New poll says most Canadians blame U.S. for 9/11 attacks
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 14 Next
hwacker @ Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:01 pm
$1:
One in five Canadians believes the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans, according to a poll released Monday.
Funny 1-5 in the last election voted for the NDP. Retard Jack is to blame for this.
Jaime_Souviens @ Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:02 pm
Calgary123 Calgary123:
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
Calgary123 Calgary123:
At the end of the day, these polls are used time and time again for many purposes. When polls are done days or even weeks before elections, they in almost every case will predict the outcome (ie. the last Conservative win here in Canada).
You can question the opinions or perspectives all you want... everyone is entitled to their own. Unfortunately, you can't argue with the results of a poll such as this.
You can question the opinions or perspectives all you want... everyone is entitled to their own. Unfortunately, you can't argue with the results of a poll such as this.
What rancid bullshit. Polls are usually very poor predictors of anything, they usually mean little more than specifically what they say, can very easily be manipulated, and are usually worthless.
I would agree that the questioning in polls can be formulated in such a way as to push out a desired result.
As far as the results being worthless? Depends on the quality of the poll. Many have been/and are used as predicters or barometers every day. Hence, their frequent use in politics as well as countless other things.
You can't dismiss the results of a poll though... just because you don't like the outcome.
No, but you can dismiss them when they're irrational.
There was a poll last week if Americans thought the war in Iraq is going well.
Now think about it, what the hell does any American know about whether a war is going well or not? You need access to reports, data, mission reports, et c.
All that poll really was about was what Americans thought, not about what was actually happening.
Of course, that was not how it was reported.
GunPlumber @ Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:16 pm
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
No, but you can dismiss them when they're irrational.
There was a poll last week if Americans thought the war in Iraq is going well.
Now think about it, what the hell does any American know about whether a war is going well or not? You need access to reports, data, mission reports, et c.
All that poll really was about was what Americans thought, not about what was actually happening.
Of course, that was not how it was reported.
You just said that the poll was conducted to reflect what Americans thought. If the poll reported what the respondents thought, how does that make the poll irrational?
Of course, the average American cannot KNOW what the real situation in Iraq is (or might be), but that is not what the poll was used to determine or reflect. You've said it yourself.
Seems like your conclusion (as a reflection of your objections) is more irrational than the reason for the poll.
Jaime_Souviens @ Mon Sep 11, 2006 8:23 pm
GunPlumber GunPlumber:
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
No, but you can dismiss them when they're irrational.
There was a poll last week if Americans thought the war in Iraq is going well.
Now think about it, what the hell does any American know about whether a war is going well or not? You need access to reports, data, mission reports, et c.
All that poll really was about was what Americans thought, not about what was actually happening.
Of course, that was not how it was reported.
You just said that the poll was conducted to reflect what Americans thought. If the poll reported what the respondents thought, how does that make the poll irrational?
Of course, the average American cannot KNOW what the real situation in Iraq is (or might be), but that is not what the poll was used to determine or reflect. You've said it yourself.
Seems like your conclusion (as a reflection of your objections) is more irrational than the reason for the poll.
Um... trouble with the obvious today, eh?
Tricks @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 4:39 am
Calgary123 Calgary123:
Tricks Tricks:
Calgary123 Calgary123:
At the end of the day, these polls are used time and time again for many purposes. When polls are done days or even weeks before elections, they in almost every case will predict the outcome (ie. the last Conservative win here in Canada).
Yet it was off.$1:
You can question the opinions or perspectives all you want... everyone is entitled to their own. Unfortunately, you can't argue with the results of a poll such as this.
No, But will it change my opinion? No. Will it change anyone elses opinion? I hope not, because then they become sheep.$1:
Yet it was off.
Really? Last time I checked we had a conservative government in office.
You feeling alright tonight Tricks? Your seem to be a bit off your game tonight.
BartSimpson @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:12 am
$1:
Are Canadians Stupid ?
National Review ^ | 09/12/2006 | Tom Nichols
Are Canadians Stupid?
They're Not getting it…
By Tom Nichols
I don’t know quite how to ask this question, but I suspect that a lot of Americans are about to, so I’ll put it as directly as I can: Are Canadians stupid?
A recent poll found that a majority of Canadians, including a whopping three-quarters of Quebecers, believe that U.S. foreign policy was the root cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This shouldn’t be so shocking; their previous prime minister, Jean Chretien, said practically the same thing a few years back (which I wrote about in NRO here.) In other words, they believe that the Americans brought 9/11 on themselves.
