From: Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > It's not my opinion that Iraq wasn't a threat. It's a fact. Since > you support the completely unwarranted, unprovoked, and > unconstitutional war in Iraq, describing your position as war > mongering is accurate and not an ad hominem.
Iraq as a threat is a debatable matter. You come down on one side, and the fact do not fully support or discredit it and others come down on the other side for which there is insufficient support or discrediting. > Iraq was under no obligation to disarm. Neither the US, nor the UN > has any authority to tell Iraq to disarm or to FORCE them into > agreeing to do so. Any agreements made by Iraq to disarm were made > under duress and therefore invalid. > Once again two diametricly opposed and valid points of view. > It's not suicidal to wait for someone to attack us before attacking > them. It's called DEFENSE. And it's the ONLY case in which > libertarians support the use of force. Defense is allowed in the case of a credible threat of force. > Attacking a country that has not directly attacked our nation and who > had nothing to do with anyone else who attacked us (Iraq qualifies on > both counts) Debatable with evidence on both sides. > is most certainly unreasonable, and unlibertarian > regardless of whether the leader of the nation is a dictator, and > regardless of whomever else he's attacked, regardless of which weapons > he happens to have access to or which weapons he's used in the > past. > Not so. All those things can be used to make a case for a credible threat of force argument. > Libertarians support military non-interventionism and neutrality in > all foreign disputes. Don't confuse this with isolationism. We > libertarians support having strong ties with other nations through > peaceful trade, and non-aggression treaties. But no libertarian > supports using the U.S. military to overthrow dictators who have not > attacked America, even if they have invaded their neighbors or > murdered their own people. > The first part of this I will agree with. But as I pointed out above, those facts can be used to make a credible threat argument. > You mentioned Hitler as though that proves military interventionism > has saved lives. There are always bad guys. But in the case of > Hitler, he came to power because of U.S. military interventionism. > If the U.S. government had not gotten involved in WWI, the conditions > that allowed Hitler to come to power wouldn't have happened and we > would never have had a WWII. America's military interventionism was > indirectly responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews, 10 million > Russians, and an untold number of American, English, Japanese, German, > Italian, Polish, French, and other lives. Possibly. On the other hand, he was there and he was a threat. What do you do about the problem of the moment is important at that moment. We could not ignore what the axis powers did. Japan attacked and then declared war on us. We then declared war on Japan. Germany then declared war on us. We then declared war on Germany. Were there other factors behind all this - probably. But the fact remains that Hitler was a threat and needed to be dealt with. The methods were most probably incorrect morally though. > America's interventionism put Saddam, Khadafi, Noriega, and others > into power and even trained and armed Osama Bin Laden. If we had > minded our own business, everyone who died on September 11th would > still be alive and all who died in the resulting unconstitutional war > in Iraq. Maybe, maybe not. > Switzerland has been surrounded by war for 200 years without being in > one. They have done this because they remain neutral, they have a > very strong defense but no offense, they keep their noses out of > everyone else's business, and the don't practice military > interventionism. So calling military non-interventionism > "suicide" is riduculous. In fact if anything is suicide, it's remaining in a > perpetual state of war because you bully other nations, take sides in > every dispute, arm every nation on earth, prop up dictators, overthrow > democracies, arm monsters, etc. as America has done. This I agree with completely. BWS ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
