Dear Samer,
Finally I have time to address your post. Rest assured as well that all are free to post their views on this board and I take no personal offense. Also, I skipped over a few paragraphs due to time contraints; if I missed anything you wanted me to directly address please repost the paragraph--I simply became exhausted responding to your post!

>>>No. It's not Christian to incinerate Iraqis and destabilize a region,
So it is better to leave a stable madman in power? And from the war's progress, minimal casualties are being reported.
>>>and rub shoulders with Turks who are looking for a piece of the pie, whom you have already permitted to bomb Kurds in the illegal no fly zones, Kurds you betrayed in the past.
I agree with you. We sold out the Kurds last time. We owe them a state (and the Assyrians one too!)
>>>There are also more ruthless tyrants than this one amongst countless others, who call for your attention. If human rights are America's concern, then Israel is the primary antagonist in that department.
I agree that Israel needs to be dropped from our support.
>>>Maybe Mr. Bush should renege his commitment of friendship and lap-dog service to a bone-fied butcher, who more than likely is clinically insane.
Agreed. But we're talking about Iraq, not Israel!
>>>Perhaps he should break ties with the fundamentalist nutcases who search Scripture for hidden meanings every time Sharon breaks wind.
LOL! That was good! I agree!
>>>Also, I assure you that living under Saddam would have done me much less harm from a religious angle than the U.S. government's friends the Saudis, who would have me eat shit were I to merely step into Mecca.
Right, agreed from a religious point of view, but if you were not an Arab and were rather Assyrian you would have a different pov.
>>>Who allied themselves with Pol Pot, for God's sake? Do you think Saddam amounts to anything in comparison to your government's fomer buddy?
I don't think the US knew the extent of craziness that Pol Pot was planning. And since you make the accusation, could you please explain exactly what you would have had us to do? I would have been against the unwinnable Vietnam War, btw.
>>>The bizarreness of this entire propaganda blitz is how the spin doctors have so personalized Saddam. This tone of a global Crusade against an "Evil Man" (a truly insignificant one) is genuinely baffling in the world of realpolitik where we know that interests are at play.
Insignificant? Nah, especially with the Salman Pak terrorist camps and the money going to terrorists.
>>>Do the bureaucrats in Washington honestly believe the American people are that stupid? To not suspect that interests are at play?
Such as? Of course we have other interests. So does everyone else. That's natural. I like running this board free of charge for you all but it is also nice to get all the attention, which is my "other motive" haha

>>>Anastasios, world peace?GǪerrrGǪ."World Peace"? I'm sorry, but you're losing me bud. You're not making sense anymore.
Hahah I lose myself sometimes.
>>>What are the objectives of this war again? And how does directly opposing an unnecessary war, death, and mayhem, rather than supporting them, stand in the way of world peace?
Same objectives as in Afghanistan, where it was successful and they are happy we came.
>>>I think the bishops have every right to ask your government to stop sending your country's young men to their deaths, and have it leave us the hell alone.
I see Pan-Arabism at work here. You are not “us”; you are living in Canada, not Iraq.
>>>Anastasios, welcome to the world my friend. Hurt and pain exist. Iraq is a drop in an ocean, if one likes to seek misery and persecution. Iraq should not be made a showcase just because the media's daily digest of propaganda happens to now focus exclusively on the career of this one man.
I don’t buy the media blame-game, especially when people like Peter Jennings try to make the US look bad as much as possible!
>>>There are places far worse in which to live if one wishes to speak of repression, and some of these are ruled by your allies. You possess the natural instincts that recoil in hurt and rebellion at the sight of suffering from which you and many folks living in First World countries are spared, but which to us is a natural state of affairs. That is good, but you are channeling these feelings in the wrong direction frankly, and I believe, allowing your emotions compounded with your inexperience with and lack of knowledge of the complexity of Middle Eastern politics and history to cloud your judgement, especially if
True but we can only take out one bad guy at a time ;-)
>>>you are intent at grasping at straws with this untenable myth that there is a link between Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic militants, a point laughable on its face for us who live there, and one that can only be made tangible in the twilight zone.
Sorry, but you may be just as ignorant as I. Of course Saddam killed off Islamic fundamentalists when it suited him but we have proof that he supported terrorists, especially at the Salman Pak training camps. You can pretend that I am believing in a myth but where's the rebuttal of Salman Pak? You don't have all the intelligence the US gov't has nor do I, for that matter.
>>>The reaction of laughter, of Englishmen to such assertions would be fatal were they sitting on a terrace enjoying tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Clinging now to any semblance of this idea is grasping at straws in the wind. These panic-stricken people are out of their league here in trying to set up any such pro-war argument based on this rediculous premise. In fact, allow me to direct you to the Kurds for that one, the fundamentalists amongst whom are more likely to have ties with al Qaida types than the mustached menace would No one who lives in the region I come from can take such a crazy notion seriously, much less the assertion that Saddam has any intentions of actually attacking (!) the U.S. For someone from the Middle East to even consider this involves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the suspension of his rational faculties for the duration of the investigation.<<<
What you are doing is trying to take the issue away from facts and play "my ignorance" (which I am ignorant and will admit it) against "the facts" and call me and others "crazy" etc. You are trying to divert attention away from the way you yourself provide no facts to back up your statements.
