Kenders' Musings

Let me begin by saying that polls, like anything that deals with numbers, are extremely subjective. I could go to the local market with a press kit and petition from DHMO.ORG warning people about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide and get signatures left and right.

Polls of course have a major influence, rightly or wrongly, in many of todays decisions made by politicians about things that affect our lives, and as such SHOULD be done in as unbaised of a way as possible.

Unfortunately that is rarely the case, so I tend to look askance at numbers that purport to claim to "know" what the public desires from it's citizens. I could do a poll today that would show that 100% of American college students want Bush impeached, and turn right around and show the complete opposite. It's all about WHERE you conduct the poll and HOW you phrase the question.

So with that in mind let's get on with this shall we???

On May 17 a legal summons was delivered to U.S. and UK embassies in capitals around the world—including Istanbul, Tokyo, Lisbon, and Brussels—on behalf of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI). The summons requested the attendance of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair to defend charges that they are in “violation of common values of humanity, international treaties, and international law” for waging war in Iraq.

So there is a worldwide effort of a large group of whiners sticking their nose into international affairs and wanting to put Bush and Blair on trial.

Uh huh.....I see.

While the summons was signed by leading international figures, including international legal scholar Richard Falk and former Assistant UN Secretary General Dennis Halliday, President Bush’s attendance is not anticipated.

So two of the people pushing this assinine idea are a legal scholar, who no doubt believes that we should wait on the UN to tell us when we should defend ourselves, and a FORMER ASSISTANT UN Secretary General.

Folks, if we waited for the UN to do anything besides complain, embezzle and commit pedophilia we would still be waitiing for Saddam to comply and the Lebanese would still be waiting for the Syrians to leave.

Do such efforts, and the broader movement to which they aim to contribute, have any chance of affecting the actions of the United States?

I sure as hell hope not. I certainly don't want the rest of the world affecting how our government does it's job, especially since one of the chief jobs of a government is SUPPOSED to be securing safety and prosperity for it's citizens.

In case anyone else out there hasn't noticed, most of the world doesn't like us much, and every single one of the countries that DOES NOT like us is either heavily socialist, communist leaning or arab and either living under sharia law or heading that way.

When millions of people around the world demonstrated against the U.S. attack on Iraq, Bush referred to it contemptuously as a “focus group.”

Yes, millions of people around the world did protest. Millions of people protest every war that comes along, in fact, there are people that protest everything these days. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see a group that starts protesting the fact that not enough people are protesting this cause or that issue. I may even start that group myself. We'll call it Attention Seeking Whiny Young Protesters, or ASWYP for short.

The article, and stupid planning, continues:

In 1967, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell convened the International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal was charged with conducting “a solemn and historic investigation” of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam in order to “prevent the crime of silence.”

Drawing on this tradition, the WTI—composed of lawyers, former parliamentarians and judges, journalists, artists, and victims of U.S. aggression—has held people’s tribunals on multiple continents in order to build “a moral, political, and judicial record that contributes to build a world of peace and justice” as part of a broader campaign to “put an end to impunity enjoyed by the United States and its allies.”

OK, I want you to pay particualr attention to that first paragraph there....go reread it. Done? Good.

A PHILOSOPHER??? What the hell? Are we back in Roman Times where folks that sit around and ponder are wanting power? (I have a philosophy degree, would you like fries with that?)

This new group is composed of "lawyers, former parliamentarians and judges, journalists, artists, and victims of U.S. aggression".....let's look at THAT shall we?

Lawyers: Out looking for a buck, most likely with heavy leftist leanings;

Former Parliamentarians: Lawyers of a different stripe most likely, and probably with an axe to grind and nothing better to do than chase down publicity;

Judges Again, lawyers;

Journalists and artists (lumped together for brevities sake) Both professions are notoriously left wing. Need I say more?

Victims of U.S. "aggression" Talk about a group with an axe to grind;

Yes, we can see that this "esteemed body of "scholars and caring people" are certainly one's that would have the best interests of humanity in mind and not have an anti-American agenda. **COUGHbsCOUGH**

I take particular exception to these next phrases which, yet again, attempt to place Bush et.al. into the same catagory as Hitler:

Just as in 1943 when the Allied troops set up the United Nations War Crimes Commission to act as a repository for war crimes evidence and compile a list of the accused, so the WTI has heard and documented the testimony of victims in Fallujah, archived video footage of journalists, and tracked the command responsibility of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

Bush is NOT Hitler....but the leftists must have some emotional buzzword to create a stigma around Bush's, and the administrations actions, and who better than one of the most evil men of the last century? Do you think it would work as well if they compared him to true empirical figures from history that actually were on Empire building expeditions? People such as Alexander the Great or Napoleon?

By speaking of the Iraq War in terms of Geneva Conventions, human rights treaties, and other aspects of international law, the WTI addresses all those who believe that states must act within legal restraints.

Must the left be constantly reminded that while actual members of Iraq's armed forces did have protections under the Geneva Conventions, those captured under the umbrella of "insurgent, rebel, freedom fighter, terrorist" or any of a dozen other names for those that are not actually IN the armed forces, with a uniform and command structure, are NOT entitled to ONE SINGLE PROTECTION under the GC?

Actually the answer to that question is "Yes, yes they do!!!"

A new and unexpected convergence of forces is developing in the United States around the Bush administration’s contempt for both international law and the U.S. Constitution. It includes not only peace and human rights activists but conservative constitutionalists and retired generals. The WTI offers an opportunity for people around the world to align with these new “legal allies” forming in the United States.

Let me make this one simple people. International law shoudl only be applied to the open sea and trade sanctions. It is this adherence to a false belief that "international law" trumps our founding documents and overrides our laws that gives away our right to secure our future from enemies that would see us destroyed. The UN is NOT our friend, and they most certainly do not have our best interests at heart when making global decisions.

Unlike many other countries that seem more than happy to let the UN run the world and adhere to their slow-moving processes, the U.S. should not hand sovereignty over to this group of America hating despots that would gladly use the UN to "legally" drag us down to the level that most of the rest of the world curreently resides at, in regards to economics and national security issues.

Let me expound on that last sentence.

Many people around the world decry the level of consumption in the U.S., pointing out the amount of resources we use compared to the rest of the world, based on a per capita basis.

First off, we can afford it. And it is our governments job to make certain that we can continue to afford it.

Second, in a dozen or so years, when China is even more of a comsumer and polluter than the U.S., does one really believe for a moment that international opinion will sway the Chinese to curtail their use of resources in the upcoming march for world domination?

Hell no!!!

This gives me pause to wonder that the world, if they were asked which country they would wish to run things if it were between the U.S. and China, would say?

And what about those statistics I was mentioning at the beginning of this rant?

In one poll, about 70% agreed that the primary lesson of September 11 is that the United States needs to cooperate more with other countries to fight terrorism, as opposed to acting more on its own.

That was from a PIPA poll, and when I checked out there site they actually had this story, one part of which read that "France Most Widely Seen as Having a Positive Influence in World.

Do I really need to say anything else about the "polls" and the "stats" that this group is using?

I didn't think so.

Go read the rest of the article here and tell me what you think.

Crossposted at The Wide Awakes