At 16:27 4-8-01 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
>At 03:05 PM 8/3/01 +0200 Baardwijk, J. van DTO/SLBD/BGM/SVM/SGM wrote:
> >There are still people dying out there because of landmines. Innocent men,
> >women and children still die or get mutilated for life because they
> >accidentally step on a landmine. Innocent people, John. Now THAT is inhumane
> >and unacceptable.
>
>Care to give me a figure of the number of innocent men, women, and children
>that have died in the 50 years there have been landmines on the Korean
>border? Care to give me the reasonable likelihood that an innocent man,
>woman, or child will die in the future from a landmine on the Korean
>border.
How is that relevant? If one single individual dies because of those
landmines that you don't want to remove, you have all the reason you need
to get rid of those mines. Heck, IMHO, America's refusal to sign the
Landmine Ban Treaty should be considered a crime against humanity.
As for the likelihood of innocent people dying: that likelihood will
decrease, thanks to those brave people who risk their own lives removing
those mines.
>(Here's a hint, the United States has a detailed map of where
>every landmine is there.)
Oh, I see! And of course the US has given a copy of that map to every
individual in that area, so they can walk around those mines safely, right?
And while they were at it, they also provided similar maps to people living
near mine fields in other locations in the world?
>Finally, care to take a wild guess as to how
>many innocent men, women, and children will die if a second Korean War
>breaks out, due to desperation on the part of the DPRK.
How can you know for sure that a second Korean War will break out? With all
those UN forces there, I think the likelihood of it is very small.
BTW, do you realize what you're saying? According to you, innocent people
should die because of those landmines, because more innocent people would
die in the event of a second Korean War. Somehow, you make it sound as if
you think that people dying in the aftermath of a war is less inhumane than
people dying during a war.
>Finally, I would like to address one last point:
> >Yet another example of the US refusing to sign a treaty because they didn't
> >get everything they demanded. :-(
>
>Yes Jeroen, exactly right. You see, this is the entire principle of
>foreign policy. Unlike democratic governance, there is no "outvoting" in
>most foreign policy. Instead, Treaties are made by the mutual agreement of
>all parties involved. The United States agrees to Treaties that benefit
>it, and France, and Germany, agree to Treaties benefit it. There is
>absolutlely no basis for saying that because the US, France, and Germany
>all agree to a Treaty that they get to outvote the Netherlands and impose
>that Treaty on the Netherlands too.
Read my posts better, John. I didn't say anything about imposing anything
on anyone. My point is that the US seems to define "coming to a mutual
agreement" as "all our demands have to met".
You seem to forget how mutual agreement is reached: by *negotiations*.
Nations come to the negotiation table, each with their own wishes and
demands. Then, by accepting some wishes from others, and dropping some of
their own demands (the principle of "take some, give some"), the various
parties eventually come to an agreement. And that's where the US goes
wrong: they expect other nations to accept American demands, but they
refuse to drop some of their demands in return. IOW: they want to take, but
don't want to give.
>IMHO, you have gone too far. You have crossed the river from
>accepting the principles of relations between democracies, into wistfully
>wishing that the Europeans could be made powerful enough to impose their
>ideas on the United States, even if we disagree with them anyways.
Again, I never said that Europe should be made powerful enough to impose
their ideas on the US. I honestly don't know where you got that ridiculous
idea. IMO, it's the US that has "crossed the river" with their attitude of
"meet all our demands, or we won't sign anything".
Don't put words in my mouth.
Jeroen
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