POLL: IRAQI'S prefer dictatorship! Re--enslave them now!

[emprworm]

i believe the UN is a farce.  if dictators want to cast votes, i dont care...so long as FREE NATIONS do not have to abide by their decisions.  the thought of  a free nation having to comply to the 'votes' of dictators is a sham.

[Anathema]

A simple yes or no would do fine, thank you.

[Edric O]

I fully agree with Wolfwiz. The UN is the United Nations. It's supposed to be a supranational body representing the people of the Earth. Democratic leaders can vote in the UN because they represent their people; dictators do not represent their people, so they have no place in the United Nations.

However, Emprworm has not responded to my point. While it may be easy to define a "dictator" for the purpose of discussion, and for making general statements of principles, things get messy when you try to write it down as a law.

Can anyone give me a clear, unambiguous definition of what constitutes a "dictator"? I mean the kind of definition that can be written down in the UN charter, without being full of holes that can be exploited by anyone for his own interests.

[EWS]

Wud prob say that a dictator is someone who exploits a country (countries) for his/her own personal gain without any respect for the needs of said country and its inhabitants.

[Anathema]

Well the UN was created in the Cold War era, and you needed the support of dictators (namely, the Soviet Union) to make global policy, so maybe the structure of the UN should be revised to fit todays world.

[Wolf]

A dictator is one who rules without the mandate of the majority of the people he rules.

A democratic leader might abuse his people, but is not yet a dictator -- he would then be voted out of office, or seize power himself against the peoples' mandate and then become a dictator in definition.

*An issue with Bush, I understand that this definition clearly rules the current US President as a dictator, however, we must understand that both parties cheated in Florida to get their candidate elected. I recall Democrats using the votes of dead people to alter things in their favor. While the popular vote was in favor of Gore, realize that the popular vote has a margin of error. The margin by which Gore won was less than the margin of error. Meaning that Bush could have won the popular vote after all, however this is not known. In an election this close, the vote would then have to be taken to a non-electoral body which also rules from the mandate of the people. In this case, the US Supreme Court. The US SC is mandated by the people because the presidents that appointed these justices won the popular vote by margins greater than the margin of error, and thus had the popular mandate to begin with, a mandate which is transferred to the SC by the Constitution.

In short, Bush escapes dictatorship by technicality.

[emprworm]

A dictator is one who rules without the mandate of the majority of the people he rules.

A democratic leader might abuse his people, but is not yet a dictator -- he would then be voted out of office, or seize power himself against the peoples' mandate and then become a dictator in definition.

agree with this.

this can be seein when Hussein got 99% of the "vote"

i would actually have more respect for the UN if it segregated out dictators from casting votes that influece free nations (dictators can vote on policies among themselves, for example, but a free nation has no unity with a dictatorship)

[Wolf]

Well, one could say that since Saddam ran unopposed, the election was not truly fair. In addition, we would have to specify that elections in which parties are barred from entrance due to political differences are not representative elections, and, thus, their results do not properly transfer popular mandate to the winner -- they are shows, nothing more.

[nemafakei]

"Until then, it is an anti-semitic sham"

Uh, why is it anti-semitic? Surely if it were so anti-semitic, it would be all for attacking Iraq?

So if the UN were improved by removing dictatorial votes, would you condemn actions by countries who overstep its boundaries and start wars without a UN mandate?

[emprworm]

depends whether those countries were consenting nations as in the case with Iraq and the Coalition, otherwise yes.  although any country at any time is free to leave the UN.  participation in THe UN should never be considered binding and forced upon nations that do not wish to be a part of it

[DukeLeto]

That post amounted to "It's OK when the US does it, but for anybody else it wrong." ::)  And tell me, do you advocate "free" countries having votes in matters that effect the third world?

[emprworm]

That post amounted to "It's OK when the US does it, but for anybody else it wrong." ::)

[DukeLeto]

Sorry if I misread your poorly punctuated gibberish, but the only other thing I vcan figure you mean by "consenting nations" is the Iraq agreed to be invaded, which I sincerely doubt.

[emprworm]

Sorry if I misread your poorly punctuated gibberish, but the only other thing I vcan figure you mean by "consenting nations" is the Iraq agreed to be invaded, which I sincerely doubt.

but i didn't misread your mindless flatulent ranting, and correctly identified it as such

[DukeLeto]

"Flatulent".  Now there's an adjective you don't too often see used to describe text. :P

And you never answered me: Do you advocate "free" countries having votes in matters that effect the third world?

