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Post by Ginnie on Jan 18, 2008 0:52:23 GMT -4
On the other hand, maybe the best thing to do would be to take my bat back upstairs, gather my family together in a room, bar the door and call the police.So you turn around and go upstairs, he sees you, knows you've seen him, and decides he can't leave any witnesses. He burns the house down before the police get there and you all die. At least, that's one possibility.Very good point. Alright, I'd probably be seething with anger that someone had come into my home, my family's home, violated my sanctum, the place which surely should be safe from the world - plus the fact that he was trying to steal our possessions, that we work hard for. Okay, I'd clobber him with the bat. If he died then I'd have to face the consequences. Our justice system here is screwy though. I might get ten years for that, yet a man who rmolests his daughter on the internet live only gets four years. Four! I'm kind of a pacifist you know Jason, but in some cases I think crucifixion or something like it should be brought back. Honestly. And don't ask me to justify that thinking, I can't. www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2007/05/16/sex-assualt-internet.htmlWhat are other members opinions on this sentence. I just want to hurt the guy really bad, and normally I'm a very nice person. Honest.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 18, 2008 5:17:15 GMT -4
I will say that bad things tend to happen to child molestors in prison. That being said, for a case like that, I'm not exactly opposed to a life sentence.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
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Post by Al Johnston on Jan 18, 2008 8:00:59 GMT -4
I don't have a gun, nor any need for one. Another excellent way of dodging a question. If you were in the situation I described, would you have liked to have a gun? I have been in a similar situation. There was a point in the struggle where, had I been so determined, I could have killed my assailant. On the whole, I'm quite glad I didn't. Had a gun been involved, I would now either be a killer, or dead. As it was, the would-be thief departed without what he came for, and I sustained a few superficial injuries; a situation rather easier to live with.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 18, 2008 11:45:49 GMT -4
Assume you are at home with your family asleep in the house. You hear a noise downstairs and take your gun with you to investigate. From behind you see a burglar has broken in a window and is now looking about your family room. In the dark you can't see if he is armed, but he definitely is a burglar. Do you wait to confirm that the burglar has a gun before you shoot him yourself, or do you fire first, knowing you will likely kill him but protecting your family from any harm he could do, and protecting your property as well? I don't know what kind of fantasy land you live in, but I live in a universe where there aren't any unicorns or fairies and the future can't be predicted. And your analogy is awful. Iraq had not broken into our house. Iraq was not even in our yard. Iraq was down the block in their own house. We went to Iraq's house, not the other way around. Here's a better analogy that deals with your analogy: Should we arrest and incarcerate individuals who come from backgrounds that make them more likely to be criminals, rather than waiting to see who actually becomes a criminal? Wouldn't that make everyone safer? Of course not. And neither should we invade countries that we think might be a threat in the future. That is exactly what you are saying about Iraq. That foreign policy would require us to invade: China Russia Iran North Korea Venezuela Mexico possibly France That is an utterly ludicrous policy as all we have to do is say "we think you might be a threat in the future." And then we invade.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 11:49:57 GMT -4
Jason, regardless of what Sadaam did, it was still a foreign country. What about other dictators in the world that don't have oil? Or anything else of value...they are left alone so it seems. Do they have WMDs, support terrorism, attempted to assassinate a former US President, and are actively breaking the terms of a cease fire with the US in a recent war they lost? Saddam was a somewhat unique case. Shall we take it case-by-case?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 11:51:41 GMT -4
I have been in a similar situation. There was a point in the struggle where, had I been so determined, I could have killed my assailant. On the whole, I'm quite glad I didn't. Had a gun been involved, I would now either be a killer, or dead. As it was, the would-be thief departed without what he came for, and I sustained a few superficial injuries; a situation rather easier to live with. Then you were doubly lucky. You took a risk and came out on top.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 11:58:44 GMT -4
