Re: OT Hatred (was Re: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

John English wrote:
> Sorry, remind me which country the US has declared war against?

No country. We are at war with the ideological fellow travelers
of the people who attacked us on September 11, 2001. That means,
among other things, carrying out targeted killings against enemy
combatants in whatever country they happen to be, using our own
definition of enemy combatant. (A working definition is "anyone
that our government decides needs killing".)

> I thought "war stuff" meant "Geneva Convention" stuff...

Nope. It's whatever the strong want to do. Geneva conventions
are for strong countries to use to badger weak ones into behaving
the way they want.

> The Nazis believed it could gas Jews -- and did so. It
> doesn't make it right, as they found out at Nuremburg.

As I said. War crime trials are imposed by victors upon
the vanquished. If the Nazis had won, or there had been
a negotiated peace instead of an outright victory, those
trials would never have happened.

> Signing a treaty is like signing a contract

No. The difference between a treaty and a contract,
at least for strong nations, is that there is no
higher authority to whom to appeal in order to
enforce the treaty. Therefore, if it is in a
country's perceived best interests to stop
participating in a treaty, it can do so. It simply
accepts the consequences, which are presumably
preferable to the consequences of upholding the
treaty.

> You may well disagree with it as a political system, but if
> the citizens of another country vote for a different political
> system from your own, that's surely up to them.

See Nazis and Nurmeberg trials, above.

There is no reason to permit someone to drill holes in
their side of the lifeboat.

> To believe that the US has an absolute right to veto the result
 > of elections held in foreign countries smacks of dictatorship
 > rather than democracy...

Yes, that's pretty much why we don't care when the rest of the
world complains about the actions of our elected president.

> but I'm beginning to realise that you feel OK about that, as long
> as you're on the side of the dictators rather than being one of the
> dictatees

I'm OK with that as long as we use our powers for good instead
of for evil, for our own definitions of good and evil.