Bit ungrateful

Were the French Resistance ungrateful?

Isn’t any conflict in Korea already deemed legal by the UN? After all, they are only living under a cease-fire, not a formal cessation of hostilities. Were the war to restart tomorrow, someone would be at fault for breaching the treaty sure, but the actual war has never officially and therefore legally ended in the first place.

This also justifies a continued US presence, as we were part of the original UN forces in the country to begin with. Since the war isn’t over, we shouldn’t be expected to just pack up and leave.

“want revenge on either the country or funder of the organisation that commited this crime???”

Not sure about your legal system but here in NZ revenge is not actually allowed and never should be mistaken for justice.

If someone accidently kills a member of your family… say in a car crash, you don’t get the judge saying… OK you can kill one member of his or her family.

One of the amusing things I find about the business of revenge is (Lets take 11/9 for a recent example) that if you justify the regime change in afghanistan and the attack on Iraq and lots of other stuff on that attack then you start to sound like the Nazis in WWII. How many peasants were killed for every nazi soldier? 10 times more for a Nazi officer. The obvious racial implication was that the local peasants were not equal to Nazis and therefore there must be a ratio (ie 10 to one for soldiers and 100 to one for officers as an example). The same could be said now with these revenge actions. Rather more than the 3,000 killed in 11/9 have died in Afghanistan and various other actions that it created. How much more valuable is American blood than the blood of say an Afghan?
The connotations are rather unpleasant.

Of course the RIGHT to preemptive self defence could just as easily be applied to Saddam actually attacking the US… after all the US made it quite clear what its intentions were before the start of the war, therefore any action by saddam could be seen as preemptive self defence.

That is why I don’t like the concept of preemptive self defence… it can be used to justify almost any act of aggression… by anyone.

The US has 37,000 troops in South Korea… that suggests an intent to invade…(Note I said suggests… in the world of the spook you don’t need a smoking gun… ask the americans and british) I guess that means NK would be fully justified launching a preemptive strike against those troops, or their country of origin when ever they like?
Can you not see how incredibly dangerous such thinking is?

Oh dear. That’s terrible. Wait until EN830 hears this.

Do you know Roger by any chance?

Snapper I just noticed that you live in lowestoft, me too.:D 😀

Oh Dear, why these filthy arabs dare to question our values?. Us the chosen and blessed people by God. Such ungratefull people:-):D

Florida Dude- there is a perception that everybody actually wants
a ‘western’ way of life – it simply isn’t true. In many ways this will be the hardest lesson for the plannners in Washington to understand. The Iraqi people are proud people and whilst wanting the removal of his (Saddam’s) regime they don’t want the coalition to try and impose a puppet government.
The West by no means has ‘clean hands’ in world of terrorism. Saddam himself was trained at Sandhurst and was once the assasin in a CIA plot to depose the leadership in Iraq in the 1950’s. The basis of the terrorist movement in Afghanistan
was supported and extensively backed by the U.S. Basically if you create a monster like Bin Laden you need to know how to destroy it also. It’s worth noting that Colonel Oliver North when being questioned on his expenditure for household security specifically named Bin Laden as a clear threat to the U.S years before 9/11.
The allure of oil in the Middle East has been a massive
draw to the West since it was discovered -I would argue that the basis of carrying out a war against Saddam was decided at the beginning of 2002 and the ultimate aim was to secure the country as a means providing the West with access to oil in an increasingly unstable world oil market.
We can say we have saved people from torture and depravation but in reality the sums spent on the war in Iraq could have been better spent fighting real famine in Ethiopia .
The threat of Saddam was kept in check for many years
by the no-fly zones. The result we have now after war is that we don’t know if he had WMD’s and if he did we are now told they
might well have been ‘looted’. So now it’s a case that if he did have them they are now in the hands of ‘madmen’ as opposed to
one supposed ‘madman’ who was under constant surveillance .

“Why should a small group of people tell other countries whats legal and illegal when it comes to major desicions”

Indeed.

The US invasion of Afghanistan illegal? Well how about if Finland had a wave of terrorist attacks which killed plenty of people and shook the world and filled us with fear tommorow, then would’nt you (zippo) want revenge on either the country or funder of the organisation that commited this crime???

Why should a small group of people tell other countries whats legal and illegal when it comes to major desicions like this, thats like France and germany telling Britain how to run OUR country.

The invasion of Iraq this time round was legalised buy the british parliament and the US congress. If no other country whishes to take action then why should they take their opinion and make it stand out and make very clearly ‘if we don’t want to go in then no one should’.

This war lasted just over a fortnight, we showed the world that the US and Britain would not stand idley by when these countries are are destroying our way of life. We also showed to the world that we will not be messed with, and that we will do our upmost to protect our countries, way of life and our interests.

I think that we’ll end this one here, and just agree to disagree.

