Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

No, you have to remember, Club is talking purely about morality, not law. Apparently on his island, the two are in no way connected.

Tanks for the memories
 

I was just trying to say that what we did to German and Japanese cities might have be considered more critically if we hadn't won the war, etc. The reasons for that are many. I wasn't trying to suggest that Germany or Japan or the USSR had the same commitment to addressing war crimes, or to put those regimes on a moral par with ours.

Presidential Commission on Intelligence
 

So, the President's own commission is chastising the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being "dead wrong" on WMD.

Yet, these are the people who are going to decide who to torture and when, right?

Tanks for the memories
 

You entirely miss Ty's point. His point is not "the Axis would have held trials if they had won." It was that the conduct of the Allies was not morally superior to that of the Axis, and that if the same rules had been applied to the Allies they would have been found guilty. Personally, I disagree with his point on many specifics, and I don't equate the bombing of Dresden or Tokyo to the bombing of Nanking and London. But anyway -- I at least understand his point.

But, even on your theory -- which people from Norway, France, or Poland levelled German cities? Tortured German prisoners? Did something that would constitute a "war crime" under the provisions of the Nuremberg accords?

Each of those countries fell in about a week, without mounting any serious defense and without having the capability to conduct a mass attack on civilians, or do much of anything else.

Moreover, neither Germany nor any other country prior to 1945 even discussed the concept of a war crime. This does not prove anything particular about the Axis; France, Britain, and the US also did not conduct war crimes trials after WWI, despite indiscriminate shelling of civilians, use of poison gas, etc. It was just not a concept that anyone had. The concept of "victor's justice", prior to 1945, entailed summary execution of enemies for the act of being enemies -- and this, the Axis did freely and routinely.



You want to compare your academic record and your career to mine? That should be fun.




Again, you misunderstand Ty's point. His point is that, if the same rules had applied to the Allies, they would have been found guilty of the same crimes. He was not making the historical claim that the Axis were likely to hold war crimes trials -- that was an unprecedented notion in 1945. On the other hand, the Axis certainly would have executed people freely, and it defies belief to think that they would not have been a little more upset at the people who bombed cities than at the average foot solder.

Tanks for the memories
 

I don't know enough about the bombing of Nanking to have an opinion. But the bombing of London is an interesting story. The Blitz was initially aimed at military targets -- airplane factories, airfields, etc. One of these was the docks on the Thames. Bombing at night, the Luftwaffe missed its target badly -- as happened often, for both sides -- and bombed a residential area, killing many civilians. In retaliation, the RAF bombed Berlin. Hitler then shifted the focus of the Blitz to bombing London and other civilian areas. (I think I have all this right, but maybe not.) The point being that each side justified bombing the other's civilians as retaliation for what was done to it.

I'm not interested in comparing the moral culpability of the Allies and the Axis. What we did to cities like Dresden and Tokyo was horrific, and was done with only the slimmest of military justifications.

A couple of historical points
 

Just a couple points on war crimes - the Geneva Convention predates WWII (though the current conventions were adopted after WWII) - the first Convention was in 1864 and then there was the Hague Convention around the turn of the century and the Geneva Convention in 1929. And the concept of war crimes predates WWII -- there were War Crime trials in Liepzig after WWI, for example.

Historicall, the victor got to hold the trials, and Germany certainly would have held them and would have had a war crimes concept during the war - how the hell they would have defended their own behavior one can only imagine.

Tanks for the memories
 

You should stop doing this.

Tanks for the memories
 

Guess what I made on the LSAT.

Question for the Readers
 

My question was less about subject matter and more about representational style. The the face of the Virgin (or Jesus, or Elvis) on a cheese sandwich is rarely realistic in a traditional sense, and, perhaps, people were not predisposed to see such things until the impressionists introduced their visual vocabulary into general public awareness.

