Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

I should probably stay out of this too by now, but....

Originally posted by RL:

Translation: President Bush defined North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the three countries on the Earth representing evil. And because President Bush's speech made these countries evil by definition, the United States thereby gained the (moral) right to attack Iran, Iraq and North Korea preemptively. That meant that the United States officially claimed the right to attack these nations before they had actually done anything, to prevent them from doing something bad in the future.

Imagine if preemptive attacks became an acceptable method of self defence in the United States, on American soil, among ordinary Americans. Imagine if you could attack and kill your neighbour preemptively, because people said bad things about him, and he really did beat somebody up ten years ago. Imagine that you could break into his apartment and kill him preemptively to make sure that he won't attack you some time in the future. And by the way, not only do you kill him, but you kill two of his kids as well: one teenager who is already on his way to becoming a gangster, and one toddler, three years old. And afterwards, you tell the court that this wasn't murder at all, but a preemptive strike to protect yourself and your family from being harmed in the future. And the court says that you acted within your rights. Would you like to see that sort of "preemptive killing" become an acceptable form of self defence within the United States itself, Roger? Remember that for all you know, your neighbour could kill you and get away with it, by claiming that it was a case of preemptive self defence.

I once heard an interview with John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton didn't mince words in this interview. He said that because American lives are more important to the United States than the lives of people in other countries, the United States had the right to attack and kill other people in other countries to make sure that these people could not attack and kill people in the U.S.A. in the future.

Roger, do you think it is at all reasonable that other people in other countries will not love the United States when they hear a high-ranking representative for the U.S. administration talk about America's right to kill others as they see fit in order to prevent future attacks on America?

Seriously, though, shouldn't it ever be allowed to attack a country preemptively? Yes, i think it should, if you have a very good reason to believe that this country is on its way to becoming supremely dangerous. But if you want to convince - really convince - the world that you are right about this, you need very good evidence. President Bush's accusations against Iraq came pretty much out of the blue, or at least it certainly looked that way to the international community. All that the rest of us knew was that Iraq hadn't attacked another country for about ten years, it hadn't carried out a genocidal attack on anyone for more than ten years, no international experts had claimed that Saddam was stockpiling dangerous WMDs, and no international terrorist had ever been known to come out of Iraq before Al Qeada took up residence there in response to the U.S. intervention. And, unsurprisingly, after the United States had occupied Iraq, no WMDs were found anywhere and no pre-existing Iraqi terror network was found, either. (However, other nations were known to have terrorists, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or to have WMDs, such as Pakistan.)

It is absolutely true that the UN finally approved Resolution 242, which gave the United States green light to attack Iraq. So yes, you can say that America's war on Iraq has the blessing of the international community. I remember, however, that as the war was about to start, the populations of a whole bunch of nations had been surveyed to find out what they thought about the idea that the United States would attack Iraq. It turned out that the population of one country, Israel, was enthusiastic about a U.S. attack. The populations of all other U.S. allies, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia, everyone - were against it. Populations in important countries like India, Russia and China, were negative, too. As far as I can remember, Israel was in fact the only country whose population supported the attack. This means that when the United Nations approved Resolution 242, a whole lot of governments defied the will of their own populations. By going against their own people, these governments created strife and ill will at home.

In countries which are democracies, it is hard to go against your own voters for a very long time. The governments which act like that will be voted out of office.

I think that the idea of preemptive strikes is a wholly new one. To my knowledge, no American President or Administration before the current one has ever talked about America's right to attack its enemies preemptively. I'm convinced that this idea has an enormous lot to do with the United States' poor ratings in the current "popularity league".

Carol, I agree with you that many of Hillary's policies are better than Obama's, and I agree that very many of Hillary's difficulties stem from the fact that her gender forces her to fight an enormously uphill battle. (Then again, Carol, how many female Prime Ministers have you had in Canada? And how many have we had in Sweden?)

I absolutely disagree with you that John McCain would be a better choice than Obama, at least as far as the international community is concerned. When McCain was asked what he wanted to do with Iran, he answered by singing - singing!!! - "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran". As if bombing another country was a funny thing that you could sing a song about.

The United States was incredibly shocked and horrified at the loss of American lives on 9/11. That is certainly understandable. But that also makes it painful to see how totally insensitive and sometimes almost flippant some Republican politicians seem to be to the idea of causing the loss of lives in other countries.

Ann