Re: "The Only Thing They Learn" -- does anyone else find it irritating?

On Jun 26, 7:17 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 26, 2:13 pm, William Hyde <wthyde1...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 26, 12:27 am, veritas <khogan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John, The company I know up there, a bunch of metal guys are very
conservative, and believed that it was Canada's duty to side with
America and the U.K. no matter what.
Ask your friends if Canada should have helped
Britain invade Suez in 57.  If not, why not?  Why
didn't the US help?  Bonus marks for knowing
where Egypt is.

Egypt is in the upper right corner of Africa.

There was nothing _wrong_ with Britain, France, and Israel taking
military action to prevent Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen in isolation; at the time, there was
a problem with the Soviet Union's posession of nuclear weapons.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it _is_ a pity that the
United States then didn't require Egypt to return the Suez Canal to
Britain. But one can understand reluctance to stir up conflict and
controversy.

 When you're wrong is when you really
need a friend

To tell you that you are wrong, and not help you make
a catastrophic error.

Here, I agree with you. If the United States were to decide to invade
Poland, France and Belgium, and start bombarding British cities,
however badly the United States might need a friend in such
curcumstances, Poland, France, Belgium, and Britain would need friends
even more - and deserve them better too.

I just don't think the U.S. is "wrong" in Iraq, at least not in the
sense usually advanced.

It wasn't wrong to topple an evil dictator like Saddam Hussein. It
wasn't wrong to be concerned about the potential security implications
of Iraqi WMDs, even if the error on the safe side turned out to _be_
an error after all.

But it is distressing that the terrorists are able to get away with
violent acts in Iraq. You must not have enough troops there to be in
complete control. If we could just have the whole Islamic world under
such complete supervision that not a single terrorist act would be
possible there, why, then the people there would no longer be afraid
to listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and eventually all the wind
would be taken out of the sails of terrorism, because they would be
just like us.

And, yes, this is part of the problem. If we're hostile to them
because we think their goal is to convert us and/or establish Muslim
rule here, obviously they won't appreciate it if it seems our goal is
to convert them and/or establish Christian rule there. But the
breakdown of reciprocity came from their side first - at least if you
don't count colonialism. Well, actually they _did_ start it, but to
prove that you have to go back to even before the Crusades.

They're caught in a trap - the terrorists who annoy us also want to
make sure they don't deviate from Muslim and anti-Israel orthodoxy...
and they're much less able to defend themselves against the terrorists
than we are. For one thing, even neglecting our magnificent technology
that crushes their armies in weeks, terrorists don't look funny in
that part of the world.

Given that the policy of remaking them in our own image is
impractical, the policy of leaving them alone as much as possible has
been *everyone's* policy, including G. W. Bush's. September 11,
unfortunately, redoced how much leaving them alone was possible.

What with Abu Ghraib, yes, there is cause to fear that a line of no
return has been crossed, and sympathy for the terrorists will spread
like wildfire. If that happens, we will have to "do something".
Unfortunately, the something that we're really good at is pushing
shiny red buttons and nuking people. Sending our boys out to be shot
at reduces our relative advantage.

We wouldn't have gotten into this mess if not for September 11, 2001.
Thus, I think it reasonable to say that terrorist attacks make it more
likely bad things will happen. What we need is fresh thinking and new
ideas.

Running away from Iraq, and letting the terrorists take it over, isn't
a solution. If we abandon our friends in Iraq to our enemies in Iraq,
that will send the wrong message. If we let ourselves be backed into a
corner, we are more likely to be desperate. So the right answer isn't
let's avoid doing really bad things by not fighting at all until it's
too late.

No; we have to fight so well that we're winning. Because when we're
winning, we're not afraid, we're not panicked, and so we're not going
to lash out in sudden rage.

John Savard

We should leave them as all people end up. Dead. Ken Hogan
.