What makes this such a jaw-dropping finding, and prompts my question about the intelligence of the average Canadian in general (and of Quebecers in particular), is that it comes only a few months after Canadian authorities broke up a conspiracy among Islamic extremists in Canada in which a dozen men and five minors were arrested. They were apparently planning to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian parliament, storm the national public-broadcasting building…oh, and they were going to behead the Canadian prime minister, too .
How can anyone in Canada, knowing this — and I assume it was news published there both in English and French — still believe that foreign policies, American or any other, have much to do with terrorism? How many such plots need to be broken up before the Canadians, or at least some Canadians, get the point? Do these same Canadians who think U.S. foreign policy is generating terrorism also think that Canada’s foreign policy would be to blame if their prime minister were decapitated on live television? Canada, after all, has over the past several years gone to no small lengths (especially under Chretien) to distance itself from the United States, and publicly opposed the war in Iraq. (As did Germany, by the way…but that didn’t stop Islamic terrorists from plotting to blow up two trains in Germany this summer, either.)
So let me for a moment address our Canadian friends (and I swear, I still do still think of them as friends), and try to state the obvious one more time. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French, but I’m sure some helpful Canadian colleague will translate this for me: It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.
Is that clear enough, or will it finally sink in only when pieces of the Canadian parliament are falling out of the sky in burning flinders?
On the other hand, let’s not be too hard on our friends to the north. We have plenty of people down here in the Lower 48 who believe the same silliness about how this or that policy — and, of course, support for the Israelis — caused 9/11. (A small number of Americans are even so reality-deprived that they think the Bush administration pulled off 9/11, despite tapes shown this week on al-Jazeera of some of the hijackers meeting with Osama bin Laden and training for the attack.) And let’s face it: If we’re going to get into a “who can say stupider things than whom” contest with the Canadians, we have to acknowledge that Michael Moore is an American, which would give us an unfair head start right away.
The real problem here is that the Canadian poll results are just another example of a kind of denial that has set in among certain people, both inside and outside of the United States, over the past five years. These people desperately want to find some reason, some issue that can be solved, as the mainspring behind Islamic terrorism. Otherwise, they would have to confront the terrible reality that there is nothing we can give the terrorists that will stop the killing. We can change our policies, but we can’t change our culture or beliefs—or at least change them enough to suit the Islamic fascists who would turn the world into one big Taliban-run Afghanistan if they could. And so rather than face the fact that we’re at war with a relentless enemy with whom no negotiated peace is possible, such people retreat into fantasies about how the whole thing could be settled somehow if we could only figure out how to stop doing whatever it is they don’t like.
Blaming America, and American policies, might bring many Canadians a sense of comfort (and to some, no doubt, that smug feeling of superiority that too many Canadians seem to exhibit regarding Americans), but it is a foolish and only temporary escape from reality. The terrorists are going to continue to try to kill Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Australians, and anyone else they can get their hands on who won’t bow to their impossible demands.
Instead of ignorantly pointing fingers at U.S. foreign policy, the Canadians — citizens of our sister nation — should join the Americans in an attempt to lead the Western community in defending our common values of tolerance and liberalism, extolling them in one voice in the face of our would-be oppressors, and cooperating with each other to find, capture — and if need be, kill — the kind of people who would blow innocent men, women, and children to pieces for the sake of their own demented ideology. Any other course of action would be…well, stupid.
---------------------------------------------
— Tom Nichols is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. The views expressed are his own.
National Review ^ | 09/12/2006 | Tom Nichols
Are Canadians Stupid?
They're Not getting it…
By Tom Nichols
I don’t know quite how to ask this question, but I suspect that a lot of Americans are about to, so I’ll put it as directly as I can: Are Canadians stupid?
A recent poll found that a majority of Canadians, including a whopping three-quarters of Quebecers, believe that U.S. foreign policy was the root cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This shouldn’t be so shocking; their previous prime minister, Jean Chretien, said practically the same thing a few years back (which I wrote about in NRO here.) In other words, they believe that the Americans brought 9/11 on themselves.
