thank you so much for voting for our fearless leader george w bush. now we are detaining iranians and blowing up their embassy in iraq.

gosh.

i used to think this was all a bad idea. but you conservative types really have convinced me. i was -so wrong- to be against bush. he really is a very good guy. he makes good decisions for our country, and for the future of civilization.

thank god bush is in office, making war with iran.

i can't think of anything better than a war with iran.

except maybe a war with china, those godless communist bastards.

i hope you all vote republican in 2008... hopefully the man Dick Cheney will be running for president, to carry on the awesome american legacy of bush, and to get these crybaby democrat cowards out of office for good!

Oh teh noes! I can already hear the fearsome tramp of Iranian boots in our streets!

Oh, no, wait. Nothing changes, except that now we will kill some of the Iranians who have been working with others to kill U.S. and Iraqi personnel inside Iraq.

So basically we were at war already and now we may or may not shoot back.

well, weither or not the iranian had it for them (various reports of ttheir would-be involvement in the ongoing crap... give or take a few), but i can't say i'm very much surprised.

the us mil defends itself saying the buildings in questions did not have diplomatic status, something teheran contradicts. either way, pressure is on. on both sides.

nasty.

Let's let Israel kick Iran's ass and stand back and watch this time.

Lecter, I'm not even going to try to adhere to the forum rules. What you said is complete and utter nonsense.

Fact is that there's quite a large portion of Iranian citizens unhappy with the present government. Do you understand that? They are not happy with it. There're not enough of them to topple the scales yet, but in time, there will be...

or would be. But NO, the USA have to exacerbate the conflict, thus uniting the Iranian people against themselves, effectively throwing back aforementioned development.

Will you just stay in your room and memorize some laws and leave running the world and/or thinking about how to run it to people who get it?

I would prefer to do what I do best, Tosh: help run the world by convincing those who wield the most authoritative gavels in the world's most powerful nation-state what the law should be by arguing that's what the law "is."

Mr. Burr said it best: The law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

This modern "progressive" distinction between a people and their government is amusing at best and disastrous at worst: it is wrong-headed at all times. You are, and should be, held accountable for that which is done in your name. Governments, however illegitimate, are the moral head of their citizens (I won't speak of them as the legal head, since international law as such is a myth). You hold the government accountable regardless of the effect on the people.

Next whiney argument by those who want their view accepted without meddlesome countering by those who "don't get it"?

Well, I'm with ya in spirit, Lecter, but the voters won't abide an expansion of the mideast conflict. No matter how correct the decision to STAY in Iraq is, political and media opposition at home are forcing the President to make decisions based on emotions and empathy, instead of logic and history.

Of course Iran and Syria are making our task difficult. Even if we humbly asked them for help, hat in hand, they'd never commit to helping. The United States is more valuable to them as "The Great Satan" than as a friend. Having a common enemy helps the dictator(Syria)/theocracy(Iran) stay in power.

There *IS* a fledgling opposition movement in Iran, but it's a long way from being real serious. And there's NUTHIN in Syria.

So, we've opposed Syria in Lebanon alongside Israel. We've blown up Al-Qaeda in Somalia. And now we've decided that enough is enough and we're not going to "play nice" with Syria and Iran, who have been supporting the militants in destabilizing the "new" Iraq. I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think that adding another 21,000 troops will do it. I could be wrong, but I liked the idea of 300,000 US troops in Iraq.

Well, whenEVER we leave, the Iranian and Syrian influences will just creep back in. I'd just like to leave Iraq with a stable, democratically-elected government of their own choosing. Hopefully they'll be able to resist Iran & Syria by themselves soon™, sos we can do the REAL "Mission Accomplished" thing.

the shitty part about iraq is that any kind of pull out will make iraq and easy scoop by anyone with a shred of expansionism/opportunism.

iraq is such a wasteland and disorganized nation at this point that it'll be next to impossible for them to survive any sort of invasion. it'll only result in more gerilla warfare.

of course, few arab nation (less even the arab league) will lift a finger (or their asses from the barrels) to get involved and try to find a solution.

like somalia, wich has been running without an established government since the black hawk down fiasco, iraq will sink much, much lower.

if there are blames to put, bush and friends do deserve a severe bitch slap on the face, but the first to blame is the a) the "league of nations" for messing with the region after ww1 and the united nation for b) messing the region further by creating israel backstabbing any chance of peaceful cohabitation amongst the mesopotamian population of the time.

oh. and jesus. boy did that sucker cause a lot of shit.

Quote by Lecter:
This modern "progressive" distinction between a people and their government is amusing at best and disastrous at worst: it is wrong-headed at all times. You are, and should be, held accountable for that which is done in your name. Governments, however illegitimate, are the moral head of their citizens (I won't speak of them as the legal head, since international law as such is a myth). You hold the government accountable regardless of the effect on the people.

