Will Bush Attack Iran Before Leaving Office?

JemyM said:

Within me, the jury is not in on the "are they *that* stupid" part. The US have really gone down during the last 10-15 years. Many of the guys the CIA used to refer to as the "crazies" are now in government. I have to confess that the US is scaring the crap out of me, far more than any terrorist organization. The US have yet to attack a democracy, but people with great power over there have really said and made things that makes me really worried.

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I don't see why any terrorist organization would scare you anyway, you're not in a country they're targeting!

The US will never attack a country that it doesn't feel it needs to. Invading Iraq may have been a mistake, but there were a lot of considerations outside of simply whether or not Saddam was trying to get WMDs or had them. The US really has no need to invade a democracy, because democracies can generally be reasoned with.

blatantninja said:

I don't see why any terrorist organization would scare you anyway, you're not in a country they're targeting!

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Sweden isn't safe from terrorism. No country is.

[ http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/09/is_al_qaeda_iraq_a_threat_to_s.php ]

(But then no country is safe from road accidents either, and there are very few countries where terrorism is a greater danger than road accidents.)

The US will never attack a country that it doesn't feel it needs to. Invading Iraq may have been a mistake, but there were a lot of considerations outside of simply whether or not Saddam was trying to get WMDs or had them. The US really has no need to invade a democracy, because democracies can generally be reasoned with.

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I think the thing that's worrying JemyM is that the US has lost many of the defining characteristics of a democracy. In recent years it's begun to exhibit many of the characteristics of the kinds of regimes that cannot generally be reasoned with. That's the scary bit.

Let's hope that this period turns out to be an aberration rather than the descent into tyranny that dte fears, so that JemyM's fears prove unfounded.

The war on terror shite we've seen post 9/11 is a far greater threat against democracy than terrorism itself and is unfortunately contagious. We for instance passed a new electronic surveillance law this week. Unfortunately the loss of freedom and privacy is rather too abstract to bother most voters during normal circumstances

If you have nothing to hide, who cares if somebody's watching? I'm sure there's a "slippery slope" angle to your concern, but I think we've got a long, long way to slide before we're in "thought police" territory.

I couldn't disagree with you more dteowner, in a country like Sweden the slipper slope angle is extremely scary. There's plans to next month pass a law that allows the government to read all electronic data passing our borders, and because of the way the Internet is built that probably means a great majority of all electronic communications.

The aim is mainly counter-terrorism right now, but the way the Swedish political landscape looks it'll be enough with one or two media hyped-up crimes to widen the scope of the surveillance, and I firmly believe that if that happens the road to preemptive monitoring for all different kinds of criminal and suspect behavior isn't too long.

Another counter-argument would be that any surveillance system generates false positives which go into secret databases, and databases are never safe, both for technical and human reasons.

This topic really concerns me and it bothers me that we have to motivate our want for privacy and protection against arbitrary surveillance with more than the most important argument, our right as human beings to it, stated in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in EU's case the European Convention.

Maybe a new thread could be of use for this, if anyone feels like having a serious discussion on privacy issues.

Prime Junta said:

Sweden isn't safe from terrorism. No country is.

[ http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/09/is_al_qaeda_iraq_a_threat_to_s.php ]

(But then no country is safe from road accidents either, and there are very few countries where terrorism is a greater danger than road accidents.)

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I'm not saying that terrorism can't hit sweden, but there are far more of those nutjobs aiming or American than Sweden.

I think the thing that's worrying JemyM is that the US has lost many of the defining characteristics of a democracy. In recent years it's begun to exhibit many of the characteristics of the kinds of regimes that cannot generally be reasoned with. That's the scary bit.

Let's hope that this period turns out to be an aberration rather than the descent into tyranny that dte fears, so that JemyM's fears prove unfounded.

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Being a democracy doesn't necessarily mean being free. It is merely a method of choosing representation in government.

Regardless, the US has survived far worse in terms of erosion of civil liberties, government corruption, voter fraud, etc., so I'm not too concerned that we won't survive the current state of things.

dteowner said:

If you have nothing to hide, who cares if somebody's watching? I'm sure there's a "slippery slope" angle to your concern, but I think we've got a long, long way to slide before we're in "thought police" territory.

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Everyone has something to hide from someone -- your employer, your mother, your date, your putative employer, your neighbors, your insurer, whoever. The trouble with surveillance is that the information that gets gathered that way tends to be abused. Even if you're not afraid of the government disappearing you for thoughtcrime, you ought to be at least concerned about the possibility that the government employee getting her hands on your file might gossip about it to someone, or sell it, or whatever else.

blatantninja said:

I'm not saying that terrorism can't hit sweden, but there are far more of those nutjobs aiming or American than Sweden.

