Adios Iraq

[Entsuropi]

This BS that your spewing Fell is the same crap france was saying 50 years ago about Hitler.

Be careful Spriggan. France took action 2 full years before America did. America only joined in after it was attacked. Your moral superioty on that issue is rather weak.

[Spriggan]

I'm not takeing a Moral high ground, there is no high or low groud here. A moral reason is the only reason we have to do so.   France only took action after it was attacked as well.  But France could have acted a lot sooner but it chose not to.  Hindsight is 20/20 we've learned from WW2 to deal with world threats, France hasn't.  

[Entsuropi]

France only took action after it was attacked as well.

o_0
Where did you pull that from? France, along with Britain, declared war after Germany invaded Poland. France was only invaded in 1940, several months afterwards.

[Spriggan]

geese excuse me for being wrong once.  But if I'm not mistaken wasn't frances govement very pro-Nazi as in several of hitlers buddies in control.

[Entsuropi]

So? Most of the British aristocracy, and a couple members of the pre war cabinet were pro - hitler.

Nobody has clean hands over WW2. Best to leave it out of the Iraq debate.

[Fellfrosch]

WW2, by the way, goes right in line with what I'm saying: the world doesn't do anything about a 'corrupt' nation until that nation starts affecting others. Hitler did whatever he pleased to his own people, and nobody stepped in until he started doing screwy things like invading Poland.

Compare me to France if you want, but to say that we have the right to invade a foreign country and impose our own form of government is to do exactly what Nazi Germany was doing in WW2. Just because we claim to have a moral superiority doesn't make us right--the Nazis claimed the same thing. Any form of global government that is not directly ruled by God must by nature be morally relative, because no one in a free society has the right to say that our beliefs are better than yours. If we do say that, and then proceed to enforce the statement with guns, we've stopped being a free society.

[House of Mustard]

Hindsight is 20/20 we've learned from WW2 to deal with world threats, France hasn't.

Maybe they just learned a different lesson than we did.  Maybe France learned that if you declare war on a madman then millions of your people will be killed, your cities will lie in ruin and your country will go bankrupt.

What are the problems that we have with France?  They're arrogant and like to flaunt their power?  It reminds me of someone else I know.

I'm also getting sick of people saying that France owes us because we saved their rear end in WW2.  I distinctly remembered that they saved ours first (in the Revolutionary War).

And have you heard about the many restaraunts that changed the name of French Fries to 'Freedom Fries' (a trend that started in the House of Representatives dining room).

Have we forgotten that France is our ally, for crying out loud?  Have we forgotten that they are tied to us politically, economically and ideologically?  The fact that they won't help us fight a two bit dictator has suddenly made them our worst enemy.  A little over-the-top, I think.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"Freedom Fries" was first reported in a restaurant in Tennessee, actually. As usual, the US Congress is just following the trends.

And it has precedent, too. Guess what country Belgian Waffles and French Toast were named after before WWII. For that matter, guess why we don't call Frankfurters by that name anymore?

The only problem is, as HoM says, France is actually an ally in general (immediate circumstances notwithstanding), not our opponent in a war. No wonder American sympathy in Europe is at a low ebb.

I'm a little tired of it too. I mean, I made as much fun of France as the next guy before this whole spiel, but wtf is up with this? I'm an American. And I oppose this war. The fact that I oppose it does not make me any less American.

Yes, Hussein is evil. No one has argued he isn't. However, the moral justification for blowing up his country is murky at best.

[stacer]

Fell, I've thought the same thing about WWII and what its precendent means for us nowadays. Different times call for different attitudes, but I've heard it argued both ways about Hitler: why didn't we stop him before he did all those horrible things? some people ask. We should have known, they say. Yes. We should have. But if we (that is, not the US, because we weren't involved at the time, but Britain and France) had taken him down before he actively invaded another country, would history be singing a different tune? Would we have been saying that Britain was the aggressor, punching down a Germany already weakened by WWI and reparations?

What I'm trying to say is it can go both ways for that situation. Anyway, Fell said it better than I can, about setting precedent on invading other countries. I think I need to stop thinking about this. My uncle's in the Air Force and he's been over in the Middle East three or four times in the last year and a half, and I just found out that this last time, which was supposed to be a 45 day assignment, is now indefinite. Let's just pray that whatever happens, it's done quickly. I have homework I should be concentrating on anyway.

