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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
 Posted - 02/20/2002 : 12:37:39 [Permalink]
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I doubt there was much negotiating going on before 9/11, and I think you'll agree that the U.S. had a little more leverage after. They could have tried, and didn't. They did not want to capture Osama bin Laden, they wanted to put troops on the ground.
I hope you're right about taking care of the terrorist problem, but I don't see much hope of that happening with the present administration.
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....and the rest of the quote is "both before and after 9/11."
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 13:38:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
I think you may recall that the Taliban (disingenuously or not) offered to give up Osama bin Laden under certain conditions. The U.S. said (as Daddy Bush did with Iraq years before) they would not negotiate. They demanded that he be given up with no conditions. There was no realistic attempt at negotiations. Had they used the time that it took to build up to an attack negotiating, they may not have needed to kill hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of innocent people. We'll never know the number.
Why was the Taliban entitled to make bin Laden's turn-over conditional? Do you think there was anything we could have done to prevent our invasion? Do you think we would have bin Laden now if we had just acceded to the Taliban's demands? Then what? The Taliban would still be in control of the country. Would we be better off now if we had bin Laden and a handful of lieutenants with the Taliban still in power?
Sometimes, Gorgo, just sometimes, the ends do justify the means.
Laws of Thermodynamics:
1. You cannot win.
2. You cannot break even.
3. You cannot stop playing the game. |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 13:57:26 [Permalink]
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You'll have to convince me of the reason for the invasion before we ask if the invasion could have been avoided.
I don't know if the Taliban had the ability to turn over bin Laden, or if they were just stalling. However, no one bothered to find out. What would have happened if they found a suitable third party to hold a trial? Would that have been worth millions of lives?
There's no great bunch of guys running the country now. Sure the Taliban was a bunch of shits, but what do they have now?
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Why was the Taliban entitled to make bin Laden's turn-over conditional? Do you think there was anything we could have done to prevent our invasion?
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 14:39:11 [Permalink]
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Hey Gorgo, where are you getting this "millions of lives" from? That's so far from being accurate it isn't even worth considering.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
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Badger
Skeptic Friend
Canada
257 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 15:52:58 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the article, Gorgo.
I guess the Taliban should have turned over Bin Laden in the first place. These lives wouldn't have been at risk in that case.
I'm stumblin through the parking lot of an invisible 7-eleven. ZZ-Top |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 15:57:19 [Permalink]
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Sure, and that wouldn't have ended terrorism, either.
Far better for the U.S. to kill thousands and terrorize millions of people and not have any better chance of ending terrorism.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 16:51:37 [Permalink]
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Just one more example of how wrong Chomsky can be. His prediction of millions of deaths never came anywhere near that and the fact is that the people in danger have a significantly better chance of getting the aid they need.
You need to read this Chomsky fellow with a bit of skepticism applied Gorgo. The man does nothing more than pounce on anything the US does and twists it into a lie. He is not someone I would rely on for ANY information.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 17:13:11 [Permalink]
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Well, you'll have to tell me where he predicted millions of deaths. Then we'll have to talk about sources, which did predict a great deal of risk. Then we'll have to talk about what really did happen. That is something we may never know. Millions may in fact die yet. It's not over.
You need to read Horowitz and Limbaugh with a lot more than skepticism. Not to mention the State Department handouts that you read in the corporate media.
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Just one more example of how wrong Chomsky can be.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 17:21:14 [Permalink]
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I never read Limbaugh. I am a liberal but not to the degree that I would swallow what Chomsky says. These people were already "at risk" prior to any bombing. That much should be obvious.
And given a choice between Chomsky and the "corporate media" I would choose the latter any day because at least they watch what each other says to some degree and at least try to be objective. Chomsky doesn't even have the word objective in his dictionary.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2002 : 18:21:46 [Permalink]
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I don't think anyone questions that there was a problem before the bombing started.
The corporate media is not biased. The corporate media is not biased. The corporate media is not biased. The corporate media is not biased.
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I never read Limbaugh. I am a liberal but not to the degree that I would swallow what Chomsky says.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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Garrette
SFN Regular
USA
562 Posts |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2002 : 06:49:07 [Permalink]
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Which means you buy into Horowitz's nonsense as did Rubysue and others. Amazing.
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I never read Limbaugh.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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Garrette
SFN Regular
USA
562 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2002 : 06:30:26 [Permalink]
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Try this article. Someone posted it on JREF. Well-balanced, and it doesn't come out on the side of pro-sanctions.
You may not like it, though, Gorgo. He does not speak well of Chomsky.
http://www.reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml
It's too long to post completely here, but here are some snippets:
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Arriving at a reliable raw number of dead people is hard enough; assigning responsibility for the ongoing tragedy borders on the purely speculative. Competing factors include sanctions, drought, hospital policy, breast-feeding education, Saddam Hussein's government, depressed oil prices, the Iraqi economy's almost total dependence on oil exports and food imports, destruction from the Iran-Iraq and Persian Gulf wars, differences in conditions between the autonomous north and the Saddam-controlled south, and a dozen other variables difficult to measure without direct independent access to the country.
Confusing the issue still further are basic questions about the sanctions themselves. Should the U.N. impose multilateral economic sanctions to keep a proven tyrant from developing weapons to launch more wars against his neighbors? If sanctions are inherently immoral, what other tools short of war can the international community use? Is this particular sanctions regime more unreasonable than others that haven't triggered humanitarian crises? How much should we blame Saddam Hussein for rejecting the U.N.'s "oil-for-food" humanitarian offer for six years, and expelling weapons inspectors in 1998? Most important, has Iraq made headway since then in pursuing nuclear and biological weapons?
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The idea that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children (or 1 million, or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source) took root in 1995 and 1996, on the basis of two transparently flawed studies, one inexplicable doubling of the studies' statistics, and a non-denial on 60 Minutes.
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By November, UNICEF was annoyed enough with the frequent misinterpretations to send out regular corrective press releases, saying things like: "The surveys were never intended to provide an absolute figure of how many children have died in Iraq as a result of sanctions."
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Sanctions critics almost always leave out one other salient fact: The vast majority of the horror stats they quote apply to the period before March 1997, when the oil-for-food program delivered its first boatload of supplies (nearly six years after the U.N. first proposed the idea to a reluctant Iraqi government).
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The man who launched the American anti-sanctions movement as we know it is a University of Texas journalism professor named Robert Jensen. His Web site's "factsheet" on Iraq contains two lies right off the bat. Citing WHO, he claims that "each month 5,000 to 6,000 children die as a result of the sanctions." And citing UNICEF, he asserts that "approximately 250 people die every day in Iraq due to the sanctions." |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2002 : 08:00:18 [Permalink]
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Well, I think if any reasoning person reads Horowitz's nonsense and comes away thinking they've read something worthwhile, I don't have much hope for civilization. He makes no attempt to refute any facts and spends paragraph after paragraph with emotional invective (much like one of our respected posters) with little substance.
I'm sure there's a lot wrong with what the anti-sanctions crowd has done and said, including myself. There has been some nonsense blown by both sides. Trouble is, there is no reliable corporate media to keep track of any of it. There was a discussion not to long ago on one of the anti-sanctions lists about the numbers and where they came from.
It's all left to a bunch of splinter groups without much in the way of resources to try to sort out.
One can argue about numbers, but murder is the intent, and genocide is still the charge that stands. Genocide is a term that I have not heard Chomsky use when mentioning Iraq, by the way. That's Ramsey Clark.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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