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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (168126)	4/19/2003 5:00:05 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574769

Not at all........a strong foreign policy is one where there is consensus and nations working towards a common goal. When there is a common goal and a shared vision on how to achieve it. But if you don't do anything that you can't get consensus on you have a weak foreign policy. A strong foreign policy, then, is giving the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Canadians, whomever, veto authority over our foreign policy. A strong foreign policy is built on leadership. We say, "Here's what we think needs to happen. We'd love to have you join us; but we are the leaders of the world and will do what we believe to be in our interests, whether or not you do join us". This is the difference in a Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, and a George Bush or Teddy Roosevelt. Leadership.

To: tejek who wrote (168126)	4/21/2003 3:08:27 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574769

They are trying to control our actions a lot more then we are trying to control theirs. No, they are not......they did not agree with our position. And I think that's because they had a better sense of the principles in play here and the nature of the parties involved than we do. Yes they didn't agree with our position. And we didn't agree with thiers. I know its your opinion that they are right but many disagree. In any case whoever is right they where trying to control our actions more then we were trying to control theirs. This would be true even if they really did have a better sense of the facts and principles in play. "We don't insist on UN approval every time France wants to throw its military around in Africa or elsewhere (genrally with less concern for innocent civilians and human rights then that displayed by American forces)." Huh? "Protests hit French intervention in Africa For three consecutive days angry crowds numbering as many as 10,000 people marched on the French embassy in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, to protest France's military intervention in its former African colony. French special forces troops swooped into the city on May 22 to put down a soldiers' mutiny against the corrupt regime of President Ange-Felix Patasse. Using helicopter gunships and armored vehicles, they killed dozens of soldiers and civilians who had joined the rebellion. " wsws.org "For almost 10 years, officials at the foreign ministry in Paris have been arguing that its annual budget for Africa of more than £2 billion could be better spent elsewhere. The French government publicly described the deployment of 600 marines to the Ivorian hinterland last week under Operation Unicorn as an evacuation, securing the safety of almost a thousand French passport holders. But like many of the 20 or so other French military deployments in post-independence Africa, there was more to Operation Unicorn than simply protecting a few French families. Western diplomats from west Africa said Paris would continue committing money and, if needs be, troops to former colonies like the Ivory Coast if only to forestall any advance by American industry and interests. "The level of pride in France's relations with Africa cannot be overestimated," one diplomat said. "President Chirac himself warned years ago of 'rival Anglo-Saxons dreaming of pushing France out of Africa'. That attitude still holds in Paris. "The old economic staples of cocoa or minerals might not be there but oil is the biggest area of economic growth through western Africa and Paris does not want to lose out to the British in Nigeria or the Americans in Angola."" telegraph.co.uk I am not sure what French action to which you are referring but I know for sure that any action they undertook is not comparable to the action we just took. The incident mentioned in my links is just one of a long series of interventions. The actions are smaller, but frequent and they include military action to decide who will rule a country. Of course Africa usually gets less attention then the Middle East, esp. when the intervention is smaller. The principle is the same whether the deployment is a few thousand or 300,000. If setting up or removing governments by force is wrong then its wrong either way. Also in the French interventions you usually have a lot less UN authorization then we had for Iraq. Tim