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I think the main difference betweenb Putin and Bush is that Putin is evil whilst Bush is just ignorant.
What comes to Putin and Chechnya, the whole thing is tragic and criminal. If you haven't seen the document by Pirjo Honkasalo "three rooms of melancholy", go see it. Shows what has been the impact of Russia to Chechnya.
it came from tv a few days ago, i missed it, but i have heard it's good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodeye
Americans believe that they are the worlds only true free democaracy! :laugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodeye
An Americans idea of democracy is, that if something doesn't go their own way they can sue and get compensation. Unfortunatly this type of view is becoming more popular in Europe :(
Tomi, as for saying Bush should be put on trail, that is crazy statement. :laugh: On what grounds ?
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Originally Posted by Woodeye
First off, the NRA is a lobby group. They dont' tell you that you should have a gun, nor use it, they just are defending those who hunt, or collect guns to not have them confiscated. To Americans, guns are personal property, and are subject to protection based on this fact. Lawyers in any society are advocates for position and while they are maddening, they are the people who define and argue points of laws to defend rights of their clients. In America, a nation dedicated to the rule of law and democratic rights, they will always hold a large role for Americans are rich enough to spend money arguing for rights that you and I just take for granted. The NRA sometimes sound like idiots to us, because we are just assuming it is the right to walk around with machine guns. No, it isn't. In fact, the NRA has always been quick to point out that gun USAGE is subject to lawful enforcement, and if you shoot someone, you should be in prison. The also don't argue that guns are people, they are saying GUNS are property, and should be protected. IF you have a problem with the guy using the guns, then apply the law to enforce civility or put the criminal in prison.
Rights are something in America that drive their psyche, and are given to them in the Constitution. It was the first one in the modern world that said in plain terms what rights the ordinary citizen should have. It is only natural that a society carved out of the woods of America should have the attitude towards rights as they do. The whole nation is made up of people fleeing systems and governments looking for a new way of life. When you bring too much control, censorship or muzzling of these rights, Americans react with great emotion. That is why they have such idealism when they go to places like Iraq where a country of 22 million were kept under the thumb of one of the most vicious men in history.
When it comes to the Americans being too eager to the world's policeman, well remember in the first half of the last century, and most of the 1800's they didn't pay any attention to anything past their immediate doorstep, and look at the major wars that took place. Numerous invasions on the continent of "civilized" Europe took place in the late 1800's. Proxy colonial wars all over the world. Exploitation of the Chinese people through colonial means, exploitation of Spanish speaking peoples until nations in South and Central America got their independence. Wars everywhere. The death toll wasn't as high as it was in the later years, but often it wasn't for lack of trying. AS the 20th century proved, America still tried to stay out of wars. The Russo-Japanese conflict. WW1 was a bloody mess that America tried to ignore. They didn't start that one, but their presence in 1917 was the tipping point that Germany was forced to deal with and realize that they couldn't deal with.
WW2 is partially a result of America going back to sleep. They didn't join the League of Nations, and that organization fell apart because no one involved in the League actually wanted to enforce anything. No one wanted to do the heavy lifting. There was no US being the boy scout running in to enforce rights, no matter how heavy handed. As a result, dictators used the world's inaction as approval for their actions until war was unavoidable. The US still stayed out until 1941, when finally THEY were attacked. God knows Britain and the Commonwealth would have appreciated a little more help, but America was desparate to try to stay out of the war.
Enter now the post ww2 Era. The US has the power to rule the world. They were the only ones with the bomb and the means to deliver it in force for the first few years. They did not do this. They fought a diplomatic war for years with the Russians, and both sides got involved with proxy wars that did neither any good. When the UN tried to put Saddam in a box after 1991 and enforce the resolutions, Saddam complied partially, but again, played a game of denial and hostility with the UN and its enforcement through the US and Britain. At what point Do you think the US is trying to RULE the world? At what point do you think they should just go back to sleep??
As I pointed out, American foreign policy being one of appeasement and ignoring the world basically wasn't working. The world was a far more dangerous place in many ways when they didn't get involved. So now they are, and they are evil? I suspect the blame you apportion on America should be spread around the world. If nation states run by thugs and regimes that abuse, kill and maim for their own ends didn't exist, the US would just have a nap....so put the scorn on those, not the one country big enough to try to enforce some sort of world order on altruistic means, even if it is clumsy....
When I see you guys arguing Bush is the most dangerous threat to the world, it is a completely naive and shallow argument in my mind....
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Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
Good points :up:
But ask yourself, are Americans capable of electing a competent President when the American people seem to be alienated from the rest of the world. I've heard that American news broadcasts have far more features on Entertainment than world affairs. ;)
No leader should be "on trial" for any foreign conflict that they should be involved with. Not if the war is prosecuted using principles of civility as prescribed in the Geneva Conventions. However, leaders end up as "war criminals" often as seen through the eyes of the victors in any conflict. That said, I would say leaders who use their power for truly evil ends, that is enslavement of another nation or peoples, inhumane and systemic mistreatment of peoples in prosecuting a war, or outright barbarity are the ones deserving the title "war criminal."
Bush doesn't meet any of those standards, as much as you try. He didn't tell the US army to go into Iraq and kill people willy nilly. American military officers took GREAT pains at times to not shoot, loot or abuse the Iraqi populace. The incidents that the press has brought up have been also ones where the Government of the US has set up in Inquiries, charged and jailed the soldiers responsible. They didn't give orders for this sort of behaviour, but in a large military operation, thuggery comes out of strange sources and for reasons that are understandable as soldiers under a great stress can treat an enemy with disdain. As long as the leaders do not condone or use terror as a policy, I don't think you can charge the leader as a war criminal. Bush isn't a war criminal, nor should you charge him as such.
