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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:26
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Ok the situation as it stands now is that the US is trying to get 9 yes votes in the U.N. security council, and then if and when france vetos the US resolution the white house is going to try and argue that france or russia is hindering the will of the U.N. and then lead a coalition of the willing against Iraq.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/842500.asp
Well using that logic, couldn't Syria, France, and Russia for example propose a resolution saying that they were going to lead a coalition of the willing to "liberate" the west bank, and then if the US vetos it, as long as they have 9 votes have the same justification for was as the US has in Iraq?
Granted nobody with the power to actually defeat the IDF will propose this, so it is truly a hypothetical situation, but isn't that the precedent being set?
Another example is if China could pass a resolution along the same lines authorizing force to reunite China and Taiwan. It seems to me that this policy has some major drawbacks.
Hell I see little use for the U.N. the far majority of the time, but if you are going to goto the U.N. for approval, and then fail, to me you look far more unjustified in going to war than if we just went unilateral on saddam's ass to begin with.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:26
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Actually, US military power is the last thing, just about, especially now, when it's overcommitted playing with the "Axis of evil."
First is the simple logistics of it - that's a hell of a lot more amphib action than the PLA has the nuts for, at least for another ten years or so.
Second is the loss of foreign investment that would accompany any destabilization.
Third is that the threat of invasion, coupled with the economic lobbying against recognition, has been adequate to deter Taiwan from asserting independence.
Fourth is that it wouldn't do much good to "invade" a smoking pile of rubble, which is about what would be left if the Taiwanese put up a serious defense on the ground.
I think korn has a good point - going unilateral in the first place fits Imran's might makes right view, but it is "interesting" to say the least, to see what kind of posturing may be done by other countries in the future to try to claim some mantle of international legitimacy.
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Sloth
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This is NOT true. From the times of Iliad on, some wars have been "right" and some "wrong". And while it is true that power has been an important factor in deciding which is which, there is a lot more to it than that.
Note that while it is in general true that "the victor writes history", in general he tries to manipulate WHAT really happened not the MORAL righteousness of his deeds.
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:26
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quote:
From the times of Iliad on, some wars have been "right" and some "wrong". And while it is true that power has been an important factor in deciding which is which, there is a lot more to it than that.
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the Trojan war was right? There were very little "right" wars, generally, mostly the civil uprisings, and a few other wars, like the war of the US against the N. African pirates ( which wasn't completed), and WWII.
quote:
Note that while it is in general true that "the victor writes history", in general he tries to manipulate WHAT really happened not the MORAL righteousness of his deeds. |
In ancient times, morals had nothing to do at all with war, noone tried to conceal the fact that the wars were fought for the glory of the empire. the first moralistic ( which doesn't say that they're ethical, that just means that they're made because of certain morals that weren't right ) wars were fought because of religion.
Then, in the dark and middle ages, religion has been really established as the stuff of power, the wars were being fought over "they don't believe in the same god"( Xians Vs. Muslims ) and "they did something bad to us", which is simply a justification of "for the glory of the empire" of previous days, which btw kept its presence as well.
The empiral age and the reinessance saw the strong return of "for the glory of the empire", which went on till WWII. In all previous cases, both sides of the war treated their citizens in very similar ways, and therefor, any war wouldn't change their status very much, or at all, and thus was simple squabbling.
WWII was probably the first war that had two sides that were really distinct in their inherent ethical levels.
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Sloth
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
There were very little "right" wars
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I agree. But here we are not discussing what WE (me and you) think.
We are discussing if a "moral consensus" (at least in the eye of one of the combatants and some of the third parties) is necessary to start a war. In my opinion the answer is a loud YES.
The Trojan war was "just"? In that sense yes: and Homer goes out of his way to convince you of that. It gives you not one but two reasons.
And this has been true throughout history.
It's true that very often the justification has been week and "woolf and lamb" situations have often arisen.
But in my opinion going through the cynical way by saying "might is right" is far worse as this de facto opens the door for any kind of atrocity.
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Sloth
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
[Again, do you really think India and Pakistan have not launched preemptive strikes on the other because of a respect for international law? ... |
Yes. India could have smashed Pakistan well before it would have nukes. They were afraid of the internal and international consequences of invading another country.
Again: if you state that if a country can invade another...well it just CAN, the consequences could be very very dangerous.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:26
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Azazel: we don't live in ancient times. If we are unwilling to follow ancient codes of conduct among peoples within states, why on earth should they matter to issues between states?
