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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (56408)	11/10/2002 1:04:10 PM
From: epsteinbd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, with Saddam calling up his Parliament in emergency session, it sure looks like your analysis won. Brutus, Brutus, can you hear us...?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (56408)	11/10/2002 1:31:14 PM
From: paul_philp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, I still believe that Iraq is strictly a tactical move in the war on terrorism. The real targets are Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Americans need to ensure that Hussein doesn't do anything crazy to destabilize the region even more. They also need a successful modern state in the region to act as an exemplar to the Arab people who today have very little in the way of a positive alternative to theocratic government. A healthier Iraq with the oil fields pumping at full production can destabilize Saudi Arabia. As this threat becomes real the US will have more leverage with the Saudi royalty. The educational and ideological foundations for the Islamists war on modernity are in Saudi Arabia and until these are transformed all else is tactical. Paul

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (56408)	11/11/2002 1:39:51 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "As I answered, Saddam Hussein has already given up 200 billion dollars of oil revenue rather than disarm as he agreed to do. Wouldn't you say that is proof that WMDs are worth quite a lot to Saddam?" I don't know where the 100 billion dollar figure comes from, so I can't comment on it. But Iraq had to give up a certain amount of oil revenue for reparations. That money had nothing to do with disarming. Other than that, as long as sanctions are in place, Iraq couldn't sell oil freely, but that limitation was something that was always going to take some time to lift. In other words, no matter what Saddam had done after the Gulf war, Iraq would still have owed reparations, and still would have had to suffer sanctions while they were being disarmed. Inspections was never going to be an instantaneous event. So Saddam let the inspectors run around in Iraq until 1998. He could have thrown them out (or refused to cooperate with them or whatever) earlier if he'd wanted to. But he wanted the sanctions lifted, so he let the inspections continue. But that farce could only go on so long. By 1998 it became apparent to him that the objective of the US was "regime change" not disarmament. That meant that he would have to suffer inspections forever and that sanctions wouldn't be lifted until he left power. When he figured this out, the motivation for continuing the inspections went away, so he quit cooperating with them. With the new UN resolution promising the end of sanctions, he's probably got his hopes up again, so he lets the inspectors back in. Re: "Our big problem with Iraq is not anti-American feelings, which are not strong there anyway as they hate their government much more than us." I doubt that Iraqis are in big love with us, LOL. Even if you do assume that the Iraqis love us, the fact is that the Iraqi sanctions piss off the other Arabs. The people who blew up the WTC were not Iraqis or Palestinians, but they were driven to take revenge for what was done to the Iraqis and Palestinians. That same observation applies to the fact that the people who blew up the WTC were not poor, and therefore it could not be that lack of wealth was a driving force for terror. This kind of logic ignores sympathy. The Iraqis and Palestinians generate sympathy throughout the Arab world. Re: "Saddam is on record as saying that his big mistake with Kuwait was not waiting until he had nukes before invading - he is sure that if he had only had nukes, the US would have been deterred from trying to stop him." Nukes might have stopped the US, but I doubt it. But that's not the real question. The real question is whether nukes would have stopped Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states. There is an assumption that Saddam Hussein would not have been stopped were it not for the actions of the "world's policeman". This assumption is untestable, but probably not true. Lawbreaking is punished even in frontier towns that don't have a "policeman". Instead, they have vigilantes. As soon as the frontier town gets a policeman, the citizens quit organizing posses, and instead let the policeman sort it out for them. Re: "Yet you think the US should have no problem with lifting sanctions and letting Saddam get nukes?" Maybe you're confusing "sanctions" with "inspections / disarmament". Even after disarmament is completed and sanctions are lifted, Iraq will still be getting inspected. Go back and read the UN Security Council resolutions if you don't understand this. I know it is confusing. I try to be specific in how I use the language to distinguish between these things, but I'm sure that I've at least once written "sanctions" when I meant "inspections/disarmament" or vice versa. The press doesn't give you much hints on this. To find out about it you will have to go to the original documents. Re: "If we pull out of the Mideast as you advise, the minute Saddam gets nukes, he'll roll right over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia." Nah, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will get nukes too, and then they'll have a "Mexican Standoff", just like the US and USSR had, or that India and Pakistan have now. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are not countries run by girls. They are run by men, and they will know how to defend themselves. But like I said earlier, your premise that the end of sanctions will allow Iraq to rearm is faulty. The problem with "sanctions" is that they make problems for a large civilian population. "Inspections" and "disarmament", on the other hand, have a much smaller footprint. What we're doing is (eventually) dropping sanctions, but keeping inspections and disarmament. Then someday, inspections will probably go away too. Re: "Letting Saddam get control of 25% of the world's oil seems a good foreign policy to you?" This whole concept that nuclear weapons give even a tiny and unimportant nation infinite power is silly. If a huge and powerful nation like the USSR is unable to take over the world with thousands of multi megaton ICBMs, there is no way in hell that a tiny and weak nation like Iraq is going to take over the world with a few dozen 50KT inaccurate nukes. Nor is there any way in hell that a powerful and rich country like Saudi Arabia is going to get its ass kicked by a weak and poor country like Iraq. Kuwait got taken down by a "sucker punch". If Kuwait had known in advance that Iraq was actually going to invade, they'd have pulled in allies and stopped the Iraqis on the border. Weapons always eventually drift into the 3rd world. When the 1st world developed the machine gun it changed warfare completely. If you'd told people back in 1914 that by 2002 Indonesia would have a large army that is *fully* equipped with automatic weapons they'd probably be making statements along the level of yours. That is, they'd assume that Indonesia had taken over Australia, LOL. Nukes are here and nukes are here to stay. As to what happens to Kuwait, I would expect to see the Arab states eventually congeal into a single country, though they will go through a few decades of democracy first. That would mean the end of Kuwait. (Don't hold your breath, I doubt I'll live long enough to see this one.) -- Carl