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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (6303)	12/18/2003 3:32:14 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Again I repeat, the US has no business in violating the sovereignity of other nations, going in there by force So, humanitarian reasons are never good enough. We should have let Saddam be Saddam. You were against intervention in Kosovo, too, I presume? Please, tell me. Were you against the first Gulf War, too? Should we have let Saddam just have Kuwait according to his system? Can't you see the internal contradictions in what you preach? On the one hand you preach human rights and tolerance for Westerners. But for Arabs, you preach compassionate racism - they may be murderous barbarians, but it's their system, so mustn't touch. They are, you know, not Europeans but "brown people" so it's different rules. If the US does not intervene there, then it does not need to intervene in Iraq? Tell me why should it be different for Iraq. First, it may happen that the US attends to one case in the world more forcefully than another. The US does not conduct its foreign policy by some arbitrary standard of 'fair' that you put forth. It conducts it according to its own national interests, which sometime line up with its own idea of fairness, which is frankly more than you can say about most other countries. But sometimes they don't. And they are always limited by what is and is not possible at the moment. Just because you cannot do everything that you would like to do, does not mean that you must do nothing, ever. Second, we had many reasons to go into Iraq, starting with the fact that we have been in a state of war with Iraq since 1990, over the Kuwait invasion. Saddam has been on parole since then, and has broken parole over and over so that we had to spend about $30 billion a year guarding his borders and stopping him from slaughtering the Kurds and Shia again. Just for starters, there is no other country on earth that we were at war with in this same way. Third, containment was breaking down, and Saddam would soon have been able to be rid of the sanctions altogether. Forth, the Persian Gulf's disfunction was no longer contained to the Persian Gulf, though it was getting worse there - it had broken out to attack us directly. Fifth, we cannot afford let the Persian Gulf slide into chaos because we need its oil. We don't need the Congo to be stable. Brutal but true. Sixth, because a beautiful friendship was blooming between Saddam and the various Jihadists, and post 9/11 we could not afford to just sit and wait to see what would come of it, given Jihadists eagerness to kill millions and Saddam's history of WMD development and use on civilians. Seventh, because we cannot attack Saudi Arabia or Iran directly. It's just not feasible. But we can pressure them by remodeling their neighbors, and hopefully having friendly governments in them. A friendly Iraq lessens SA's hold on us immensely. Add all these reasons together, that's why it should be different for Iraq. BTW, I notice you didn't answer my question on the slave trade. I imagine you don't have any problem condemning the Portuguese slavers. But can you condemn the Arab slavers, esp. the modern Arab slavers, that is the question? Did you know that Saudi Arabia only abolished chattel slavery in 1963? Moral standards may change over time. It's not fair to judge Alexander the Great by the standards of today. But it impossible to hermetically seal one group of people apart and give them an entirely different scorecard for their behavior, especially when they are not isolated. If you believe in human rights for all humans, it has to mean for Arabs too, or it means nothing.

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (6303)	12/19/2003 5:32:55 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

chinu. You said...." Again I repeat, the US has no business in violating the sovereignity of other nations, going in there by force, arresting their men without due cause, etc. as they have done in Iraq. Maybe we can just change a few words here and see what it sounds like. ....." Again I repeat, islam has no business in violating the sovereignity of other nations, going in there by force or other means, killing innocent people without due cause, etc. as they have done in Iran, Afgahanistan, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere. You said...." The US has no business to unilaterally go into countries and impose their systems.".... So do you think islam has any business exporting their brand of government to other countries? You paying attention to France lately?