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Justifying the War
Topic Started: Sep 7 2006, 12:10 PM (703 Views)
Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
In your own befuddled, foggy mind you may *think* you're examining the grey areas, but in fact you are not. *You* are the one thinking in black and white. If you were really to actually look at the grey areas, you'd understand that the war in Iraq is far more complicated than your narrow little viewpoint. In fact, that was what I was trying to get you to see, but you're too ideologically constipated to grasp it. So your response is to stick to your little black and white, either/or viewpoint. War is bad, Iraq is a war, therefore the Iraq war is bad. That's simple minded, ideologically driven ignorance.

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Radu
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Hobie
Sep 8 2006, 12:43 AM
As for my agenda, I have none. I came over here for some fun (from PW) and ran smack dab into zealots of war and the rah-rah-rah for the home team garbage.


Of course you have an "agenda". Your idea of having *fun* here is to start a fight with Larry. Nothing else is of importance for you.
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"Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!"
The modern media has made cretins out of so many people that they're not interested in reality any more, unless it's reality TV (Jean D'eaux)
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Hobie
Junior Carp
Larry

Evil people should die
There are evil people in Iraq...

Lets go kill them.

How's that for simplistic?

Hey...you can do better than that last post. There was 'nary and insult in it. What's the matter...are you getting tired?

It is the bully-on-the-playground attitude that got us into trouble in Iraq, and it's the same attitude that you keep going at me with. You will never get me to agree with your point of view. I will never get you to agree with mine.

So unless you want to display some more of your awesome writing style...we really don't have to get into a pissing contest, do we? I have a similar writing style, I just feel wierd being a newbie and start off here by unleashing on you. Maybe we should start a new thread called, "How to make your point and insult someone at the same time"

I think we'de get shut down, though.
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Radu
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Hobie
Sep 8 2006, 02:34 AM

Hey...you can do better than that last post. There was 'nary and insult in it. What's the matter...are you getting tired?


If this is not trollish behaviour....
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"Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!"
The modern media has made cretins out of so many people that they're not interested in reality any more, unless it's reality TV (Jean D'eaux)
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Hobie
Junior Carp
Hey
I'm no troll

I am fighting fire with fire. And there's some flames around here.

The war is wrong. If that's being a troll, delete me, moderators.

Larry's writing style is funny enough for me to want to get ripped on by him.

What's not funny is that I come over here and post, "The war is wrong...I'm against it" I get fully slammed, and now I'm the troll?



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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Hobie, I know you like to think of yourself as a brainy, witty guy, but the fact is you have shown yourself to be just about the most ignorant, ideologically constipated mental midget that has ever crossed these forums. If I tried, I couldn't do a better job at showing what a moron you are than you've done all by yourself.

As for having a pissing contest - sport, you just don't have the slightest idea of what you're stepping into. So far all I've done is give you examples of your stupidity. But if a pissing contest is where you'd like to go, you just let me know - I'll rip your head off and **** down your neck, sport. And I can do it, scooter - just ask around.


Now - if you're a troll as Radu suspects, and I agree with him, bring it on. If you came here to be a participant in discussions, get your head out of your ass, put your attitude away, and accept the fact that your opinions aren't the only opinions out there.
Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Hobie
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Larry

Holy cow that was awesome.

It would appear that the other opinions on the forum you speak about only matter if they are the ones you agree with. Do you bully everyone into agreeing with you?

I would love to engage you in your own game of trash-talk, but that really would be a misuse of the forum. I am really good at it, though.

Suffice it to say, I'll be back soon, but I've wasted enough time here already. I'm going on a bike ride.

Don't you have a new column to write for this week? I hope it is about the pacifist tree-huggers that are ruining America!

Peace...Hobie

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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Let's see.....

You play Bob Dylan tunes on the piano and cry about war...
You wouldn't fight to save the life of your own child.....
and now we find out you're still riding a bicycle?.....


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!

Do you have lacy underwear too, pussy?

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ivorythumper
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Hobie
Sep 7 2006, 01:20 PM
The rationale for Veitnam was either fight or let the Communists take over.  That was really good thinking now, wasn't it?

Hobie: The rationale for Vietnam was the obligation of mutual defense against aggression under various multi-lateral agreements. Whether or not we should be parties to things such as SEATO or NATO is a different question, but once we obligated ourselves to come to the defense of Vietnam, we were obligated.

Your understanding of things would be aided by reading history so that you can speak intelligently on these matters. It would make for "really good thinking". :wink:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
I am afraid that is far too nuanced for anyone who has just one conception of war (war = bad). Not much grey to work with there. In fact, it is strikingly similar to the starting point for negotiations with Israel's enemies. That is, Israel must die.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Rick Zimmer
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ivorythumper
Sep 7 2006, 08:14 PM
Hobie
Sep 7 2006, 01:20 PM
The rationale for Veitnam was either fight or let the Communists take over.  That was really good thinking now, wasn't it?