What makes this such a jaw-dropping finding, and prompts my question about the intelligence of the average Canadian in general (and of Quebecers in particular), is that it comes only a few months after Canadian authorities broke up a conspiracy among Islamic extremists in Canada in which a dozen men and five minors were arrested. They were apparently planning to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian parliament, storm the national public-broadcasting building…oh, and they were going to behead the Canadian prime minister, too .
How can anyone in Canada, knowing this — and I assume it was news published there both in English and French — still believe that foreign policies, American or any other, have much to do with terrorism? How many such plots need to be broken up before the Canadians, or at least some Canadians, get the point? Do these same Canadians who think U.S. foreign policy is generating terrorism also think that Canada’s foreign policy would be to blame if their prime minister were decapitated on live television? Canada, after all, has over the past several years gone to no small lengths (especially under Chretien) to distance itself from the United States, and publicly opposed the war in Iraq. (As did Germany, by the way…but that didn’t stop Islamic terrorists from plotting to blow up two trains in Germany this summer, either.)
So let me for a moment address our Canadian friends (and I swear, I still do still think of them as friends), and try to state the obvious one more time. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French, but I’m sure some helpful Canadian colleague will translate this for me: It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.
Is that clear enough, or will it finally sink in only when pieces of the Canadian parliament are falling out of the sky in burning flinders?
On the other hand, let’s not be too hard on our friends to the north. We have plenty of people down here in the Lower 48 who believe the same silliness about how this or that policy — and, of course, support for the Israelis — caused 9/11. (A small number of Americans are even so reality-deprived that they think the Bush administration pulled off 9/11, despite tapes shown this week on al-Jazeera of some of the hijackers meeting with Osama bin Laden and training for the attack.) And let’s face it: If we’re going to get into a “who can say stupider things than whom” contest with the Canadians, we have to acknowledge that Michael Moore is an American, which would give us an unfair head start right away.
The real problem here is that the Canadian poll results are just another example of a kind of denial that has set in among certain people, both inside and outside of the United States, over the past five years. These people desperately want to find some reason, some issue that can be solved, as the mainspring behind Islamic terrorism. Otherwise, they would have to confront the terrible reality that there is nothing we can give the terrorists that will stop the killing. We can change our policies, but we can’t change our culture or beliefs—or at least change them enough to suit the Islamic fascists who would turn the world into one big Taliban-run Afghanistan if they could. And so rather than face the fact that we’re at war with a relentless enemy with whom no negotiated peace is possible, such people retreat into fantasies about how the whole thing could be settled somehow if we could only figure out how to stop doing whatever it is they don’t like.
Blaming America, and American policies, might bring many Canadians a sense of comfort (and to some, no doubt, that smug feeling of superiority that too many Canadians seem to exhibit regarding Americans), but it is a foolish and only temporary escape from reality. The terrorists are going to continue to try to kill Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Australians, and anyone else they can get their hands on who won’t bow to their impossible demands.
Instead of ignorantly pointing fingers at U.S. foreign policy, the Canadians — citizens of our sister nation — should join the Americans in an attempt to lead the Western community in defending our common values of tolerance and liberalism, extolling them in one voice in the face of our would-be oppressors, and cooperating with each other to find, capture — and if need be, kill — the kind of people who would blow innocent men, women, and children to pieces for the sake of their own demented ideology. Any other course of action would be…well, stupid.
---------------------------------------------
— Tom Nichols is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. The views expressed are his own.
Persiana @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:15 am
I think saying that "Canadians" blame "U.S." for attacks is a little severe. That reads very much a citizen-citizen blame, and I don't think its that. I have heard some discomforting things though about Bush's ties to the Bin Laden family prior to his winning the election, and I've also heard about how when planes were grounded, they were flown out of the U.S. Probably the one thing that makes me wonder the most about would be the Pentagon crash & the question that was raised about "Where is the plane?" Not enough is known either way though IMO for me to really have a set firm "belief" about it either way.
Scape @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:27 am
Olbermann's Comment for the anniversary of 9/11
Tricks @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:49 am
Holy fack I am an idiot. I took this poll, as how Calgary posted it "Canadians blame U.S. for 9/11", that they pulled it off. Not that their foreign policies brought it upon them selves. Shit, I am a dumbass 
This poll is probably right on then. Though what the writer of the Article above should know, not everyone is this stupid. We also don't all speak french. This guy uses his own anger over this poll to take a shot at Canadians in general, and not just the few people *cough* NDP *cough* who are crazy enough to think like this. So while I agree that there are some dumbass people who will take forever to realise that terrorists want to destroy our way of life, not all Canadians think like that.