Sort of a "no one had Freudian dreams until they started reading Freud" thing.

eta I'll stop now, I promise.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

You are not listening - I never said it was OK. I was just responding to the phrase - that makes us no different from the Baathists. I heard it during the cold war a lot about the Soviets and I have heard it referenced to the Nazis. I never said what happened at Abu Graib was OK or moral. But, just becaused it happened, does not make us the same as Saddam Husseins regime or the insurgents. They disembowel and behead their prisoners. The kill them and record it on video tape. They also gassed their own people and the Iranians in war just to name a few. We have a long way to go before we get down to their moral level. Our torture of the prisoners may have been a step in their direction, but it was the first step up mount Fuji.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

So we now have changed from - it is absurd, naive and ridiculous to think that Democracy is spreading in the middle east. Now that argument has changed to yes- there is a Arab spring - but the elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine had nothing to do with it.

Question for the Readers
 

When you get all cultural and semiotic on me like this, it makes me so want to do you.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

It's still unclear to me that democracy is "spreading" in the Middle East any more than it has been for a while. If you've never looked in the barn, and then you look and there are cows there, one possible explanation is that the cows just arrived in the barn. Another is that they were there all along, and you never noticed.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

Interesting progression:

1. The war will not bring elections.
2. The elections will be a farce.
3. The war and the elections will have no effect on anyone else.
4. Everyone else was already democratic. (Or, they had cows. I'm not sure which.)

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

Who said "the war will not bring elections"? Who said they'd be a farce? Establishing a democracy takes a lot more than holding some elections. Back when Clinton was President, Republicans intuitively got this, but they've suspended their disbelief for the last few years.

The CSM article I quoted suggests that the war has had an effect on others. Just not quite the one we'd like. Republicans can ignore the way we prop up dictators across the Middle East, but -- oddly enough -- some Arabs notice it. And it turns out that the model of installing a democracy by having the United States invade and capture your dictator and then hold elections for you is not as readily transferable to other countries -- how odd.

"Everyone else was already democratic." Yes, that's about the level of sophistication about the Middle East that lies behind today's conservative thinking.

Question for the Readers
 

I don't buy this. People were seeing appearances of the Virgin in all sorts of place long before a cheese sandwich. The impressionists were also far from the first non-representational painters (if you can call them that, since their work is still far from abstract). Indeed, it is only as a reaction to fifty years of hyper-realism in the French Academe that the early impressionists make sense as not being themselves a representational school. Many of Monet's brush techniques would have been at home in the Netherlands in the 17th century.


(ETA: Wonk is right, though, I love it when you get Semiotic on us. Better than SI.)

Mantra
 

Nothing to see, move on...

I hate motherfucking asshole Tom DeLay

Move along, move along. Nothing to see. Keep on scrolling.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

I'm not referring to the situtation in Iraq and elsewhere per say.

Any difference is one of intent, not one of action. That being the case, I think the "good" to come from that intent needs to be factored in the equation. We all may agree that that torture should be prohibited in nearly all cases, but I think that is a different question than the morality of the action.

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

oversight

Ty- now is it a scandal?
 

I'm defending the proposition that torture is not always morally wrong.

Force is also justified outside of the self-defence context.

ETA: Nice attempt to try to call me a hypocrit, but your point is laughable.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

It takes guts to say this to me following your little cow homily.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

Serious question -- not intended to be a vote on one side or the other of this debate:

Do you think that Palestine would have had elections but for Arafat's death? And if he had died five years ago, would there have been an election to replace him? If not, what?


I will note that, while I certainly supported the war in Afghanistan it's very hard to say that the county is functioning very well as a democracy -- our attention has been drawn elsewhere, among other things -- and a lot harder to say that it's part of the "Arab spring." (Cue Hank to point out "different towels.")

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

You have your bees. Let Ty have his cows.

eta: When did you convert?

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/US/03/31....prayer.ap.jpg

security clearance
 

if you are elected to Congress, do you automatically get a security clearance (not necessarily top secret or super-duper-extra top secret, but a lower-level one)? Or just if you are on a relevant committee? Or can someone be denied a set on a committee or whatever because they didn't clear or pass or whatever it's called?