As for the article I linked, I heard on the radio that we have the satellite photos to prove it. Has anyone else heard this?
>>>Bomb the abortion "clinics" then, by that logic. The unborn get slaughtered in the multitudes daily, and there's more killing of the unborn going on where you live than the people Saddam has ever killed.<<<
I don't see the link. States can use force, individuals can't.
>>>Some unfortunate Japanese in '45 come to mind, casualties of a despicable Mason**<<<
LOL, you don't actually believe in conspiracy theories like that, do you? The “Masons”? C’mon, Samer, that’s just too silly for you to believe in. Up until this point you were making good, solid points, but you lost me with that Mason comment. BTW I don’t think it was just for us to have nuked Japanese civilians AT ALL!
>>>Read Fr. Seraphim Rose, and note the contrast he would make between your Christian conduct in the matter of an individual case, in adherence to Christ's command to clothe the naked, feed the hungry etc., and the epic-scale statist enterprise of Pax Americana. He distrusted misguided attempts to "change the world" or fullfill Christ's commandments on the national scale you propose, only implementable through the instrument of the state.<<<
He was not trained in politics or ethics! And oftentimes he was wrong! But still, please tell me where he writes of this so that I might digest it myself.
>>>You are free to join or fund local resistance movements, but should refrain from using the State, with its gargantuan capacity for destruction, as your instrument. Plus it is fueled by stolen loot, otherwise known as tax dollars, for such purposes. Perhaps the money's rightful owners do not wish their hard-earned labour which produced their wealth to have gone in the service of something they disapprove of as murder. Build your own treasury of funds and go recruit combatants to join in the Iraqi battlefield.<<<
I am a statist and I will work to get the state to support my views. I am NOT a libertarian. ;-)
>>>After the hell and misery your sanctions and bombing have put them through and the state to which they have been reduced, you find that surprising?! <<<
Let me clarify that I am against the sanctions that we imposed on the people of Iraq. The bombing in Iraq didn’t do much damage to civilians; NBC was interviewing an Iraqi that said “in the last gulf war we knew after a day you weren’t going to hurt us so we went up on the roofs every night and watched the fireworks.” The US this time actually dropped pamphlets saying “please do not watch the explosions from your rooftops!”
>>>Folks are not prone to welcoming liberation via incineration.
We're not incinerating people. We are blowing up legitimate military targets, just like before.
>>>Second, America (and unfortunately, as is sometimes the case, the people by association, another example of the danger the U.S. government poses to its own civilian populace) is loathed by Iraqis and many Arabs, and propaganda is entirely unnecessary for that when you've seen the carnage caused by American military and economic weapons that I've seen. <<<
Such as? But I will say when I have read Arab newspapers that publish in English, they usually are wildly biased in the opposite way and in no wise “fair” and “balanced.”
>>> Everyone knows Saddam is a cutthroat, and I doubt you fill find more than a handful of Arabs who will not gladly slit his throat. Therefore, any commentary on his bad behaviour is a red herring and diversion from the core of the argument: the balkanization that will ensue, and the interests of fundamentalist Islamism and the butcher par extraordinaire, TurkeyGǪ.and Israel! Keep your eye on Palestine in the coming days ahead.<<<
So what is the solution, then? Leave him alone??
>>>Anastasios, a neocon credo if I ever saw one.
And that credo is the way things are now.
>>>As one of a libertarian persuasion, I believe in free trade (not exporting "democracy" and New Dealish mixed economies [misnamed "capitalism"] at gunpoint)--though I, along with Austrians (followers of the economics school), see NAFTA to be to free trade what Sharon is to peace, imposters in drag--and cultural interaction and exchange such as what the Arabs engaged in in the past. We have always been merchants and traders and these commercial activities foster peace and goodwill.<<<
You’re against NAFTA??? Gee wiz!
>>>And I believe this, quite frankly, frightening blueprint that you draw up here of military globalism,
imperium Americanum, and the dissolution of national sovereignty, is the antithesis of the aforementioned principles. As for your plans regarding ethnicity, keep it to your parish, but keep it out of my country. <<<
Canada? My ideas regarding ethnicity are basically the same thing that would ensure that Canada would not break up into two countries based on ethnicity. I don’t support making all peoples “one” or any of that nonsense.
>>>In closing, no harsh remark was at all intended against your person anastasios, but I believe the foregoing had to be said. I think you have good motives, but your vision and perception of things I will have to disagree with vehemently. I pray for the lives of soldiers on both sides, and knowing a war veteran, I have respect for soldiers as opposed to their unscrupulous civilian commanders. But make no mistake; your forces are the enemy from our point of view, and without malice directed at their persons, I hope to see them defeated in combat, though that is an impossibility. This intention is in effect as of now, since your forces are already attacking as we speak. <<<
I don’t take offense at your views, but I wonder how you can believe in this Pan-Arab thing. I don’t support Germany just because I am German (which I am from about 5 generations back). My wife’s Slovak family doesn’t support Slovakia. My El Salvadoran friends have a love for El Salvador as a “place” but don’t actually support its government. You seem to support Saddam because he’s “one of us”. You’ll admit that he is a murderous tyrant but them resign yourself to say “well there are other evil ones out there, too” as if that makes it suddenly ok to leave him alone. What would you do with Saddam and Iraq? I’m curious.
Sincerely,
anastasios