From: casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE)
Subject: Re: Foul Words and False
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 06:01:00 GMT

In article <1da3k2INN9dd@fido.asd.sgi.com>, coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge) writes...
>In article <5NOV199202465423@vxcrna.cern.ch>, casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE) writes:
>|> In article <1992Nov4.194250.14760@news.columbia.edu>, egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes...
>|> >In article <griffinb.720791098@unix1.tcd.ie> griffinb@unix1.tcd.ie (brendan james griffin) writes:
>|> >>In <1992Nov2.175821.12287@news.columbia.edu> egl1@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Elizabeth G. Levy) writes:
> 
>No, no, you have it wrong. Clinton was demonstrating *because* his fellow
>Americans were dying. As soon as you say "while" instead of "because", you
>sink into a semantic tarpit that doesn't care about what happened, but 
>rather only about what one can be made to believe about what happened.

I fail to see how demonstrating in a foreign country (where he was also
conveniently safe from the draft, yet still "politically viable") did anything
to aid these poor victims for which he supposedly cared so much.  Why not
come home and take a stand where it might have some effect on the government?
Why not openly repudiate the draft then instead of playing administrative
games that look for all the world like someone trying to stay out of the draft
while keeping a low profile?

>BTW, the Vietnamese weren't our "enemy". Or perhaps I missed it when
>Congress declared the war...? What? No War? Well, then...

Talk about semantic tarpits.  Yeah, ok, they weren't our enemy.  And they
*certainly* couldn't have been armed, supported and financed by any other
countries with bad intentions toward the US.  They were just out for a little
nature walk on the Ho Chi Minh trail with their Kalashnikovs.  Please.

>|> >One would think that Clinton wouldn't have helped arms Hussein, given
>|> >the latter's track record on human rights that the Reagan/Bush
>|> >administration conveniently ignored.  I think Clinton argues for a
>|> >more humanistic basis to foreign policy, and would not view statecraft
>|> >solely as a billiards game, where only the actions of nations, and not
>|> >their natures, are important.
>|> 
>|> This is what scares me the most about Slickness.  It's the same airy-fairy
>|> idealism which led that other great Moral Force of our era, Jimmy Carter, into
>|> unmitigated humiliation and disgrace.
> 
>Glad we now understand your position on questions of ethics.

Ethics alone are great for moralists and Sunday school teachers, but I'm
afraid the world outside Podunk, Iowa is a bit rougher.  I'm not questioning
Carter's motives, but merely saying that world history is littered with these
naive do-gooders who expect tyrants to play by club rules.  The first ethic
as far as I'm concerned is self-preservation.  I ask you: was Carter effective
at advancing the ethical state of the world?  The sole accomplishment you might
point to was Camp David, which itself was an extremely mixed bag.  By selling
the Palestinians out, Sadat and Carter basically nullified the chance for a
just peace.  Everywhere else: Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Poland, Carter
wound up doing more harm than good.

Contrast this to the foreign policy accomplishments of Reagan and Bush.  You
may disagree with me on how much credit they deserve, but you cannot deny they
played a role in making the world a safer, more peaceful, and more democratic
place.

>|> By your moral criterion then, a more ethical FDR could never have conscienced
>|> aiding Stalin in the war against Hitler, since Stalin was not a nice person.
>|> The mere fact that he was willing to aid in the struggle against a common
>|> enemy who was perhaps only equally as evil (Hitler's evil being directed more
>|> outward than Stalin's, however) would be irrelevant under this view, since
>|> only the moral value of nations, not their impact on US national security,
>|> should be considered.
> 
>It's precisely the Realpolitik attitude you espouse that *creates* problems
>for our security by constantly playing off one nation against another.

Right, everybody should just sit down and be mellow together and there'd be
no more international problems.  Why didn't anyone think of that before?

