Anaxagoras
Posts: 3086
Joined: 5/9/2009
From: Eire
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ORIGINAL: WingedMercury
I am replying to Anaxagoras, post 197
Should I google Anaxagoras to find out who or what he was? I take the Mercury name because my initials are Hg, and I am sure you know your chemistry well enough to recognise the connection.
Anaxagoras was a very important but somewhat forgotten ancient pre-Socratic philosopher. He was the first significant philosopher in Athens. He developed the idea of “Nous” influencing Socrates, plato etc.
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You say: "We can talk about the ethics of such actions but it would be fair to say this form of diplomacy has done a lot of good as well as bad so I wouldn’t say that such actions are strictly unethical because nations are governed mainly by their political self-interest and any force exerting pressure on that self-interest need not be inherently negative."
Again, you are right in what you say, but you are missing my point. I agree that nations are governed by their political self-interest, and I also agree that that self-interest need not be inherently negative. But I am saying that by taking a partisan approach, by and large, in the Middle-East crises, US has not acted in an honourable way, they have acted in what they believe was their self-interest (Twin Towers might have changed their perception of self-interest), and this has not helped any peace process. Though previous presidents have been more even-handed than others, Obama has been the most even-handed yet, and we can see how Israel has responded to his initiatives. The current impasse in the Middle East must surely be forcing you to query your viewpoint. I fear we need a succession of like US presidents, because after 60 years of mutual distrust, it will take many years to turn it around.
You say: "It is hardly one-sided to say lets partition the remaining 22% of the land (78% was ceded to Transjordan) and give the Jews half of that."
It is a poor response to my statement. In 60 years of conflict, you give one example of US impartiality, and that was 62 years ago. How many UN resolutions concerning Israel has US vetoed? You give implicit praise to the UN for its 1948 action (which I have explained was achieved by bribery though you don't like the word. Indeed you accept that this is the way nations do business without complaint) but the US (though perhaps not you personally) votes against the UN subsequently. You cannot really have it both ways. You cannot hold the UN up as the ultimate decision maker then disregard it. (I feel I must confirm that I am not anti-Israel. I am merely trying to be objective in explaining why the crisis has continued, and how it may be resolved)
I hope you too are not becoming disingenuous like so many of the pro-Palestinians on here for you are making out that we were talking about something else. All along you have been saying that this very example (not others) led to the Twin Towers hit, saying it was unethical and one-eyed to which I responded. Yes indeed the US has vetoed the UN on may occasions. It is in no way having it both ways to say the UN was just then but unjust now. Within a few years of the UN being established it was turned into a forum for attacking the US and Israel. The Soviet Union, the Arab block and some other Muslim and leftist countries formed a voting block that passed resolution after resolution attacking Israel and to a lesser extent the US. More resolutions have been passed on Israel than all other countries combined. This extended to existential threats to Israel’s existence such as the UN submitting to Egypt that demanded UNIFIL peace keeping troops leave the Sinai. Egypt moved in which led to the Six Day War which Israel was lucky to win. Similarly the UN only called for a cease-fire after the Yom Kippur War turned Israel’s way after it was very nearly destroyed. The UN used to be a worthy organisation but it has been used to deflect attention from far worse conflicts whilst hounding Israel. The influence of the US in the mid-east conflict has actually counter-balanced the influence of indifferent Western states and very hostile Islamic states. It has in fact prevented Israel’s almost certain destruction so your contention that it has impeded peace in that region is simply incorrect unless it is a carthiginian peace. Again I say “bribery” is an unduly negative word to use suggesting bias. If there were counter forces putting pressure on other states to vote against, then it is fair for the US to do the same, and it was not anything more than quid pro quo for the US to get the states it was already aiding to vote on their side.
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US has had a unique role in modern history as a lone super power, and it is a pity it has continued to act only out of self-interest, a position you endorse. This is where we differ on this issue, I believe.
You say: "I would contend that whilst the US did significant harm in Vietnam etc., overall its influence has been good rather than bad for it effectively opposed the expansion of the Soviet Union and communist China. Leftists give out a great deal about the US whilst ignoring the pain the Russians and Chinese visited not only on their own people but others too, which has been substantially worse in my opinion. I believe the way in which Russia acted in Georgia and the Ukraine recently is just a taster of things to come."
Yes. Acting out of self-interest often confers good elsewhere. No quibble with that comment. But self-interest often confers bad elsewhere. You should be careful though with your research. Your comment on Georgia, for example. I "listened" to this conflict escalating on BBC, Radio Netherlands and Deutsche Welle, and then was amazed when Bush blamed Putin for the escalation. It then became accepted knowledge throughout the Western World that Russia was to blame. I was not surprised when eventually this report appeared on the BBC website: "'The war in Georgia last year was started by a Georgian attack that was not justified by international law', an EU-sponsored report has concluded." Of course there was provocation, so I am not blaming Georgia or Russia - it is a border conflict over disputed territories.{http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8281990.stm).
