Brumar--you're drawing only your own interpretation from my words. Please know that your interpretation doesn't fit into either the intent or the meaning of my words.
Perhaps this is because you're so opposed to my thinking in this matter that objective reasoning has become difficult for you. Indeed, you leave aside the wisdom to what I wrote regarding the first Gulf War.
In the post to which you find objectionable, I wrote:
"The British drawn boundary lines landlocked Iraq and Kuwait was once part of the Basra Province. Bush the elder didn't have to start the war--Saddam would have withdrawn his troops if negotiations were more r[e]asonable. Perhaps it should have been a matter for the world court. But, hey, the US don't want no world court!"
First off, a cause for war must be just. Another nation invading another nation is indeed a just cause for war, as it becomes necessary to help defend the rights of the invaded nation. This especially when such an act violative of international law.
Secondly, war must only come into play if and when all other remedies have been exhausted. The point I made in the comment you find objectionable, was that Saddam was willing to negotiate an alternative other than militarily being forced out of Kuwait. But this effort never saw the light of day due to the Bush I Administration's want for war.
Thirdly, a determination has to exist as to whether greater overall harm would result from using the instrument of war, rather than from pursuing alternative peaceful diplomatic solutions.
Unfortunately, the position Bush the elder imposed at the time was: No negotiation/no concession. Consequently, military action took the place of negotiations largely due to the Bush the elder's unwillingness to negotiate for a solution.
Was there a reason to negotiate? I think, yes. Why? Because there seemingly were some issues needing both recognition and a resolve. Consider the following excepts from a history of the Iraq v. Kuwait Gulf War:
history.searchbeat.com
>>>Prior to World War I, Kuwait had been a province of Iraq, as a territory in the Ottoman Empire. However, Kuwait was split from Iraq in post-war negotiations and became a British territory, later an independent monarchy. Iraq never accepted the legitimacy of Kuwaiti independence from Iraq , although prior to 1990 it had accepted the reality. The Iraq-Kuwait border was never well-defined and border disputes between the two countries had been continuous since the creation of Kuwait.
Following the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s , Iraq was extremely indebted. It hoped to repay its debts by raising the price of oil through OPEC oil production cuts, but instead, Kuwait increased production, lowering prices, in an attempt to leverage a better resolution of their border dispute. In addition, Iraq charged that Kuwait had taken advantage of the Iran-Iraq War to drill for oil and build military outposts on Iraqi soil near Kuwait. Furthermore, Iraq charged that it had performed a collective service for all Arabs by acting as a buffer against Iran and that therefore Kuwait and Saudi Arabia should forgive Iraq's war debts.
In late July, 1990, as negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait stalled, Iraq amassed troops on Kuwait's borders and summoned American ambassador April Glaspie for a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In that meeting, Hussein outlined his grievances against Kuwait, while promising that he would not invade Kuwait before one more round of negotiations. Glaspie offered mixed messages, expressing concern over the troop buildup, while saying that the US "have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" (from the Iraqi transcript of the meeting, as published in Sifry).<<<
>>> Iraq initially established a puppet "liberated" Kuwaiti government, but quickly dissolved this and declared parts of Kuwait to be extensions of the Iraqi province of Basra and the rest to be the 19th province of Iraq.<<<
So even though some Iraqi administrations gave up the claim to Kuwait as a province of Iraq, Saddam took an opposite perspective. Thus, Saddam's wrongful military move into Kuwait, and with a mistaken notion that the US would not involve itself in an Arab-Arab conflict.
>>>The Department of Defense claimed to have satellite photos of a large troop buildup in Kuwait along the Saudi border, but never made them public for security reasons. Other satellite photos purchased from Soviet satellite sources apparently showed no such buildup.<<<
American propaganda maybe? Appears so.
>>> Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the US. It hired the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton for about $11 million, money from the Kuwaiti government. This firm went on to manufacture a fake campaign, which described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and letting them die on the floor. A video news release was widely distributed by US TV networks; false supporting testimony was given before Congress and before the UN Security Council. The fifteen-year-old girl testifying before Congress was later revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States; the supposed surgeon testifying at the UN was in fact a dentist who later admitted to having lied. [MCA]<<<
Was this Kuwaiti or American propaganda? And does anybody konw about Hill and Knowlton?
>>> Various peace proposals were floated, but none were agreed to. The United States insisted that the only acceptable terms for peace were Iraq's full, unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq insisted that withdrawal from Kuwait must be "linked" to a simultaneous withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and Israeli troops from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon.<<<
Again, there was some food for negotiation on the table but the US would have nothing of it.
>>> The US policy regarding media freedom was much more restrictive than in previous conflicts. Most of the press information came from briefings organized by the military. Only selected journalists were allowed to visit the front lines or conduct interviews with soldiers. Those visits were always conducted in the presence of officers, and were subject to both prior approval by the military, and censorship afterward. This was ostensibly to protect sensitive information from being revealed to Iraq , but often in practice it was used to protect politically embarrassing information from being revealed. This policy was heavily influenced by the military's experience with the Vietnam War, which it believed it had lost due to public opposition within the United States.<<<
Hmmmm! Shall we all clear our voices at once? The above paragraph sorta sounds like a complaint about not being able to interview scientists without the presence of Iraqi "minders." So who really are the American "minders" for the media? What's that all about!?!
Anyway, back to my point. Here's yet another example showing an unwillingness to negotiate a solution, and a want not to even entertain an Arab solution which probably would have been a proper way to go. Here are the reflections of Britain's Margaret Thatcher:
>>>"... And then while we were talking, a telephone message came through, I think from the ruler of the Yemen, and I said to him "President, you do know that the Yemen, being on the Security Council did not vote last night against Saddam Hussein", so we were already alert that there were some people who were in fact, not going to take the view which the President and I took, but were going to argue as indeed the next telephone calls that came in, from I think King Hussein, from Yemen. Let's try to get an Arab solution.
"It was too urgent for that. The negotiations could have gone on and on and in the meantime, Saddam Hussein would have been control of the people of Kuwait. So we left it for a short time, -- we really weren't enamoured in any way with the possibility of an Arab solution, because we didn't think it really existed...."<<<
pbs.org
Brumar, do you know that the US literally bought its coalition to drive Iraq from Kuwait, and that negotiation for lesser harms, i.e., a diplomatic solution, was not on the table? Moreover, the UN Security Council vote was split, and among the 'Big Veto Five' China abstained.
Did I support the first US Gulf military action? Given the backdrop described above, no, I did not support that war. Clearly, the three principles described in the early going of this post, concerning the nature of a just war and competing harms, were not met.
The present threat of war? Well, it looks as though they'll be a veto (France) at the UN table, and an overall Security Council vote right now seems to not want to push for war, that there are better alternatives.
Now I wrote that I would support a war to remove weapons of mass destruction and a threat to other nations if the UN determined such threats existed. However, I reserve the right not to support such an action if I believe the respectiving UN voting process has become tainted by tradeoffs having nothing to do with the war in exchange for pro votes to support the war. |
