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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (195536)	8/7/2006 10:58:59 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

For example.. Saddam attempted to use force to dominate the Kuwaitis, under the pretext that Kuwait was the 19 province of Iraq. He should have been removed from power in 1991, but it required 12 more years of "other means" before it became obvious that he was not going shape up.. So force was required to make him "ship out". Why do you think Kuwait should not be part of Iraq? Why should half a million Kuwaitis control ~7% of the world's oil resources rather than letting those resources be spread between 24 million Iraqis. The two countries border each other and the only reason they are separate countries is due to outside British interference in their local affairs. I'm not saying Saddam would have used Kuwait's oil wealth wisely, but having this little princely sheikdom which sits on enormous wealth to the benefit of a few thousand (the royal family) certainly doesn't make as much sense as sharing the oil wealth equally between a population of 24 million. As for uniting them via force, how else are you going to get the Kuwaiti royal family billionaires to agree to share their oil wealth equally with their Iraqi "brothers"? They aren't going to give away what the British gave them, so unless you use force you are left with the unjust, unfair distribution left by the former ruling British forces. A similar argument can be made about Brunei and Malaysia. There is no logical just reason why Brunei's oil wealth should not be shared equally by the millions of people of Malaysia rather than used to buy yachts and flat screen TVs for the few thousand people in Brunei, but that is the unjust status quo left to the Malaysians by the British. And in the aftermath of that overthrow, and the opportunity for potential democratic reform in Iraq, it was imperative that the Iraqi should be permitted the chance to possess a democratic system. So while a war to "make" countries adopt democratic systems might be "extreme", it certainly is not extreme to foster democratic reforms when opportunities present themselves. Come on, you're falling for the argument that enforcing democracy was the reason for the Iraqi invasion. If enforcing democracy on a non-free people were the goal, surely the US should have started with Kuwait (where we have a lot of influence, and resistance by overweight princes really wouldn't be that tough) rather than with Iraq. And if enforcing democracy is a current US goal, why aren't we doing it in Kuwait today? It's not like the Kuwaiti BMWs and Mercedes have katyusha rocket launchers in them.