Our differences seem to rest on your belief that bluffing is a morally correct modus operandi in diplomacy.
You have not understood my post to you. I thought I made it very clear that we have three separate points of difference and they are all exclusive.
1) Bluffing is a part of diplomacy, and I do argue it can be a valuable part of diplomacy.
2) REGARDLESS OF IF BLUFFING IS ACCEPTABLE: The UN was not necessarily bluffing. As I have said, I would have voted the same way and I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN BLUFFING.
3) REGARDLESS OF IF BLUFFING IS ACCEPTABLE: The US (and specifically Bush) cannot be hoisted as some sort of straight guy that showed up the weakness of the UN and stuck to some moral center.
Bluffing is deliberately perpetrating a falsehood, & is lying. I cannot agree that a global political machine that is going to have integrity & garner respect
Well I guess if you have the moral rule that "lying" is always wrong, then you would find bluffing to be wrong.
That does not erase its practical uses, even for a global entity. It does have the risk of being called and thereby losing integrity and respect in the eyes of others. That is why the key to using it is to use it wisely and not get it called.
However, your hyperbolic statements of what happens when a bluff gets called are unjustified. What counts is that one does not bluff about the most serious matters effecting one's security, or at the very least to follow through when it does effect a nation's security. If you would please outline how (even if this was a bluff) it effected anyone's national security that would be great.
Iraq was a nonthreat, that's why other nations did not care (bluffing or no).
Furthermore there are worse ways to lose integrity and respect. One can claim intelligence that one does not have and have it revealed. One can invade unilaterally and kill a bunch of innocent people with no real plan for afterward. One can invade in such a carelesss fashion that one incites more people against you AND spread materials that can be used against you. One can invade lesser enemies, wasting great amounts of resources and tying up one's military, while allowing more important enemies to escape.
Or do you really believe getting caught in a bluff is somehow worse than the above?
France et al were nowhere to be seen in any of them. Please don’t delude yourself that France had any intention of taking any form of limited action whatsoever in lieu of invasion.
I'm not sure what your point is with this. None of this indicates a bluff, perhaps merely that the threshold had not been reached where they believed action was necessary.
And whether France was bluffing does not indicate that others within the UN were.
And it may be pointed out the France has been involved in missions the US would not go into.
Talk is cheap in the UN.
I outlined the reasons they may have done nothing during the 90's to be stronger about Iraq. It was small fry and they had bigger issues. That happens to everyone, including nations.
Can I remind you that most of your fellow citizens were against the invasion. Were they somehow duped by the French or something?
Saying Bush rushed to war is counterfactual & nave. Resolution 687 was 12 years old when Iraq was reinvaded.
Nice try. Others have already explained the matter to you, but let me try again.
WAR was not mandated by any of those resolutions. Even if WAR was an option that was ALLOWED, it was not necessarily the ONLY or BEST SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM.
Bush was NOT president during those twelve years. He entered office with hawk advisors that claimed we should while AT THE SAME TIME ADMITTING that IT POSED NO THREAT TO THE US. If you can wrap your head around that, maybe you can start figuring out what happened.
Once he entered office I cannot say whether he definitely had it in his head to go to war, but he was certainly itchy for a reason. He used 9/11 as a pretext. He RUSHED to war at that point. He went from arguing there was no reason to invade, to we must because Iraq has WMDs in a very short order with NO ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE.
He did not prepare the international community, he did not prepare the US public, he did not prepare the military, he did not prepare adequate plans for dealing with Iraq in the aftermath.
A WAR is a BIG THING. One does not rush into it unless it is necessary. He could have waited for more consensus. Hell, he COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE waited until he was done with Afghanistan and AQ.
Saying there were resolutions 12 years old, so he should have invaded, really is the naive position. As it is... well wait a second...
And saying Bush didn’t show an inadequacy in the UN is also counterfactual & nave. That members of the UN bluffed & were called on this, is an inadequacy. Bluffing is lying. Or is lying adequate, these days?
I have given you reasons for why they were not necessarily bluffing, not to mention why Bush was not necessarily proving anything about the UN, and all you have given me is "France sux" and a reassertion of your original position.
How about dealing with the arguments I gave you? This whole discussion has been so much beneath your usual quality it is amazing. I don't care if you disagree with me, but at least pick up your game.
Why do you keep mentioning vetoes? Resolution 687 was passed unanimously. I fail to see what the veto has to do with rebutting my argument where no vetoes were involved.
I am not sure which case you are talking about as I mentioned vetos more than once.
If you mean the threatened Veto by France, that is what the US claimed would happen and it would only be France. That's when Bush WITHOUT QUESTION bluffed that he would put through the resolution YOUR OWN GOV'T recognized was necessary to authorize war. When it was then realized other nations would not back the resolution of war, calling Bush's bluff, he whimpered away like a coward.
The other mention of vetoes, were the long lists of vetoes the US had used against the international community. They could get a near unanimous vote (with only US or US and Israel saying no), giving the UN a mandate of action, and the US would undermine it with a veto.
There is a difference between the situations in that while certain Iraq resolutions were unanimous, the mechanisms were not, and so there could be disagreements on what to do. The other resolutions were nixed by the US, despite the UN mandate on what to do.
You know the only way your position would have held water is if Bush hadn't bluffed, sent up a resolution for war and France had vetoed it. How ironic.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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