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Then again, America is far bigger than Sweden, so the individual Swede may well be about as likely to get hit by a terror attack as the average American.

Being a democracy doesn't necessarily mean being free. It is merely a method of choosing representation in government.

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Actually, it *does* necessarily mean being free -- it implies free and fair elections, which imply freedom. Being a *republic* does not necessarily mean being free.

Regardless, the US has survived far worse in terms of erosion of civil liberties, government corruption, voter fraud, etc., so I'm not too concerned that we won't survive the current state of things.

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It has?

Prime Junta said:

Actually, it *does* necessarily mean being free -- it implies free and fair elections, which imply freedom. Being a *republic* does not necessarily mean being free.

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I disagree. Democracy mearly means that you get to cast a vote in an election. Now, you could make an argument that for any vote to have any meaning, you need free and clear discussion before hand, but you can still be a technical democracy without having things like free press, etc.

It has?

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Absolutely. If you want to see corruption, look at the Grant, Nixon, or Coolidge administrations. You want to see voter intimidation and fraud? Look at the South in any election prior to the last 20 years or so. Or look at Kennedy's "win" in Illinois in 1960. Civil liberties? Last I checked we aren't rounding up an entire ethnic race, including children, and putting them in internment camps. Things aren't bad at all compared with what has gone on in our past.

blatantninja said:

I disagree. Democracy mearly means that you get to cast a vote in an election.

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That would make North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Zimbabwe democracies. Not to mention Saddam's Iraq, Syria, or Iran. Since you earlier defended the attack on Iraq by claiming that democracies don't need to be attacked and can be reasoned with, don't you think that would indicate that there's something wrong with your definition?

(As an aside, your definition is also quite far from the standard definition used in political science.)

Now, you could make an argument that for any vote to have any meaning, you need free and clear discussion before hand, but you can still be a technical democracy without having things like free press, etc.

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You could indeed.

Absolutely. If you want to see corruption, look at the Grant, Nixon, or Coolidge administrations. You want to see voter intimidation and fraud? Look at the South in any election prior to the last 20 years or so. Or look at Kennedy's "win" in Illinois in 1960. Civil liberties? Last I checked we aren't rounding up an entire ethnic race, including children, and putting them in internment camps. Things aren't bad at all compared with what has gone on in our past.

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Nope, the water isn't turning warm at all. Keep swimming, little frog...

Prime Junta said:

Even if you're not afraid of the government disappearing you for thoughtcrime, you ought to be at least concerned about the possibility that the government employee getting her hands on your file might gossip about it to someone, or sell it, or whatever else.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/uk-suffers-new-personal-data-loss/2008/01/19/1200620256386.html

Prime Junta said:

That would make North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Zimbabwe democracies. Not to mention Saddam's Iraq, Syria, or Iran. Since you earlier defended the attack on Iraq by claiming that democracies don't need to be attacked and can be reasoned with, don't you think that would indicate that there's something wrong with your definition?

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Well perhaps I should be a bit clearer in that you have to have a choice in yoru vote. When only one person is on the ballot, it's not particularly democratic. My point is that the implementation of surveillance doesn't make a country undemocratic, nor does it's attitude or actions towards other countries. It's a political process, not necessarily a policy definition.

Nope, the water isn't turning warm at all. Keep swimming, little frog...

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Not sure exactly what you mean by that, but if you are saying that we are worse today, I would suggest you read up on American history a bit more.

Prime Junta said:

Everyone has something to hide from someone -- your employer, your mother, your date, your putative employer, your neighbors, your insurer, whoever. The trouble with surveillance is that the information that gets gathered that way tends to be abused. Even if you're not afraid of the government disappearing you for thoughtcrime, you ought to be at least concerned about the possibility that the government employee getting her hands on your file might gossip about it to someone, or sell it, or whatever else.

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Do you really think, in this day and age, that there's such a thing as a secret? Given time, desire, and a bit of money, a persistent person could find out what color underwear you wore on your 16th birthday. There's already so much information publicly available that another government database isn't really going to matter that much in the big scheme of things. The gossips already have enough sources to do what they want.

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that the "blogosphere" has significantly eroded the boundary between truth and fiction anyway. Hell, *I* could start better unsubstantiated rumors about myself than any government database will ever produce.

Of course there is still such a thing as secret dte. I am suprised that you, out of all people, would doubt that! You must be really hung up on this "Big Brother USA" scenario!
True, if some powerfull organisation would choose to aim their miscoscope at you personnaly they could find out most or all of what they want to know but, if it was "a persistent person" from your post, than he/she would have to break quite a few data protection laws while going about it.
And than, as citiziens of a nation, we have anonymity in numbers. Nobody yet build a computer system powerfull enough to hold, sort and retrieve all the details about all of us. Holding information is one thing, making use of it is quite another.

