Militant keepers-of-the-peace (LC, AJ, Frimost, Miles)

[70/30]

I've heard the GWB, Rush, O'Reilly, and Kristol arguments. Please provide me with a justification for militant peace-keeping; something over grade level 7. No acceptable answer, no justification. Also, no Chamberlain, Todd Beamer, or Toby Keith quotes.

Here is as close as I'll come to assisting you:

John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies: of queens' gardens

"I do not wonder at the single-handed murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the daylight by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and kings. But this is wonderful to me--oh, how wonderful!-- to see the tender and delicate woman among you, with her child at her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, and over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger than the seas of earth--nay, a magnitude of blessing which her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite:--to see her adbicate this majesty to play at precedence with her next-door neighbor! This is wonderful--oh, wonderful!--to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within her, go out in the morning into her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they are drooping, with her happy smile upon her face, no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall around her place of peace; and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their lifeblood."

 

[]ooooo(chained)]

I would surmise that embargo did not work because our allies were profiting from the embargo.

Now they wish to continue the embargo because they are waging economic war against the United States as it has upset their pre-eminent role in world affairs (as in the promulgation of the slavery of the black races and extermination of the Jews).

To this wit I say, invade Europe and get it over with before the radical Muslims do it.

A_J

 

[70/30]

9th grade Bob Jones homeschool...

Congratulations you achieved the standard I set.

 

[]ooooo(chained)]

I deeply apologize for going over your head...

 

[70/30]

History says the Natives quickly cowered into oblivion

The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Portion of part IV. (it's poetry so punctuation doesn't transfer)

...Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude stern and defiant, Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious in aspect; While on the table before them was lying unopened a Bible, Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed in Holland, And beside it outstretched the skin of a rattlesnake glittered, Filled, like a quiver, with arrow, a signal and challenge of warfare, Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy tongues of defiance, This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and heard them debating What were an answer befitting the hostile message and menace,

Talking of this and of that, contriving, suggesting, objecting;
One voice only for peace, and that was the voice of the Elder,
Judging it wise and well that some at least were converted,
Rather than any were slain, for this was but Christian behavior!

Then outspake Miles Standish, the stalwart Captain of Plymouth,
Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky with anger,

"What do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses? Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted
There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils?
Truly that is the only tongue that is understood by a savage
Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon!"

Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder of Plymouth,
Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent language:
"Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other Apostles;
Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of fire they spake with!"

But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain,
Who had advanced to the table, and thus continued discoursing:

"Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth.
War is a terrrible trade; but in the cause that is righteous,
Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the challenge!"

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden contemptuous gesture, Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage,
Saying in thundering tones:

"Here, take it! this is your answer!"

Silently out of the room then glided the glistening savage,
Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself like a serpent,
Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths of the forest.

 

[badasschick]

OK I'll play....


I'm diggin' it

 

[miles]

Yawn.

 

[70/30]

BAC--your link backed up much of what I had previously noticed. The oppressed often have the same outlook as the literary inclined. Someone that is both oppressed and literary inclined can voice (and display) especially pointed objections. Really, I would love to hear a profound justification for war (any war), at the least to disrupt what I've painted as an absolute.

previously I picked Ruskin's closest call for war, below was expressed early in the talk. To me it is very similar to what your link expressed--However, it fits more flush with the cold war military economies than combatting Saddam or 21st century dictators.

John Ruskin Sesame and Lilies: of kings' treasures lecture given Dec 6, 1864 Manchester

"Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be valued with pure gold. A web more fair in the weaving, by Athena's shuttle, an armor, forged in divine fire by Vulcanian force--a gold to be mined in the very sun's red heart; where he sets over the Delphian cliffs;--deep-pictured tissue,--impenetrable armor;--potable gold,--the three great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, if we would, with their winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the path no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen! Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought forth the treasures of--Wisdom--for their people?