By the way, did you guys know that I'm in grad school now, those of you that know me from before? I've been in Boston since January, going to Simmons College and working on my master's in Children's Lit. Fun!

(Tangent: for class I just recently had to read the James Cross Giblin book The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, which just won the Sibert award, the equivalent of the Newbery for nonfiction. I highly recommend it, by the way, as a straightforward history of the rise of Hitler's power. You all probably know this, but several years before he came into power, he was involved in a coup that sent him to prison, where he wrote Mein Kampf. What if Hitler had been taken out then? Would history be any different? Or would the social conditions just have brought a different madman to power? Not that I'm trying to start a discussion on it--just thoughts I had as I read the book.)

[Fellfrosch]

Congratulations on being in grad school...that sounds weird somehow. Anyway, good luck.

[Lord_of_Me]

And have you heard about the many restaraunts that changed the name of French Fries to 'Freedom Fries' (a trend that started in the House of Representatives dining room).

I heard about that, did anyone hear about the attempt to change the name of the two towers and to change 911?

I personally don't support the war. i still haven't heard proof about these "weapons of mass-destruction". Oh.. and half the country now hates tony blair.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

did anyone hear about the attempt to change the name of the two towers and to change 911?

That effort, in fact, was a Troll. It really was a web site, but it was simply there to see who they could piss off. Funny if you're Andy Kaufman, I guess...

[Spriggan]

there's a difference between us and hitler.  Case in point the Iraqi people haven't chossen their govement it was imposed on them.  we're not going into a sovern country that has a fair and legal goverment and laws.  If we invaded turkey or france that would be different, even though they didn't support us when we needed it that was the will of the people there.  If the Iraqi people had chosen their leader and still wanted him in power that would be different.  But they didn't.  I don;t see this as imposing our form of goverment on the Iraqi's but instead freeing them so they can have the choice of how their country is to be run.   Just like in Afganistan.

as for the whole freedome fries & kiss that's just plain stupid.  It's just a few people over reacting and the media blowing it out of perportion (or how ever you spell that )

as for we saved the Frenchs butts in WW2 I can see why its a big deal a lot of those people are still alive and it's defantly in recent memory more then the Revolutionary war.

I know there's WOMD in Iraq.  If there wasn't you wouldn't see both Republicans and Democrats (the ones on the Intellegence commitie) say that they are 100% sure that Sadam has these weapons.  That's enough for me, I'm not following blindly.  I've heard countless of my leaders say that there is and only a small part of them are in the Bush adminastration.  I've also read testomony from Iraqi defectors, but military and Scientests.

I just want to know this from the Anti-War people.  If we go in and we find countless Stores of weapons and the Iraqi people great us a liberators what will you say then?  Will you still be against the action?  Will you apologise for being wrong?  Or will you just pretent like it never happened?  I'm not trying to be confrontagious or cynical here I realy want to know.

True Ismar half your country hates Blair but sence the 48 hours to get our the percentage of Brittans who Oppose the war fell 15%, granted it's at 60% now.  But if the war goes quick and we find these stores he'll be a lot more popular.  A lot of people hated Churchill during WW2 now, at least here in the States, he's prectalcly a hero.

[Fellfrosch]

For my part, I'm not denying that Iraq has WMD or that Saddam is evil--I think those are pretty accepted facts. What I'm saying is that we are setting a dangerous precedent for sticking our nose into other people's business (though this is not technically the first time America has pre-emptively invaded a foreign power and planted its flag on conquered soil--that was back in 1898 and our war with Spain). If our example shows people that it's okay to invade people you don't like, what's next?

[Spriggan]

Well this may be kinda a stupid answer, but unless it's china what's going to keep us from threating us if they do?

But your right and that was a question that was rasied quite a lot when Bush/Blair first said that's what they wanted to do.  And from what a lot of people said is if we have a resolution from the UN then it's no big deal.  But now we don't have on (and despite my pro-war thoughts I still wish we had the UN's approvil if for nothing more then to avoid this problem).  But I guess the only thing we can do is wait and see what happens.