[Edric O]

See, the problem with the "consenting nations" idea is that you don't know whether a nation is "consenting" or not until you actually invade it.

Your policy is to shoot first and ask questions later, which amounts to pure warmongering and imperialism.

[Edric O]

A dictator is one who rules without the mandate of the majority of the people he rules.

A democratic leader might abuse his people, but is not yet a dictator -- he would then be voted out of office, or seize power himself against the peoples' mandate and then become a dictator in definition.

*An issue with Bush, I understand that this definition clearly rules the current US President as a dictator, however, we must understand that both parties cheated in Florida to get their candidate elected. I recall Democrats using the votes of dead people to alter things in their favor. While the popular vote was in favor of Gore, realize that the popular vote has a margin of error. The margin by which Gore won was less than the margin of error. Meaning that Bush could have won the popular vote after all, however this is not known. In an election this close, the vote would then have to be taken to a non-electoral body which also rules from the mandate of the people. In this case, the US Supreme Court. The US SC is mandated by the people because the presidents that appointed these justices won the popular vote by margins greater than the margin of error, and thus had the popular mandate to begin with, a mandate which is transferred to the SC by the Constitution.

In short, Bush escapes dictatorship by technicality.

Thank you, Wolfwiz. That is a very good definition. But it still has problems:

1. What if the Gore/Bush situation repeats itself in another democratic country, but this time the losing candidate actually wins the popular vote by more than the margin of error? Should the UN re-classify the country as a dictatorship and suspend its membership then?

2. What about dictators who hold sham elections? The UN would have to set some very clear standards for how elections are to be conducted, or else people like Saddam are going to say they are legitimate leaders because they won their mock elections.

But all those UN standards would make the process of determining a country's democratic status insanely complicated, and they will probably leave a lot of back doors themselves.

3. Finally, what about really powerful dictatorships, like China? You can't just expel them from the UN without risking the greatest diplomatic incident in history.

[Wolf]

Its not necessarily imperialism; its just plain messy. Its like those assassination attempts involving huge bombs that manage to kill everyone except for the intended target. I would have preferred to either have an international body, as a whole, condemn the dictator and have him tossed out politically, which would have been nice, and then threatened a task force had the humanitarian situation not improved. I think that would have covered all our bases, and thus sidesteps the whole WMD argument, since it is still possible that, with the seven months in between a declaration of US intentions to go to war, and the actual beginning of the war itself, followed by two more months of combat, Saddam Hussein may have had time to destroy everything. If we had made this a purely humanitarian mission, remove the dictator, institute democracy, and played this game by the books in the UN, then I think we might be better off.

However, I also wonder if we wouldn't be better off. I had read an article in the March/April isse of Foreign Affairs . It talked about how, no matter what the United States did, European powers would have opposed it, and hyped anti-Americanism within their own countries in order to establish political power over the United States. Because, even though America has a military/economic empire, it can be controlled through a political one. If America needs European legitimacy for its actions, Europe can easily contain America. The author cited evidence that, in 1999, in Kosovo, America and Europe went to war without a UN mandate. Everyone, pretty much, thought the war was legitimate, and just. No one really complained, and all was well in the West. In Iraq, America is going to war without a UN mandate, but not all of Europe follows. America has a broad coalition of other nations from across the globe, but it doesn't have all of Europe... is that what makes international action both legitimate and multilateral? That it doesn't matter how many nations you have, or who they are, as long as they represent the big players of Europe?

Well, I don't know if all that is true, but thats a theory that might become appealing to lots of Americans, and whether or not Europe is trying to pull America's strings, the perception might be bad enough to make American foreign policy even more schizophrenic, which is something I hope we all want to avoid.

*EDIT FOR EDRIC:

1. Well, just in the case of the Gore/Bush election, the issue of the election must be taken to a non-electoral (something that does not exist to elect officials) body that also rules with the mandate of the people, and have them judge the situation of the election. This would only happen if the issue was pursued, if the losing candidate conceded, then I would say that the winner, even though he was within the margin of error, ruled with popular mandate. Anyway, the UN would have to set strict guidelines.

2. Again, the UN would have to hold strict guidelines, as you correctly stated. The problems you pointed out are also problems they would face; complication of the electoral process, suspicion of UN interference, the works.