It is widely believed that the Georgians escalated the hostilities, expecting US support. So don't claim Georgia has an example of US good. Pick another country .. Cuba, Venezuela .. there are several for you to choose)
It is not surprising that you see things from a US perspective, but this subjective view can get you into trouble.
I don’t see things from a US perspective. As I said before there are a significant number of things the US did that I dislike. However, I don’t hate the place like a lot of leftists do. In Europe there is a rather sickeningly smug morally superior attitude to the US. It is worst perhaps in the UK/France and there are plenty of examples of it on here. It should be clear when viewing history that the US has had a far more benign influence on the world. It has only been a lone super-power for almost 20 years now. Don’t forget the nasty old USSR. Leftists hated the US infinitely more even though the immense human rights abuses in the USSR were well known. Your take on the Russian-Georgian war is rather simplistic. Russia unilaterally invaded Georgia. There were some tit for tat attacks involving Russians, Georgians, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia probably don’t have clean hands but the entire issue was instigated by Russia/Gazprom which very clearly wants to control Abkhazia. In contravention to peace agreements they recognised its independence and have militarised it. They also took steps to stop Georgia joining NATO. They have been engaging in outright power politics and have been appalling to deal with by using gas which is depended on to control the politics of the surrounding regions like the Ukraine where they also have a political stake. Kosovo is even an issue for them. It is clear they still feel they have a claim on at least some the surrounding nations that used to be part of the USSR.
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You say: "Interesting point about the emptiness of Australia at the time but I still think the very presence of millions of Jews would have been a significant source of hostility considering the cultural baggage that the earlier white settlers brought from the West."
I think that means that you accept my point. I have no idea what the situation would be today if something else happened 60 years ago. You might very well be right.
I’m not clear on the point but not really as you seemed to make out that there would be little hostility.
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You say: "...the fact that Jews are the indigenous people of Palestine surely qualifies them for a right to return if they experienced many episodes of genocide elsewhere."
Why does this "surely qualify?". Whether they are entitled to a new country, based on a religion, and entitled to mistreat the Arab population the way they have done and the way they are doing is highly questionable. But that decision has been made and the issue now is how do we make it work.
Incidentally, my grandfathers were English, but I have no rights of return to England and be given a portion of it. I am not sure if it follows that because a Jew's great great great grandfather used to live in Palestine he is entitled return there. Should the original North Americans set up a state in US somewhere. I know they sold Manhattan Island - maybe a few thousand square kilometres centred on Queens might suffice. The only thing that makes the Jews different from others is the Holocaust - 70 years ago. Israel was established to give the dispossessed a home they could call their own.
You are leading my point here into your own terrain. I never said they were entitled to mistreat Arabs and as far as I can see they haven’t. I was speaking of the principle. If a people are controlled or forced out of a region by successive invasions of foreign forces (in this instance pagans, Christians and Muslims subsequently) over a sustained period of time, there population will inevitably reduce dramatically to a point where it is marginal. This is an injustice. If that people wish to return for any reason they should have that opportunity. Being the indigenous people gives them a moral claim greater than any foreign influences – I think this is widely recognised as is the case in many parts of the world where a stronger population puts excessive pressure on another group. Many of these people are displaced but still qualify as indigenous to a given region. This is especially an issue of justice where said people have been unable to settle for a prolonged period of time in security elsewhere and have been subjected to sustained campaigns of genocide. I would see it as a case of natural justice for those people to have a right to self-determination especially in their homeland. This point was widely understood to be the case for many decades with Israel. If it was correct then in principle, it must also be correct now. Even those that disliked Jews understood this to be the case. An old Jewish man once told me that in 1940’s Dublin people used to often tell him “Get back to Palestine/Israel Jewman”. Your point about the English would only be valid if the English suffered a similar fate to the Jews, and as we all know the opposite was the case with the English - apologies to my British friends. It is wrong to say the only difference is the Holocaust. That’s partly why I made a point about sustained genocide.
