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

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (133171)	5/16/2004 11:11:53 AM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> Am I missing something? Does our military might give us the right to force other nations to trade with us on our terms? How does this justify our actions in Iraq? << No you're not missing anything. That is the executive summary of one the three motives for the invasion. The other two can be cast in the same terms. 2- our military might gives us the right to force other nations to stop supporting Palestinians. 3- our military might gives us the right to force other nations to accept military bases on their territory. The slogans about democracy were and continue to be just lies.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (133171)	5/16/2004 1:08:46 PM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You understand fungible, so you know it is not important where the oil goes so why bring it up. The point is price and Iraq is and will be need to be the marginal producer with increasing production going forward. Iraq has not served its best interest in 20 years niether has Venezuela, Nigeria, or Saudia Arabia. But we can do whatever we need to to ensure oil is provided to the open market to ensure the other 6 billion people can prosper. We are not asking them to trade with us long term on our terms. We are asking them to get their act together because our mutual interests are tied together. We will not survive the way of life we have know without the Persian Gulf area improving. Even Canyon Dwellers will be impacted if the oil flow is reduced because of internal chaos.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (133171)	5/16/2004 5:41:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

On Abu Ghraib and war itself: See through relativism of abuse csmonitor.com <<...Before the United States launched "the optional war" in Iraq, practitioners of nonviolence were advocating concrete alternatives that would have sought to depose Saddam Hussein without war. One plan called for a massive humanitarian assistance program to the Iraqi people while launching a campaign to declare Hussein a war criminal and to carry out even more rigorous arms inspections throughout the country. Of course, many of us nonviolent activists were dismissed as being hopelessly naive. But is the logic of warfare and occupation really wise? Does it really make sense that we can bomb neighborhoods, storm into people's homes at night, imprison thousands in degrading conditions without charge, and then assume that these people will love us? Where does the greater naiveté lie? Do we really believe that we have created a safer and more stable world because we launched a war in Iraq? We worked with a relief agency among farmer refugees in Vietnam for five years during the war there. Our home was just five miles from the village of My Lai, where more than 400 villagers were slaughtered on a March morning in 1968. My Lai was that war's Abu Ghraib. Unhappily, we learned that the massacre in My Lai, while possibly the largest of its kind in that war, was far from an isolated case. Do we blame the individual soldiers who participated in those war crimes? Again, there must be personal accountability and responsibility. But those soldiers were forced to serve among a people whose language and customs they barely knew. Without intimate knowledge of the society, they could not know who was friend and who was enemy. So many became fearful, if not contemptuous, of all Vietnamese people. Little wonder that atrocities took place. It is the logic of war. It is naive to think it will be otherwise. Today, most US officials and commentators, while condemning the abuses revealed in the Abu Ghraib prison, speak in terms of finding ways to fix the system so these abuses will not happen again. The need is deeper. We need to understand that if we choose the option of war, abuses will inevitably follow. It is the very nature of war. Indeed, war itself is abuse...>>