Think what an amazing business that would be! How inconceivable, in the state of our present national wisdom! That we should bring our peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise!--organise, drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers!--find national amusement in reading rooms as well as rifle grounds; give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. What an absurd idea, it seems, put fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists of civilised nations should ever come to support literature instead of war!

Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single sentence out of the only book, properly to be called a book, that I have yet written myself, the one that will stand (if anything stand) surest and longest of all work of mine.

'It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which support unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them besides, which makes such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of the cost of base
fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with; as, at present France and England, purchasing of each other ten millions' sterling worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped and granaried by the 'science' of the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans of the capitalists, those loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person.'

France and England literally, observe, buy panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic annually; and that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not be better somewhat for both French and English?

It will be long yet before that comes to pass."

 

[70/30]

Really it goes both ways. Supposedly 30% of Iraqis are under the age of 16. Sixty-percent of Iraqis rely on food aid. Assuming 50% are women. A considerable portion of the adults are highly educated. Many are not fundamentally religious. There should be just a small sliver of Iraqis that would willingly fight for Saddam.

However, there may be a lot that want to fight against Jr. Bush and Uncle Dick.

 

[Frimost]

It took me a long time to type so please read it.

You asked, here is why, I have read too much of this before to oppose any action whose goal is the overthrow of such a morally corrupt and evil regime.

From The New Yorker, March 25, 2002.
The Great Terror, by Jeffrey Goldberg.
an excerpt from pages 62-63....

We sat on the carpet as she told me about her family. She comes from the Kirkuk region, and in 1987 her village was uprooted by the Army, and the inhabitants, with thousands of other Kurds, were forced into a collective town. Then, one night in April of 1988, soldiers went into the villages and seized the men and older boys. Baban’s husband and her three oldest sons were put on trucks. The mothers of the village began to plead with the soldiers. “We were screaming, ‘Do what you want to us, do what you want!” Baban told me. “They were so scared, my sons were crying.” She tried to bring them coats for the journey. “It was raining. I wanted them to have coats. I begged the soldiers to let me give them bread. They took them without coats.” Baban remembered that a high-ranking officer named Bareq orchestrated the separation; according to “Iraq’s Crime of Genocide,” the Human Rights Watch report, the man in charge of this phase was a brigidier general named Bareq Abdullah al-Haj Hunta.
After the men were taken away, the women and children were herded onto trucks, They were given little water of food, and were crammed so tightly into the vehicles that they had to defecate where they stood. Baban, her three daughters, and her six-year old son were taken to Topzawa Army base and then taken to the prison of Nugra Salman, the Pit of Salman, which Human Rights Watch in 1995 described this way: “It was an old building, dating back to the days of Iraqi monarchy and perhaps earlier. It had been abandoned for years, used by Arab nomads to shelter their herds. The bare walls were scrawled with dairies of political prisoners. On the door of one cell, a guard had daubed “Khomeini eats shit.” Over the main gate someone had written, “Welcome to Hell.”

