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

To: epicure who wrote (106704)	7/20/2003 5:47:16 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

This is the tough thing about Iraq, that there was no discussion worthy of the name, previous to the US invasion It sets everyone up into difficult positions .... now, after the fact, nations are being asked to help out there, but they cannot do so without validating the abuse of principle inherent in the neocons arrogating all power unto themselves by deciding international matters in the back rooms of Washington So what do we do .... what should Canada do? ... this is where i pay taxes for the most part - what should i recommend to my foreign office on how those taxes be spent? .... like you, i want the world to come out better, and do my part on this road .... on the one hand, it is vitally important that a nation central to the middle east not be screwed up, and a multi-lateral approach, belated though it certainly is at this point, has a far better chance of success than one nation from across the sea trying to subjugate another ..... on the other hand, it is not productive to reward hubris in its abuse of power, and any assistance to the PNAC bunch on their iraqui project would be exactly such a reward At the end of the day, the thing is to support discussion, i think .... to point out that the great failure of the Bush approach is its rejection of discussion, of parliamentary openness in debate between all effected parties .... so actually i've already expressed to my foreign ministre that he should support the UN, because it's all we've got so far as a structure for discussion, and we should fix it up, admit its weaknesses, see what we can do to repair them, to make the place work ..... and in the meantime, absent an abject apology out of the neocons, we stay out of Iraq ... there are other things we can do, that do not reward abuse of power By the way, earlier you posted WSC's quote in favour of poison gas, well there was a canadian officer who served with the white russians in 1919 to 1921 or so, when the treaty banning the use of gas came up in Geneva around 1925, he spoke out against it, quite strongly, felt it was an effective weapon and the 'other guys' would use it anyway, so why restrict yourself from its use .... i think he was also a member of parliament, and possibly in the cabinet, he and WSC have been quoted together, it was the same time period, but i can't recall his name, so can't google up anything on him, don't have fine enough search terms ..... those were the days when they thought chemicals could be WMDs, now we understand they're not, compared to nuclear weapons anyway, they're too difficult to deliver effectively