Originally posted by coanda
they always think they are being done out of somthing

The West has interfered in Middle Eastern affairs for centuries, trying to shape things for their own interests. We’re still doing it. Why shouldn’t they feel this way?

I dont even have a fridge with an ice cube dispensor………

on a more serious note, I have never come across a more ungrateful group of people than the iraqi’s and quite frankly most arabs. they always think they are being done out of somthing.

whether or not that upsets anyone I’m not awfully bothered.

condolences to the families of the 6 UK soldiers murdered this week, and to the families of the US soldiers murdered.

coanda

Florida Dude

Has this guy complied with the rules of Trolling? 😀

That bit is debateable, all depends on the motives behind the following invasion of Iraq during Desert Storm.

If it was with the intention of removing Saddam from power – illegal.

If it was with the intention of securing the safety of various oppressed people in the South – legal.

If it was with the intention of capturing oil fields – illegal.

If it was to send a message to Saddam not to try it again – well, legal but a bit overboard. 🙂

Originally posted by alex
[B]Moggy…my version of “legal invasion” and “illegal invasion” is as follows:

1) Desert Storm = legal. A foreign nation had invaded a soverign state so the allied forces were within their rights to remove the invader by invading the occupied land of Kuwait.

2) Iraqi Freedom = illegal. A fat bloke who was very naughty in the past but had gone quiet for sometime wakes up one morning and finds American and British tanks bearing down on him because he has WMD which the CIA can’t seem to find – despite the fact that the CIA semed to know a lot about them prior to the invasion.

Ah, very clear thinking.

And if the Desert Storm troops had kept on rolling into Iraq as they should, does it stay legal or suddenly become illegal?

Moggy

I say we should keep the contracts for the re-build and if we leave with plenty of oil then thats a plus, we earned it.

Ohh, really…so what contracts is Britain gonna get then??? After all British soldiers died too, so hasn’t Britain earnt it???

Plus, Florida u jackass, if the US leaves with a whole load of oil Bush is gonna make himself look like a prat (not that he already hasn’t) to the World isn’t he….considering the US said it wasn’t going to take any oil from the Iraqi people.

Why should Iraqi’s be grateful…after all they have just gone from one dictator to another. So really are they in any better a situation than they were before???

Also, who says the Iraqi people wanted our way of life? I don’t remember the Iraqis begging and pleading for us to turn them into a Western culture.

Moggy…my version of “legal invasion” and “illegal invasion” is as follows:

1) Desert Storm = legal. A foreign nation had invaded a soverign state so the allied forces were within their rights to remove the invader by invading the occupied land of Kuwait.

2) Iraqi Freedom = illegal. A fat bloke who was very naughty in the past but had gone quiet for sometime wakes up one morning and finds American and British tanks bearing down on him because he has WMD which the CIA can’t seem to find – despite the fact that the CIA semed to know a lot about them prior to the invasion.

May differ from Zippos or anyone elses version, but thats mine.

Originally posted by Zippo

from an ILLEGAL and UNPROVOKED INVASION.
Regards

You must one day explain to me the concept of a ‘legal’ invasion.

But fiine, you’ve convinced me. The Iraquis were much better off before with Sadam in charge. Lets see if we can find him, rearm and reconsitute his secret police and let them get on with their idyliic, pre-invasion lifestyle.

Moggy

Originally posted by Zippo

The Nazis used the same pretexts:”Human rights”,”liberation” etc.

No they didn’t.

They used “Lebensraum” and “Racial purity”

If you are going to make a fatuous point at least get your references correct.

Moggy

Darn it, that there Billy the goats family is a trampin’ on ma bridge again.

No, it’s not OK. But like in most unfree societies, i don’t think that the average Yussuf did a lot to get himself into troubles. Just pretend to be a fine upstanding Saddam-admiring citizen, sing a little praise at the occasional Baath-rallye and chances are you won’t be executed all too often.

If you are used to living a quiet life, like most people do (in a dictatorship it means survival, but i don’t think the average person in a democracy is that much more defiant) you won’t notice it if someone you don’t know gets tortured. You will however notice it that your children no longer have a school to go to, which is just as well since they now can walk fifteen miles back and forth to fetch some water from the nearest functioning tap.

Of course the Iraqis were liberated from a brutal dictator, and the security (on a social level) the Iraqi system offered was of course far, far less and much less predictable than the stability the oppressed people in the German Democratic Republic suffered from. The people who will enjoy freedom mostly will be the ones who actually have an opinion and voice it. Plenty of people didn’t do that under Saddam, and won’t do so in a democracy.

Hmm,

So it’s OK if they torture your brother-in-law, execute him and drop him in a pit as long as the guy is there to take the trash away each week?

Strange priorities Arthur, but we are all different. 🙂

Moggy