That is exactly where you are wrong. You do not allow for gradual changes in a state, instead, you look to find an excuse to justify any and all actions taken by the USA (their government).

I would prefer to do what I do best, Tosh: help run the world by convincing those who wield the most authoritative gavels in the world's most powerful nation-state what the law should be by arguing that's what the law "is."

I seriously doubt you're actually good at that. Nothing you have done or said/wrote so far convinced me of your aptitude at this particular skill.

Mr. Burr said it best: The law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

By that logic, the National Socialist Party in the Third Reich would be justified, if you want to be consequent. So would be the marginalization of the native americans. And the atrocities committed during the existence of the soviet union. Get real, man!

"if there are blames to put, bush and friends do deserve a severe bitch slap on the face, but the first to blame is the a) the "league of nations" for messing with the region after ww1 and the united nation for b) messing the region further by creating israel backstabbing any chance of peaceful cohabitation amongst the mesopotamian population of the time."

Well put. For as bad as Saddam was, he maintained order. From what i've read on wikipedia he actually tried to make the country a decent place to live prior to the Iran/Iraq war (which made both the USA and the USSR gobs of money selling weapons to opposing sides). Unfortunately his bad temper got the better of him whenever there was any kind of problem with the Shiites or the Kurds; he wasen't about to take ANY bullshit. Then he thought Kuwait was trying to screw him over. That lasted about a week before he flew off the Handle again and really landed in deep shit. Anyway back on topic.

"No matter how correct the decision to STAY in Iraq is, political and media opposition at home are forcing the President to make decisions based on emotions and empathy, instead of logic and history." I couldn't agree more leber. Doesn't that sound kinda like what we did in nam; letting the polls determine how we fight a war, rather than the people who know what the hell their doing? Yea that worked great, worry more about accidentally killing a few civilians (once they started turning kids into walking bombs they all should have been fair game) than actually taking out the enemy. Though we do have one thing going for us in Iraq that we didn't in nam. In nam the majority of the south Vietnamese only fought because if they didn't we'd shoot them too. In Iraq at least most of the the Iraqi army wants to see their country succeed and prosper. Also it's nice to see that the returning soldiers aren't being spit on upon returning to America as my father was.

Perhaps that's why you would never be a judge, Tosh.

Know what, I take that back: your sort might be a shoe-in for the D.C. Circuit.

You assume (wrongly, I might add) that I aspire to be a judge. I also do not claim to be one who can run the world. I do think that I am better at determining how it is running than you, though.

toshiro said That is exactly where [Lecter is] wrong. You do not allow for gradual changes in a state, instead, you look to find an excuse to justify any and all actions taken by the USA (their government).

Well, post-justification and false flag operations and the like are always done in wars. Not to say that those kinds of things are good, they're not.

The United States is not "technically" at war with Iran, and in my opinion it would be a grave mistake to enter into armed conflict with Iran. Nothing would unite the Muslim world against the United States like a holy war, "started" by the Great Satan.

As it stands now, the dictatorships and fragile governments of the Islamic middle east are so afraid of the rise in religious extremism, they'll do a lot to appease those vocal minorities. Don't get me wrong, there are also calls for patience, level-headedness, and reconciliation, but those voices are always drowned out by the more visible, media-savvy religious nutballs in those countries.

In the "coming soon" age of terrorists and nuclear weapons, I don't think "Waiting around for gradual changes" in a hostile state is really the way to go, tosh. If indeed Iran is having a "go" at our forces in Iraq, through proxies or through their own "military observers", then it is appropriate to respond quickly with military force and make an unambiguous statement that the United States won't tolerate that. With the obvious "or else".

War with Iran would certainly be unpopular in America, and I believe it would be unwinnable not for lack of military success, but for lack of political will. In addition, war with Iran would certainly fracture Iraq and essentially make it a no-man's land resembling the parts of Afghanistan far from Kabul.

You may call it "throwing our weight around" or "bullying", but we are essentially preventing a neighboring state from unduly influencing, if not downright infiltrating, the fragile, fledgling, formative Iraqi government. A government, with all of its obvious flaws and shortcomings, that was nevertheless ELECTED by the people who consented to be governed by it. And that is something that all freedom-loving people in the world should be supportive of!

/me wraps himself in the American flag and walks offstage...

Hmm, I see your point, the middle east is a security risk for the US. But I seriously doubt that going in there 'in force', even if it is only to retaliate and suppress further terrorist acts, I don't think that it will show any effect in that direction, rather the opposite. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but the recent war between Israel and the Hizbollah/Lebanon (I hope you agree that Lebanon's government didn't really have any say in it) showed that dissymmetric warfare doesn't really work, so why should it work for any other 'developed' countries? The fact that it's politically nigh-impossible for the US government to wage war against Iran only adds to it, but isn't the only problem.

