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Originally Posted by Lebell
Hitler a) rounded up Jews, Gypsies, gays, and other "undesireables" and killed them. The world said, "it's Germany's internal affair.
Saddam b) rounded up Kurds, Shiites, political opponents and killed them. The US asked the UN to follow through on their sanctions. The UN said no. (France said, "hell no"). The US acted.
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As said by someone else in Politics, while Saddam was committing his mass murders and acts of genocide, the US did nothing. It took someone to threaten their oil supplies before they acted. If he'd just stuck to gassing Kurds he would've been fine.
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Originally Posted by Lebell
Hitler a) simply wanted America to stay out of the war or since we were aiding England, to sue for peace after Japan attacked us. His real goal was to just take over western Europe. There were those in America that thought this was ok.
Saddam b) simply wanted America to stay out of the war while he took over most of the Arabian pennisula. There are those in America that think this would have been ok.
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Kuwait is hardly most of the Arabian peninsula. Anyway, as we all know, the Arabian peninsula has shitloads of oil that the US needs whereas Western Europe does not - possibly why they stayed out of WWII until they were directly attacked themselves but didn't bat an eyelid when it came time to kicking the crap out of Iraq twice?
It strikes me as ironic that people are defending the US policy of international meddling as it got a notorious despot like Saddam out of power when it was the policy of international meddling that put him in power in the first place.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
to the extent that an american president might be in a position to alter the nature of american-dominated capitalism around the world, maybe he or she would be in a position to reduce the threat of "terrorism" by reducing some of its causes. because to argue that "terrorists" act out of some essential quality that is coterminous with religion, say, is to argue for and about nothing. people are driven to desperate actions by the situations in which they find themselves---these situations have causes--the political options that might otherwise have channelled dissent/desperation would have to be largely inoperative as well--this too has causes.
"terrorism" is a political act.
so it stands to reason that the american president could do things that would reduce it. whether he or she would do these things is a different matter.
as for "protecting" the states from the consequences of its policies, direct and indirect, without addressing those policies--no....all this self-blinding way of thinking does is make the slide into a kind of fascism lite easier to rationalize. you are not safer for it.
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I would have to agree with that. If you have a knife stuck in your leg, you don't just mop up the pus occurring as a result of it and then wonder why it keeps coming back. You remove the source - then the pus will disappear as well (not the most eloquent of analogies I know, but it's early and I'm tired). So back to the original thread question, I think a President could stop terrorism if he wanted to.