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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (121715)	12/16/2003 11:04:25 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

When we, the US, do something bad and say it is because we want to achieve something good, it does not make it right. We find Saddam and you think that makes everything right, but it doesn't. The ends do not justify the means. By pretending otherwise you destroy the foundations of our society, our freedom, our democracy.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (121715)	12/16/2003 11:18:51 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

You wouldn't be sneering then there, would you, Nadine? You might have set a new record for fatuously self-righteous indignation with that one. Coupla points: So, we should be for peace and democracy, as long as we just talk about it? Mustn't actually use military force? Um. That one sounds suspiciously like "war is peace". Then there's the Jimmy Carter vendetta. Funny, most of the body count attributed to Saddam comes from the Iran-Iraq war, and which side were we on there? Who was off glad-handing Saddam in that timeframe? Under Nadine logic, which seems to go somewhat beyond conventional neocon logic even, I guess that was all Carter's fault.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (121715)	12/17/2003 1:19:26 AM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

One of the anti-war arguments that had kind of faded out is now back in its full glory with the capture of Saddam: "America is responsible for Saddam." Scott Burchill writes about that in a column in SMH. As an Australian, he is writing about Australia, but one could take his column and perform a few minor search-and-replace operations ("President Bush" for "Prime Minister Howard", "America" for "Australia", "Washington" for "Canberra") and you could transplant it to an American leftist publication just fine, where it would make just as much sense as most of the rest of what you'd find there. (Which is to say, "not much".) Most of those claims are exaggerated and have been refuted long since, but assume they were true. The response to that is pretty clear: If we are responsible for Saddam being in power, we have an obligation to make up for the sins of our past by removing him. If we made a mistake in the past, should we not correct it now? The anti-war logic on this has never been clear. Why were claims of past support for Saddam an argument that we should not oppose him now? Were they contending that we were required to keep supporting Saddam because we had done so in the past, compounding the very sins they accuse us of? Actually, what they wanted, what they've always wanted, was for us to be convulsed and paralyzed by self-doubt and shame. They didn't want us to support Saddam, nor did they want us to oppose him. What they wanted was for us to oppose ourselves, to hate ourselves as Americans (and Australians), to hate the entire notion of "Americans" ("Australians"), to reject our membership in the group "Americans" ("Australians") and to start thinking of ourselves as post-modern citizens-of-the-world. "Ask yourself why they hate you." It's the essence of that question. And it's always been a stupid question, because what they were really asking was this: "If they hate you, should you not also hate yourselves?" denbeste.nu