As for calling the other countries against the war "silly," considering that Hussein was a tyrant and the U.S. was seeking to liberate the people in Iraq from said tyrant, yes it was pretty silly to be complaining so much as so many were. It wasn't like the U.S. was going in to conquer the area or something. The U.S. should not be the jury and justice provider solely on its own.
George Bush is a tyrant too! The only thing that saved his ass from being impeached is that he immediately created a secrecy act to protect all Presidential conversations from being able to be legally heard or used for fifty years past his term in office. And nobody stopped him or seemed to want the possibility of a stain on American pride. Granting Saddam's cruelty, the U.S. was
not in any threat from him and your President and staff among other supporters around the world (including ours, Canada), knew this. The U.S. was wanting to finish their war with Saddam from the early nineties but he pulled back and gave no one justification to continue. 9/11 was a convenient excuse but they tried desperately to try to find a natural connection which wasn't happening. The lying and innuendos was their strategy. And though they did a dumb-ass job about it, half of our populations (that includes Canadian and UK opinions) are either really stupid or just willing to pretend they are.
When you say, well, "he was really bad anyways", the logic is no different to the emotional play that a prosecution makes to sway the jury by pointing to the horror and nature of a crime and then associating the fact that the defense did something else that was bad in their life, even if they have no connection.
Where did the United States profit from invading Iraq? All it did was cost a bunch of money and soldiers.
To begin with, conservative politics believe in what they claim is "smaller government". But to their reasoning, it should be passed to preferential corporate interests for the nations sake: that is, they spend money on corporations to do what is lost in government. [This, by the way, is what National Socialism did in Germany.] One of the things that Bush did was to encourage war in order to create economy for the military machine and particular favored corporate interests (like Halliburton, for instance) The loss or cost of the debts of the war are passed on to the common people through lives, taxation, and loss of rights to privacy and securities at home. But these are not incurred by people like Bush. If they could, they would bankrupt the government as is to make it impossible to exist (smallest government). All those he wanted to gain personally, are and have been secured.
I don't know about the Canadian imports, but I think you are reading too much into some perceived U.S. media attention to Australia and the United Kingdom. The media was mostly against invading Iraq and was not at all friendly to the Bush administration.
Perhaps. I do still think that the media in most places, including the States, is still significantly fair considering the variety of sources. It is not news reporting that I'm referencing this attention to though. Bush first clearly stated that he would favor those countries, businesses and people if and only if they support his agenda for war with Iraq. He wasn't speaking to your public when he said, "You are either with us or against us." It was a threat and a promise. Anyone can clearly see that that is
bullying and
blackmail. We all know who has the biggest gun (Nuclear threat to every other country).
Again, (1) why would it be America's duty over and above all other countries to act in such a way? (2) If this was true, what reasons make the United States select only such specific countries to do this over other ones that have more just reasons to help on similar grounds? (3) How is the support of the creation of dictatorship for another population regardless of their population's personal democratic choices superior to the American's population preferences? American democratic vote isn't open to those country's election process. So American governments imposing change on another population is worse than the taxation without representation that the British imposed on American origins.
1) It was America's duty because it was only America that had the ability to stand up to the Soviet Union.
2) Most of the countries the United States selected was to directly counter the Soviets and other communists. A whole lot of the "crap," if you will, that happened in the second half of the 20th century around the world, was because of the communists, primarily via the Soviets and the Chinese, wanting to oppress everybody and the U.S. just seeking to counter this.
3) America's creation is different in that it wasn't to extract resources and exploit the people for some "American empire" but rather to counter communists. This isn't to say certain American business interests didn't seek to exploit the situation at certain times.
America, contrary to your propaganda, was
not the determiner of the break of the U.S.S.R.. There are a lot of factors that went into it. Italy, I'm sure is amplifying the fact that it was the new Pope from Poland who initiated the fall. We have also learned through recent times that the Soviet Union's people had more just reasons to fear the Americans throughout the cold war due to their paranoia.
I'm referring to your assumption that there could be a group of Americans (The whole minus those who govern) would always represent something anything superior to a tyranny. The problem is is that the definition of a democracy implies that the government IS the people by some means. When any group perceives themselves as separate from the government itself in a democracy, they are less than the majority.
Yes, but in a liberal democracy, the system must protect the majority from the elite minority and the minority from the majority that seeks to oppress their rights. Also, groups that form to resist the government by force if the government suspended the democratic process I think could be superior to a tyranny. It would depend on the group.
This sounds rather like a circular and obtuse justification for anything. How could these facts of a liberal democracy suggest that it is best to have people armed? If anything, the only way you could even begin to place the importance of the people to be armed, is to
require all citizens to be
equally armed. At the moment, only those who are most paranoid and relatively extreme are holding weapons. People like the David Koresh's will always take better advantage of gun ownership over those who either don't choose to have weapons or cannot afford to stock them away as such.