Nice comments Cortland!

But just to stir the poker in the fire, this war is about Peace. I know that
those who are screaming for peace are going to choke on that statement, but
it is true. This war is about bringing stability into an unstable and
traditionally violent region. Is't that Peace? This war is about bringing
reliant justice into a region that barely pays lipservice to the true
precepts of justice. That sounds like Peace. This war is about securing a
non-renuable resource and preserving it for future generations. That is
peace. This war is about bringing freedom to oppressed and subjugated
humans. That is Peace. This war is about disarming a known beligerant and
militant regime and securing not just one nation but many nations from
falling victim to this regime. That too is Peace. 

Some relavent Quotes for folks to ponder:

"We make war that we may live in peace."
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics

"Let him who desires peace prepare for war."
Flavius Vegetius Renatus (~375 AD), De Rei Militari

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless
he has his freedom.
Malcolm X (1925 - 1965), Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is
worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing
to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a
miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so
by the exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute
damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you
started with."
Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Vor Game", 1990

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally
full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other."
Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906)

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Speech, September 22, 1936

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of
thought which they seldom use."
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

"Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all
men."
Jane Addams (1860 - 1935), Speech, Honolulu (1933)

"Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles...respect for
human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the
equality of all good citizens before the law...or, in a word justice."
Max Nordau (1849 - 1923)

"Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is
justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness."
Henri-Frédéric Amiel

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16,
1963

Anyways, just some thoughts people wiser than myself have had. Maybe one of
them will spark a thought in someone else. Who knows, 

Dave Swanson

PS: quotes selected from http://www.quotationspage.com/





-----Original Message-----
From: Cortlandt Wilson [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 3:44 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] [Offline] OT: A sobering answer


> This is also not a "war for oil".

While some of the "war for oil" arguments seem rather silly to me the phrase
itself is vague.   When I hear the phrase I can think of a universe of
meanings between the polar extremes of:
- the US wants to steal the oilfields and everything else said is a sham

to the idea that

- without oil money to support him Saddam would be dead because he wouldn't
even be able to pay for the police state that keeps him in power.

The phrase can mean all kinds of things.  That is the problem I have with
it.

In a similar vein phrases along the lines of "it's about ..." or "it's not
about ..." means almost everything and nothing.   The line is so flexible
that I can construct reasonable meanings so that I can think of a thing as
both "about A" and "about not-A" at the same time.

IMO without more explanation to nail down the concept the use of these type
of phrases is presumptive.   It assumes that every else understands the
meaning consistent with the thought that is currently floating around in
your mind.   If one is to talk about arrogance might I suggest that casual
use of these types of code-word phrases requires a bit of arrogance on the
part of the speaker.


Cortlandt Wilson
(650) 966-8555

>-----Original Message-----
>From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
>Behalf Of Jim Mc Coy
>Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 9:15 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] [Offline] OT: A sobering answer
>
>
>These protestors are protesting the troops!  Thay also destyoyed a memorial
>to 9/11 victims.
>These protests are organized and paid for primarily by 2 groups - the World
>Workers party (a self-proclaimed marxist group) and the iraqi government.
>These are not "anti-war protestors" they are traitors to this country.
>
>What really gets me going is how these people are calling Bush and Blair
>"war criminals" but saddam (who killed about 2 million people) is not a
>criminal to them.  This kind of thinking should give an idea of
>what kind of
>people we are dealing with here.
>
>This is also not a "war for oil".  Although oil is the primary reason the
>french are opposed to the war.  They want the oil and think they won't get
>it after we win.  They may get some but it won't be as cheap as they have
>been paying.
>The russians didn't want us in there because they were trying to hide the
>fact that they have been selling saddam weapons.
>I don't think we have uncovered the real reason why china is against it.
>But I am sure something will be uncovered soon.
>
>This is a war against terrorism and the regimes that promote it and pay for
>it.  al qaeda was first, then iraq.  We will have to see who is next.  Some
>are going to continue to claim that saddam has no connection to bin laden.
>This is what they have tried to say all along.  But we knew they were wrong
>all along - and that has been proven by the presence of al qaeda fighting
>side by side with saddam's troops.
>
>To protest President Bush's stance against terrorism is not just a protest
>against a man these people hate.  It is a demonstration in favor of
>continued terrorist attacks against the U.S.  There is not more
>than 2 sides
>to the "debate" on terrorism.  You are either for it or against it.
>I for one would like to see more people in this country take a stance
>against it.
>
>jm
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Mark Wonsil" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 11:57 PM
>Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] [Offline] OT: A sobering answer
>
>
>> Fred wrote:
>> > The protesters are not protesting against the troops. Their protests
>> > are against the administration. If there hadn't been protesters during
>> > the Vietnam war, it might have pointlessly continued with the loss of
>> > another 58K troop lives (not administration lives).
>>
>> I recently reread in the famous Hanoi Jane incident in Snopes:
>> http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.htm (worthwhile BTW), which in part

