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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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  • Who cares if any dictator wants to slaughter thousands of their own people. Who cares if that dictator takes your daughter beats her head in with a hammer and then puts her on your doorstep as a warning. That is their country. We shouldn't bother with them.

    • Yes, which is why we're making such a big effort in Darfur, and practically all of Africa.

      I could have sworn we went to Iraq to find WMD. I didn't realize it was all for humanitarian causes.

      • Strange how Bush and Blair have failed to take any action against far worse junta's and dictators accross asia, russia and china. Iraq was a tinpot dicatorship that the CIA lost control of, it was also too close to Israel, Kuwait and Saudi - nobody cares about junta's and dictatorship's that aren't sitting on a shedload of oil or next to key allies of the Bush Administration. Just look at Pakistan - a key allie in the war on terror, but of course it used to be a democracy and is now ruled by a military ju
        --

        @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
        print reverse @JAPH;
        • This is a terribly irrational argument. At best, it's a straw man, as no one in the administration ever said the only reason for going into Iraq was to get rid of a bad guy. It's also because Iraq is of obvious strategic importance, economically, militarily, and otherwise, and also because Islamic radicalism is a real threat to us at home, and Iraq's democratization will help us combat that.

          But perhaps worse than the straw man posed is the direct implication that if you don't try to help EVERYONE that needs it, you can't justify helping SOMEONE that needs it.

          As to Pakistan, of course we would like democracy there, but more important than democracy is stability. Many times, the US government said it would accept a government in Iraq that was not a democracy so long as it recognized certain rights of its people and wasn't hostile to its neighbors or the West. That is far more important than democracy in the short term.

          And the Dawkins article itself ... it shows why most people should stick to what they know. Dawkins doesn't know jack about political philosophy, and the reason most people didn't hear about this article is because it is not worthy of note.

          For example, he wrote, "Al Gore's majority in the country, reinforcing his majority in the electoral college but for dead-heated Florida, would have led a just and unbiased supreme court to award him the tie-breaker."

          The problem is that there is no such thing as a popular vote for President in the U.S. Gore did not have a "majority in the country" because no such thing exists. And to award him the "tie-breaker" because he is leading before Florida is counted would have been to deny Florida its rightful representation in the electoral college, which is a punishment to be handed out (cf. Amendment XIV, Section 2). It would have been unlawful for the court to do so barring evidence of Constitutional misconduct.

          And so Dawkins' argument boils down to, "I dislike the result the law produced, which only shows there is something wrong with the law." He says following the law gave the victory to someone who didn't deserve it, but his evidence is based only on his opinion that Gore was the better candidate, and a misrepresentation of the facts.

          He's about as astute on these points as a random actor from Hollywood, and about as worthwhile to listen to.

          And as to his forecasting of Bush being a dream for Bin Laden ... that's surely been proven wrong thus far. There's a long way to go, but democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, the arrest and killing of many insurgents, a more moderate Palestinian leadership, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Pakistan and other nations cracking down on radical Islamism, more democratic rumblings in Iran and LIbya and Egypt and Lebanon ... this is a dream for Bin Laden? On what planet?
          • "This is a terribly irrational argument. At best, it's a straw man, as no one in the administration ever said the only reason for going into Iraq was to get rid of a bad guy. "

            That's funny as that has been the post-facto argument from Bush and Blair has been exactly that. The goal of regime change was obvious before and after the war, actually rebuilding a stable iraq was probably a lower priority than Halliburton and Others paydays, getting elected and striking back after the humiliation and incompetance
            --

            @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
            print reverse @JAPH;
            • That's funny as that has been the post-facto argument from Bush and Blair has been exactly that.

              You're absolutely wrong. The stated purpose of going into Iraq was never, ever, merely one thing. You hear what you want instead of what is actually being said.

              The invasion of iraq and the truly fucking ridiculous management after victory was announced has done the opposite - there is now terrorism where there was none, there is anti-western feelings where there was none, and there is increased radicalism.
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