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a) Iraq posed no threat whasoever
b) had no links to terrorism whatsoever
c) the war has made us and the world less safe, not more
Your logic is rather warped and bizarre...
I really don't think you want that...
The Islamic militas were already there before the camp adn this isn't some protest aginst the west either.
for instance, it is ok to tolerate dictators and what they do in their country when they are you allies. It is not when they turn on you and become your enemies.
Leaders have to do what is best for their own nation and if allying with a tyrant who murders is good for your nation at the time, you do it, principles are not the way of politics. And alliances are fluid for such occasions after all.
It is not ethical or moral or anything like that, but it is the way the world works.
Persoanlly the more we debate such issues on here, the more i find myself agreeing with the sovereignty argument and saying, if a nations leader wants to be a tyrant and commit mass murder and genocide and what ever, so long as he does it with in his own nation, let him. If his actions affect another nation however, that is when action can be taken against him...or her!
Cynical i have become!
It wasn't best for any nation concerned though; nor was it the intention of the Western governments in question to further the interests of their nations- only their own and those of their friends in the oil industry.
In fact, the US and British governments did a great fucking disservice to their nations by making brutal dictators their allies and arming them to the teeth.
Even though I don't agree with never intervening in a conflict (I believe in extreme circumstances we ought to do something), your position is certainly preferable to going into ill-conceived illegal interventions for the wrong reasons.
What we (for 'we' read our Western governments) cannot do is lecture and patronise the world about how much we care about freedom, democracy and human rights and use those excuses to illegally invade and occupy certain countries while at the same time supporting equally brutal regimes even arming them.
And then we wonder why there is so much resentment towards our countries...
I suppose, it is still the duty of the poweful world to intervene in cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing, if we didnt then the lessons of the past would not be learnt, so i concede on that.
As for the arming of tyrants, it has often blown up the faces of the West. Although understanding customs has added to it, he would never have invaded Kuwait had President Bush sent a man to see Saddam and told him America would not stand for it. Instead i think Bush sent a woman who Saddam had no respect for and she implied it would be ok for him to invade Kuwait. Keeping Saddam in power and an ally would have been preferable and profitable to the West, had they not let go of the control they had.
Libya now is an exception case to the norm however.
Be my guest. You really have no idea what you are talking about if you can equate Saddam and a democratic, liberal, western nation.
Through its support of Latin American dictators in the '80s, the USA's responsible for more repression and torture than Saddam ever was.
Not to mention US complicity in 100,000s of politically-motivated murders in Indonesia & the continued use of depleted uranium which will render Iraq a permanent deathzone.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/TruthBehindUSForeignPol.html
Matadore has been told all this before but he never quite seems to understand. Poor boy.
And what about all the bloodthirsty African dictators France has propped up over the years?
Anyway I’m not sure I can see why present politicians should act in accordance with the principles of their predecessors – does Blair have to act like Wilson so as not to be somehow hypocritical? Cameron like Thatcher? Your logic doesn’t make sense – what America did in the 80s shouldn’t necessarily be a guide to US policy in the 21st century.
And for the record America and Thatcher at the time had a pretty strong case for backing Pinochet.
But since you mention it, at least France doesn't lecture the world about caring for human rights and freedom and justifying embarking in countless wars on such alleged concerns.
Bullshit they did.
i dont know if this has been mentioned in the thread yet, i cant be bothered to read through the drivel
but you wont know what you are capable of dying for, until you are dead, which does seem to be a bit silly
there is a difference between indivdual soliders undertaing actions of their own back and state sanctioned actions.
No doubt your mumput it to you this way when you were a child -
"Would you jump in the river just because you were told to?"
Pointless? Say that to people in Africa who’ve suffered at the hands of corrupt and brutal dictators backed by Paris.
Well if France didn’t have multi billion dollar interests in Iraq and Saddam’s regime specifically the French wouldn’t have had any qualms about invading. France opposed the Iraq war purely out of self-interest. And tbh if France was any kind of ‘ally’ they’d have supported the US and Britain on Iraq – or they’d at the very least be assisting now in helping make Iraq safe for the Iraqi people. But with nothing to gain the French couldn’t care.
I don’t condone the wrongdoings of his regime but were it not for him like many I don’t think Chile would be a democracy today. It would probably look pretty similar to Cuba – with no democracy, no free press, no free speech and censorship and repression instead of the freedom that Chileans today enjoy. It’s funny how most of the left never have a bad word against Castro isn’t it?
there is a big difference.
on one only the individual is accountable and th eother the whole regime is.
There is only one country that has made a habit of waging war and attacking nations that are not going in the way it wishes...
Er... Chile was a fully functioning democracy when the US decided it'd rather have a brutal fascist dictator in charge.
Don't believe every scaremongering story the Republican movement tells you... Allende was no more a 'communist' than Ronald McDonald. He simply was a democratically elected left of centre leader who had the guts to stand up to the Washington machine.
Pretty much like Chavez today- by happy coincidence another democratically elected leader whom the US has tried to have unlawfully removed and replaced by a dictatorship. Do you think we should instigate a coup d'etat in Venezuela as well and replace its democratically elected President with another mad general? No difference from Chile, really...
The only reason France didn't went to war in Iraq it's because the muslim population is huge and there is huge tension with them as well.
Just look at all the riots there was and more will come if nothing is done.
If France was going to war against a muslim country they would have to deal with a civil war as well.
What about them? What the fuck's France and Africa got to do with the US supporting Latin American dictators?
Allende was democratically elected by the Chilean people. Pinochet led a military coup that removed that elected government, and didn't hold an election until an extremely dodgy plebiscite in 1980 that kept him in power for an 8-year-term. How did that make Chile more democratic?
The last time France was at war was in the First Gulf War in 1991 when it sent 18,000 troops to join the coalition against Iraq - which kind of rubbishes any arguments that France didn't participate in the 2003 invasion simply because it was too friendly with Saddam or because it has a large Muslim population.
But that's not the main reason. French and German firms were positioning themselves to take advanatge of the end of sanctions (with the support of the French and German Government). The end of Saddam, might mean the end of sanctions, but it would be US and British firms who would be a better position rather than the French.
As an aside the French sold more arms to Iraq than the US did http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_sales_to_Iraq_1973-1990
And when people say we supported him I'm slightly at a loss to why the US would support a left-wing anti-Israeli Arab nationalist, when the rest of their policy in the Middle East was to try and get rid of them, either support democratic states such as Israel or traditional monarchies, such as pre-Shah Iran or Saudi Arabia.
Unless of course by 'we' your either Chinese, Russian or French
Simple - the Ba'athist party coup in Iraq, and the subsequent Ba'athist government was supported by the West because the government it overthrew was pro-Soviet.
After the Ayatollahs took charge in Iran, of course, Saddam then became the West's golden boy for a while because he provided a buttress against militant Islamic fundamentalism.
then over time he gre worse and wors, threatening neighbouring arab states, abusing his own people, invading kuwait etc and thats when we withdrew our support.
:rolleyes: