Quote from hapaboy:
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Hapa, thanks for the post. I don't have the time to respond to each of your counterarguments. I'll just take on a couple of them.
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Hapa: Regarding Your Oil Argument: This war is only about oil in the sense of ensuring the stability of the global oil supply and trade. To suggest it is because the US lusts after the oil and intends to steal it somehow flies in the face of history and common sense.
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Say, I own the 2nd largest copper mines in the world, and I can influence the world's copper prices, although not to the point of completely controlling them. You come in with an army of mercenaries with M-16s, Bradley fighting machines etc. Since I am completely outgunned, I have to flee. You install a management team friendly to you so that for the next fifty years, you are sure to have a cheap supply of copper. And by the way, you also righteously claim that it's better for the world's economy because now everybody has access to cheap copper. That's not stealing, of course. But that's armed robbery, legitimated by the rhetoric about everybody else benefitting from the booty.
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Hapa: Furthermore, you cannot compare the India/Pakistan situation to Iraq/US because the former two are kept in check with the concept of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). To appreciate that concept, you have to be rational and sincerely worry about the future of your country and your people.
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So, if Iraq had had ICBMs armed with nuclear warheads, then the US would not have been justified to invade Iraq. So, if someone is weak enough to be bullied, the U. S. should go ahead, as it did with Saddam's Iraq. You are now trashing the moral arguments in the same breadth. You can do better than that, I believe, Hapa. As far as international politics is concerned, moral high grounds count little in the wake of vested interests, oil and markets. Moral high heels are opium for the unsuspecting masses doled out by the likes of MSNBC and ABC, media thaat are collectively kowtowing to Washington.