Re: "smoked salmon socialists"

"Rat & Swan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
<snip>
>The problem is when we began learning about all the ways
> our government and groups of Americans have betrayed, and still
> betray, those ideals.  It is the thwarted affection of someone who
> sees someone he once respected turn into a hypocritical and greedy
> bully.

You probably think that looking our for our own interests and spreading our
culture worldwide is being a "hypocritical and greedy bully." It's those
Western values that are the key to helping those nations.

> >> During all the protests against the war, if I talked to an anti-war
> >> individual, they'd say "Oh, I'm not in favor of Saddam, not any more
than
> >> you are!" However, they only got angry with me if I said "Well you
> >> certainly
> >> don't seem to want to do anything about him."
>
> And what right do Americans have to engage in preemptive military
> force against a sovereign foreign country

A tyrant who is torturing and killing his own people is not a legitimate
ruler. I don't consider a government like that to have any claim to be a
"sovereign country."

>which is not providing
> a direct threat?

Bullshit. Saddam posed a direct threat to his neighbors, he financed
terrorists in the region, and that is a direct threat to our interests as
well. He was working on a nuclear program several times in the past and he
was going to do it again, that was a direct threat to us.

Before 9/11 I would have told you that I didn't believe in nation building,
that the U.S. should worry more about building up our own nation. Now,
however, I've changed my mind. We do need to look outward, neutralize
threats before they become imminent. Build nations up so they don't resent
us as much for having the prosperity that we do.

Removing that tyrant was one good step in that direction.

>If a country can come in and kill civilians and
> depose a government just because they don't approve
> of that government, why should we attack Saddam for invading in
> the First Gulf war -- or, for that matter, any of the Communist
> or Nazi takeovers?

It's patently silly to compare the U.S. to Saddam, or to the Communists or
the Nazis.

Saddam was a bloodthirsty tyrant who thought it was entertaining to torture
people and their families. He committed genocide upon some of his own
citizens. Saddam invaded Kuwait and delcared it part of Iraq. We have never
tried to make Iraq our own. We have simply removed a bloodthirsty tyrant and
tried to get their own government set up. There's still work to be done but
we're staying until they're ready to stand on their own feet and govern
themselves.

Communists spread their demonic doctrine of totalitarianism and enforced
atheism. They crushed all freedom, which is exactly the OPPOSITE of what the
U.S. is doing in Iraq. The same applies to the Nazis. They wanted to take
over other countries, make them part of their own and crush the freedom
there. The Axis powers were so called because they wanted the world to
revolve around them.

Everything the U.S. has done in Iraq is completely opposite to that kind of
thing.

>Aggressive attack and "regime change" don't
> become right just because it's Americans who do it.

You're right. We're not being imperialistic or aggressive against the
nations themselves, we're helping those nations to get out from underneath
tyrants, while protecting our interests at the same time to keep those
nations from becoming hotbeds of terrorism.

>It's highly
> suspicious, too, that we do it to a country with lots of oil, but
> ignore a much more genuine threat, like North Korea, because Korea
> doesn't have anything the U.S. wants.

Korea already has nuclear weapons, and is a threat to Japan, S. Korea, and
other nations in the region. Comparing N. Korea to Iraq is like comparing
apples to oranges. N. Korea can be more wisely dealt with through diplomacy
at this point. Every situation is different, but remember, just because
something isn't on the news doesn't mean people aren't working on it. When
all eyes were on Iraq, there were still negotiations going on with N. Korea.
N. Korea has not been forgotten, and it will be dealt with, one way or
another.

> Try asking yourself -- how would we feel if Iraq decided they
> didn't like our government and engaged in violent attack to try
> to depose our government?  Oh -- that was what the Al-Qaida did
> (in much less violent form than our invasion of Iraq) on 9/11.
> Doesn't seem we accepted the rationale when someone used it on
> us.

Your value system is completely twisted around. Al Qaeda hates the U.S. and
the West because of our values of freedom, democracy, and capitalism. They
resent the fact that a woman can go to the beach in a bikini and not be
stoned for it. They resent the fact that we support Israel's right to exist.
They resent the fact that we're not under their oppressive regime of sharia
law.

We're the ones who stand as a symbol of freedom and capitalism. That's what
they were attacking. They HATE that. If it wasn't the U.S., it probably
would've been another country with strong western values.

9/11 was a terrorist attack that killed thousands and thousands of innocent
people, some of which were Muslim, as an act of absolute hatred against our
way of life. The war in Iraq was done to liberate the Iraqi people, as well
as to neutralize any terrorist threats that may have been growing there. Day
by day, more progress is being made there to get the Iraqis standing on
their own, to govern themselves without tyranny.

-Rubystars