wre,
Does Zimbabwe have oil reserves, they have a dictator every bit as evil as Saddam was, but no U.S.A. intervention, I wonder why that would be, no economic gain for the U.S.A. perhaps. I wish someone could get the message to Bush that when he makes statement about "the American people" he is assuming that Mexico, Canada and a whole host of smaller countries in North America don't exist, and neither does South America, what an arrogant approach to take, the U.S.A. is only a country in North America, not the whole of America.

I would have loved to have attended school in the U.S.A. if someone who can't string a sentenence together can reach the Presidency I could have become anything.

Relda:
You exhibited your knowledge of the contradictions and eccentricities of Ghandi.(half his luck ) on the spray he got from a Nobel Laureate V.S, Naipaul who made a career of criticising other writers from Dickens,Jane Austen and Hemingway and whose major beef in life was that his writing was not given due accolade in Britain. There was a vast chasm between Ghandi and Naipaul ; Ghandi succeeded in inspiring a Nation: He was a doer who achieved a worthwhile goal...and paid with his life as did other prominent world leaders, Martin Luther King ,Steve Biko, JFK and his Brother Robert; Naipaul wrote novels, got a Nobel Prize and a Knighthood.
Ghandi was only mentioned in the latter half of your post yet you dismissed the whole article as Inane despite some compelling argument supporting the ideal of living dangerously advocating peace from some pretty heavy supporters. You uttered an offhand concession to the idea of non-violence and peace Do you propose we continue to support escalation of wars of conquest ? or do you have an alternative proposal ?

maracas,
They have no alternate proposals conservatives know only one way, if they want/need anything, simple just blow some heads off and take it at any price to their country. Normal people negotiate and come to agreements and have respect for human life, this lot operate on greed and selfishness, for them money is their God.

Maracas,
Maybe the old question, Could Hitler have been stopped by a massive sit-in with group of protestors singing, “Give Peace a Chance”? has run dry – despite there being insufficient martyrs to cater for a million plus Nazi bullets.

In a Christian context, the assertions of the pacifist and the realist is that all use of force is evil and that the teachings of Christ forbid violence" The pacifist, therefore, shuns all military involvement, while the realist sanctions war only as a "lesser of two evils." War opponents categorically refuse to permit killers to mold them in their own image. Pacifists alone uphold the motivating premise of absolutism, that the killing of human beings is morally forbidden.

If the morally high-minded ‘imposition’ of peace, however, becomes an attempt to impose our scale of 'higher' values upon others it leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. Our self-righteous attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to the very intolerance we, ironically, hoped to absolve – Bush’s Iraq may be a case in point. Socialism has proven to be a disaster both in Russia and the third World. It becomes literal proof that “the road to hell is in fact paved with good intentions”. However, I believe The Dalai Lama breaks all political and social barriers cogently with, “To experience genuine compassion is to develop a feeling of closeness to others combined with a sense of responsibility for their welfare. This develops when we accept that other people are just like ourselves in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering.”

SHONGA,
Conservatism can perhaps be a little ambiguous – it probably has been a movement infiltrated by religious fundamentalists, paranoid patriotic groups, and big-business leaders, all united in their loathing for the intellectual elites.

If you perhaps see activism as the default mode of politics, you shouldn't be surprised when it leads to anti-intellectualism, tolerance of extremists, retreat into fantasy, and a self-defeating kind of partisanship designed to make people feel better about themselves rather than produce meaningful change.

Relda
I hope you don't believe that your exercise in semantic obfuscation in any way categorises you as anything but an intellectually bankrupt egocentric. Get a life.

Advocating peace to Genghis Khan ? :) Actually, it would have worked.. but the way the Persians expressed their feeling about him was to send his ambassadors head back in a package. Termed "The package which changed the world". All Khan wanted to do was engage in trade peacefully. The 'head' changed his mind and a million corpses later... there was peace.

The Non Violence of Luther King, was withIN an already established national peace. Same with Ghandi.

The problem with advocating 'peace' is that it just doesn't work.
You can 'advocate' till the cows come home but if some megalomaniac wants your arse.. he is going to have it, peace or no peace advocasy.

"Advocating Peace" is just shallow, misguided and stupid. EVERYONE wants peace you dimwits. The problem is..."Who's" peace.. What "kind" of Peace.

If you peaceniks don't tweak to the obvious ramifications of my above statements, then I'm not going to try to educate you because the job is probably too big.

'Peace' all :)