I\'ve been discussing politics more and more since its inching closer to november and the election and one thing I keep hearing from the republicans I talk with is how we needed to get Saddam out because he was killing his own people (I\'d like to move on from the war, but of course none of them will let me ) It pisses me off because I know there are fucking tons of rulers that murder their own citizens and we don\'t do a damn thing about it. So what I\'d like is any rulers (past/present) you know of that killed their own people (not counting by sending to war, no matter how pointless it was)
\'s a difficult one. If your friends tell you the prime motive for the war was helping the Iraqi people, they\'re clearly wrong. To be honest, I\'m totally against war, but a small percentage of me hoped someone could get rid of Hussein. Still I\'d prefered the Iraqi\'d managed it themselves. I don\'t know what arguments you want \'n what for. But the existance of other evil leaders doesn\'t justify not going against one of them. But since there are other unharmed rulers who still carry on their business without intervention from the US (or other countries), there had to be another reason for the US to intervene (to put it neutral) in Iraq. They had a different agenda.
Skinner makes a good point, your argument should be that if anything the Iraqis should have liberated themselves. It\'s not our place or our duty to die for them. Not to mention that if this war keeps up we\'ll have killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. Bush said recently that \"...there are no more mass graves in Iraq...\", well, there are actually, because of us. And if these fellows like to consider themselves fiscal conservatives you should mention that the war (at last count) has cost 165 billion dollars. This huge bill isn\'t even included in Dubya\'s budget, meaning that even if this administration fixed the budget outright (something that Clinton did) there would still be a huge price tag for this war sitting in the background. And the war\'s not even a fourth of the way through by the Bush government\'s own estimates.
From the point of view of most pro wars people I know money is very important. I\'m trying to build an argument that would convince the kind of person that would care about the financial cost, which may end up hurting and ending a lot of lives in it\'s own right.
I typed 20th century genocide into the google search and this is what I found. I know some of these dudes weren\'t \'rulers\' but they ended up massacring plenty of people. Hope some of these names help you out. Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1934-39) 13,000,000 (the purges) Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII) Mao Tze Dong (China, 1966-69) 11,000,000 (cultural revolution) Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians WWII) Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps) Menghitsu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000 Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915) 1,200,000 Charles DeGaulle (Algeria, 1954-1962) 1,000,000 Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000 Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000 Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000 Suharto (East Timor, 1976-98) 600,000 Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1971) vs Bangladesh 500,000 Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000 Mullah Omar (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000 Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000 Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000 Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ? Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000 Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000 Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-96) 180,000 Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000 Saddam Hussein (Iraq, 1987-88) 100,000 Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) 100,000 Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ? Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (vietnamese civilians) Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000 Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) 40,000 Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 (dissidents executed) Francisco Franco (Spain) 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war) Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000 Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000 Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) 20,000 Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000 Osama bin Laden (worldwide, 1991-2001) 4,000 Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) 3,000 Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala) 2,000 Marcos (Philippines) ?
wow, thanks guys, I completely forgot about this thread.... of course I agrued my heart out with the bush supporters and I even got one of them to change!!! He was just like \"no, I see what he saying, and that was really my only reason for liking Bush........ wait a minute! fuck bush!\" ... well not exactly like that but you get the picture
http://www.overgrow.com/edge/showthread.php?t=457052 best argument is a dispassionate outside observer\'s analysis imo.