GunPlumber @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:49 am
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
GunPlumber GunPlumber:
Jaime_Souviens Jaime_Souviens:
No, but you can dismiss them when they're irrational.
There was a poll last week if Americans thought the war in Iraq is going well.
Now think about it, what the hell does any American know about whether a war is going well or not? You need access to reports, data, mission reports, et c.
All that poll really was about was what Americans thought, not about what was actually happening.
Of course, that was not how it was reported.
You just said that the poll was conducted to reflect what Americans thought. If the poll reported what the respondents thought, how does that make the poll irrational?
Of course, the average American cannot KNOW what the real situation in Iraq is (or might be), but that is not what the poll was used to determine or reflect. You've said it yourself.
Seems like your conclusion (as a reflection of your objections) is more irrational than the reason for the poll.
Um... trouble with the obvious today, eh?
None at all, actually.
What IS plainly obvious is that you cannot address any argument head-on. Your trick bag consists of confronting any - and all - arguments with deviation(s) from the main points, after which you engage in circular argumentation with the intention of returning to the original point of divergence, hoping to shift the focus to it. Only you never arrive back at the exact point of divergence because your path is not a circle on a common plane but an ever-downward spiral. All the while, you argue only for the sake of argument, while patting yourself on the back, convinced that your irrelevant arguments are adding something significant to the debate.
Is THAT obvious enough for you?
EHHHH?
Tricks @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 7:53 am
Something else I noticed after reading the article more carefully, is that it only says the Quebec and Ontario position. Since whne is that what all Canadians think? Take A) the most anti-american place in the Canada, and B) Ontario with the likes of miller and Mcsquinty in power, of course you are going to get dumbasses. What abou the rest of Canada? Were they polled? I doubt it.
GunPlumber @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:08 am
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
$1:
Are Canadians Stupid ?
National Review ^ | 09/12/2006 | Tom Nichols
Are Canadians Stupid?
They're Not getting it…
By Tom Nichols
I don’t know quite how to ask this question, but I suspect that a lot of Americans are about to, so I’ll put it as directly as I can: Are Canadians stupid?
A recent poll found that a majority of Canadians, including a whopping three-quarters of Quebecers, believe that U.S. foreign policy was the root cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This shouldn’t be so shocking; their previous prime minister, Jean Chretien, said practically the same thing a few years back (which I wrote about in NRO here.) In other words, they believe that the Americans brought 9/11 on themselves.
What makes this such a jaw-dropping finding, and prompts my question about the intelligence of the average Canadian in general (and of Quebecers in particular), is that it comes only a few months after Canadian authorities broke up a conspiracy among Islamic extremists in Canada in which a dozen men and five minors were arrested. They were apparently planning to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian parliament, storm the national public-broadcasting building…oh, and they were going to behead the Canadian prime minister, too .
How can anyone in Canada, knowing this — and I assume it was news published there both in English and French — still believe that foreign policies, American or any other, have much to do with terrorism? How many such plots need to be broken up before the Canadians, or at least some Canadians, get the point? Do these same Canadians who think U.S. foreign policy is generating terrorism also think that Canada’s foreign policy would be to blame if their prime minister were decapitated on live television? Canada, after all, has over the past several years gone to no small lengths (especially under Chretien) to distance itself from the United States, and publicly opposed the war in Iraq. (As did Germany, by the way…but that didn’t stop Islamic terrorists from plotting to blow up two trains in Germany this summer, either.)
So let me for a moment address our Canadian friends (and I swear, I still do still think of them as friends), and try to state the obvious one more time. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French, but I’m sure some helpful Canadian colleague will translate this for me: It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.
Is that clear enough, or will it finally sink in only when pieces of the Canadian parliament are falling out of the sky in burning flinders?
On the other hand, let’s not be too hard on our friends to the north. We have plenty of people down here in the Lower 48 who believe the same silliness about how this or that policy — and, of course, support for the Israelis — caused 9/11. (A small number of Americans are even so reality-deprived that they think the Bush administration pulled off 9/11, despite tapes shown this week on al-Jazeera of some of the hijackers meeting with Osama bin Laden and training for the attack.) And let’s face it: If we’re going to get into a “who can say stupider things than whom” contest with the Canadians, we have to acknowledge that Michael Moore is an American, which would give us an unfair head start right away.