I don't know what kind of fantasy land you live in, but I live in a universe where there aren't any unicorns or fairies and the future can't be predicted. What is that supposed to mean? Not at all. We had just had a bloody demonstration that terrorists had been in our house, and could be right at that moment. We suddenly realized that our door was unlocked and hanging open. No. But Saddam wasn't someone who was "likely" to become a criminal. He was a bloody tyrant responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own people, and hundreds of thousands more killed in attempted wars of conquest. You can't compare him to someone who hadn't done anything wrong (yet). The nations we worry about today are those that already have a rap sheet. To use the analogy they are already proven criminals, not people who "might" do something, and it's those past actions that make them current threats.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 18, 2008 12:12:49 GMT -4
What I mean is that you are pretending that you have some magical advanced knowledge of the future. We don't live in that universe. A foreign policy that uses war as a tool against what someone might do in the future is a foolish policy. Not by Iraq. Not by anyone associated with Iraq. Your analogy is false. Our house was attacked by someone who had threatened us repeatedly. In response, we attacked the kid down the street that we never liked. That kid down the street wasn't responsible for the attack on our house. He didn't help the guy who attacked our house. Oh - and last time your analogy had a guy in our house with a gun. Now it's just that our door is hanging open. A "war on terror" gives us license to go after anyone who is bad? For any reason? Whether or not they have done anything to us?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 12:33:03 GMT -4
What I mean is that you are pretending that you have some magical advanced knowledge of the future. We don't live in that universe. A foreign policy that uses war as a tool against what someone might do in the future is a foolish policy. True, we can't predict the future. That means we have to act with the best knowledge we have. And if we judge that someone is about to hurt us seriously it is better to hurt them first than to act only after we've been hurt. No one can argue that it would not have been better to catch or kill the 9/11 hijackers before they killed thousands of people. The point is that when our door is hanging open anyone can come in. And if the kid down the street has tried to break in in the past and is carrying around a bomb that he could set off in our house to cause some serious damage then we have to do something about it. And if we can't secure the door, or the kid might already be in the house, then we have to neutralize the kid - either force him to hand over the bomb or take him out before he can use it. Saddam wouldn't let us satisfy ourselves that he didn't have a bomb, so we had to act. No, the first hypothetical had a guy that we didn't know if he had a gun or not - that was a crucial element to the question. And the point of making it a burglar in the house was to make him a lawbreaker - someone who we know is guilty of at least breaking and entry, as Saddam was guilty for the things he had done. The door being open might be a better analogy for the actual situation, now that we look at things in hindsight, but we certainly felt at the time that the burglar could already be in the house. Not for any reason, but if they support terrorism and terrorists who might strike against us, and have the means to make those terrorists ten times more effective. Saddam supported the terrorists, and everyone thought he had WMDs. That made him a legitimate target.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 12:48:51 GMT -4
Okay, I'd clobber him with the bat. If he died then I'd have to face the consequences. Our justice system here is screwy though. I might get ten years for that, yet a man who rmolests his daughter on the internet live only gets four years. Four! I'm kind of a pacifist you know Jason, but in some cases I think crucifixion or something like it should be brought back. Honestly. And don't ask me to justify that thinking, I can't. www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2007/05/16/sex-assualt-internet.htmlWhat are other members opinions on this sentence. I just want to hurt the guy really bad, and normally I'm a very nice person. Honest. I don't ever want to kill or seriously hurt someone, but I like to think I'm realistic enough to realize that there are some circumstances where I might have to. If I make the decision now I have less chance of a fatal hesitatiion if I ever find myself in that actual situation. As for this child molestor: Luke 17:2 "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." I'm not sure if a painful death is the penalty that he should face, but I'm sure that 4 years in prison isn't going to cut it.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 18, 2008 12:51:24 GMT -4
So now you are arguing that Saddam was an imminent threat. He was most decidedly NOT an imminent threat. He was NOT about to hurt us.
And now you are doing the same thing that President Bush did: you are linking Iraq and 9/11 when no such link existed or exists.
Nor did we seriously consider that his bluster about weaponry might have been aimed at Iran. Either way, he did not threaten us. And either way, we were completely wrong and broke into a guy's house only to find that what we thought was a bomb was actually an old suitcase with socks in it -- just to keep the bad analogy alive.
Your analogy is broken. Saddam was not in our house. He was not in our yard. He was not in the street and not even in our neighborhood. We went after the wrong guy.
