[Grovenet] Is This Why The "Support Our Troops"SignsDissappeared
Meredith Bliss
mbliss at agora.rdrop.com
Sat Dec 23 21:52:09 PST 2006
I don't know that the UN would be a good alternative since it would take the
unanimous support of the five permanent members of the Security Council,
which includes Russia and China, and I doubt that they would see this as in
their best interest to be involved. Afghanistan is now a NATO mission,
however, and one might ask why Iraq has not been similarly "adopted" by NATO.
The UN has been very effective on the health front, caring for refugees, and
many other roles. Like any big organization, it has its faults, and those who
oppose it find a lot of easy targets there, but on the whole it has been a
very useful tool in many instances.
And please be patient with the rest of us, too. You have every right to expect
a respectful answer to a question put respectfully, but sometimes we do get
carried away ;-) And none of us has an inside line, so no need to feel
intimidated by others who seem to know more ... sometimes they do, sometimes
they don't ... take what seems useful and ignore the rest.
On Saturday 23 December 2006 21:13, muriel Gordon wrote:
> I have an honest question,,,, who has faith in the UN anymore, they seem
> as messed up as everything else. I may not have followed politics much but
> they don't seem to be helping anything anywhere? I do miss a lot of things
> maybe I missed what they do? thank you, for an answer. geeze I still have a
> lot to learn lol sometimes my worry takes over but I try to think about
> things openly also. be patient with me. Merry Christmas
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Allen Warren<mailto:jirow at dsl-only.net>
> To: Forest Grove local interests list<mailto:grovenet at rdrop.com>
> Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 3:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Is This Why The "Support Our
> Troops"SignsDissappeared
>
>
> Ron, well put.
>
> Our President sure has placed us in a difficult position. My perception
> is the only planning performed was how to overthrow Saddam. No research on
> the make-up of Iraq. No research on the potential outcomes of unseating
> Saddam. Only the continued mantra of needing to "bring democracy to the
> people of Iraq". And for what real purpose? Bring democracy because we
> think it then opens up the opportunity for big oil companies to sweep in
> and get one of the richest oil inventory areas of the world under order and
> control?
>
> Maybe somebody really did conduct research into Iraq, the 3 primary
> "tribes" that made up Iraq and the different scenarios that could pan out
> once we pushed Saddam out of control. If so, it's terribly, horribly sad
> our President and/or whoever else had the information chose to either
> ignore it or not include it in whatever planning was conducted.
>
> And so we sit today with our troops attempting to stay one step ahead of
> the local insurgents who I'm guessing believe they have absolutely nothing
> to lose yet everything to gain while the President of our country keeps
> attempting to push our Western Democracy on people without every attempting
> to understand what they really want. So we're stuck: if we send in more
> troops the insurgents only get bolder. If we pull out troops in shifts the
> danger to the remaining troops is a direct relationship: the danger
> increases as the troop level decreases. And if we decide to conduct a mass
> exodus for everyone as quickly as we can get them out we could very well
> end up leaving Iraq in a total state of chaos.
>
> I agree with Ron: best thing would be admit our error, beg forgiveness,
> and ask both the U.N. and neighboring countries to Iraq like Syria for
> their help and support to get us out of this mess with the least amount of
> further damage as possible. Unfortunately, our President will never, ever
> do this. No, he's shown only too well he'll keep doing what he, George W.
> Bush, wants to do regardless of whatever anyone else states. Hell will
> freeze over and the Cubs will win the World Series long before GW Bush ever
> admits to himself let alone the rest of the world he made a mistake.
>
> I expect history will not treat kindly the Presidency of George W. Bush.
> And rightfully so.
>
> allen
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ron D'Eau Claire"
> <rondec at easystreet.com<mailto:rondec at easystreet.com>> To: "'Forest Grove
> local interests list'" <grovenet at rdrop.com<mailto:grovenet at rdrop.com>>
> Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 12:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Is This Why The "Support Our
> Troops"SignsDissappeared
>
> >I agree about the lack of a cohesive society in Iraq. Yes, Saddam did
> > glue together a bunch of distrustful, even warring, tribes. Well,
> > America along with the European powers after WWI "glued them together"
> > and then supported a series of dictators to keep them in line, ending
> > with Saddam.
> >
> > I avoided referencing Japan for a reason. We had the opportunity (and
> > were smart enough) to leave the Emperor in charge. So, when he ordered
> > his people
> > to lay down their arms, no matter how horrible the consequences might
> > be, they did so, to their credit.
> >
> > I thought Germany a more apt example because we did decapitate that
> > government (although we did hire a bunch of Nazis to run the post war
> > government because there simply wasn't anyone else with the experience
> > to do it). But first we employed shock and awe in an effective way
> > doing things
> > like incinerating over 600,000 non combatants in Dresden in a single
> > night. That was true "shock and awe" that I'm sure gave lots of
> > would-be German
> > "patriots" pause. That and the fact that we were clearly the lesser of
> > two evils with the Russians slaughtering everyone in sight as they
> > stormed in from the East. Still we had to field a much, much larger
> > Army of occupation in Germany to ensure the peace than we have
> > considered putting into Iraq.
> >
> > You may be quite right that the German people were a more cohesive
> > society than the two major tribes that make up Iraq (the Kurds still
> > insist they deserve their own country that was taken away from them
> > after WWI). Still, consider that Germany, as a unified nation, was only
> > decades old when Hitler
> > came to power. The Germanic peoples had a common culture, as do the
> > Arabic tribes in Iraq, but not an especially long history of peaceful
> > cooperation.
> > In the 1800's Germany was actually almost 300 independent states with
> > their own currency and governments, the final detritus of the collapsed
> > Holy Roman
> > Empire. Only in the last few decades before WWI were many of the German
> > warring states finally pulled together at the point of a gun by the
> > Prussian
> > van Bismarck.
> >
> > I'm left to wonder just how much different they were from the Iraqis
> > today, in terms of cultural cohesiveness.
> >
> > Still, I agree that we Americans don't have the stomach for the
> > atrocious acts required by unlimited warfare, to our credit I think.
> > The intense efforts required to whip American anger up sufficiently to
> > do that in WWII are testament to our general dislike of playing the
> > role of mass murderers,
> > even in defense. It took a huge, openly racist, campaign on top of
> > Pearl Harbor and the sight of ships being torpedoed off the eastern
> > shores along with the powerful rhetoric of perhaps America's most
> > inspiring President to accomplish that in the 1940's.
> >
> > Setting aside what I expect to happen, what I'd like to see us do is,
> > as I said before, go back to the UN, "hat in hand" and explain that we
> > made a huge mistake. It was our political mistake of an inept
> > President compounded by a majority of Americans saying they wanted this
> > President to "stay the
> > course" at the last Presidential election. It's a national mistake with
> > national blame. We should ask the nations of the world to allow us to
> > help them bring peace to the Middle East, and in the process bring
> > peace to America. Notice that I said that we need to help them. We've
> > demonstrated that American, as a nation, is in no position to lead the
> > world toward peace, either in our choices for leaders or in our actions
> > over recent years.
> >
> > It's what "grownups" would do, whether they're individual people or
> > whole nations.
> >
> > It's what a "Christian nation" would do, or any nation who aspires to
> > be a leader in the world.
> >
> > American needs to learn that being a "superpower" or any kind of
> > "power" in the world means a lot more than simply having the most
> > atomic bombs or the
> > best military.
> >
> > If Santa wants to bring me a Christmas present, that'd by my first
> > choice.
> >
> > Ron D'Eau Claire
>
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--
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Just happy to be here, but speaking
only for myself!
Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
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