The real problem here is that the Canadian poll results are just another example of a kind of denial that has set in among certain people, both inside and outside of the United States, over the past five years. These people desperately want to find some reason, some issue that can be solved, as the mainspring behind Islamic terrorism. Otherwise, they would have to confront the terrible reality that there is nothing we can give the terrorists that will stop the killing. We can change our policies, but we can’t change our culture or beliefs—or at least change them enough to suit the Islamic fascists who would turn the world into one big Taliban-run Afghanistan if they could. And so rather than face the fact that we’re at war with a relentless enemy with whom no negotiated peace is possible, such people retreat into fantasies about how the whole thing could be settled somehow if we could only figure out how to stop doing whatever it is they don’t like.
Blaming America, and American policies, might bring many Canadians a sense of comfort (and to some, no doubt, that smug feeling of superiority that too many Canadians seem to exhibit regarding Americans), but it is a foolish and only temporary escape from reality. The terrorists are going to continue to try to kill Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Australians, and anyone else they can get their hands on who won’t bow to their impossible demands.
Instead of ignorantly pointing fingers at U.S. foreign policy, the Canadians — citizens of our sister nation — should join the Americans in an attempt to lead the Western community in defending our common values of tolerance and liberalism, extolling them in one voice in the face of our would-be oppressors, and cooperating with each other to find, capture — and if need be, kill — the kind of people who would blow innocent men, women, and children to pieces for the sake of their own demented ideology. Any other course of action would be…well, stupid.
---------------------------------------------
— Tom Nichols is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. The views expressed are his own.
National Review ^ | 09/12/2006 | Tom Nichols
Are Canadians Stupid?
They're Not getting it…
By Tom Nichols
I don’t know quite how to ask this question, but I suspect that a lot of Americans are about to, so I’ll put it as directly as I can: Are Canadians stupid?
A recent poll found that a majority of Canadians, including a whopping three-quarters of Quebecers, believe that U.S. foreign policy was the root cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This shouldn’t be so shocking; their previous prime minister, Jean Chretien, said practically the same thing a few years back (which I wrote about in NRO here.) In other words, they believe that the Americans brought 9/11 on themselves.
What makes this such a jaw-dropping finding, and prompts my question about the intelligence of the average Canadian in general (and of Quebecers in particular), is that it comes only a few months after Canadian authorities broke up a conspiracy among Islamic extremists in Canada in which a dozen men and five minors were arrested. They were apparently planning to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian parliament, storm the national public-broadcasting building…oh, and they were going to behead the Canadian prime minister, too .
How can anyone in Canada, knowing this — and I assume it was news published there both in English and French — still believe that foreign policies, American or any other, have much to do with terrorism? How many such plots need to be broken up before the Canadians, or at least some Canadians, get the point? Do these same Canadians who think U.S. foreign policy is generating terrorism also think that Canada’s foreign policy would be to blame if their prime minister were decapitated on live television? Canada, after all, has over the past several years gone to no small lengths (especially under Chretien) to distance itself from the United States, and publicly opposed the war in Iraq. (As did Germany, by the way…but that didn’t stop Islamic terrorists from plotting to blow up two trains in Germany this summer, either.)
So let me for a moment address our Canadian friends (and I swear, I still do still think of them as friends), and try to state the obvious one more time. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French, but I’m sure some helpful Canadian colleague will translate this for me: It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.
Is that clear enough, or will it finally sink in only when pieces of the Canadian parliament are falling out of the sky in burning flinders?
On the other hand, let’s not be too hard on our friends to the north. We have plenty of people down here in the Lower 48 who believe the same silliness about how this or that policy — and, of course, support for the Israelis — caused 9/11. (A small number of Americans are even so reality-deprived that they think the Bush administration pulled off 9/11, despite tapes shown this week on al-Jazeera of some of the hijackers meeting with Osama bin Laden and training for the attack.) And let’s face it: If we’re going to get into a “who can say stupider things than whom” contest with the Canadians, we have to acknowledge that Michael Moore is an American, which would give us an unfair head start right away.
