"It's arrogance to expect our closest ally to side with us?"
Well, yes. If you're doing something wrong, you shouldn't expect your allies to support you, just because they're allies. I mean, if someone looks at you funny, and you tell your best friend "hey, hold that guy down while I beat the shit out of him", your friend shouldn't do it just because you're friends.
You've never held down anyone for your freinds? Some freind you are!
It's all a case of the Ends justifing the means: Canada's POV was that it's a war without reason and the US (general population anyway) was that it was a war to help both the Iraqui people and the world in general by removing a tyrant from power....and therein lies the problem with Canada's refusal to send troops. Americans are looking at Canada as an ally that wouldnt help us fight against a bunch of oppressive fucks while our troops suffered for Canada's morals. Huh. We're Klingons invading Cardassia and Canada is the Federation deciding to condemn our invasion.
It didint start out as a Trek refrence, but there you go.
This means, of course, that Cheney is an Israli in disguise.....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
...and that Canada will soon place Worf in charge of the Ministry of Defence, a plucky crack Canadian team will infiltrate Iraq and bring back Saddam in order to do blood tests, and then the US will lead a strangely ineffective attack on the Skydome?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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"We're Klingons invading Cardassia and Canada is the Federation deciding to condemn our invasion."
Um... Didn't the Klingon's weakinging of Cardassia ultimately cause Cardassia to join up with the Dominion, resulting in a galaxy-wide war with millions of deaths which ended up only being won by the good guys becauser of a magical deus ex machina?
Great analogy.
The fact is that, just because is Country1 is friendly with Country2, that doesn't mean Country1 is required to (or even should) support Country1 when Country1 goes rogue and starts invading stuff.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
We didint "go rogue". A few countries with massive debts owed by the Iraquis were vocal in the UN against us and several smaller countries that have known oppression within the last century were with us along with Britan. I wont get into our motives because that's been done to death and really here is no country without plenty of shades of gray in their decisions here.
Canada, France and Germany all condemned the idea of invasion. Then decreed it "a great day for freedom" once we got saddam. So it's such a "great day for freedom" that you condemned it from the start and now want to be treated as if you were in our corner all along? Fuck that noise.
Bush is a moron for letting the exclusion of these countries become public knowledge when they could easily have kept it quiet and only a minor amount of indignation would have resulted instead of the press running with it and making it seem even more exclusive than is intended. If they'd been slick about it, they could have issued all the contracts with only minimal US press coverage, but theyt blew it.
I think we should give all the contracts possible to the smaller countries that vocally supported us. The ones Chirac threatened with EU exclusion for siding with us.
Then Britan and the US should have their share to (ha ha) offset the cost of rebuilding Iraq from the ground up.
Once Iraq is stable and (hopefully) a independant country, it'll be free trade to whoever wnts to bid on whatever and all the "snubbed" countries will have a fair chance to compete in a democracy the US and Britan established.
France and Germany are already dominating the EU, so their plates kinda full already anyway.
Despite all the congradulations from Canada, France, Germany, Russia and, of course, the UN on capturing saddam and installing a new government, I really get the feeling it's sour grapes. They expected, -and in some ways- wanted the US and Britan to fail -and still do. Everyone wants to US to intercede in any conflict to maintain the peace through the UN but they also want the US to be completely bound by UN resolutions to take no action against our own enemies.
As dumb as the policy excluding non-supportive countries is from a internatinal politicals POV, those same leaders that now want "in" would love to be able to say "I told you so" if we failed to remove saddam.
Bet on it.
Partially it's a anti-Bush thing and partly it's an anti-american sentiment now that we're one of the few real superpowers left.
The world powers may resent our presence in the middle east, but we're actually doinf what's been idly hoped for in the UN for decades: establishing democracys and removing dictators. It's just not under their control and they dont like it one bit.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: Didn't the Klingon's weakinging of Cardassia ultimately cause Cardassia to join up with the Dominion, resulting in a galaxy-wide war with millions of deaths which ended up only being won by the good guys becauser of a magical deus ex machina?
Great analogy.