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I don't think that the "shocking statistics" you quote are terribly relevant, nor terribly scientific, but do possess a modicum of interest. This may interest you. I have visited York in England where 400 Jews were incinerated (Gordon's Tower, if I remember correctly). I have visited Dachau near Munich, and the pictures of the faces of joy when the remaining survivors realised the arriving troops were Americans, and they had been saved, will long stay in my memory. I have visited Sachsenhausen, a lesser known concentration camp in the former Eastern sector of Berlin where the attrocities were no different from other camps. I have visited Auschwitz in Poland, on a bitterly cold day which gives some sort of an idea of how the inmates suffered. I have visited the battle fields of Vietnam, and seen the lingering effects of Agent Orange. I have visited the S-21 prison, Phnom Penh, and the killing fields of Cambodia. (Pol Pot was a "nobody" school teacher with no followers. He was anti-American, and the population of Cambodia became so anti-American after the bombing that Pol Pot became a national hero, and I am sure you know the result. Remind me again, please, about your contention that "overall its (US) influence has been good rather than bad" because I am having trouble getting my head around it. Remember the Vietnam War, that US admits they were wrong and the Gulf of Tonkin incident (Parallels with Korea, perhaps. Do we learn from history or not? You have already acknowledged the Vietnam error).
Each of the above visits have had long and lasting effects on me. I think it is important and beneficial never to forget the atrocities man does to man.
I have not visited Gaza.
It should be very clear why I mentioned the immense loss of the Jewish people to genocide – an example as far as I know unparalleled elsewhere with regard to what was once a large population making up several percent of the world’s people. Quoting such little known numbers shows that the Holocaust was merely the climax of this genocide and this sentiment has not magically disappeared as some seem to think it has. The point was made in relation to Israel and their need for self-determination after nearly two millennia of intermittent but continued genocide. It is not a solution to shuttle them off to another part of the world in vast numbers only for there to be a good chance of similar situations arising again. The US did some bad but in the scheme of things as super-powers go, their influence on the world has been more benign than any other “super-power” of the past, and it would appear of the near future too as China and Russia will be. This is probably the wrong place for such a discussion as it is not relevant for the opening thread. You do also seem to be paralleling events in Gaza with the Holocaust. Whilst Israel seriously damaged Gaza the death toll is very different to what people believe from what pro-Palestinians tell them. You might check out the earlier pages of this thread and the “3 month suspended sentence” thread for both sides of the argument as I don’t wany to revisit it again.
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Your final paragraph opens up a new chapter in this discussion which I cannot be bothered going into much detail now, though I probably won't be abled to help myself. I am not going to dispute your facts at this stage, mostly from exhaustion, but I beg you to look at the facts behind the facts. Arafat never "ruled" Palestine. Palestine is not a state or nation the way most of the western nations are. It is made up of disparate groups, and Arafat had difficulty uniting them. And the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli radical really floored any chance for peace. Rabin, you will remember, was awarded the Nobel Peace Price with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in 1994, Rabin was assassinated because the young Right-winger assassin opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accord. It is a bit much to blame the Palestinians for this, but US has always liked to have Arafat as the whipping-boy, and they were greatly dismayed with Arafat's sharing the Peace Prize.
Since Rabin's assassination, mainly due to the frustation of not proceeding with the Oslo Accord, both Israel and Palestine have drifted to the extremes. Israel is now led by the Right Wing Likud party, and Gaza is in the grip of Hamas. Abbas and Obama are the only non-extremists left in the picture. A difficult job indeed.
This is only a potted background of the facts behind the facts. There have been ups and downs in the road that you can comment on, but the general direction is as stated.
Your serve.
I never said Arafat ruled Palestine in the same fashion as a sovereign nation would be ruled over. However he was clearly seen as the ruler of the Palestinian people and had been for a long time. There were disparate groups but Arafat was in far greater control of the Palestinian movement until he became quite old, sick and weak in the latter years of his life (after 2000). I disagree that after Rabin’s assassination there was no chance for peace. People who blame Israel for this failure say Rabin was willing to compromise more than he did until his assassination. I didn’t blame the Palestinians for Rabin’s assassination. The point was that even though the really hard questions were to be dealt with at a later stage, a significant number of the lesser issues of the first accord were not put into play properly by Arafat. He showed bad faith, didn’t bring about the security arrangements needed to aid a further peace deal, and extremely serious terror attacks continued - many by his own quarter. You assert Israeli governments have become increasingly right wing. I don’t see how that can be asserted – there has been more or less a 50-50 spread. You completely skip Barak and Olmert who offered very plausible settlements with the Palestinians where the majority of their demands would be met. Abbas isn’t much more as moderate than Arafat. He still allows the very extreme incitement to go on in the PA and hasn’t opposed the Islamicisation of it to any great extent and many Christians have fled or are fleeing.
I thought you were keen to avoid tit for tat arguments. I have no interest in them either.
< Message edited by Anaxagoras -- 12/9/2010 2:19:14 AM >
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