OT: Dutch democracy compromised... Options

[Jeroen]

A truely sad day for all Dutch
Today movie maker, columnist and chain-smoker Theo van Gogh was murdered

He was known and feared for his strong critizism and his blunt and harsh statements that he spewed when ever he got the chance. Often shocking his "opponenents"
Van Gogh had a very stong opinion about the way muslims-funtamentalists suppress women and how they condem gays.

In an ultimate attempt to shut him up, he was brutally excecuted in Amsterdam this morning. He was shot 6 times and then a letter was pinned to his dead body with 2 knives

The killer was captured after a shoot-out with the police. He is an immigrant from Marocco and aparently a muslim-extremist.

Van Gogh paid the ultimate price for what he believed in the most: the freedom of speech

[Joe Bob]

Geez....politics.....

Ok....Bush Senior was an out of touch idjut...BUT....he was smart enuff to spank Saddam and then get the FUCK out of Dodge. Winning a war is the easy part....occupation and control in a foreign land ....well look what's happening NOW....look at the American Revolution....Viet Nam...both the French and the US got spanked over there...

Oil....if controlling Iraqi oil was the goal...well "W" screwed that up...prices at the pump are the highest we have ever seen. OPEC....c'mon....whenever one of the oil sheiks needs a new airplane he pumps over his quota and the price goes down a bit and then they bitch at each other things get adjusted again....

The whole thing sucks....

Civil war in Iraq....well....say what ya want about Saddam...he did control the rival factions....now that his corrupt, brutal, iron fisted control is gone...they are free to fight among themselves and the controlling entity...which now is the US.

Hey, even Hitler got the trains to run on time and turned a bankrupt country around....not that his way of doing it was the right way....but German citizens voted HIM in....loved him until he was exposed for the monster he was....

Nothing has really changed....Somalia, Afganistan, Iraq and any other backwater POS country our idjut leaders think need to be invaded.

I'm just glad that the friends, relatives and ME are either back here after serving or too old/young to go.....

Now back to your regularly scheduled channel....

[Jeroen]

They are not seen as insignificant things...

Hey Ernie, you are right, issues like gay marriage and abortion are not "insignifficant"
Bad choice of words from my side...

[redshift]

Civil war in Iraq....well....say what ya want about Saddam...he did control the rival factions....now that his corrupt, brutal, iron fisted control is gone...they are free to fight among themselves and the controlling entity...which now is the US.

Hey, even Hitler got the trains to run on time and turned a bankrupt country around....not that his way of doing it was the right way....but German citizens voted HIM in....loved him until he was exposed for the monster he was...

Mike, we were once a fledgling democracy. We were brothers in arms, even if we were shooting at each other.

If it were about oil, we'd have invaded Saudi, 30 years ago.

This is a fight between humanity, and inhumanity. The kindest thing we can do for the future of mankind, is label it, kill it, and roll the dead body out for all the disbelievers to inspect.

It's a brutal world, but not really here.... in civilization.

I've never seen that analogy of Hitler used in such a positive light... to me, it's a rhetorical. It looks like a point, on your card... yikes!


M

[Joe Bob]

Yeah well....my Hisory Prof actually blamed it all ....Hitler and WWII.... on the French.......

He felt that the humiliating terms of Germany's WWI surrender in the treaty of Versailles caused most of Germany's problems in the 20s and early 30s.....war reparations, the disbanding of their army and navy....the ban on expansion....this all plunged Germany into a deep economic depression and humiliated the German people.....Pride is a real motivator.

Adolf took the prejudices of the majority and blamed the minority(s) in his rise to power. When he WAS firmly in power he went after the French....when he won, he got the same railway car out of the museum where they signed the WW I treaty and forced the French to do it all over again...payback....except HE was the head BITCH.

It's all who has the biggest weenie.....

[redshift]

As well he should!

'Welcome to Paris! Can I take your order?'


M

[SirAndy]

it came down to a choice for me between two bad choices.

"the lesser of 2 evil is still evil"

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) Andy

[SirAndy]

This is a fight between humanity, and inhumanity.

unfortunately, this is exactly were you (and so many others in this country) are wrong ...

you're living a idolized dream of the the great battle between good and evil (you guys are being the good ones, of course).
while i applaud you for your uncanny naivity, i really hate to burst your rose-red bubble.
reality is different. much, much different.

you choose to be blind. you choose to ingnore the history facts. you choose to be ignorant.

we all will pay the price ...