I don't pretend to have a solution for the situation in the middle east. But I'm pretty sure that it cannot be solved by using military force. If I thought it could, I'd be all for it (obviously).

As for Iraq, it's a bit euphemistic to call the thing they have 'government'. I don't know the death toll in Iraq, but I guess there's several dozen dead a week, if not per day. You can't call that order, and they're not even getting close to establishing it, from what I heard/read/saw. Please prove me wrong, I'd really like to believe otherwise (this is no joke).

Also, I have to reiterate, if Iran is attacked or overly pressured (so that the population feels it), I believe that the current development (the government currently in power is not at all supported by the entire population) will reverse itself and they will instead fall back behind the fundamentalist hard-liners, possibly throwing back the country by decades.

Perhaps if more than 25% of Americans actually gave a damn and voted...

I'd like to point out that there are also at least several dozen people in America dead per day, too. Death toll really is a bad meter on government stability and order.

For what it's worth, the per-capita death (non-natural causes, homicide rate in D.C.) rate is, amusingly, higher in D.C. than Iraq at the moment.

And, as usual, your demoliton of a straw man was amazing, Tosh. Nowhere did I assume, state, or imply you aspired to become a judge. I merely stated that (1) you'd make a shitty one, and (2) since my job is to convince judges (you know, guys/gals in black robes who get to issue the orders that guys with guns--or guys who control guys with guns--generally have to follow here in the U.S.A.) of the correctness of my arguments... the fact that you find me unpersuasive isn't worth a cup of warm spit.

Read what I write next time, before blowing a load of irrelevant and emotional splat into the thread, hmmm.

Again, you are wrong, Lecter. You assume that I am angry or insulted because of the pitterpatter you write. That is not the case. I am angry because I think that you have a very simplistic and mechanistic view of the world, and that, sadly, does not work, since the world is neither simple nor a mechanism.

As for the judge bit: Why write it, then? Wouldn't writing that be "blowing a load of irrelevant and emotional splat into the thread", hmm?

And again, a straw man: I note that you're emotional. I never state or imply or assume anything else about your reasons for being so; nor does my point that flows from your emotional state depend on your being that way because of 'X'.

For the final time, read what is written. For example, the 'why write it' was in the post to which you'd replied. Either you're an idiot, or you're being deliberately obtuse (I've added emphasis to the parts you'll need to grasp the point if the case is that you're not being deliberately oblivious). Of course, the unstated premise is "Tosh would make a shitty judge because Tosh doesn't think (or analyze arguments) like a judge"... but hopefully you didn't need that spelled out for you. Sheesh.

I merely stated that (1) you'd make a shitty one, and (2) since my job is to convince judges (you know, guys/gals in black robes who get to issue the orders that guys with guns--or guys who control guys with guns--generally have to follow here in the U.S.A.) of the correctness of my arguments... the fact that you find me unpersuasive isn't worth a cup of warm spit.

If you're still confused, allow me to use another's (more eloquent) words:

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike;
One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

Perhaps you know the title of this little epigram?

But I'm glad you finally set out what's wrong with my way: it's too simple. It's not 'holistic' enough. It needs to be squishier, more sensitive to the myriad other little things that affect how people work. You'll never be able to, say, explain precisely why and how I'm wrong, but you feel it and that's all you need. So you just point out that I 'don't get it' and that my approach, while superficially appealing, perhaps, is 'too simplistic'.

I'm done with this thread. You, sir, are either an idiot or a deliberate non-thinker. I will contend with neither.

Even though you might not be reading my reply:

Point taken, I didn't read closely enough. And no, I don't know neither title nor author of the cited text, for I'm not overly proficient in the field of english literature (if it is, and not a translation from another language). My interests are varied, but do not include that.

Still, I did say pretty accurately why I think you are wrong or, rather, your approach at judging the goings-on on this world is wrong: Because you have a mechanistic view of the world. Push this, something else protrudes. Yet you do not think a lot about side-effects. Neither do you allow for any kind of compromise. Both traits are not overly compatible with the world as it is today. This opinion of mine was formed by reading your posts on varying subjects such as death penalty, the war in Iraq, torture as an interrogation technique and the recent attack on an Iranian embassy, this list not being exhaustive.

Hopefully I won't need to be more precise than this. I can't really be bothered to peruse the forums in search for tidbits of your writing to prove a point that's not going to make any difference. Writing such belligerent posts is just a way for me to 'blow off steam'. If you have a problem with that, either a) don't post in a way that makes me react, or b) ignore me entirely, if you haven't chosen to do so already.