The real problem here is that the Canadian poll results are just another example of a kind of denial that has set in among certain people, both inside and outside of the United States, over the past five years. These people desperately want to find some reason, some issue that can be solved, as the mainspring behind Islamic terrorism. Otherwise, they would have to confront the terrible reality that there is nothing we can give the terrorists that will stop the killing. We can change our policies, but we can’t change our culture or beliefs—or at least change them enough to suit the Islamic fascists who would turn the world into one big Taliban-run Afghanistan if they could. And so rather than face the fact that we’re at war with a relentless enemy with whom no negotiated peace is possible, such people retreat into fantasies about how the whole thing could be settled somehow if we could only figure out how to stop doing whatever it is they don’t like.
Blaming America, and American policies, might bring many Canadians a sense of comfort (and to some, no doubt, that smug feeling of superiority that too many Canadians seem to exhibit regarding Americans), but it is a foolish and only temporary escape from reality. The terrorists are going to continue to try to kill Americans, Canadians, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Australians, and anyone else they can get their hands on who won’t bow to their impossible demands.
Instead of ignorantly pointing fingers at U.S. foreign policy, the Canadians — citizens of our sister nation — should join the Americans in an attempt to lead the Western community in defending our common values of tolerance and liberalism, extolling them in one voice in the face of our would-be oppressors, and cooperating with each other to find, capture — and if need be, kill — the kind of people who would blow innocent men, women, and children to pieces for the sake of their own demented ideology. Any other course of action would be…well, stupid.
---------------------------------------------
— Tom Nichols is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. The views expressed are his own.
So, Bart,... since you pasted this article without commenting on it, I'd like to ask: did you put it here only to spur debate or because you actually believe in (or agree with) the contents and conclusion of the article?
BartSimpson @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:18 am
GunPlumber GunPlumber:
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
GunPlumber GunPlumber:
So, let me pose a series of related questions:
1. What official reasons did Saddam give for the invasion of Kuwait, and in light of the post-war investigations, did his complaints have merit of being factual accounts of offences committed by the Kuwaiti government against Iraq.
1. What official reasons did Saddam give for the invasion of Kuwait, and in light of the post-war investigations, did his complaints have merit of being factual accounts of offences committed by the Kuwaiti government against Iraq.
Hussein claimed Kuwait as Iraq's 19th province and, ergo, there was no negotiating with Kuwait as the official position was that it had no right to exist. Much the same as China's relationship toTaiwan.
$1:
2. Did Hussein seek to resolve the disputes by peaceful means, and did he expend all possible diplomatic options, before seeking to resolve the disputes by miltary means?
Nope.
$1:
3. If the Kuwaitis were guilty of the offences that Hussein had accused them of, did they in any way signal that they would cease and desist from the illegal course of actions they had undertaken and did they indicate they would make reparations for the damage and theft which Hussein alleged they had perpetrated? Or did they avoid and rebuff any attempts (by the Iraqis) at finding a diplomatic solution?
Kuwait did absolutely nothing to Iraq. Nothing.
$1:
4. Did any party, (like say,...um maybe,... the U.S. Governmant) outside of the dispute, encourage either the Kuwaitis to avoid a diplomatic solution or the counsel Iraqis to pursue a military one?
What diplomatic solution can there be when the issue is one's national existence?
$1:
5. If you answered correctly to all of the above questions, congratulations!!
Now for bonus points, we pose one final question from the "morality" category.
If the disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were transposed to North America, with Canada playing the part of the poor aggrieved victim (Kuwait) and the U.S.A playing the part of the megalomaniacal villain, would you have any hesitation in justifying an invasion and conquest of the former by the latter?
Now for bonus points, we pose one final question from the "morality" category.
If the disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were transposed to North America, with Canada playing the part of the poor aggrieved victim (Kuwait) and the U.S.A playing the part of the megalomaniacal villain, would you have any hesitation in justifying an invasion and conquest of the former by the latter?
This is a multifaceted question so let me address it thusly:
A) Canada is an ally of the USA and a long-time friend and that makes the question moot on its face.
B) The situation does not compare because there has never been an argument that Canada was once US territory as it is true that Kuwait and Iraq had been conjoined in the past under several governments and empires not the least of which was the United Kingdom.
C) I would refuse orders to participate in an invasion of Canada as an openly hostile act.
D) In the event that the US was co-opted by your "megalomaniacal villain" who wanted to invade Canada as an imperial pursuit I would have to take up arms to depose that government and restore the Constitution that I have sworn allegiance to more times than I can recall.
