudices in that they form and condition your decisions and opinions before having had any real experience. Nobody can prevent starting without prejudices of this kind, but everybody should IMHO try to accept that they are in fact a very limited (and limiting) factor in the way you percieve, judge and react to the rest of the world. Thus you should try to improve them, not raising them to dogmas. Question them and strenghten, change or otherwise improve them through debate and research! I cannot guarantee the results will be absolutely right, but at least the method is.

And we are just plodding along in this thing called time and space trying to make sense of what life is for. So, it looks like we are pretty limited because there is nothing else outside of being misguided.

Yes indeed, and that is very sad... the tragic human condition... life is absurd. Have you ever read Baudelaire? Beatiful in a very horrific way, is his short poem Le Cadavre (my French isn't perfect...) "The Corpse". Reminds me of Keats sometimes... *deep sigh* or Leopardi ... beatiful... and in the end we're all gonna die anyway ... *deep sigh* ... oh well .... *shrug* ... like Italo Svevo said in "La coscienza di Zeno": "Life isn't good or bad, but interesting."

[doemel]

I read earlier someone said we have been messing with the Middle East for decades now. Guess what! They (the Middle East) have been battling longer than most countries were around/ organized!

it was atually me who said that. i do agree that "they" have been battling around for a long time. but so has every other people for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years. so this point is invalid as stated by you.

The US is not the only "aggressers" in the world. 10 years ago, Iraq invaded Kuwait. There are so many battles in Africa it would make your head spin. Does anyone know how many people are killed in China each year? North Korea? Iraq? And these are their own people! Come on! We might look like aggressers because we don't sit on our butts and enjoy cheese and wine all day, but we are hardly the ones that started the whole thing.

you miss the whole point. while i agree that the US is not the only aggressor (they are also not the only ones claiming to be "good" or "righteous" or whatever term they use to set themselves apart from their adversary) i still want you to realize that a lot of the conflicts you're talking about (Africa, Middle East...) are a direct or indirect result of first European imperialism and these conflicts would probably not exist if we didn't go there, define territorial constraints at will and split up ethnic groups lumping them together with other ethnic groups in the first place. take a look at a history book. you'll certainly find nice colorful maps of how exactly the brits, frenchies, dutch and at one point even the germans and italians split up that huge pie a.k.a. Africa. then try to find a map that shows which people lives in which country and you'll see that even after decades of bloody conflicts, ethnic cleansing and genozide the borders are still arbitrary.
the situation in the Middle East is not very different.


My main challenge with these protest is that if the US and Britain drops the whole thing and in a couple months BOOM! Kuwait or the US gets hit again.What then? The US is going to be labeled as wimps, gutless to stand up to terrorists, and paper lions.

if we'd follow you logic we would have to bomb the Saudis first. but...oh no! we have very important oil deals with the Saudis and they don't stand in our way to more oil, so we can't bomb them! is that how you'd justify that the US is not doing anything about the country that was a major investor in the Al Qaeda network? i hope not.
i for my part have not seem any evidence of Iraq supporting terrorists more than most of it's neighbor countries. you'll quite likely find someone in about every large country on this planet that is somehow connected to a terrorist group and even supporting it. does that mean we should bomb all these countries? i don't think so. 9/11 and Iraq are two totally different issues, so let's PLEASE keep it that way. i am sorry about what happened on 9/11 but quite frankly: you've already had your revenge in Afghanistan. and speaking about Afghanistan: the US still has not installed a regime there that would better the situation of the population, namely the women and children. i for my part fear they again took side with someone that might get back at them in the future. it's happened repeatedly before and i don't see the US govnt. having learned the lesson yet.


Our country was not founded by a bunch of ninnies. But nowadays, it's hard to find people who actually have solid beliefs in a world of "no absolutes". There is evil and there is good. Killing people is evil.

i don't think we're getting anywhere with the "good-and-evil-does it-exist?" debate. i for my part beliefe that there are indeed shades of grey in the world and that what a certain shade of grey is to me is probably something else for you.
i do agree though that killing is evil (for me). and i refer to any kind of killing, no matter who you are and on which side you are.


However, in this case, involuntary evil has to fight voluntary evil. We didn't volunteer to get attacked 9-11.

there is no such thing as involuntary violence.


We want to protect ourselves and others.

so does everyone else.


The only thing I know is that if a small army of terrorists came into the MidWest, they would have no chance whatsoever.

For me, diplomacy. But, sometimes, kids have to be taken to the woodshed when words don't work.

there's a huge difference between punishing only the culprit and punishing all the people that happen to live in the same country as the culprit.

[toast]

Doemel just made a very ture point about Afghanistan that deserves careful reading and thinking here.

I've been working on a strange problematic today in class: are democracies the best regime to propagate democracy elsewhere (ie outside their borders) ? In other words, are democracies the best exporters of their own values ?

AdmiralAK: 2) The two party system sux big time. we, as the american people, need to create more parties that represent US (us not U.S.) the people who vote.

Multipartism is not systemically better than bipartism. I live in a multipartist country, where all parties can be positioned on a bipolar scale (from x-left to x-right). Therefore, there is no more political diversity in my country than in yours.
Plus, the actual American party system (money, money, lobbies, money, more lobbies, more money) makes birth of new parties a fantasy. Think about it, find some examples, you'll make it by yourself.

[Ugg]

[quote]Originally posted by toast
Multipartism is not systemically better than bipartism. I live in a multipartist country, where all parties can be positioned on a bipolar scale (from x-left to x-right). Therefore, there is no more political diversity in my country than in yours.

I agree with what you say, Toast, however, the one aspect of multipartism that IS better is that it allows ALL people to have a voice in their govt. One of the biggest problems with a bipartist system is that a large percentage of the voters are left without a voice. Some people speculate that this is why the voter turnout is so low in the USA. Of course, we might just be lazy, apathetic couch potatoes too

[doemel]

Multipartism is not systemically better than bipartism. I live in a multipartist country, where all parties can be positioned on a bipolar scale (from x-left to x-right). Therefore, there is no more political diversity in my country than in yours.
Plus, the actual American party system (money, money, lobbies, money, more lobbies, more money) makes birth of new parties a fantasy. Think about it, find some examples, you'll make it by yourself.

I couldn't agree more, but I think the real problem in the US system is not the bipartism, it's all the lobbying. It is a legal form of corruption! Keep in mind that corporations or individuals that have enough dough can "buy" both parties (not that the difference is all that fundamental) and therefore they have things their way in any case. We see it in sports: Why is there so much corruption in sports that involve lots of advertisment/licence and other money? And why should it be different in politics? I recommend to put strict limits on the money that can be received for electoral campaigns and you'll have a system that's more democratic (for the people). This might even get the couch potatoes to be more active politically. And it opens the door to mulitpartism.