[redshift]

Nah..


M

[dmenche914]

Ok we are in it now. We still have to win the "peace" It has not even been three years yet. Many iraqi's are glad we did what we did, and many know that as soon as they and us finish the job with the terrorists, and saddamists, we will be on our way. That is exactly why there have been no mass killings of our troop. Hell if even 20% of the Iraqi's truely hated us, we would be in a big mess, but we are not. Sure it is a mess, war is a mess, but it cleaned up a bigger problem. Saddam supported terror, and had the know-how, and will to make an atomic bomb. That threat is gone.
Give it time to settle the issues in iraq, hell we still have troops in Germany and Japan, after 60 years! Took until the 1960's to return Okinawa back to Japanese control, that was over 15 year after surrender.

So would we have rather have saddam in power, three more years of him fooling sanctions, with several western nations on the take from him. With the UN weapons inspectors leaving 300 tons of plastic explosives in iraq, which saddam had for the purpose of making an atomic bomb. Libyia would still be in the terror and bomb bussiness also, Libya renouncing terror and atomic bombs was a side benifit of us destroying saddam.

Now unless you kill them all, it is not to smart to "win" a war, and then get out of dodge, cause then you are seen as a destroyer, rather than a liberator, unless you kill them all, then there is no one to complain.

So four options when you know some really bad guys are supporting terror, and working on atomic weapons

1. Invade, and work with the civilians to set up a freedom loving nation.

2. Invade and kill the sadamists, stopping the bomb program (of course unless you rip up the entire nation, you may miss some important stuff, likely not even capturing saddam, and then leave them a big mess, just leave, no help in establishing freedom, or rebuilding. (allowing the terrorist to come in and rule, or saddam to come back)

3. Use the big stick, and kill them all, civilians, saddamists, terrorist, everyone, scorched earth, a wasteland, in fact take it over, and pump the oil, and kill any and all that might object from other nations.

4. Do nothing, except let the UN, and france pussy foot around with the likes of saddam, let the half assed muslim nuclear arms inspector play hide and seek.


Option 1 is what we choose

Option 2 is still open, we could just pull up and leave.

Option 3 is still possible, however we are so far winning the peace. Most iraqi civilians look forward to elections, and are glad saddam is gone, they are joining the fight against terrorist in their midst. So why change now and kill them all (with reprocussions from other arab nations, which woud cause use to kill them all also)

Option 4, too late to do nothing, yeah we could have waited for UN resolution #18, then #19, ..... however do you really believe saddam, and kadahfi would have come clean????

for oil, the price of gasoline, adjusted for inflation is not much differeent than 20 years ago!

So oil prices are high, we are guzzling it like crazy in SUV's, so demand is higher than ever here, along with more people. China is coming on big as an industrial nation, and is consuming much of the oil also. (to bad we encouraged modernization in china, and gave plenty of thechnology to them.) They are a competitor, have an evil non-freedom loving government, yet we have helped them, and can look to a future of problems with them. They have been useless in helping us stop N. korea. China is a seperate subject, but they are a growing danger to freedom.

We also choose not to drill in Alaska for oil. We choose higher prices verses drilling there.

So oil prices have a lot to do with things other than iraq, although iraq is a component. Could be also a bunch of arabs in opec wanted to affect the US election also.
Good thing we drive 914's rather than SUV's.

So alot of people bitch and mone about Bush and the war on terror, but I have heard few if any alternate solutions to the danger of bad evil governments that support terror, and want to make atomic bombs.

The saying that saddam at least kept control of his people, like hitler kept the trains on time is hopefully a joke, else it would be on of the most stupid ideas I have heard on this list. Ask any survivor of saddams torture, or one of hitlers concentration camp survivors, Maybe you have blonde hair and think that you would have been ok under hitler, i hope you were joking. i think we have exposed saddam for the monster he WAS (past tense emphisied)

By the way, America did not get spanked in our Revolution, we did the spanking. Vietnam was lost because we lost the will, maybe never had the will to truely win it. Sept 11 gave alot of Americans the will to take on evil. We also won a hell of alot wars, but none were clean, and all took time.

[Joe Bob]

Whoa.....cool yer Jets Bubba......

All I stated was that they accomplished goals...AND I stated that I did NOT repeat NOT agree with the way they did it.

