From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Mon Jul 29 2002 - 00:39:06 MDT
[Joe Dees 1] If our country were to be lost to an undemocratic, totalitarian adversary because a volunteer military were insufficient, all, including those able yet unwilling to fight, would suffer.
[Hermit 2] Why do you think it would make a difference Joe? Between
Mssrs Bush, Ashcroft et al (with a little help from the Supreme Court)
the US does not seem to be doing to badly at establishing herself as an
"undemocratic, totalitarian" state. After all, she is repudiating treaties
left and right, ignoring her own constitution and international law,
regulating, restricting the freedoms and intimidating her own citizens (and the rest of the world), and apparently shares values with other wonderful
totalitarian, undemocratic countries such as China, Zimbabwe, Zaire/Congo etc.
[Joe Dees 3] I, of course, heartily disagree with your gross and offensive
mischaracterization of our participatory democracy. Although I voted
for Gore and believe that he won the popular vote by a c*nt hair if all
ballots were counted, it was the fault of the voters here that they did not
mark them legibly or in concert with their intentions. That will not
happen again.
[Hermit 4] Elections? I'm sure dubya would be overjoyed.
[Joe Dees 3] While I am not in favor of the dimunition of civil liberties, I note that the present administration is bending over backwards to make searches egalitarian and non-profile-driven, to a hilarious and horrible PC
degree.
[Hermit 4] As in the FBI checking on "un American art?" [Refer: "The End of Freedom: You will be watched - The New McCarthyism", The Progressive, 2002-08-12 (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadid=11541;start=150)]. But are you suggesting that as long as everyone's rights are equally violated, that this is acceptable even though you don't much like it?
[Joe Dees 3] The recent reorganization of several far-flung government
agencies into a cabinet-level department of homeland security is, I
believe, a necessary response to the organized domestic terrorist
threats presently faced by our nation.
[Hermit 4] Well aside from doing more damage to US constitutional rights than any external (or internal) enemy has ever achieved before, and abandoning the separation of powers which has helped manage government excesses since the US was founded, can you tell me what good taking a bunch of huge, incompetent (infra) bureaucratically bogged down departments, and turning them into an even larger, much more expensive quagmire is going to achieve? Why does industry, when large groups become ineffective, break them up. What makes you imagine that government works differently?
[Joe Dees 3] I also note that a pre-9/11 investigation of some of the terror flyers (Moussaoui among them) was kiboshed by the FBI due to the fear that they would be seen as profiling Islamics, with disastrous results.
[Hermit 4] Really? How interesting. According to now classified documents, President Bush was handed a memo Crawford, in Texas, on 6th August 2001 which warned that "Osama bin Laden's organisation was poised to hijack US aircraft to wage a terror campaign ... and according to ... Washington Post, the memo left little doubt that the hijacked airliners were intended for use as missiles and that intended targets were to be inside the US." Further, "other intelligence and FBI reports gathered from the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre specified that al-Qaeda was out to hit the Pentagon and White House using crashed planes packed with high explosives." In addition, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that they "should have more aggressively pursued warnings" from one of its agents in Minneapolis about Zacarias Moussaoui, confirming that his agent's report "mentioned the possibility of Moussaoui being that type of person who could fly something into the World Trade Centre." [Refer: "Explosive - A bad call?",
The Observer, 2002-05-19 (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadid=11541;start=135)]. Seems that the "disastrous results" might have had other contributory causes.
[Joe Dees 3] I also do not think that we should be refusing to sign onto the treaty on global warming; that will eventually turn around.
[Hermit 4] Interesting? How about these?
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,764631,00.html
UN Protocol on Torture http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,762663,00.html
Funding for the United Nations population fund (UNFPA) http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,761987,00.html
1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,542020,00.html
1972 convention on biological and toxin weaponshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,494257,00.html
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,689478,00.html
Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,640593,00.html
UN conference on small arms http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,525877,00.html
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,710728,00.html
I'm sure I could find more if I looked.
For example our continued support of Israel, despite their breaking US law on the use of arms supplied, our provision of arms to countries with abysmal human rights records, our implementation of steel tariffs despite WTO agreements, our limiting foreign aid to 0.1% of gross domestic product.
[Joe Dees 3] We recently placed our military under the prosecutorial discretion of a permanent international war crimes tribunal, despite fears that politically motivated prosecutions might be instigated against them.
[Hermit 4] Rubbish - "The disagreement comes less than a fortnight after the security council struck a compromise on US demands that its peacekeepers be granted immunity from prosecution by the new international criminal court, which came into force on July 1 with the power to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,762663,00.html
[Joe Dees 3] As far as your last unsupported ad hominem canard as to shared values with supposedly objectionable nations goes, please list the values they share and why you find them repugnant.
How about the fact that the US is the only democratic nation to allow execution of the mentally retarded? How about the fact that we share, with Zimbabwe, the dubious honor of not having signed the UN Protocol on Child Rights? How about the fact that the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and the only state to have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe international law?
How about the fact that more terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth? They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals.
Try reading http://docsmgmt.hrw.org/us-pubs.php if your stomache can handle it.
[Hermit] Or is your objection just that the other "undemocratic,
totalitarian" states are not American?
[Joe Dees 3] My objection is, of course, that many within the Islamic world, in powerful and influential positions in several known terrorist-funding states, object to us being secularly democratic and religiously
untotalitarian; in otherwise, we are dar-el-harb, and have not joined the umma, and are willing to take that refusal as an attack on Islam and thus 'defend' the faith by killing as many of us as they can manage.
[Hermit 4] You can say this all you like, but right at the moment, I'd suggest that most of the rest of the World considers the US to be vastly more of a threat to World peace than any Muslim state. Think on it. Are they really wrong?
[Hermit 2] Besides, why should anyone have to fight to preserve Mr Bush's
ability to destabilize nations and kill their citizens? It all seems a little
silly to me.
[Joe Dees 3] Actually, I think we are presently fighting to eliminate Mr. Bin Ladin's desire to do the same to us.
[Hermit 4] No, according to Mr Bush, $650 billion later, he doesn't know where Mr bin Laden is - or what he is doing.
[Hermit 2] PS - given that the US spends more per year on her military than the next ten largest military spenders together, isn't this rather a sad indictment of how this money is being expended?
[Joe Dees 3] Both external and internal threats, military, paramilitary and terrorist, have to be addressed, and due to our status as superpower and world leader, we incur more of them, and we also in that function in effect subsidize many other countries by assuming their defence (which allows them to spend the funds that would otherwise have to be directed to these purposes on social spending); all this cannot be done on the cheap.
[Hermit 4] Isn't this supposed to have contributed to the collapse of the USSR? Have you taken a look at what is left of the US economy lately? Besides, have you heard the expression, "It is impossible to defend from the inside"? It means that the money spent attemptiong to defend yourself is wasted. You can spend everything you have - and, as dubya seems to be attempting, more attempting to create an impregnable situation. Yet an enemy only needs to find one hole - and your investment is wasted. Military analysts around the world have known that for 3,000 years. When will the US catch up?
Regards
Hermit
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25812>
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