E) If needed, I would serve alongside Canadians to defend Canada and hopefully free the USA from such tyranny.
Well, that's amazing! You scored a perfect zero for five. Can't say that I'm totally surprised.
1. Hussein claimed:
- that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had both contracted to have them protected by the Iraqis from Shia fundamentalist revolutionaries (i.e., Iranians). We know this is true because the documents have been produced to prove it. In Kuwaits case, the amount of indebtedness equalled more than $4 billion dollars,... in 1990. When the Iraqis went to collect the debt (and to resolve the second issue), the Kuwaitis would not even discuss the issue, refusing to meet even with Hussein himself. They foolishly believed that: after a brutal eight year war with Iran (i.e., protecting Kuwait from Shiite revolutionaries) that Iraq had neither the military power nor the collective will to pursue the military option.
- that the Kuwaitis were drilling diagonally along their northern border and tapping into Iraq's southern oilfields. This is why fleeing Iraqi troops set Kuwaiti oil rigs ablaze as they were exiting Kuwait. After the "Gulf War", wild-catters (like Alberta's "Red" Adair) were sent in to extinguish the fires and they found - surprise, surprise- that the Kuwaiti wells were extracting oil from Iraq's southern fields via diagonal drilling.
Hussein NEVER made the claim that the invasion of Kuwait was justified "because they were Iraq's 19th province". That is a claim which originated during Britain's occupation of Iraq, and was discarded during the early years of Baathist rule. The claim was resurfaced by the same people who brought you the "babies taken from incubators" charade, to divert your attention from the real issues that led to Kuwait's invasion. It was, and is, a red herring. And apparently some people are still taking the bait.
Wanna do some research and perhaps change your answers to questions 2 - 5?
I did my research. I was there. Bum leg and everything I stayed in KKMC when the Iraqis rolled in and spotted them and as they retreated I introduced an Iraqi brigadier to Allah (and got my DSM for putting a .50 through his chest at just over 3,000 meters - I was aiming at his head so I personally consider this a "miss"). Subsequently I went along for a ride with an Army unit and got to see the liberation of Kuwait City. The Iraqis did, indeed, loot the place including the local hospitals.
The Iraqis made up a lot of BS to 'justify' their actions but Saddam was quite clear before Kuwait was invaded that it had no right to exist. The official map of Iraq from 1983 to 2003 included Kuwait and did not recognize any international border between the two countries.
The drilling issue claim was irrelevant because when Iraq went before the OAS in 1990 to present this charge the first question they got from the Bahraini delegate was, "Is Iraq recognizing an international border between itself and Kuwait?"
The complaint was immediately withdrawn.
So it stands that for an Iraqi complaint about the Kuwaitis illegally drilling across the border to stand then the Iraqis must have had to recognize that border (which they never did) so the claim is irrelevant.
Any and all other Iraqi complaints about Kuwait are also irrelevant as for those complaints to have any legitmacy Iraq would first have to recognize Kuwait.
BartSimpson @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:25 am
GunPlumber GunPlumber:
So, Bart,... since you pasted this article without commenting on it, I'd like to ask: did you put it here only to spur debate or because you actually believe in (or agree with) the contents and conclusion of the article?
I posted it so that an American response to the CBC poll could be heard. I also elected not to comment on it as I did not want it to be "spun" by my words.
I try to be fair once in a while...(don't tell anyone as that ruin my rep as a right wing reactionary and I kind of like that medal!).
GunPlumber @ Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:27 am
Tricks Tricks:
Something else I noticed after reading the article more carefully, is that it only says the Quebec and Ontario position. Since whne is that what all Canadians think? Take A) the most anti-american place in the Canada, and B) Ontario with the likes of miller and Mcsquinty in power, of course you are going to get dumbasses. What abou the rest of Canada? Were they polled? I doubt it.
A very good question. I read the CBC article too, but couldn't extrapolate the logic or find the supporting evidence that lead them to declare "New poll says most Canadians blame U.S. for 9/11 attacks". For now, it appears the CBC interpreted the results of the poll to draw some attention.
I went to the Leger Marketing website to try and see who had been polled and what question(s) were used. Unfortunately, this poll doesn't appear anywhere that I can see.
Maybe we could just make a deal with "Islamic terrorists". Bomb the CBC and we'll leave you alone (but leave the Jazz programming intact, puhleeze)!
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 14 Next