3. Well, you can and you can't. If you really want to make a difference, and show that the UN is ready to be a just and strong organization that is capable of enforcing its resolutions and principles, then, you'll have to expel even China if it doesn't meet your guidelines. If you feel that China's national interest is more important than a UN principle that is designed to allow all people to live in political freedom with civil liberties, then you don't expel them. It's all about whether a matter of practicality trumps a matter of principle. (Also known as why Ralph Nader isn't the US president).

[Dante]

A year of war that made the world a more dangerous place

What follows is the lead article from 'The Independent,' Newspaper of the Year here, on Saturday 20th March.

"One year after the United States announced the United States announced the start of the world's first pre-emptive war with a fearsome bombardment of Baghdad, the results of this ill-advised application of armed force are plain. Iraq is a devastated and divided country, balanced on a knive-edge between a faltering return to self-government and civil war. Nearly 600 Americans, 60 Britons and more than 40 nationals of other countries have been killed. Many times more have been injured. The number of Iraqi dead, military and civilians, runs into thousands. Large numbers of foreign troops and billions of dollars of aid will be needed in Iraq for many years to come.

As we argued forcefully and repeatedly at the time, this was a war that should never have happened. Even at our most pessimistic, however, we underestimated the flimsiness of the pretext and the gravity of the consequences. With the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, we pleaded for the inspectors to be given more time. With the French, Germans and Russians, we demanded a security council mandate before any military action. With sceptical back-benchers, we argued that our government had not produced the clear legal justification for war that it needed.

And we drew attention, more times than we care to recall, to the muddled logic that the Government used in its inceasingly desperate attempts to persuade a sceptical public that force was the only option. Did Britain join the US in order to eradicate the thread from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Or was it to liberate Iraqis from an evil dictator? To spread peace and democracy through the region? Because we believed that Saddam Hussein protected al-Qq'ida terrorists? Or was it in the hope of restraining President Bush's reckless unilateralism?

One year on, it turns out that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction: the inspectors should have been given more time. When the US and Britain defied the majority of the Security Council, they prompted an international schism, which divides Europe and isolates our two countries to this day. There was, and never had been, any evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida - US officials now admit as much - but the occupation of Iraq is already becoming terrorism's best recruiting agent. The removal of Saddam has precipitated no spread of peace or democracy through the region, nor the least whiff of reform. As for American unilateralism, recent polls show the US as diplomatically isolated and as globally unpopular as it was one year ago.

Yes, Saddam and his regime fell at the end of a remarkably short and clinical war that was, in purely military terms, a success. But the abject lack of planning for the "day after" created a security vacuum that left many Iraqis asking whether they were any better off than they had been before. A string of policy errors, which included the dissolution of the Iraqi armed forces, fuelled popular resistance and religious and ethnic rivalries. The complexities of securing a post-Saddam Iraq were the chief reasons why President Bush's father had decided against driving on to Baghdad after allied forces had liberated Kuwait. He was right then; his son and Mr Blair were wrong.

But what has been done, while deeply misguided and regrettable, cannot be undone. If, as this week's poll suggests, a majority of Iraqis is now reconciled to current circumstances, even hopeful for a better future, there may still be a chance that something can be salvaged. The Iraqis must sieze the oppertunities opened by the removal of Saddam. But the occupying powers have an obligation to provide the necessary conditions. They must redouble their efforts to impose law and order, while restoring reliable suppklies of water and electricity. If this requires more funds and more troops, the US and Britain have a duty to dispatch them well before the 30 June return of sovereinity to an Iraqi authority. The 30 June deadline must be met - not to suit George Bush's electoral timetable, but to show that the US and Britain honour their promises and that the occupation is finite.

The UN must return to Iraq, not under US-set conditions, with with a Security Council mandate and genuinely international protection and blessing. Elections must be organised, if possible, ahead of the 2005 schedule. But the watchword must be security: Iraqis must be able to live their daily lives without fear for their safety, or what is their new freedom worth? This is the absolute minimum that the US and Britain owe to Iraqis. Together they committed one of the gravest foreign policy errors in either country has committed for decades: the US since Vietnam; Britain since Suez.

This historic misjudgement has cost Iraqs dear, but not only Iraqis. The Spanish Government fell at least in part because of its unpopular decision to support the US. The Polish Prime Minister had expressed retrospective doubts about joining the alliance. But the highest price may yet be extracted from those who launched the whole ill-fated enterprise. George Bush, once cruising to re-election as a "war" president, finds himself fighting for a second term, his 11 September heroics in tatters. Mr Blair's plight is equally grave. Britain has reaped no reward from the Prime Minister's loyalty to Mr Bush, only grief. British companies recieved no favours in the granting of post-war contracts; four of our citizens are still held in the reprihensible legal limbo of Guantanamo. Most of all, Mr Blair has forfeited perhaps his most prized political asset: the trust of voters in his judgement. He aspired to bring democracy to Iraq, but came perilously close to subverting it at home.