My only objection to increased security is that what isn't illegal today might be illegal tomorrow.

dteowner said:

If you have nothing to hide, who cares if somebody's watching? I'm sure there's a "slippery slope" angle to your concern, but I think we've got a long, long way to slide before we're in "thought police" territory.

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The bolded part is IMHO a dangerous fallacy. Are you comfortable with having say personal conversations/interactions with your gf/wife monitored? Sure, it probably wont lead to any dangerous consequences and I'm sure there's nothing irregular about it.

Surveillance is not the worst aspect of the anti-terror hysteria at any rate. Imprisonment and detention without due procedure is. We've taken clear steps away from rule of law in the name of safety. Swedish citizens have had their bank accounts closed and their freedoms severely restricted due to being put on international terrorist listings on extremely flimsy grounds, without even knowing what they were accused of (that later turned out to be unfounded). A German father on vacation in the Balkans has been abducted and taken to a central Asian prison where he was treated in a way that no western legal system would allow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/w.../Reference/Times Topics/Subjects/K/Kidnapping

The US administration is actively trying to dodge American law (which I actually hold in fairly high esteem) in it's handling of terror suspects, and trying to get away with torture.

The harm done if the best organised and strongest governments on the planets pursues this kind of course is of course much greater than what Jihadist crazies can inflict even in their most spectacular successes. The rule of law is pretty darn fundamental to our civilization.

To make it worse it is even doubtful whether the steps taken actually bear much fruit in dealing with the terrorism issue. Terrorism should have been handled as a combination of traditional police work and sending in special forces to capture terrorist leaders, not through extralegal measures.

EDIT: It should be noted that I'm not pessimistic about the US system as a whole, it can well survive this crap and recover, but the current administration is on a fairly nasty course. I also believe that any of the remaing major presidential candidates will reverse at least some of this crap.

Have a look at this year's season final for Boston Legal; it deals with this issue.

In some ways it's not a totally unexpected reaction to terrorism as we've seen heavy-handed reactions from governments in the past. The UK, Israel, and West Germany have all to some extent sidestepped the rule of law with anti-terrorism as an excuse. Spain even created its own illegal counter-terrorist-terrorists to fight ETA (GAL). The difference with the US is one of scale. Since the US is so big and important their activities become a global rather than a national problem as other countries follow their lead.

Heck, even a (fairly crappy) Hollywood production got the rough idea in 1998 (but with a too optimistic assessment of the public outcry against the measures) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133952/

blatantninja said:

Well perhaps I should be a bit clearer in that you have to have a choice in yoru vote. When only one person is on the ballot, it's not particularly democratic.

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And having a meaningful choice implies the freedom to make that choice, right? Think about it a bit -- it implies all kinds of other things: the freedom to campaign, the freedom of political speech, the absence of coercion about your choices, the freedom to assemble, and so on. In other words, pretty much everything we understand by the fuzzy concept of "freedom" when applied to politics.

My point is that the implementation of surveillance doesn't make a country undemocratic, nor does it's attitude or actions towards other countries. It's a political process, not necessarily a policy definition.

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I didn't have only surveillance in mind. I was also thinking of the co-optation of the mass media by politically linked corporations, the co-optation of government itself by corporate power, the blatant and almost unchallenged manipulation of opinion, electoral fraud big enough to swing elections, the de facto legalization of torture and indefinite imprisonment without trial, and so on. Not to mention actual acts of policy, such as illegally invading countries that pose no strategic threat to you.

Not sure exactly what you mean by that, but if you are saying that we are worse today, I would suggest you read up on American history a bit more.

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It's rather hard to put things on a continuum of better or worse; the world is so different today than it was in the 1930's or 1950's, or even 1970's. But I do get the feeling that you're making the mistake of closing your eyes to real, serious threats to your freedom simply because they're not the same threats you faced (and eventually surmounted) before.

dteowner said:

Do you really think, in this day and age, that there's such a thing as a secret? Given time, desire, and a bit of money, a persistent person could find out what color underwear you wore on your 16th birthday.

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Yes, dte, there are secrets.

You're in your "we're all doomed anyway" mood again, it seems. Which is why it beats me you even bother to vote. Things aren't black or white, you know.

There's already so much information publicly available that another government database isn't really going to matter that much in the big scheme of things. The gossips already have enough sources to do what they want.

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There's a huge qualitative difference between dispersed and concentrated information, but that's a bit of a long trek to get into right here.