>|> Look, in the early '80s Iran was the biggest threat to our security in the
>|> middle east.  Hussein was willing, for admittedly nefarious reasons of his
>|> own, to fight against them.  Compared to the extent he was armed by the
>|> Soviets, American contributions to the Iraqi military were insignificant.  It
>|> is a credit to the Reagan administration that they were able to contain Iranian
>|> radicalism with something short of US military involvement.  At the time Jimmy
>|> Carter left office, we looked like we were headed for an armed confrontation.
>|> A US-Iranian war during the pre-Gorby years could have touched off a US/Soviet
>|> conflict.
> 
>Hogwash.
> 
>Iran has never been a threat to our security. They were a threat to our
>prestige, but that's all.

Yeah, I guess its not like we need oil or anything.  Even Carter was smart
enough to realize that we have a critical interest in the Middle East.

>And anyone who thinks that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, is
>simply girding for a later conflict with his enemy's enemy.

No, I call it more like "the enemy of my enemy might do something that helps
me out and save me from having to fight my enemy"

>|> Look, the world is a *fucking dangerous* place, especially when you're the
>|> only superpower left and your so-called allies (France, Germany, Japan -
>|> Britain being the lone exception) have to be led by the hand every step of the
>|> way and told to put the seat down before taking a dump.
> 
>I'm sure that France, Germany, and especially Japan would be mighty grateful
>to receive that sort of personal attention from you.
> 
>Ever make the connection between that idiot attitude and much of the world's
>resentment of the US? No? Take a close look, or maybe even *ask* some of
>the citizens of those fully sovereign states what they think of your
>analogy - and what Uncle Sam has done to them since WWII.

"Done *to* them?!?!?!"  They've done to us exactly what you accuse the US of
doing - they've taken advantage of us to fight their political and often
military battles for them!  They've graciously allowed us to bear a massively
disproportionate share of paying for their defense!  Hey, like I said, it's
great if you can get away with it.  We had to do it because twice this
century they've been unable to do it for themselves.  In the final analysis,
it was probably worth the enormous cost to us anyway, but please don't try
to portray these poor wealthy countries as some kind of victims.

And yes, in fact, since I live in France, I do hear and see a lot.  Been many
Mideast Peace Conferences sponsered by Europeans lately?  Do you see them
pushing for strict enforcement of inspections in Iraq?  How long have they sat
and wrung their hands over Yugoslavia?  How many international conferences have
concluded lovely little treaties which have had no effect? And then Mitterand
and others clamor for the US to please do something! 

I'll tell you, the Europeans are great at doing business, but when it comes
to building a consensus on foreign policy issues and actually taking action
about it, all bets are off.  Their governments are too fragile and their people
are too pacifist - I might even say isolationist.  The have become complacent
from having their good old Uncle Sam around to stick up for them all these
years.  John Major will now become the leader of the Western alliance, and I
hope he is able to fill the same role of pointman and consensus-builder that
George Bush has played, because you sure aren't going to see the Germans or the
French doing much to keep the peace outside their own borders anytime soon. 
And the same in spades for the Japanese.  And the Slickster will be too busy
protecting the spotted owl to worry about anything as irrelevant as 3rd world
nuclear weapons or the threat of a resurgent Iraq. We are basically back to
isolationism in the US and appeasement in Europe. 

>|> The President of the United States is responsible first and foremost for
>|> protecting the security and interests of the US.  When those interests coincide
>|> with doing some greater good in the world, so much the better.  But when
>|> confronted with a choice between defending the US with some less than sanitary
>|> instrument or jeopardizing the US in the name of some ethereal Moral Good,
>|> I hope, I really hope, he will put the interests of the nation first.  For all
>|> his faults, at least JFK understood this.  I have the gravest doubts that
>|> Slick Willy Clinton does.
> 
>I'm certain he understands it better than the paranoid bozos who've been 
>running this country's security and defense for the past twelve years...

Wait, so are you now saying The Slick One is student of this Realpolitik you
despise so much?  I think not.


>|> >And gentlemen in England now abed
>|> >Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
>|> >And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speak
>|> >That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.	   [Henry V, 4.3]
>|> 
>|> 
>|> Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.       [Hamlet 2.?]
>|> 
> 
>What fools these mortals be.			[A Midsummer Night's Dream]

How many divisions has the Pope?	[Stalin]

Xref: sparky alt.politics.bush:13296 alt.politics.clinton:16004 alt.politics.elections:22809 talk.politics.misc:58410