DO NOT misquote me, take me out of context or abbreviate my comments.......that's pure election year dirty tricks.

[dmenche914]

Sir Andy< I see you are still out there, any suggestions on how we should have taking it on, maybe you think there was no problem? How are we naive? How is our world view wrong? lets here some suggestions on how you would work it out rather than constant criticism.

If this is not of good verses evil, then what is it? Is not saddam compariable to hilter, stalin, mao, idi amin, and were these bastards not evil??? (they killed millions, and hated freedom)

Are you so pacifist that you will not stand up to evil, or if you do not believe in evil, do you not stand up up against killers, dictators that have evil (sorry no evil) Bad intent against America.

Are you guys that are aginst Bushes strategy so pacifists that you are not able to stand up to this challenge. How would you have done it?

How can we have such a one sided debate.
Ideas? Suggestions??? Was saddam evil or not in your opinion, or do you believe evil does not exist?

[redshift]

I am a hunter/gatherer.

I want to hunt terrorists, and gather their bones to build an elevator to heaven.



M

[Joe Bob]

Of course they were/are evil.....as to bashing Bush....just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they don't support them. I just think that the guy's personality is of a type that I would love to just give him a kick in the ass if I ever met him in a bar....I just can't come to grips with respecting the little weaseldick's integrity....I don't trust him....

Kerry is a dork too...except he's a little bigger and I would have to really drunk and pissed to take him on....

Democracy is where you can agree with some of the stuff and support the rest. I support our troops, I just don't support ALL the reasons they are there for.

The conditions for civil strife in Iraq were always there....the invasion took the lid off...it's boiling over....time to get the fuck out....

C'mon...you have many factions that have been pissed at each other since Mohammed was a youngster....they should technically be seperate countries.....you have the Kurds to the north....the nomadic tribes, the Shiites and the Sunni's and the Baathists and the guys that think
Monty Python is funny.....not a good mix.

[dmenche914]

mike Z, there is no election year dirty tricks here, i did not miss quote you, I simply asked for clarification on a statement you made. The statement seemed so crazy if interpitated wrongly that I had to ask, seeing as you brought it up about hilter. I am glad it is clarified.

Now how would you have solved the iraq problem, or if you believe it was not a problem, let us know why????
From you hitler train statement would it be wrong to assume you think we should have left saddam alone? Is that what you ment to imply?

Lets have some ideas on how you think the problem should have been solved, if invading was the wrong thing to do?

There are some parellels here with hitler. The french trusted him, the brits via chamberlin said peace in our time. even stalin signed a treaty with hilter. All believed in the fairy godmother, and that things would be ok, and no reason to risk war to stop hitler. I know hindsight is perfect, but now we must have foresight to stop some bad guys, We have a list, and their home addresses, and we are working on that list now. A pity if we stop before the job is done, and allow a terror sponsor state to get a nuke. Will future generations look back on us like we see the french for caving to hilter, hell he was right next door, and they did nothing until it was too late. Maybe the french liked the idea of timely trains. Hell if it weren't for the USA entering the war, I bet all the french trains would still be running on time.

Also if destroyed german pride was a reason for the rise of hilter, and i will accept that premiss, then what explains the peace we achieved in europe for the last 60 years??? We beat them, disbanded the nazi party, tried and executed the war criminals, and still have troops over there.
As far as winning back iraqis, less than three years from start of war, the iraqi's are farming thier own army and police forces, we are giving control to them, talk about pride. Not only that, in WWII we tried the nazis we captured. I iraq we have turned over saddam to be tried by iraqi's, all this less than three years after start of war.

Good grief, talk about a fast turn over to control. Iraqi elections in two months??? (after Afganistan had elections already!!!!)

As near as I can tell, we are following the post WWII model of rebuilding after a war, and we are doing it faster then back then.

Yes there is a danger of a WWI style problem, but only if we acted french, and demainded repairations, and such, no way, we have told the iraqi's that the oil belongs to them, we are setting up schools, and hospitals, all at a rate faster than what happened in WWII germany. Iraq is working out like WWII, not WWI. Good parellel you have drawn, wrong conclusion however.

[ThinAir]

Ideas? Suggestions???

In my opinion, we are doing exactly what we would eventually have needed to do in Iraq, but we are in trouble because we were so impatient to do it that we did not build the international alliance that is required to actually get the job done.

