Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

If we take support to mean 'agree with' or 'encourage' then I think your logic is flawed. By not intervening does not necessarily mean that we agree with or encourage. There could be any number of reasons why a nation can't take action or we can't stop a kid attack another kid. For instance fear for your own safety, not having the capacity to name just two.

By not doing anything may mean you haven't affected the result, but this most definitely doesn't mean you supported that result.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Why do I need to to be in Iraq to play my part in bringing the torture and killings to an end?

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Yeh - sorry, mate, I was replying to the posts you had posted, not the posts you were re-posting while I was posting a reply to your original posts - so, I would have found it difficult to know that you had edited your posts before I hit the reply button. :monkey:

"However, in another dimension, they might not have been" - excellent, I must remember to use that one sometime - "OK, Hitler was evil, invaded countries, and instigated policies that led to the death of sixty two million people, but in another dimension, he was really, really nice, and founded Amnesty International". ;)

As you said, I think we must agree to differ on this, as we are probably taking up too much server space with this :(

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

By doing nothing we are sending a message that such behaviour is acceptable.
Phoning the police from round the corner and letting them know what is going on so that they can intervene is doing something, how is the attacker going to know it was you?

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Wouldn't you have to "walk on by" to get to the phone around the corner?

Two good quotes from a bbc news webpage of the time - doesn't sound like TB thinks the protestors were "implicitly" supporting Saddam.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2773771.stm

"Mr Blair said he "should and does listen to the thousands that marched on Saturday" in anti-war protests. He insisted most of the marchers were not against war in all circumstances but were opposed to a war that was "rushed or unnecessary".

And a quick quote from Charles Kennedy on the same page, which (imho) think is quite relevant considering some of the comments made in this thread.
""The prime minister implies - in making his moral case for regime change - that anyone who is not yet persuaded of the need for war is somehow less moral than he is.
"A lot of people in this country will resent that implication."

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Possibly .... however, should I not walk on by, there are a range of options open to me, 'military action' (i.e. setting upon the attacker) being just one of them. Calling for a diplomatic solution is another option. It's unreasonable to paint those who called for diplomacy as 'walking on by' just because the solution they support differs from yours.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Depends which corner the phone is around ;)
The fact is, you've actually done something.
If you walk on by and then go about your business without making any effort to have the attack stopped, you're sending a message that the attack is acceptable.

Similarly, if the only way to oust Saddam was through war, and you won the protest against the war, you can't then say "oh but we didn't want to keep Saddam in power"
By stopping the war, you are accepting that Saddam remained in power.
People may not like to admit that, but its true.
If having Saddam in power was unacceptable, then the war would not have been protested.
It works like this, the anti-war people would have accepted Saddam remaining in power, as long as it meant we didn't go to war. There was no other way to remove Saddam, diplomacy wouldn't have worked, and interal revolt was a failure.
So for them to say that they want saddam out, but won't accept the only way to do it, means that they therefore accept that Saddam would have remained in power.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

And herein lies the rub imo. In Punky's statement, as well as the Polaris example, there is an implicit assumption that the protestors wanted to do nothing. I imagine there will have been loads who felt that other options had not yet been exhausted. It's not a binary distinction.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

How exactly would diplomacy have removed Saddam?
"Hi Saddam, its Kofi here, yes, his father, would you mind stepping down and not letting your sons take over? No? Oh ok, we're angry by that, so we'll send you a letter telling you how angry we are, what do you think of that? Why are you laughing?"

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Dude, chill out. I wasn't saying it was your fault. Also, you don't have to be nasty either.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

thats it.

---------- Post added at 16:07 ---------- Previous post was at 16:05 ----------

says the man who falsely accused millions of decent europeans and indeed americans of supporting saddam ;-)

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

No there isn't.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

You make a perfectly good point but it doesn't answer mine. Just because someone takes an action you disagree with, does not mean they are doing nothing. You cannot accuse those who favoured diplomacy of 'walking on by'.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Says the man who refuses to read my posts.

Re: Saddam To Be Hanged
 

Diplomacy which kept Saddam in power where he could kill and starve Iraqi's?

To try and resolve a problem with an inefectual solution is like tackling the attacker in the street by tying your shoelaces then going home.