That is exactly how you got into the mess you are presently in - when the Arab world
Agreed. I know many who think that the fact that this happened is terrible. Some are even republicans which made the outcome of the election even more confusing for me. Bush sucks. He didn't listen and was not wise it his decisions. Congress is equal in blame as well. We live in trying times in the US no dispute.
Well, that it will tend toward absolutism, of course. I have already remarked that I find it unsurprising that a state so firmly founded on the model of Rome has, like Rome, become a militaristic empire.
Even a republic can tend toward absolutism. If not limited by birthright we are restrained from completely eliminating absolutism by the socio-economic barriers to political influence. Anything system that has a central form of government, even if elected, has the ability to tend toward absolutism. I fail to see why this makes the US special or worse in any way.
Also, the US has
always been a militaristic empire from its conception. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of US history. Not that this is justification though. We must be careful not to say that just because we are this way it does not mean that we should continue this way. That being said, it is folly to conclude that the US is alone in this regard either now or in the past. We were not the first and will not be the last. Abjection directed
only at the US for its history and its current circumstance is ultraism.
You mean the abject failure of the civil rights movement.
You seem to be an all or nothing person. Why should a movement that made such great strides be considered a failure just because the ultimate goal, death to racism, was not achieved?
No delusion is as cherished in the US than that there was some big sea-change in the middle of the century, but apart from the rhetoric, little changed.
I would not call desegregation and the end to Jim Crow a little change. The foundation was laid for the healing of over 200 years of racism. To think that this was going to be fixed by one movement in one decade is ridiculous. The fight against hatred is a constant battle requiring the vigilance of all people. To say that nothing changed or that the civil rights movement was a failure is total absurdity.
The civil rights moevement failed so comprehensively that now, 50 years on, homosexuality and feminism rmeain widely despised, and racism is rife.
To expect a single movement to completely change the landscape of all types of emotional hatred in a country is the paramount of being unreasonable. Giant leaps were made but not the total abolition of racial hatred or all hatred for that matter. You seem to be very much intransigent about things. If you wish to start a new thread to discuss this I will join you there as this is beginning to get off topic.
You forget that Hitler was ELECTED Reichskanzler; Hitler rose to power through the democratic process. What reason is there for thinking that the US system is more robust - can you actually support that claim from institutional comparisons?
Democracy does not grant protection from fascism. Your comparison is erroneous though I will humor a response. Not to say that the US system is flawless but we do have a checks and balances system that, as far as I know off the top of my head, had not been duplicated by Germany in the early 20th century. I do believe that if it he could George Bush would directly and promptly turn this country into a theocracy. Abortion would be illegal, censures would turn into marshals, etc. The minority power, even if impotent to stop many of the things we now regret, has been effective in stemming the potential radical breeches of our Constitution. The administration also still had to pander to "value voters" to get itself re-elected this time. The neo-cons will probably continue this strategy to maintain power even though it limits the effectiveness of its political gains.
Not to say that the US could not turn into a fascist nation but there are certainly more road blocks to doing so.
Furthermore, I mentioned furing thre last election that I was horrified to learn that the republicans had obtained legal consent to have observers in polling stations to vet voters. To vet the VOTERS? This is only a hair away from declaring the public election invalid.
While also off topic I will respond. You seem to be content simply to vilify the US in any arena despite the topic on hand. We need much election reform no doubt. I am part of an organization fighting for that right now.
Electronic Frontier Foundation | Defending your rights in the digital world
Republicans as well as Democrats were allowed observers in polling locations so even though the partisan influence is not desirable it is balanced. Any objection also has an appropriate defense. Even independents have recourse through both partisan and non partisan channels. Overall our election implementation needs an overhaul but that does not a villain make.
Your democracy is disintegrating - it has ceased to command genuine popular consent.
No. It is just that the popular consent is currently that of the religious right. Not enough people in opposition took practice in their right to vote. A non vote is not a vote of no confidence like many seem to think.
Charges of irrationality are levelled by both sides, and when an irrational madman is due to be elected, surely taking matters into your own hands is justified? If your generals think that anti-war protestors are completely mad, what would they think of voters who elected an anti-war president?