“We arrived at Midnight,” Baban told me. “They put us in a very big room, with more than two thousand people, women and children, and they closed the door. Then the starvation started.”
The prisoners were given almost nothing to eat, and a single standpipe spat brackish water for drinking. People began to die from hunger and illness. When someone died, the Iraqi guards would demand that the body be passed through a window in the main door. “The bodies couldn’t stay in the hall,” Baban told me. In the first days at Nugra Salman, “Thirty people died, maybe more.” Her six-year-old son, Rebwar, fell ill. “He had diarrhea,” she said. “He was very sick. He knew he was dying There was no medicine or doctor. He started to cry so much.” Baban’s son died in her lap. “I was screaming and crying,” she said. ”My daughters were crying. We gave them the body. It was passed outside, and the soldiers took it.”
Soon after Baban’s son died, she pulled herself up and went to the window, to see if the soldiers had taken her son to be buried. “There were twenty dogs outside the prison. A big black dog was the leader,” she said. The soldiers had dumped the bodies of the dead outside the prison, in a field. “I looked outside and saw the legs and hands of my son in the mouths of the dogs. The dogs were eating my son.” She stopped talking for a moment. “Then I lost my mind.”
She described herself as catatonic; her daughters scraped around for food and water. They kept her alive, she said, until she could function again. “This was Ramadan. We were kept in Nugra Salman for a few more months.”
In September, when the war with Iran was over, Saddam issued a general amnesty to the Kurds, the people he believed betrayed him by siding with Tehran. The women, children, and elderly in Nugra Salman were freed. But, in most cases, they could not go home; the Iraqi Army bulldozed some forty thousand villages, Baban’s among them. She was finally resettled in the Chamchamal district.
In the days after her release, she tried to learn the fate of her husband and three older sons. But the men who disappeared in the Anfal roundups have never been found. It is said they were killed and then buried in mass graves in the desert along the Kuwaiti border, but little is actually known. A great number of Anfal widows, I was told, still believe that their sons and husbands and brothers are locked away in Saddam’s jails. “We are thinking they are alive,” Baban said, referring to her husband and sons. “Twenty-Four hours a day, we are thinking maybe they are alive. If they are alive, they are being tortured, I know it.”
Baban said that she had not slept well since her sons were taken from her. “We are thinking, Please let us know they are dead, I will sleep in peace,” she said. “My head is filled with terrible thoughts. The day I die is the day I will not remember that the dogs ate my son.”

 

[]ooooo(chained)]

Iraq used to have an 80% Literacy rate, now its down to about 65% (as per the INFALLABLE DAN RATHER! the sage of the left...).

That's how one garners more support when one needs blind sheep.

 

[Ishmael]

Iraq used to have an 80% Literacy rate, now its down to about 65% (as per the INFALLABLE DAN RATHER! the sage of the left...).

That's how one garners more support when one needs blind sheep.

Yep, keep'm stupid and starved. The dictator's path to success. I think that's rule number two. Right after the "kill anyone that's smarter or more ambitious than yourself."

Ishmael

 

[]ooooo(chained)]

Has anyone, anyone, yet to spot Tarik Asiz (sp?)??????

 

[70/30]

Some generic replies

You asked, here is why, I have read too much of this before to oppose any action whose goal is the overthrow of such a morally corrupt and evil regime.

*******************
But, in most cases, they could not go home; the Iraqi Army bulldozed some forty thousand villages
*******************

Who brought him into power? Who sold him the bulldozers? Who sold him the chemical weapons? How many children starved from the sanctions? What percent of Iraqi land is arable?

____________________

Ishmael, what was the typical literacy rate in the SovieT Union?

 

[Frimost]

Who brought him into power? Who sold him the bulldozers? Who sold him the chemical weapons? How many children starved from the sanctions? What percent of Iraqi land is arable?

He brought himself to power for the most part, give the guy credit, he is a weasely, slippery guy with a lot of street smarts.

The bulldozers? France, Japan, perhaps Germany? There are a lot of construction firms other than Caterpillar and they ARE just CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT!!! You can't blame US for the misuse of such benign and indeed helpful equipment as a bulldozer whose purpose is to BUILD things. That would be like blaming a silverware company for me cracking open your head and trying to scoop out any brains inside assuming there is stuff in there to scoop out.

The Soviet Union sold him his chemical weapons, much of it was developed domestically by Iraq as well.

A lot of children starved because Saddam decided to use the nations wealth to build himself more palaces and bunkers rather than importing more food and medicine.

13% of Iraq is Arable land. They have the great Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which give them rich arable land in the flood plains which is the main reason why civilization started in Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) in the first place and not out in some desert in the Sahara or in the Arabian peninsula.

 

[]ooooo(chained)]

We did spot Tarik (after putting out the rumor he'd been shot)!

Then we followed him.

Then we blew the shit out of Udee...

That's some funny shit, man. Even 70 to 30% of the p_p_DonWAVIANS have to admit that!