they kiss and make up

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Originally posted here by FrameWork


Surely you arent suggesting that the people of Afghanistan are worse off than before are you? Because if you are then maybe you need to replay the video from when they were dancing in the street, playing music for the first time, and shaving their beards off that the Taliban made them wear.

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Hey may not say that ...but in five years every one may well think that. Remember the afganies where danceing in the streets when the Taliban overpowered the warlords. Under warlord rule might made right, murder, theft, and rape by the local goverment was commen (actual rape, and they didn't care who, they had "buggering" squads that would go around looking for unatended boys to make their property). Guess how the US is putting back into power . thats right the warlords.

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Originally posted here by Ghostdog

That's no true. Here is the definition (found url=http://www.wordreference.com/en/democracy]Here[/url]

democracy [dı'mɒkrəsı]
noun
(plural: -cies)
1 government by the people or their elected representatives
2 a political or social unit governed ultimately by all its members
3 the practice or spirit of social equality
4 a social condition of classlessness and equality
5 the common people, esp. as a political force
[ETYMOLOGY: 16th Century: from French démocratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek demokratia government by the people; see demo-, -cracy]

They never said that the majority win. UN IS a democracy because there is a vote of ALL his members. The only thing is that there is 5 permanents members and 10 are elected every 2 years. To adopt a resolution ALL THE 5 permanents MUST BE AGREE. Like all others democracies there is rules.

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Yes, you are technically correct that that is the dictionary definition of a democracy.
However, if you asked any person who is a citizen of a democratic state, they would assume it meant that the majority vote wins.
To take an example, if the French parliament votes on something, with a result of say 500-50, would you expect the side that got 500 votes or the one that got 50 to win ??

You are totally incorrect in stating that ALL the members vote on security council issues - as you said only 15 (out of all the members) get the chance, and 5 of those can veto a vote, making it completely meaningless anyway.

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darkes said

Yes, you are technically correct that that is the dictionary definition of a democracy.
However, if you asked any person who is a citizen of a democratic state, they would assume it meant that the majority vote wins.
To take an example, if the French parliament votes on something, with a result of say 500-50, would you expect the side that got 500 votes or the one that got 50 to win ??

You are totally incorrect in stating that ALL the members vote on security council issues - as you said only 15 (out of all the members) get the chance, and 5 of those can veto a vote, making it completely meaningless anyway.

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Well, first the second point . When I say ALL the member I'm refering to the 15 not all the countries (look at the list, I don't know why some are in UN).

For the first point, if you look at how a US president is elected and how a French president is elected you'll find some differents but both are democratic. There is rules and you must follow them. In our both countries the majority wins but there is several majority too : absolute and relative. Why one will be better than the other ? I don't see the permanent members with a veto but I see that all the permanent members MUST BE ALL AGREE. The result is the same but the thinking is different.

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Originally posted here by darkes


Yes, you are technically correct that that is the dictionary definition of a democracy.
However, if you asked any person who is a citizen of a democratic state, they would assume it meant that the majority vote wins.
To take an example, if the French parliament votes on something, with a result of say 500-50, would you expect the side that got 500 votes or the one that got 50 to win ??

You are totally incorrect in stating that ALL the members vote on security council issues - as you said only 15 (out of all the members) get the chance, and 5 of those can veto a vote, making it completely meaningless anyway.

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So you are arguing that the ability for one to veto many nullifies a democracy....well I guess the US isn't a democracy then.

I would argue that with its inability to make laws, money, or have an independent standing military that the UN isn't a government. It isn't a ruling body but rather a debating club as such it doesn’t matter if its a democracy or not any more so then say a college frat. That is all it ever was or ever will be, with that in mind why dose it matter if the UN voted in the war in Iraq. They didn't vote on Frances war with Algeria, or Britans war with Argentina (or can we not remember 20 years into the past.) Hell look through the 80's and 90's and you will find a lot of first world nations beating up on third world nations (US into Panama, and Granada, and Libya. The French: attack on Egypt in 56, Algeria, a lot of little wars in south east Asia.) The UN ruled none of this on.

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Originally posted here by bballad


So you are arguing that the ability for one to veto many nullifies a democracy....well I guess the US isn't a democracy then.

I would argue that with its inability to make laws, money, or have an independent standing military that the UN isn't a government. It isn't a ruling body but rather a debating club as such it doesn’t matter if its a democracy or not any more so then say a college frat. That is all it ever was or ever will be, with that in mind why dose it matter if the UN voted in the war in Iraq. They didn't vote on Frances war with Algeria, or Britans war with Argentina (or can we not remember 20 years into the past.) Hell look through the 80's and 90's and you will find a lot of first world nations beating up on third world nations (US into Panama, and Granada, and Libya. The French: attack on Egypt in 56, Algeria, a lot of little wars in south east Asia.) The UN ruled none of this on.

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You are correct that the UN is usually only a debating club when it comes to really important issues. Interestingly, it is a democracy (in the sense that the majority vote wins), for less contentious issues that are decided by ALL member states.

These include issues like food aid, world health (e.g. SARS, where the UN told China to get its act together), peacekeeping forces, and so on. IMHO the UN does still have a role to play in this area, as generally it is regarded as representing world opinion, as the majority of members of the UN have approved it.

Incidentally the UN did vote in favour of the Falklands war 20 years ago.
There were two resolutions passed by the security council.
The first one was that Argentina should withdraw its troops unconditionally from the Falklands.
This resolution in itself is meaningless, as this type of resolution is routinely ignored by the offending party, because the UN doesn't take any action to enforce it.

However, crucially, it was followed up by a second resolution authorising 'all necessary means' by other countries to enforce the first resolution. In diplomatic terms 'all necessary means' does specifically include the use of military force. If my memory serves me correctly, on this occasion the USSR was thinking of using its veto, but when it was obvious that Argentina wasn't going to compromise, they relented, and the resolution was duly passed.

Every member on the security council who voted for this was well aware they were voting for a military attack by Britain on the Falklands - only one voted against (Panama). Those who abstained (the USSR, Poland, China & Spain) were giving it their tacit approval - in other words, we can't vote in favour for political reasons, but on the other hand we aren't going to stop you. As you may remember, by coincidence (?) it was France who was the major military threat to the UK, as they were supplying Exocet long range anti ship missiles to Argentina, even after Argentina had invaded the Falklands.

I stand duly corrected, unfortunitly my military history is a littel shaky when dealing with countries outside of the US.

another point about that unnecessary conflict is that Russia supplied intel to Argentina during the war.

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Originally posted here by gold eagle
another point about that unnecessary conflict is that Russia supplied intel to Argentina during the war.

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True, but it was 'sanitised', and didn't really contain anything of that much use to Argentina. After all, there was hardly an element of surprise on this occasion.

The USSR did however get a lot of valuable intel from this (strange the way all these 'fishing trawlers' appeared), because it was the first time they were able to monitor a member of NATO on a war footing.

Oh, and it probably wouldn't have happened without the support of the US, who whilst being neutral on the diplomatic front, gave the UK access to some of their secure communications links (satellites etc.), and continued to share intel with the UK.

This conflict was 'unecessary' in the sense that the UK sent out all the wrong diplomatic signals beforehand, leading Argentina to believe that the UK had no interest in the Falklands. However, once Argentina invaded the situation became very different.

The closest analogy I can think of here is that a power hostile to the US took one of the Pacific islands currently owned by the US by force, and asked the US what is was going to do.

Or how about this analogy - foreign minister of iraq asks us minister if they would mind if kuwait was invaded. After the fact the us found that it did indeed mind and hence the gulf war.