There has never even been a passing hint of nation wide insurrection from the military in American history that I have ever heard of. The stretch of your imagination has no bound. Certainly anything is possible but what you are suggesting will never happen in the current climate. If you choose to further the support of your speculation, please do so with a more robust case that includes more than the media opinion of one general.
I suggest it is entirely realistic, in perfect accord with both history and reality, and that those men should indeed be termed murderers.
Start supporting your moral position that soldiering is equivalent to murder with reality and history then. Lets see the precedent for the act of soldiering and the equivalence with murder. So far, we have only seen the dispensation of your own personal moral which, like I said before, is admirable. I think you will find it hard to find many that would agree that killing in defense of an invasion constitutes murder. Good luck.
Thus, those who murder most effectively can nominate criteria by which their acts of murder are excused as something else, but that is merely the rationalisation of murder.
Good start. While certainly true from a rational and moral standpoint it fails when examined by history and reality. It also makes no connection between being a soldier and being a murder. Furthermore, soldiers are rarely the ones defining the criteria. Rather society including the history of that society deems what is considered illegal killing and often the precedent is that killing in defense is not illegal. Show me how pervasive societies are where this is not true and you will have a measure of support for your position.
Note that this does not mean my position is that a soldier
cannot be a murder. Only that soldiering does not automatically make you a murder like you seem to be suggesting.
Which raises the question - has that actually happened, or is that just more propaganda? I have been meaning to ask Tal for a citation of this event he has referred to so frequently, becuase it is prima facie absurd.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Children massacred by Iraq bombs
While the allegation of 'targeting children' may remain, certainly being undeterred by masses of children is substantiated. I recall also an incident where a school bus was hit directly by an attack but I could not find the source.
Purposefully killing children can meet few military objectives. If there has been an even in which someone purposefully killed children, for no military reason, then they should be seen as a psychopath, not as acting on behalf of any organisation. If they are attempting to achieve a military objective, such as breaking the morale of an enemy group, then they can still be treated in every respect as a soldier - certainly every bit as much as pilots who nuked Japan. And if what they were trying to do is kill one or sevral of the occupying army, who happened to be surrounded by children, then of course it is "mere" collateral damage, perfectly validated by both US and Israeli precedent.
The point was that murder is happening on both sides of the coin. From American troops to the insurgency or rather "freedom fighters" if you think they are. The reason for killing children is not what is in argument here but rather that it is this act that actually constitutes murder when it occurs. My reason for saying what I said was to show that murder is a part of war rather than a part of merely holding the position of a soldier. Also, both sides commit the act so your assigning some kind of higher honor to the insurgency holds no merit. Murderers exist on both sides of the fight and that fact does not legitimize or invalidate any reasons for the fighting which is actually the topic of this thread.
It does, I'm afraid, both in my eyes and the law. The individual soldier is responsible for the legality of their own actions - this was the precedent established at Nuremburg, pushed for by American lawyers. All coalition troops in Iraq are personally and individually
responsible for their crimes, case closed. They are murderers.
Great. You have just shown me law that says soldiers who commit the act of murder are considered murderers. I was not disputing this. Now show me then where in law an armed escort to a supply truck, a soldier remember, can be arrested for murder due to the actual murder of another soldier actually involved in armed combat. How is the one soldier who has actually not committed an act of murder still a murderer by the mere fact that he/she is a soldier? Show me where in law. What is held in your eyes, while may be interesting, has no bearing on what is considered truth.
Then when you are done with that, show me in law where a soldier who kills while engaged with an active combatant is considered a murder. Also, please reference law and not your eyes.
These are the things you need to fulfill your generalization that soldiering is equivalent to murder.
Of course thats true. But then again, I am not the one denying it, the US is, by denying the legimitimacy of global resistance to American aggression and of freedom fighters seeking the liberty of their land.
Shooting back at a "freedom fighter" does not constitute murder because there is ambiguity to who is a "freedom fighter" and who is a "terrorist". Until you show otherwise, shooting and killing someone who was shooting at you first is not considered murder. Shouldn't the perpetrators of the overall action, the administration, be the ones held responsible to the world? Is not the political action itself an international crime rather than blanketing the responsibility of each intricate detail of the war to all involved?
Now is the winter of your discontent!
-- Stewie Griffin
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