CNN is reporting...
 

the pope has received last rites.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...pe1/index.html

CNN is reporting...
 

YES!!!! I knew that non-fucker would kick it at some point!!!

Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry. I'll take it to the Celebrity Death Pool board.

CNN is reporting...
 

Like he's not on everybody's list. It's a nonevent over there.

CNN is reporting...
 

Hank probably didn't pick him. Too obvious.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

I think Democracy is a highly contagious and almost incurable disease. I think it is contagious, because people are bascially egotistical and selfish. Everyone thinks they should have a say in how the government should run (no matter how little they really understand government). I don't think people necessarily think other people should have a say on how the government is run. Hence, who every runs the government and anyone who has a say usually don't want to add to the number of decision makers. However, what happens is that a large swath of the population figures out that the only way they are going to have a say in how the government is run is if there is a democracy. So they push for Democracy. When a citizen of a country sees that a citizen half way around the globe gets to vote it does not mean much because they cannot relate to that person. But when there cousin, or friend in the neighboring country gets to vote, they think "hey why not me". The other problem is once a people get the right to vote they are going to want to keep it. They get spoiled. In the middle east many Arabs in neighboring countrys of Iraq are saying, hey if they get to vote why not me?

1) While Yassir Arafat was alive a palestininian democracy was relly a joke. Now that he is dead Democracy can happen. But I don't think Israel would allow such elections without pressure from the US. So the Palestinian thing adds to the pressure - but since they are really occupied by Israel, it doesn't mean much. But Iraqi elections really puts on the pressure. It will be even worse once US forces leave.

2) Afghanistan did not have that much influence, and yes their democracy is shakey, but I think it just supplements the pressure created by Iraq. I think Afghanistan and Iraq together are putting a lot of pressure on the Iranians. Not only did the Iranians used to have a democracy, but now they see that those dirty backward Arabs have a democracy and so do those peasant uneducated and uncultured Afghans.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

I know you chose this wording for its adjectives, but let's not forget the connotations of the noun at the end, OK?

Tanks for the memories
 

No, I think that he -- like Hank -- will go straight for height.

S_A_M

(P.S. -- Maybe penis size, if he's feeling bold. But we should all remember that during a discussion with Not Me, it was established that Bilmore probably wins that one.)

Tanks for the memories
 

I doubt that one poster calling me a big prick is dispositive of anything.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

I think disease was a good word. Viruses take over cells, change those cells, and then use those cells to help change more cells. Democratic activists will take over a country, overthrow the dictatorshp, and then produce activists to go to other countries and get them to over turn over the neighboring dictatorship. All the cells in a certain area become infected, just like all the countries in a certain area become infected.

In 1780 there were very few infected countries (including the United States) and now over half the worlds population lives in democracies. Authoritarian governments have tried all sorts of stuff to try and stop the spread of democracy, and for a while it looked as thought they came up with a cure - communism, fascimns, but in the end democracy beat back all these antibodies. If somebody doesn't do something soon, every country in the world is going to get infected. The Free Market disease has also been pretty effective.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

Bees, cows, and now viruses. Is this the biology board?

Tanks for the memories
 

Nope. Far be it from me to discourage anyone from bragging about their special public school.

Tanks for the memories
 

Depends on the poster. If it'd been Deuce, it would've mattered to everyone.

promoting democracy in the Middle East
 

With such an abnormal rate of growth, perhaps cancer would be a more apt analogy?

Tanks for the memories
 

Is there some Paigow/Slave type history here that was, until now, a quieter affair?

And of course the pun was intended, you twit.

Tanks for the memories
 

I know you folks in gated communities look down on anyone who doesn't go to prep school, but there are places in this country where public school is pretty damn good.

I'm the NFH of Politics
 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/31/la...ion=cnn_latest

Findlaw article on the Shiavo case(s).