Far from making the world safer, the Iraq war was a catastrophe that has made it more dangerous in every respect. It will account for more lives and many billions more dollars, before it is truly over, and their may be more governments to fall."

The judgement is perhaps a bit odd but the conclusions are definately good.

[emprworm]

1. What if the Gore/Bush situation repeats itself in another democratic country, but this time the losing candidate actually wins the popular vote by more than the margin of error? Should the UN re-classify the country as a dictatorship and suspend its membership then?

Absurd.

[Wolf]

"The UN must return to Iraq, not under US-set conditions, with with a Security Council mandate and genuinely international protection and blessing. Elections must be organised, if possible, ahead of the 2005 schedule. But the watchword must be security: Iraqis must be able to live their daily lives without fear for their safety, or what is their new freedom worth? This is the absolute minimum that the US and Britain owe to Iraqis. Together they committed one of the gravest foreign policy errors in either country has committed for decades: the US since Vietnam; Britain since Suez. "

I agree with that statement; UN involvement should exist, but no nation should be excluded; not even the United States. However, I feel that the US should have some say in the UN operations that go into Iraq, if only for practicality's sake. America is there. America is on the ground. America has already been working there for months. They have a system set up, and it would be good to heed their information and warnings when we send in a UN force.

I also agree that Iraqis need to live their lives in relative safety. Otherwise, their new freedom is freedom only in principle, not practice.

[Dragoon Knight]

Hey Emprworm?  Maybe you didn't see my thread concerning why I like Bush?  Just in case, here it is again in full. ;D

<<I keep on going on about how much I like Bush, because he is funny in a UK TV show called "2D-TV".  Well, here is a photo that I think sums Bush up totally (a moron ;D) and a sound file to go with it.

Warning: It is unadvisable to view, or listen to, this thread if you are Emprworm, or if you have your head anywhere NEAR as far up Bush's ass as he does.  For the rest of you, enjoy. ;)>>

Sound File --> "Blow up the White House!  A-ha a-ha a-ha!"

[Anathema]

Isn't expelling China a bit draconic? A better aproach would be IMO to pressure China to better respect human rights, and we already posses the means- the entire economy of China is dependent on export to western countries, and we do practicly nothing with it.

[Edric O]

Absurd.  The US has a brilliant democratic system.  Even the UN is modelled after the concepts of the US system.

Actually, most mathematicians agree that the US system is the worst possible democratic system, because it has the greatest potential for allowing a minority vote to win over a majority vote.

Popular vote should not always win out in a democracy.

Oh, there I was thinking that democracy actually means "RULE OF THE PEOPLE". Guess I was wrong. ::)

When you think about why your tiny little pee-on country of Romania gets equal voice in the UN to the much more populous country United States, and when you understand why that concept is important

Actually, come to think of it, this idiotic concept should be removed from the UN as well as from the US. More populous countries should get more votes. Romania is about 1/6 the size of the USA, so I agree that it should get about 1/6 of the vote.

Oh, and the even more idiotic concept of veto power in the security council should also be removed.

The sad thing, is that you (Romania) were once under dictatorship.  A true dictator.  That you think our system is dictatorial is so absurd, it shows your utter supreme ignorance and ruthless hatemongering towards the U.S.

If you'll interrupt your tantrum for a few seconds, you will notice that I did NOT, in fact, call the USA a dictatorship. I wasn't even talking about the USA in particular, but about countries in general. What I said was:

What if the Gore/Bush situation repeats itself in another democratic country, but this time the losing candidate actually wins the popular vote by more than the margin of error? Should the UN re-classify the country as a dictatorship and suspend its membership then?

You minimize those who have truly suffered under REAL dictators.

Actually, we were just discussing how to define a "real dictator".

And the word "dictator" is not a title of honour awarded only to the planet's greatest tyrants. Just because some dictators may be benevolent while others are ruthless murderers, that doesn't change the fact that all of them are dictators.

Your ignorance smells like a maggot hole.

I wouldn't know what a maggot hole smells like, but I trust that your vast personal experience makes you more than adequately qualified in this field.

[nemafakei]

The dungeon is calling...