Compare him to Putin in Chechnya, where the slaughter has been indiscriminate. Also note, that this region is being kept in the Russian nation at gunpoint, while the Ukraine, Baltic states, Belarus and others were allowed to become their own nations. Why? Oil. No other reason. Why should this nation be any different than any others? Putin has also interfered in the Ukraine, and in Belarus where he openly backs through money and other more subtle but deadly ways parties that would work towards his goals of a greater Russian influence. When political opponents appear, or journalists seeking the truth, often they mysteriously are poisoned or killed out right by unknown assassins? You suggest this is by accident? People more involved than I in this, journalists who know Russia are writing endless arguments about Russia, and what Putin is doing. He is using his government to quell any dissent, or any democratic rights and freedoms. He does it in nations outside of his own in manners that suggest his motives are not altruistic at all. Yet Bush is the bad guy to you fellows? Listen, I get you don't like him, I wouldn't have spent this much time arguing with you if it was that simple, but this blind and stupid rush to judgement sounds juvenile when I see the evil creeping out around corners from Russia, China and Islamo/fascists. If the US did nothing for the next 10 years and never went to Iraq, I despair what kind of mess the world would be in....
Americans elect who they elect, no matter what you might think of their education and their media.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brown, Jon Brow
I despair for the level of education that is shown in American Media at times, but I also know to simply just dismiss their leaders as boobs because Boobs elect them is no more correct than Iam to suggest that all Venezuelans are pompous morons because of Hugo Chavez. No one who has been to America and travelled around to small towns and the midwest would ever suggest that they are a people that understands the greater world outside. They can be insular, but their leaders are like those of any other western democracy, they learn on the job, and they are often from parts of soceity that are very well educated and are aware. They just look at the world through a different idelogical prism that is very altrustic when it comes to the idea of democracy and the application of power to effect change. Americans dont' like talking about problems they are not prepared to try and solve. I think many European leaders would talk everyone to death....
They may have gone back to sleep, but at least they didn't start a new unnecessary war in Europe like they did in Iraq. Sometimes it's good to be passive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa
Maybe if the US had slept also the WW1, the things might have been different. Germany may not have lost so badly that they elected Hitler and wanted a rematch.
No, it isn't good to be passive when human rights are being ignored. It isn't good to ignore a nation that if unchecked would conquer its neighbours.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eki
Eki, you are right back where you were about 10 pages ago where you argue that diplomacy and talking is the means to the end. It ONLY works when you are dealing with someone who is as civlized as you are. If the US just went back to the affairs of what Paris Hilton is wearing today, and ignored things the world outside their borders, I fail to see how Saddam doesn't go back to what he was doing before Kuwait. This guy did NOT have the desire to mind his own business. Iraq had invaded 2 nations in less than 15 years and they were allowed to just ignore resolutions of the civilized world of the UN, then what good good is the UN? What good is telling any thug that he is wrong if you are not willing to use force to show the other ones that you have a point where you wont take any more?
At some point Iraq had to be confronted. After 11 years it was obvious Saddam wasn't going to become a good citizen of the world and if left to his own devices, they would be WMD's being used to threaten the middle east. Your contention Bush shouldn't have invaded only holds water if diplomacy was given a chance, and that you HONESTLY believe that Iraq would have been open to changing its ways. No evidence supports Saddam was going to change (unlike Gaddafi, who gave up his WMD's on his own when Iraq was invaded) and no evidence proves to me Saddam was going to comply fully with UN dictates. Was the world supposed to have an embargo on Iraq forever? Were his people supposed to just starve while he built a palace a month? Were they to just continue to be oppressed because they were Kurds or Shias? You continue to make excuses for this, and yet I know you wouldn't condone such behaviour in civilized nations. You are obviously of the opinions that too bad for the Iraqi people, they don't deserve to have the yoke of Saddam off of them because it just offends your rules of diplomacy.
Listen, the US doesn't invade every nation it disagrees with. Nation states worse than Iraq for mistreatment of their citizens exist, and while the US doesn't like them, they haven't invaded. Iraq was different. Two invasions, endless threats, and flouting international decency got him to the enemy number one list with the Americans. He just never learned, and in the end, the Americans did what they should have done in the first gulf war, and legally, that is how it breaks down in my view. The resolutions that kept Iraq in check were imposed after that war, and violations of them are to be treated as hostile acts and therefore the was back on. The fact Iraq is screwed up now has a lot more to do with people in Iraq not knowing what to do with freedom, or wanting to exploit it for ethnic clensing or settling old scores of Islamic hatred.
AS for unneccesary wars in Europe, Most of Europe finally got it into their heads war is a bad idea after the carnage of the 2 world wars. That said, look at the mess in the former Yugolslavia. It took American and NATO involvement in actually shooting and bombing to get the Serbian's to the point that they were ready to realize Slobo was leading them down a path to ruin. If the Americans didn't get involved THEN, I suspect the shooting and looting of post war Yugolslavia would still be going on. God knows it was on Germany's doorstep and the Germans and French really didn't want to get their hand's dirty at first. When evil goes unchecked, it often does NOT go away, it spreads.