It's easy to make jokes about the French, but they are one of the countries with a much longer history in Middle East affairs than the U.S. and we should have listened much longer and harder to what the Europeans were saying. We did the easy part, winning the war, without any apparent plan to win the peace because we cut ourselves off from some of our best sources for putting together just such a plan.

To me, we erred when we stood before the world and proclaimed over and over than Iraq had weapons of mass destruction while refusing to show any credible evidence of such. When other nations didn't just climb on board, we walked away from them.

I believe that we should have used this argument instead: "Sadaam is bad and a dictator who kills his own people and seeks to export terror if not restrained. He's a Hitler in the making (if not already there). We've been keeping him hemmed in with sanctions and armed air patrols for 10 years, but the U.S. and the world cannot afford to keep this up forever. We need to bring it to a conclusion by either getting believable assurance of compliance or getting rid of Sadaam. We cannot adequately fight the war on terror without freeing up the resources that are being used to keep Iraq's government in check."

It's not short and clean like WMD so maybe it doesn't sell very well, but it's the only basis on which I could support going into Iraq.

The problem we have is that because we went in virtually alone, we now have to solve it virtually alone. Without humbling ourselves and going back to those we chose to ignore, I don't know how we'll get it done.

[J P Stein]

This is a fight between humanity, and inhumanity.

unfortunately, this is exactly were you (and so many others in this country) are wrong ...

you're living a idolized dream of the the great battle between good and evil (you guys are being the good ones, of course).
while i applaud you for your uncanny naivity, i really hate to burst your rose-red bubble.
reality is different. much, much different.

you choose to be blind. you choose to ingnore the history facts. you choose to be ignorant.

we all will pay the price ...

I thought we were done with political threads here.

Andy's quote is a perfect example of why this should be so.

Disregarding whether or not he is correct, he has managed to insult the intelligence of prolly half the folks on this list.
When I was a kid, my dad said to never argue religion or politics with your friends. I didn't get it then, but .....

I assume that few of have have our heads buried in the sand and are aware of the situation in our world outside of this BBS.
We are bombarded by "expert" opinions on both sides of every issue imaginable. I come here to be bombarded by opinions of 914 issues not more of the same BS from the "outside world".

So Andy, it's "your" website. Is this where you want to take it?

[type11969]

Someone will say, going into Iraq was not validated since they had no WMDs, and their ties to 9/11 are sketchy at best

Someone else will say, they harbored terrorists and they found 380 tons of high explosives that can be used for nuclear weapons.

Someone else will say that many nations harbor terrorists, high explosives are not wmds, and N. Korea already has nuclear weapons.

Then someone will say that Saddam was a bad person and hated freedom.

Then someone else will say that there are many others out there that are much worse than Saddam, again bringing up the point that N. Korea already has nuclear weapons.

Then someone will say that you don't think we should have done anything after 9/11.

Someone will say that we did with going into Afghanstan, that was validated, Iraq was not.

Someone will bring up terrorist harboring and Saddam being a bad person again.

Blah, blah, blah.


Or something like that. I got in a big discussion on the stf, no ones opinion was swayed, so whats the point?

dmenche914, I would ask you how you think we are going to be able to continue this terrorist nation hopping with a growing deficit and a military spread very thin, but I don't really give a damn. What I think about this, and what you think are both speculation, only time will tell.

-Chris

[Joe Bob]

Ah fuck it.....it's time for a beer and a shot......

[914GT]

Before locking the thread, here are a couple web sites to look at. Decide for yourselves who you want to agree with

http://www.daneshjoo.org/smccdinews/articl...icle_4319.shtml
http://www.moveon.org/pac/news/hope.html

[ThinAir]

I agree that what I come to 914World.com for is the car stuff, but I also come here because as a big family we get a place to share what is going on in our lives and is important to us. Within that context I think there is a place for a "political" thread once in awhile so I don't mind this at all.

About a week ago I heard a commentator on NPR talking about the year she spent studying in Europe many years ago. She noted that in America we tend to call someone names or degrade them when they disagree with us. In Europe the response she witnessed was "That's interesting - why do you think that?"

This thread reminds me of the "why do you think that" approach. We've managed to put forth our views in a fairly reasoned way without calling each other names, but instead have explored the "why do you think that" angle. It has made for very interesting and thought provoking reading.

As long as topics are appropriately labeled so that we know they are not about our teeners, I welcome this kind of interchange.