I only meant Gowrons speach about the Federation sitting in judgment while Klingon blood was spilled making the quadrant safe. Not the whole Dominion storyline.
Nor do I think Canada is great analgy for the Federation: they're too benign.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Good. I'd hate it if hostilities were to break out between the US and Canada because those wouldn't cease until Cheney was unmasked as an orthodox yarmulkehead on A Mission� to plunge the West into chaos so his ultra-paranoid people could conquer the world and that could take forever and the two years of global war between the Western quadrant powers and Iraq and Israel which would then ensue before their forces could be driven back to Palestine Prime (or Baghdad or whatever) where they'd be forced to surrender would also suck major balls.
Or something. The analogy is crap anyway, except maybe for the part where the US (along with the remnants of Canada's nasty French seperatist movement) assumes responsibility for pushing Iraq straight into Israel's arms. B)
[ December 30, 2003, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: Cartman ]
Registered: Nov 1999
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quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Lee: Such amazing ignorance. No mention of the decade-and-a-half of US support for Saddam. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So how does my "Ignorance" invalidate my statement? What was the world situation when the U.S. was aiding Iraq?
-------------------- I am the Anti-Abaddon. I build models at a scale of 2500/1
Registered: Aug 2003
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"Canada, France and Germany all condemned the idea of invasion. "Then decreed it 'a great day for freedom' once we got saddam."
They were praising the end, not the means. Just because we accomplished something, that doesn't mean we did it the correct way.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: Well, at least you're being a consistent idiot
How about this Rob? How about it is inconsistent of the US to pat a dictator on the back for fifteen years and tell him "good job", and then all of a sudden point a gun at his face and say "Sorry bud, need the boost in polls", and then when Junior decides he needs a boost in polls over a decade later, oh look, the Bush family's favorite whipping dog is still wandering around Iraq.
Oh, yes, and then it IS very inconsistent to say "Wow, look, we're a model of virtue, and a big shiny city on a hill. Woohoo!"
Thank you for the sterling example of crap revisionist history, which manages not only to completely ignore the years between 1992-2000, but in fact the entire invasion of Kuwait. That must have took a great deal of cognitive dissonance to accomplish. I don't envy you the headache you're going to have in the morning.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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And the invasion of Kuwait isn't a very good excuse. I mean, under any reasonable circumstances, it would be. But, in a country that's selective about which invasions it's going to condemn, and which it's going to ignore... That's just hypocrisy, and not worthy of recognition.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Selective condemnation of military actions is what the UN's all about.
Condemnation by consensus.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Even with all the snide and stupid remarks between Bush and your PM, the general attitude towards each other has really sucked. Bush comes off as imperilistic and your PM (name escaped me at work) comes off as petulant and frankly, advasarial in the american press.
I thought Cartman was an Aussie? Didn't his PM back the US in this lillte illegal war. Canada's position on the war was as follows. There was no immediate threat to the US and under UN charter you are not supposed to invade a country unless you can show imminant threat to your own. Canada does believe in honouring the treaties and charters that we sign, unlike some other countries that I can think of. The US was never able to even show that Iraq had the means to attack the US so Canada did not back them in this war. Canada did try to put forth a resolution in the UN which would have eventually given the US the backing it needed for an invasion but only if the WMD claims could have been verified. The US dismissed this resolution out of hand. As far I have seen so far these claims have not been verified even though the US has gone over the area with a fine tooth comb for more that 8 months now. Before the war, all US claims had been proven false by the inspectors on the ground, and still that was not enough for the US to look back on it's "intelligence", and I use that term loosely, and say "Hey maybe we have this wrong". Instead they defied the global community and attack a soveign country without showing provacation. How could you expect us to back you on this? Especially when the US started the name-calling and accusations by claiming the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada without proof, threatened us without proof, snubbed us when we were the first country to help your citizens after 9/11. We sent blood, food, rescue workers, money, blankets and then your president thanks everyone but us in his post 9/11 speech. Canada was not the nation which started the bad blood after 9/11.
-------------------- "and none of your usual boobery." M. Burns
Registered: Oct 2001
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-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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