From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Sep 26 2002 - 17:40:41 MDT
Damien writes
> [Lee wrote]
>> Iraq is playing with everyone's favorite ball, and
>> maybe the US will get it, or maybe more
>> kids can play with it if Iraq gets creamed.
>
> Iraq is playing with Iraq's ball, given to Iraq by Iraq Senior with the
> help, oddly enough, of US Senior. US used to have a really big ball but
> it's pretty much worn out now. If the situation were reversed, would it
> seem peachy for the other kids to cream US so more kids could play with its
> favorite ball?
Actually, I was thinking of "oil". Is that what you
were thinking?
But to answer your question, I don't see any equity
between Iraq and the U.S. Now if Iraq was the only
superpower, and the U.S. was some threatening little
country with an evil dictator that had a near monopoly
on, say, strategic minerals, then the U.S. (in this
hypothesis) would be pretty stupid to be making WMD.
"Peachy?" Why the attitude? ;-)
I din' have no attitude.
> >Question: does this analogy seem very biased
> >to you, a little bit, or hardly at all?
>
> Perhaps less biased than pointless, since it
> abstracts away from most of the important
> real world issues and complexities.
Yes, indeed it does abstract away very important
issues, but here is why I don't think it is
pointless (or as Samantha said, irrelevant):
I perceive the underlying power politics as
*exactly* what happens in a lawless barbarian
tribe or in a school yard when no teachers are
around.
Earth's nations today are *not* law-abiding in
the sense of following legislated laws and rules
of conduct.
(Many, like me, and argue that it is as yet
impossible for one-world government, because
governments are always based upon sufficient
power to enforce their decrees, whether
democratic or not, and nobody has anything
like that much power.)
Therefore I say that one is not going to
understand the complexities of the real
situation without also recognizing the
inescapable basis it rests on.
Lee
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