Hobie: The rationale for Vietnam was the obligation of mutual defense against aggression under various multi-lateral agreements. Whether or not we should be parties to things such as SEATO or NATO is a different question, but once we obligated ourselves to come to the defense of Vietnam, we were obligated.

Your understanding of things would be aided by reading history so that you can speak intelligently on these matters. It would make for "really good thinking". :wink:

SEATO did not mandate that we involve ourselves in what was basically a civil war.

Vietnam was divided at the behest of the Western powers, not by the decision of the Vietnamese. From the time of the division, the North fought it as did many in the South who supported the North throughout the war with the French and again when the US stepped in. The Vietnamese as a people never accepted the partition -- which was their right since it was, after all, their country.

Indeed, history shows that Kennedy understood this and recognized what a quagmire Vietnam would be because there was little popular support for the South Vietnamese government and was ready to disengage from Vietnam.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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JBryan
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Wow! I hardly know where to begin. There is so much that is inaccurate or downright false about the previous post that I am just speechless. However, I might start with the fact that our SEATO obligations still attached to what we recognized as South Viet Nam even though international conventions arbitrarily divided Viet Nam at the 17th parallel. At that point North and South Viet Nam were recognized as separate political and geographic entities by the world community so the term "civil war" is not even vaguely applicable. Indeed, there would have been no Viet Nam war if Hanoi had decided not to invade and incorporate South Viet Nam.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Rick Zimmer
Sep 7 2006, 08:35 PM
ivorythumper
Sep 7 2006, 08:14 PM
Hobie
Sep 7 2006, 01:20 PM
The rationale for Veitnam was either fight or let the Communists take over.  That was really good thinking now, wasn't it?

Hobie: The rationale for Vietnam was the obligation of mutual defense against aggression under various multi-lateral agreements. Whether or not we should be parties to things such as SEATO or NATO is a different question, but once we obligated ourselves to come to the defense of Vietnam, we were obligated.

Your understanding of things would be aided by reading history so that you can speak intelligently on these matters. It would make for "really good thinking". :wink:

SEATO did not mandate that we involve ourselves in what was basically a civil war.

Vietnam was divided at the behest of the Western powers, not by the decision of the Vietnamese. From the time of the division, the North fought it as did many in the South who supported the North throughout the war with the French and again when the US stepped in. The Vietnamese as a people never accepted the partition -- which was their right since it was, after all, their country.

Indeed, history shows that Kennedy understood this and recognized what a quagmire Vietnam would be because there was little popular support for the South Vietnamese government and was ready to disengage from Vietnam.

You must be reading other history than me, and if the way you read my post is any indication you are not doing that too accurately either since I did not say that SEATO mandated the intervention. Vietnam was not a signatory to SEATO, but other alliance treaties existed that later got subsumed under SEATO.

Also, it was Russia, not the Western powers who recommended the admittance of both NV and SV to the United Nations.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Quote:
 
SEATO did not mandate that we involve ourselves in what was basically a civil war.

Vietnam was divided at the behest of the Western powers, not by the decision of the Vietnamese. From the time of the division, the North fought it as did many in the South who supported the North throughout the war with the French and again when the US stepped in. The Vietnamese as a people never accepted the partition -- which was their right since it was, after all, their country.

Indeed, history shows that Kennedy understood this and recognized what a quagmire Vietnam would be because there was little popular support for the South Vietnamese government and was ready to disengage from Vietnam.


:huh: :blink: :D .........

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Where'd you go to school, Rick - Romper Room?......

BAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!
Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Rick Zimmer
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JBryan
Sep 7 2006, 08:55 PM
Wow! I hardly know where to begin. There is so much that is inaccurate or downright false about the previous post that I am just speechless. However, I might start with the fact that our SEATO obligations still attached to what we recognized as South Viet Nam even though international conventions arbitrarily divided Viet Nam at the 17th parallel. At that point North and South Viet Nam were recognized as separate political and geographic entities by the world community so the term "civil war" is not even vaguely applicable. Indeed, there would have been no Viet Nam war if Hanoi had decided not to invade and incorporate South Viet Nam.

Seek truth from facts, jb.

Your facts are basically correct. Now let's look at the truth.

The Western powers were in their own struggle between those led/controlled by the Soviet Union and those in Western Europe and the United States. Because of this, THEY chose to divide Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not asked about it, were never consulted and never consented.

Ho Chi Minh, who had been the Vietnamese leader fighting the French to get them out and let Vietnam run its own affairs, was the logical leader of the country. As such, he began the war to keep his country together. The West installed a rival government in the South. The war was between the long time champion of Vietnamese independence and the Western-installed rival government in the South.

