Sxotty said:
Um as you know the Iraqi's tried to get their freedom, and they died, sometimes people need help.
If we had not had the French's help we would still be a british colony, well actually I am not stupid enough to believe that, but we would not be the US we are, we would be like Australia, or Canada.
People do need outside help sometimes, maybe you have never needed help in your life but normal people do.
Very true, but help does not equal full scale military invasion as your example of the US liberation war serves to illustrate. Or like an Iraqi living in Baghdad posted on his
website shortly before the war started put it:
"
I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now, we hear the war drums loud and clear if you don’t then take those earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits they will almost snap. A decision has been made sometime ago that “regime change†in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, that’s silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with differently since the first day after GW I.
The entities that call themselves “the international community†should have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant, should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war five minutes before midnight.
What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could “support democracy in Iraq†become to mean “bomb the hell out of Iraq� why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."
Had the Shiite revolution recieved outside support in 1991 they probably would have ousted Saddam, and this would be a very different world today. Letting them get slaughtered only enabled Saddam to tighten his grip around the Iraqi people. I realize that all the "if we only had acted differently then"s in this world won't free the Iraqi people now, which is why now that the war has begun, I am less emotionally against it then before. I am still not in agreement with it though and question wether the justification presented is really the motivation behind it on several different levels. Anyway, slowly but increasingly now are we seeing signs of the population starting to believe the coalition is really there to see it through, which is good.
As for Joe's post:
1) The problem of the WDM issue is that Iraq was asked to prove a negative, which is pretty much impossible. It's like saying "Prove me that you do not have a weapon in your house. I know you have one because I sold it to you, so prove me you don't have it anymore". You could probably never present me with enough proof to assure me beyond any doubt, so I'll have to take your house apart, tear down walls, open up floors, clear out the cupboards, etc. It takes a long time, and I can always accuse you of moving it to those 3% of the house I haven't yet searched. Its a silly game, a race against time, one the accused can't possibly win against the will of the people accusing him.
The solution in this case of WDM is not proof, but containment. UN resolutions are not law, many nations have broken them including members of the coalition invading Iraq, I don't see us in a hurry to bomb them to the stone age. The real question is, can we prevent him from doing any more harm with any WDM that might possibly slip through our net. And I think the answer to that would have been a yes! We have seen that Saddam, although continuing to play games, was actually complying to a surprisingly high level with weapon inspectors in the months leading up to the war. His military has been degraded to a joke and never been able to recover after the first Gulf War, his ties to 9/11 are virtually non-existant, so IMO you'd have to be pretty paranoid or desperate to still consider him a threat, especially if you're living far-off in the US. The middle east as you call it, is for us europeans actually the near east, we should be much more worried about it than you are, but funnily enough we aren't.
As for a procedure for this solution, the fact that you even have to ask is a bit sad but I will try to explain a possible scenario. With a slower and more carefully prepared facade of military pressure, a fully united interational stance and basically just more consideration and patience, the whole situation could have been handled a lot better and very possibly been brought to a satisfying end. There would have had to be a much more determined effort made towards the issue than was presented over the past years though. When the first indications of the Bush administration's renewed interest in the Iraq issue became apparent there was hope that it would lead to the situation I described above.
Unfortunatelly most of that determination was obviously leading directly towards war, causing a lot of opposition and dividing the ranks of the international community, thus taking any hope of a peacefull solution. I blame both sides for this, the Bush administration for their diplomatic failure and much too obvious direct determination to a war, and the opposition (e.g. Chirac, Schröder) for taking their stances of an absolute no to war. The whole situation will go down in the history books as an example of how NOT to conduct international diplomacy and cooperation IMO, as an example for coming generations to learn to do better...
2) The question of opression is a much more difficult but also dubious one. I hate to use the word after recent discussions, but hypocrisy does play a role, because in face of the realities of the world, the opression of the Iraqi looks like more of an emotional playcard in the hands of the coalition than anything else. Funny you are using it now, as usually such things are the speciality of your so despised "liberals".
There are dozens of opressive governments around the world, crimes against humanity are unfortunatelly committed every day and almost everywhere in the world. So I have to ask you Joe, seriously, what is your solution to those problems? Go and launch a "pre-emptive" invasion against them all, is that YOUR solution? That's not the world I want to live in.
Call me an idealist, but I believe in the souvereignity of countries. That does not mean that opressed people should not recieve help, but everything has its time, place and scale. Look at a situation like the Kosovo, there too US troops (amongst others) intervened without UN backing and all allies were with you. Why not now?
1. People there were pretty much openly crying for international help in light of the crisis, similar things can be said for some of the other more recent military interventions. The Iraqi people didn't ask for help AFAIK. Yes that also has to do with the history of the past decade and the Saddam regime's control mechanisms, but there was an open revolution before, it could have kindled up again with help.
2. It was not the invasion of a souvereign country with the goal of a regime change, but a carefully aimed intervention. It was not a pre-emptive war, a war that sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Actually I have to say that I feel this war is very un-american in many ways, the US I thought I knew didn't stand for pre-emptive invasion of a souvereign country.
This war also sends out a sad message to all other opressive regimes out there loud and clear: get WDM, as many and as fast as you can! As Northkorea shows, as long as you can proove you have sufficient quantities of WDM and the ability to deploy them, you won't be militarily attacked by the US. Because in that case they suddenly want to "talk things over" with you...
I rest my case for today. It's like half past 5am here, so forgive me for any spelling or gramatical errors. I have tried to adress your concerns as seriously as I can at this time and I hope I managed to convey everything I wanted to. I think I made a post worth of non-inflamatory serious replies, but only tomorrow will show that I guess. I'll go to bed now , night everybody!