>> says:
>>
>> "The right to freedom of speech is one of our most cherished
>rights. It is
>> also a double-edged sword: the same right that allows us to
>> criticize our government's policies without fear of reprisal
>also protects
>> those who endorse and promote racism, anti-semitism, ethnic hatred and
>other
>> socially divisive positions.
>>
>> Rarely is this dichotomy so evident as when a democratic nation
>engages in
>> war, and the protection of civil liberties clashes head-on with the
>> exigencies of a war effort. Protesting a government's
>involvement in a war
>> without also interfering in the prosecution of that war is a
>difficult (if
>> not impossible) feat, a situation that has sometimes led the
>government to
>> curtail the freedom of speech, such as when the U.S. Sedition Act (passed
>> during World War I) made criminals of those who would "willfully utter,
>> print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive
>> language about the form of government of the United States." Under this
>law,
>> peacefully urging citizens to resist the draft or simply drawing an
>> editorial cartoon critical of the government became illegal.
>(The Sedition
>> Act was later overturned.)
>>
>> The most prominent example of a clash between private citizen protest and
>> governmental military policy in recent history occurred in July
>1972, when
>> actress Jane Fonda arrived in Hanoi, North Vietnam, and began a two-week
>> tour of the country conducted by uniformed military hosts. ..."
>>
>> A more current example:
>>
>> A 'Human Shield' Returns From Iraq, Work Undone
>>
>> By ROBERT TOMSHO
>> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>>
>> MILWAUKEE -- After getting arrested at a local antiwar protest on
>Wednesday,
>> Ryan Clancy went home and turned on CNN, dreading what he would see. "The
>> government is going to bomb some of the people I just met, and I am
>> powerless to do anything about it," thought the lanky 26-year-old, who
>> recently spent several weeks in Iraq serving as a so-called
>human shield .
>>
>> The human-shield campaign was founded in London late this past
>year on the
>> premise that Westerners' presence at key sites in Iraq might deter U.S.
>> bombing and save civilian lives. Its primary organizer, Ken Nichols
>O'Keefe,
>> is a disgruntled Gulf War veteran who settled in the Netherlands after
>> renouncing his U.S. citizenship. With little advance planning but much
>> publicity, Mr. O'Keefe assembled about 75 would-be shields -- including
>> retirees, photographers and computer technicians, mostly from Europe and
>the
>> U.S. -- and headed for Baghdad in late January in a bus.
>>
>> In the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi government forced foreign hostages to
>serve
>> as human shields . This time, Iraqi officials had no direct role in
>planning
>> the shields' volunteer campaign. It did, however, welcome them,
>along with
>> other peace activists, supplying entry visas, hotel rooms and food.
>>
>> In Iraq, Mr. Clancy, a substitute teacher and owner of a small
>music-supply
>> business, would learn how seemingly humanitarian causes can become
>> casualties of war. Soon after arriving in Baghdad, he and some other
>shields
>> were invited to what was described as a peace conference. Mr. Clancy left
>> the gathering as soon as he determined it was a pro-government rally.
>Still,
>> he was stunned to see himself on Iraqi government television that night.
>"It
>> was portrayed that these human shields were supporting Saddam," he says.
>>
>> > I fought in Korea too. I also give all of my support to our troops.
>> > So what??
>>
>> So if you protest in public here and your face ends up on Iraqi TV and it
>> gives the people fighting our troops a lift, are you really giving the
>> troops ALL of your support?  Are there other ways that one can keep their
>> moral positions and not (unwittingly-unintentionally) give
>support to just
>a
>> different violent solution?
>>
>> Constraints are often the breeding ground for creativity.  Now I must be
>off
>> to think of how I can continue to support our troops and the
>Iraqi people.
>>
>> Mark W.
>>
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