Posted by Al; [Aldurant] on April 07, 1999 at 07:38:44 {HTWDI6pmYgbNVk78PDhst74NX2uzuA}:
In Reply to: ******Look out Milosivic posted by Smurf, New on this!! on April 06, 1999 at 15:21:46:
Smurf-
I'll do my best to follow your response.
:To find the truth, speak not only with your "brothers in truth".
Is this something you are saying to me or do you think I said that? I don't understand. For the record, I said that I have spoken with military men. By that I mean a U.S Army general and a ICBM silo second in command. I have spoken with NO brothers in the "truth" about this. Who I do speak to are not JW's. I don't know why this statement is in your post.
I understand that even the elected governments of 20 nations can be in error or evil, but the possibility does not make that the default position. We are very unlikely to be the ones, who by our mere assertion, establish that they are. If we were speaking of a gang of terrorists who had already purposefully shot an eleven-year old girl in the head, such assertions would be very likely, but for the elected gov'ts of twenty nations the burden of proof is on us. One can't just wave their ignorant hand and pronounce all these governments evil or incompetent. Declareing something possible does not make it even remotely probable. Neither you, nor anyone else has produced any evidence whatsoever. You certainly have no grounds whatever to compare them to Hitler or Mussolini. That is a serious overgenerality. They are both "in government" so I guess they are the same. That is utterly insane.
Being in a "high" position is not the point that I was making. My point is that they are 20 separate countries, independent from each other. Each of them answer to a voting public and a critical press, which they do not supress or control. I am fully aware of the conspiracy theories touted by Witnesses and other cults that would prefer to be the ones in control of your thoughts.
When I say "evidence", I am not speaking of evidence that we have killed someone. I am speaking of the evidence we have before we decide to kill. Are we sure that Milosevic and others have committed certain atrocities? If we are not, we should not act. If we ARE sure, because of the evidence we have, we do act. We will not be hiding anything, because we believe that what we are doing is right.
Black and white thinking is not something that I learn from the WTS nor is it emotional as such. It is a tendency to oversimplify, a tendency I had long before I heard of Jehovah's Witnesses. It means that I would negotiate much less after making sure of the evidence of the atrocities. I would take stronger military action, sooner. However, if I were a statesman, who was conferencing with a hundred other statesmen, I might understand NATO's seemingly slower timetable, realizing further complexities of the situation that I am not aware of now.
I don't know what you are talking about with Africans, but I think that you understand the concept of distance. Kosovo is surrounded by nearby NATO airbases. Somalia, for example, in Africa is not. That is all there is to it. One thing is easy, and the other is hard. To get 20 nations to agree to go to Africa, to even have the evidence to go, is much more difficult.
Need more bombings? Short of arms? Nuclear war? I brought up none of these things. Someone said something about how we wouldn't help the Africans the way we are helping the people in Kosovo, as if it was because of their race or something. I simply pointed out one of many reasons why the various situations in Africa are different, and do not lend themselves easily to that sort of military assistance. It would have been nice if there could have been a couple of hundred thousand U.N. troops in Rwanda a few years ago. They probably wouldn't have had to do anything, and the butchery that occurred there probably would not have happened.
Smurf, I don't think you are reading my posts carefully enough. You seem to be talking to another person in some of your comments rather than me. I think you might be making some assumptions, which, if you will carefully read my posts, are unwarranted, and do not reflect my actual views.
Al