The role of the US after the French were defeated was to enforce the division created by the Western powers -- as if the Western powers had that right -- and to fight the desires of the Vietnamese people to be able to have a unified country and to be left to govern themselves, not to have some arbitrary division forced by the West with the South having a puppet government kept in power only by Western military forces. The role of North Vietnam was to oppose the Western division of the country and unify it.

When Johnson chose to dramatically expand the US efforts to enforce the West's arbitrary division of someone else's country and the war became full bore, one of the things the American troops found was that they were not just fighting the North Vietnamese, but also thousands in South Vietnam who supported the war to reunify the country.

It was this desire by the grassroots in South Vietnam to reunify the country with the north that made it impossible for the US to win the war and that ultimately defeated the US, thus removing Western domination of their country and reunifying it which had been their goal from the beginning.

Simply because the West decides it can muddle in other country's affairs and impose its own will and then sets up international agreements and conventons to provide legal cover for their actions, this does not mean the West has a right to do what it does nor does it mean the people in that country should have to roll over and peacefully acquiesce to the West's actions.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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JBryan
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I can agree that it was a mistake to accede to French desires to restore the pre-WWII colonialism known as French Indo-China. After that, your represetation of the facts goes awry. The division between North and South Viet Nam was agreed to by Ho Chi Minh and his attempts to reunify the country was an abrogation of that agreement. There were very many Vietnamese in the South who had no desire to become a part of Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam. That is where they fled when Ho Chi Minh kicked out the French. It is not as clear cut as you like to paint it that the Vietnamese people desired unification under Ho Chi Minh. The millions who fled Viet Nam at the fall of Saigon is clear testament to that.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Good God - talk about revisionist history.........

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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Rick Zimmer
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JBryan
Sep 8 2006, 06:52 AM
I can agree that it was a mistake to accede to French desires to restore the pre-WWII colonialism known as French Indo-China. After that, your represetation of the facts goes awry. The division between North and South Viet Nam was agreed to by Ho Chi Minh and his attempts to reunify the country was an abrogation of that agreement. There were very many Vietnamese in the South who had no desire to become a part of Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam. That is where they fled when Ho Chi Minh kicked out the French. It is not as clear cut as you like to paint it that the Vietnamese people desired unification under Ho Chi Minh. The millions who fled Viet Nam at the fall of Saigon is clear testament to that.

You are obviously correct that not everyone wanted to live under Ho Chi Minh's rule. In what society would you find 100% agreement during a transition. However, it is clear from the reaction of so many South Vietnamese during the war that they were far more interested in independence and unity and getting rid of Western influence and domination, that they supported him and fought the Americans.

As for his abrogating his agreement? If I were Ho Chi Minh and knew it was going to take a long struggle to get the West to stop interfering -- a struggle that had to be step by step -- I would have agreed to the division too -- in order to get the French out -- and when that was achieved, I would have continued my quest to unify my country.

Given the fact the West had no right to divide the country, the Vietnamese had no obligation to comply with any agreement to do so, even if as a step towards independence they had agreed to allow it to happen.

The millions who fled? The result of two things -- first, they were mainly those who had worked with the Americans during the war. They new that they had chosen the losing side and what happens to those who do so when any war ends. They fled to protect themselves and their families. I don't blame them. The second group fled because they did not want to live under a communist authoritarian regime. I don't blame them either and it is their right under the UN Declaration of Human Rights to emigrate elsewhere.

Of course, 30 years later, these same people who fled the country are now the ones establishing closer and closer ties with it. Time heals all wounds, it appears.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
Rick Zimmer
Sep 8 2006, 10:05 AM
Given the fact the West had no right to divide the country, the Vietnamese had no obligation to comply with any agreement to do so, even if as a step towards independence they had agreed to allow it to happen.


I am sure this is absolutely correct from Ho Chi Minh's point of view. There are many others on the other side of the DMZ who would disagree.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
JBryan
Sep 8 2006, 11:13 AM
Rick Zimmer
Sep 8 2006, 10:05 AM
Given the fact the West had no right to divide the country, the Vietnamese had no obligation to comply with any agreement to do so, even if as a step towards independence they had agreed to allow it to happen.


I am sure this is absolutely correct from Ho Chi Minh's point of view. There are many others on the other side of the DMZ who would disagree.

Then you must love the Palestinians, Rick. They don't live up to anything they agree to either.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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AlbertaCrude
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Rick Zimmer
Sep 8 2006, 07:05 AM
Given the fact the West had no right to divide the country, the Vietnamese had no obligation to comply with any agreement to do so, even if as a step towards independence they had agreed to allow it to happen.


Given the fact the West had no right to divide the country...

Quite a sweeping statement Rick. A statement with huge implications for a host of countries in the world. Especially one country that some people do not believe has ever had a right to exist.
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