Heaven said:
[Well, your first error was assuming that anything in my post had to do with liberalism, as I am most definitely one of the most conservative posters on the Escapist. You can't refute arguments by attacking an ideology, which appears to have been your primary goal here. Quite frankly, I'm embarrassed that someone like you could ever be on my side of the divide.
Next. Do you honestly believe that the world's interests would not involve immediate retaliation against the United States for such an action? Any military strike, whether by ground or air, against a country that is not an imminent threat immediately signals to the rest of the world that America is run by nutjobs who could attack at the slightest provocation. China and Russia would absolutely look out for their own interests; their interests would be in ensuring that they, their allies and neutral countries don't get destroyed because Americans decide to launch an attack. America is so dependent on Chinese financing that all they would have to do is refuse to purchase bonds and recall debt. They don't even have to attack militarily; there would be riots in the streets. Hundreds of millions of people, overnight, realize that the United States has no money and can't pay salaries or benefits. The economy collapses leading to a bank rush and a spiral of devastation.
And it's not as if Switzerland would ever back down on such a blatant invasion of their sovereignty. Remember that this is the country that pretty much blew off German threats in WWI and WWII, because for the Swiss, independence is of the utmost importance. The "no, really, we're serious this time" threat gets blown off without a second thought, and we're back to the American destruction again.
Face it; America is only a truly dominant superpower in one area: naval force. If you think that America only restrains itself for moral reasons, you have deluded yourself. The American government is nowhere near all-powerful, and is at all times dependent on the people accepting its authority. Even the most vociferous anti-piracy crusaders would first assassinate the entire government than allow it to knowingly destroy the entire American economy over such a trivial reason. Like I said before, the only way America ever launches genuine assault on a country is if the country itself is on the precipice of destruction. And if you believe for a second that there are actually people out there who would cheer the destruction of a country over some admittedly shady dealings, you need to be committed.
You are embracing what amounts to a "peace at any price" doctrine which means you are a liberal at least in terms of international policy. Your reaching for feeble justifications based on possible, boogie-man retaliation to justify why the US should not take action in it's own interests.
You also have to understand nobody talked about destroying the Swiss outright. The point is to leverage it into changing policy for fear of the repercussions. They would only be wiped out if they chose not to modify their policy after such a show of force and intent.
A nation like the US is imminantly threatened by the outright theft of it's intellectual properties, that kind of thing cumulatively can very much lead to the destruction of the US is everyone figures "it's okay, we can steal from the US".
Being viewed as nutjobs isn't really a factor, because again, we're being stolen from, at a time when we're making a big deal about IP laws. If we let the Swiss get away with it, even if simply with movies, music, and video games, it hurts our position in dealing with say China and other more major offenders accross a wider range of IP issues who can look at what's going on here and say "well, you let the Swiss do it, why not us?".
Like many people with liberal sentiments on subjects like this I notice your short on solutions, and that's why your a liberal. Your putting the idealogy of "it's wrong to attack people" ahead of common sense. We DID try diplomacy first which is why we had this ruling. How do you propose to make them stop stealing IPs? The answer is you don't, you'd rather let people rob the IPs than go to war, and create boogie-man justifications for why we can't do that rather than solve the problem because we're in a position where the only way to get them to stop is to make them.
Your dead wrong if you think that many nations would rally to the defense of the Swiss over this because a lot of nations have a stake in the same exact thing. What's more the US has the firepower to destroy the world 10x over, you might be in denial when it's inconveinent but it happens to be true. The only way the US could ever be defeated would be through MAD (Mutally Assure Destruction) and the cessation of all life on the planet. Actually a global WMD exchange gives us a 20% chance of surivival right now according to the last thing I read, and that includes things like enviromental fallout (even if the damage to the US would indeed be horrofic) nobody else would survive though. The point here is that choosing to go to war with the US would be tantamount to putting a gun to your own head and pulling the trigger, even if we WERE crazy the entire globe isn't going to committ suicide for some symbolic point. What's more given that we are being *robbed* we're not exactly insane, especially seeing as we *DID* engage in diplomacy first.
Honestly, if we took action here I think we'd receive a combination of subtle applause at least from world leadership behind the scenes (even if there is a civilian outcry, since there is always one due to acts of war), and the example would lead to the shifting of a lot of protection of IP laws and start putting a lot more pressure on China as it would probably wind up being the only hold out.
In the end we have to agree to disagree, but instead of flaming me you might want to think things through, especially when you don't have any better solutions. Your basic attitude seems to be "we should lube up and bend over". Sorry, I disagree with that. I myself have some very left wing points of view on certain matters (which rarely come up on these forums) but international policy isn't one of them.