The guy who broke into our house is actually living in a house next to the guy's house that we attacked. We've been so busy in the wrong house, that the actual criminal is still in that other house and we've been too distracted to go after him. We should have been expending all our resources on that other house, but we didn't because we are apparently stupid. We declared a war on terror and then attacked someone who had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, no matter what analogy you try to shoehorn him into.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 13:14:16 GMT -4
So now you are arguing that Saddam was an imminent threat. He was most decidedly NOT an imminent threat. He was NOT about to hurt us. No, I'm arguing that Saddam had the appearance of being a threat and that we had no way to determine that he wasn't without invading. Given the risk of the damage he could have done if he had actually been a threat, and the damage he definitely was doing to his own people whether he had WMDs or not, the invasion was justified. That was the whole point of my burglar analogy/hypothetical. If you know that the guy is at least definitely a burglar, and that there's a good chance that he might have a gun and be about to start killing you and your family, is it better to take defensive action, even if it will probably kill the burglar, or to try to preserve his life at the possible expense of your own and your family's? My answer is that it's better to defend your home and your family despite your uncertainty as to the exact threat the burglar poses. You know that he is a lawbreaker, he is breaking the law right now, and preserving the lives of your family therefore takes precedence over his safety. There is no link in causation. The two are linked, however, in that 9/11 made us realize the damage Iraq could do to us. It showed the U.S. was vulnerable to terrorist attack, and the measures we were using to protect ourselves had been woefully inadequate. To keep the analogy, we knew he had had bombs in there before, we didn't know what he had done with them, nobody we talked to believed he had actually gotten rid of the bombs, some of the people we talked to said he had been out shopping for more bombs reacently, and he kept acting very suspiciously about the suitcases where he had kept the bombs, and we had an agreement that we could do thorough searches for bombs that he kept actively obstructing. And to keep the analogy in line, we would have to say the guy was torturing his family in the basement and sending funds to other guys to help them build bombs. But how could we know the threat was not iminent at the time? And the whole idea that "Iraq has distracted us so much that we have made no headway against the real Al Qaeda" is also false. It might be more accurate to say that Iraq has distracted Al Qaeda so much that they've been unable to mount another strike on US soil.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 18, 2008 13:30:48 GMT -4
Well, again -- then it's onward to China, Russia, North Korea, France, Venezuela and Mexico -- who might all be at this very moment, without us knowing it, deep in planning an attack on us. How can we be sure they aren't? They all have weapons. Some have very bad weapons. Some have very bad rulers who are very bad to their people. Quick, we must invade! It is our only choice.
And it might be more accurate to note that it has cost the lives of 3926 members of the United States military (so far). Yes, that's about a thousand more than died on 9/11. That's a great way to keep US citizens safe.
Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still out there. I guess I'm just a little more pissed off about that than you are. I guess I just think they should be brought to justice a little more than you do. I don't think distracting them is enough.
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 18, 2008 13:35:55 GMT -4
Jason, regardless of what Sadaam did, it was still a foreign country. What about other dictators in the world that don't have oil? Or anything else of value...they are left alone so it seems. Do they have WMDs, support terrorism, attempted to assassinate a former US President, and are actively breaking the terms of a cease fire with the US in a recent war they lost? Saddam was a somewhat unique case. Shall we take it case-by-case? Not with me right now Jason. I'm reading "Bad Astronomy" and a few moon books. But I have no doubt that you support all the previous actions of your government. Lets leave it at that for now.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 18, 2008 13:41:44 GMT -4
Well, again -- then it's onward to China, Russia, North Korea, France, Venezuela and Mexico -- who might all be at this very moment, without us knowing it, deep in planning an attack on us. How can we be sure they aren't? They all have weapons. Some have very bad weapons. Some have very bad rulers who are very bad to their people. Quick, we must invade! It is our only choice. None of those countries are an exact match for the situation we faced in Iraq, and so you can't expect us to react to them in quite the same way. It may sound harsh to say it, but yes it is preferable that trained volunteers who are professionals be killed while actively defending people than that innocent civilians be killed. It's still a loss, but it's better than the alternative. How many attacks on America have those soldiers prevented? How many Iraqi lives have they preserved? And how many Iraqis will benefit greatly in the future by that sacrifice? We can't put a definite answer to that question because we don't know all the facts yet and the war isn't quite over yet, but it could be vast. Absolutely they should be brought to justice, and much of Al Qaeda has. We're not just ignoring the guy - he is actively being sought. Are you perhaps arguing that the troops in Iraq should be invading Pakistan looking for OBL right now?
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