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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (117591)	10/24/2003 1:31:03 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes, we were intervening in Iraq in a big way. We pursued a policy of containment for 12 years and the results were terrible for the Iraqi people and bad for US foreign policy. The US got all the heavy lifting of a failing containment policy, while everybody else broke the rules and made money, Saddam got the be the Great Arab Survivor & Defier of the US, and the Iraqis starved. On top of that, the containment policy was breaking apart - remember Powell's push for "smart sanctions" in the UN? and what came of it? France stood to make billions through its TotalFinaElf contracts if sanctions were lifted. Give the great "cooperation" we were getting from our "allies" on containment, it's really hard to see what other options would have been better.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (117591)	10/24/2003 7:30:04 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The point I am making is that we were intervening. I think it was more like procrastination and wishful thinking, rather than ever decisively dealing with the problem (which we weren't in a measure of doing without support of the UN then nor now.) This the usual modus operandi with any of these things, keep them swept out of sight, with some half-way measures, in the hopes the problem will go away by itself. If the UN wasn't so worthless, something would have been done about a dictatorship like that long ago, but that's not how it works. By the way, I don't think any of the comparisons bandied about (Vietnam, Algeria, etc) are pertinent. Algeria might seem to be a close fit, but in reality the world really didn't care what happened there. Was there ever any news analysis of the situation here in the US while the civil war was raging, and a good order of magnitude or more people were killed in the process than has happened or will happen in Iraq ? Now, all eyes are on Iraq, and it's a far more strategic country than Algeria since a stable oil supply is a real concern. Vietnam was this proxy cold war battle, and not related concretely to supply of something so crucial to the civilized world.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (117591)	10/25/2003 1:53:11 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Now if we had changed the requirements, all we had to do was to open it to debate and come up with different set of intervening scheme. No offence, but you just get it... Did you pay ANY attention to how France and Russia were attempting to prop up Saddam, undermining that "intervening scheme" you seem to believe was possible? Did you pay any attention to the multi-hundred billion oil deals that Saddam was holding out to France and Russia? Did you pay attention when France attempted to declare Iraq in compliance with UNSC binding resolutions and recommended lifting sanctions? Look Sun Tzu... Iraq was a vital element in carrying out a strategy aimed at undermining the ability of Islamic Militants to threaten the stability of local regimes. And most of all, it eliminated the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, one of the primary gripes that Bin Laden held against the US and transferred the battlefront of militancy to Iraq... Now we'll see if the Saudis are serious about cracking down on their militant elements. You seem so disinclined to use massive military force Sun Tzu, even when we had 12 years of limited use through our UNAUTHORIZED containment of Iraq (no UN authority to do so). But it obviously was not accomplishing the job, was it? And post-9/11 there was more to be gained by removing Saddam and restoring economic and political stability to the region, than any risk that might result from removing him from power. And now, it's just amazing.. the French, who were all over the place trying to trade with Saddam's Iraq, want nothing to do with rebuilding the country now... And what's even more amazing is that all of these nations went to Madrid effectively to say we could give a sh*t less about the Iraqi people who they claimed they wanted to help throughout the sanctions period. And I don't think the Iraqis are going to forget that anytime in the near future.... Hawk