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

To: GST who wrote (121643)	12/16/2003 2:17:28 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

No, GST. We didn't "front" for him. We didn't defend him and protect him. We dealt with him, and not that much when compared to France or Russia or Germany, when he was the lesser evil in the 1980s, a policy wholeheartedly supported by every ally we had in the Gulf, who all wanted to see two such horrible regimes fight each other for as long as possible. We didn't sell him his nuclear reactor or his chemical weapons. France did that. France broke the sanctions of the UN they're supposed to revere to keep selling Saddam weapons. France did everything in their power to protect Saddam and delegitimize the US effort to get rid of him. If it were up to France, he would still be in power today. You have really got to get over this "deep pockets" mentality about foreign policy. The far left looks for American involvement to blame in every issue like a trial lawyer looks for a "deep pockets" with liability in a tort case, knowing that if he can just pin 1% of the blame on the "deep pockets", he is sitting pretty, no matter if some other party is 99%+ to blame. So if America is 1% to blame, if it can't say it has clean hands and pure heart, the left cries, "it's America's fault! Blame America!" What I would like to know is, if you are so upset that we supported Saddam in the 80s, why were you more upset when we got rid of him? Because we didn't have clean hands and fight from pure altruism? You would rather see more people die than have them saved by someone with an ulterior motive? This is moral preening, and the left has been indulging in a great deal of it, together with the Euroweenies. I have no patience for it. We never fronted bin Laden. Bin Laden never fought the Soviets, he funded those who did, as did we. We never funded him, we scarcely knew anything about him in those days. Again, a deep pockets mentality. You have more of a case with the Shah, who was an ally of the US. But unlike Saddam, he never used the arsenal on his own people. He stepped down when he lost Iranian and American support. One really has to ask what sort of American foreign policy you would favor. Wearing a hairshirt and beating our breast in contrition, as you imply we should, would not improve the lot of one person suffering in a dictatorship. But I have to admit, it would make for great moral preening.