There are a few assumptions running around that I find dangerous. One of them is the : the US is omnipotent" one. Yes, I do not question that the US could defeat in a one to one battle any other concventional military in the world, if we take nukes of the table. But first, nukes are on the table, and second, most of the dangers we face today are not from conventional enemies but from unconventional ones. It was not some states missile that took down the WTC. Big militaries solve military problems: only where the military and political problems are intertwined do they solve the political issues as well: everyone here seem to regard the IDf as invincible in the ME: they can beat any Arab army, or perhaps all the Arab armies combained. Yet, has this power allowed them to beat the Palestinians into submission? Did all that power win them Lebanon? There are limits to the power of conventional military force, and counting on your military to solve everything is a great recipe towards solving nothing.
Many people say thast it is the fear of retribution that keep everyone in line...not some internalization of norms. Usually, people who say this like to cmpare states to people, or draw examples form history and such. Well, let me ask everyone here: which reason is trully more important when it comes to why YOU don't commit crimes (of whatever size): is it because the fear of getting caught is so great you are afraid to do it, and if there was no punishment, you would do it, or is it because you think it would be wrong to do it? To ask it another way. If rape was decriminalized tomorrow, would you go out and rape someone?
Values do matter: Do people in the US support this war simple cause they can? Or do they do it cause they think..well, we are right in doing it? Hearing all the people on this forum that support war, all of them say: "its the right thing to do, we must uphold the UN's word..blah, blah". Those are appeals to values, not power. There are trully very few sociopathic wars out there. Even Hitler believed he was fighting for a cause, a set of values.
The US has two types of partners going into this war: those they forced to be with us, by threats of punishment, or the withholding of carrots, and those that actually believe. The Us can always count ojn a coolition of the first kind. we are big enough. But getting allies of the later type requires some set of common beliefs which force simply cannot create. If Spain and the UK are with us against Hussein, it is only because Iraq has the UN record it has. Which means that fundamentally, even the few allies of belief we do have have yet to buy the full package of ideology driving the Bushies to war, and that is not a good sign for this new "grand startegy" we have.
If this war does trully break up the notion of international colective security (which means most together) then overall, international security goes down, not up.
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:26
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Ned
like GePap said, in Gulf War 2 Iraq is not the aggressors, and basically you are saying a US lead invasion, occupation, and reorganization of the Iraqi government is wrong.
also even if Israel wasn't the agressor, and lets say in 1967 it had of occupied and then annexed all of Egypt, I doubt anyone would have recognized those claims.
My thinking is this, when Bush went to the U.N. he was basically lending creadability to the idea that the U.N. has legitimate authority to authorize force. He was asking the world for a mandate, and that mandate was a U.N. resolution that implied the US had the right to "disarm" Iraq. However, any 8th grader in model U.N. knows that even a single veto will kill your resolution, and obviously Bush should have known this too. No matter how much he paints the French or people who don't agree with him on the security council as people on the wrong side of history, basically they can prevent him from having the U.N. authorization to use force that he sought out in the first place. There are rules, and Bush (or somebody in his administration) knew the rules before Bush took this to the U.N. Obviously somebody must have advised him on the possibility that this resolution could fail, and hopefully they told him that this would hurt America's prestige and legitimacy abroad.
Before Bush took this to the U.N. weapon inspectors weren't in Iraq and Bush could have ordered punative air raids with the stated goal of trying to "disarm" Iraq since it refused to cooperate with previous U.N. resolutions. These air raids could have been on the same scale as the proposed awe and shock air raids rumored to be in planning. Instead of simply trying to target WoMD we could have attacked presidential palaces, head quarters, communications, the republican guard, and the security agencies in Iraq, in the hopes of destabilizing Saddam's government. If not we could have certainly dealt a huge setback to the Iraqi arsenal. All of this could have been accomplished in a relatively short amount of time, so that it would be over with before any kind of opposition movement could form. During the interim the CIA could help beef up the opposition, and a year later do the same thing, with the hopes that the opposition would overthrow Saddam. We don't need to invade to disarm him, but we are, and we are going to do it after bringing it before the U.N. and then failing to get the authorization we needed.
That is what disturbs me, if we are such a hyperpower, why can't we get this resolution passed? Shouldn't hyperpowers be as diplomatically capable as what they are militarily? America can't rely on unilateral military action alone to meet its objectives, a couple of 50-200 billion dollar wars and troops moving from one country to the next will certainly errode support at home. In many ways we need the U.N. just so we don't have to completely rely on unilateral military action, and since we have more carrots and sticks than all of the other nations in the U.N. the more we can do to strengthen it, the better off we are for the moment. Yet by undermining the authority of an organization that we created and that we can't disband seems to hurt US interests.
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11-03-2003 10:02
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