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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (48754)	10/1/2002 11:05:57 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Joel Goldberg has a good rundown of the more shopworn arguments against the Iraq war. This takedown is particularly good: People who think we must go through the U.N. seem to believe that the U.N. is an objectively neutral or moral institution. In their eyes, getting approval from the U.N. is like getting approval from a judge or a priest. Or, they think the U.N. is where the nations of the world put aside their petty self-interest and do whatever is in the best interests of humanity. There's only one problem with this. None of the nations in the U.N. — especially the permanent members of the Security Council — are acting on such pure motives. France isn't opposed to invading Iraq out of an abiding love of peace. It's opposed to an American invasion largely because France has been trading with Iraq for years, despite the sanctions. France has billions of dollars in oil contracts it doesn't want to lose. Which is why, according to numerous accounts, the French have made it known that if they can keep their existing contracts, they will probably approve a U.S. invasion. Or, consider Russia. Russia's foot-dragging is also largely about oil — and securing the $8 billion Iraq already owes them. But Russia also wants the U.S. to turn a blind eye to its military abuses in Chechnya and Georgia. And, by the way, a precondition for China's vote is tacit American approval of a Chinese crackdown on separatist Muslim Uighurs. Now, how is it that an American invasion of Iraq is somehow morally superior with U.N. approval if that approval can only be bought by American support for bloodshed elsewhere? Altruism and charity aren't the coin of the realm on the Security Council; blood and oil are. As the editors of National Review put it in the latest issue: "We will leave it to the shrinks to determine why American liberals consider it a mark of morality in foreign policy when that policy coincides with Russian and French strategies that are themselves arrived at for the crassest of reasons. In general, making 'international opinion' the benchmark for right and wrong is a mistake, since so much of it is driven by fear, self-interest, and greed." nationalreview.com

To: Ilaine who wrote (48754)	10/2/2002 1:31:09 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "Because I have been teetering on the brink of putting you on "Ignore" due to your general obnoxiousness." This from the woman who suggested that I kiss her ass? #reply-18008111 Go ahead and put me on ignore. It will help you to keep believing your version of reality. If you don't put me on ignore now, you will when I rub in the fact that I was right and you were wrong. And by the way, did you ever admit to being wrong, wrong, wrong about the deployment of the US sealift? -- Carl P.S. See #reply-15785428