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Reid: Change foreign policy? Nah!
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I first came across this when I flicked through a copy of The Times on Saturday. I saw a letter, signed by several organisations and individuals, written and aimed towards the Prime Minister. They write: "As British Muslims, we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens. It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad. To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy..." (click here to read the full text)
John Reid, the man who sees himself as the stand-in Prime Minister, (for the simple reason he's slightly more competent than John Prescott) feels the need to comment on everything. Any day now, I'm expecting him to give us his views on who should win Big Brother. Today, he moaned that, "It is, I think, completely misconceived to suggest that we should change our foreign policy because it might cause some people to take up arms against us. That's a form of blackmail and I think that letter was completely misconceived." (click for the report)
Really? This is coming from a man who backed the illegal war that Tony Blair dragged Britain into on the basis of lies. That, in itself, was the "dreadful misjudgement", in my opinion. And his claim that we "decide things in this country by democracy" is torn to shreds by the fact nobody supported that war (aside from stupid, misguided MPs) and that most people abhor what Israel and Lebanon have been doing in the past month.
Over to you. What do you think of this letter, and of Reid's subsequent reaction?
John Reid, the man who sees himself as the stand-in Prime Minister, (for the simple reason he's slightly more competent than John Prescott) feels the need to comment on everything. Any day now, I'm expecting him to give us his views on who should win Big Brother. Today, he moaned that, "It is, I think, completely misconceived to suggest that we should change our foreign policy because it might cause some people to take up arms against us. That's a form of blackmail and I think that letter was completely misconceived." (click for the report)
Really? This is coming from a man who backed the illegal war that Tony Blair dragged Britain into on the basis of lies. That, in itself, was the "dreadful misjudgement", in my opinion. And his claim that we "decide things in this country by democracy" is torn to shreds by the fact nobody supported that war (aside from stupid, misguided MPs) and that most people abhor what Israel and Lebanon have been doing in the past month.
Over to you. What do you think of this letter, and of Reid's subsequent reaction?
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
Actually a comfortable majority of people initially supported the war against Iraq. It's not really relevant however since foreign policy isn't created by a couple of opinion polls and focus groups. And I don't really care what British people think about Israel's war against Hezbollah, most people are completely ignorant anyway and it's a conflict between two foreign countries with no British involvement.
But certainly not before Britain's support and direct involvement in an illegal war of aggression in a neighbouring country in 2003 :rolleyes:
First off, the inaccurate and misleading leader needs to get its facts right. The government didn't change its policy after the bombings. The new government had always said- well before the attacks- that it would remove its troops from Iraq if it got elected.
Secondly, the Madrid terrorists demanded that Spanish troops be removed from Iraq and Afghanistan or more attacks would follow. Both the old and new governments had said they had no intention of withdrawing from Afghanistan for the time being. In addition the terrorists had said very clearly that the attacks happened because of Spain's involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan. So let's not pretend the Daily fucking Telegraph knows the motivation for the attacks better than the perpetrators themselves.
Sure. And the US' unique and incredible blind support of Israel and its guaranteed protection against any unfavourable would-be UN resolutions, coupled with its imperialistic and one sided Middle East policy and the infestation of US military bases in the region has nothing to do with it... :rolleyes:
So there you have it... a pretty misleading and untruthful commentary by a warmonger voice. The neocons can bury their head in the sand and pretend their unjust and murderous actions throughout the world are not to blame for the wave of terrorism and resentment from the Muslim and Arab world... the rest of us know better.
No British Government is going to agree to that and as Galteri and the IRA found out, the Brits don't respond well to violence.
But it's not unfair to blame our leaders when they do something that is illegal and wrong, and the public gets to pay the price for it as well.
If there were any 7/7 perpetrators left to face trial, Tony Blair should tried at the same time for charges of indirect manslaughter of the 52 victims.
And before you say you're encouraging other bombers to do the same in other countries, that would not be a legal issue for Tony Blair. If anything it would be with the Prime Minister of the nation in question.
That would be fine with me so long as all those who bomb innocent people face trial.
Including Prime Minister Tony Blair and President of the United States of America George W. Bush.
Now you know this isn't strictly true dis. I wish you could be a little more honest about things.
But its not encourgaging us to be nice - its basically saying that we should rethink our foreign policy (and by rethink they mean to fall in line behind what they want) and nothing to do with ethics or being 'nice to people' (which as an aside actually means being nice to some people and pretty nasty to others).
And I assume the leadership of Hamas, hezbollah and those who supply there weaponary. I also assume you'd want it backdated so we could include people such as Castro (following his involvement in Angola), all those who were involved in Kosovo, Bosnia etc.
Come to that I also assume you'd be as happy to see Churchill and Roosevelt on trial as you would have been Hitler.
I would agree with the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah. And the Israeli government naturally.
As for backdating it, we could choose whether or not to go down that road. But I hope you're not suggesting just because there have been war crimes or terrorist acts in the past that have gone unchallenged it means we shouldn't or cannot do anything about present-day ones.
I see no difference whatsoever with Bush and Blair blowing up innocent Iraqis and terrorists blowing up innocent commuters. Do you?
I do see a difference - because I know enough about military targetting as the UK and US do it (ie neither as a policy purposely targets civilians) to see a difference between them and people who live under the protection of the state deliberately target civilians of said democratic state.
Now to a certain extent you're right that there is no moral difference between say a group of Iraqi moving to London and bombing the tube, than there is off a RAF pilot attacking a group of insurgent - save that the aim of one group is to have either a return of Baathist regime or a fundamentalist theocracy and the other is to put in place a functioning democracy. But that doesn't mean we should allow the Iraqis insurgents free reign and not try to stop them, nor does it mean we should bend to their demands.
Given that both actions (the war on Iraq and the bombing of civilians by terrorists) are as illegal and wrong as each other I really fail to see any difference between the two.
There are wars and wars, and circumstances and circumstances. In the case of Iraq we cannot really differenciate either morally or legally between the former regime of Saddam Hussein and the Allied forces of Britain and the US. Hell, if anything the Allies are the ones in the wrong here, seeing as they initiated an illegal war without provocation or reason.
I don't make much distinction in the current war between the countless facets and groups and the Occupation troops. Either they're all criminals or none is- or at least their leaders anyway.
Which bit? British involvement is very limited. And since Britain has little influence on either side the fuss about Blair not demanding an immediate ceasefire and a few Labour backbenchers wanting a recall of Parliament is all rather pointless. Most people too are pretty ignorant and indifferent with regards to present events and the general Arab-Israeli conflict.
Can't you make a moral distinction? I can quite easily. One was a regime which made no pretence of ever going for democracy, where power was vested in torture and in a secret police, and well one isn't.
That's not to say that the overthrow of Saddam has led to nirvana, or that mistakes haven't been made or that some people haven't committed war crimes, but there is a major moral difference between the two. Even most of the violence now is the result of insurgent groups who don't wish to have democracy and to human rights are an anthema.
I accept the US/UK/coalition is grey at times, but those who they are against are an even darker shade of grey
It has financed death squads and assisted butchers, rapists, fascists and mass murderers while attacking other regimes for not being democratic enough.
The US government is in my view and without a doubt far worse than Saddam's regime ever was.
Britain is not nearly as bad as the US government, but not an angel either. And the fact remains that two wrongs don't make a right and that the war was unjustified, illegal and based on lies and more damned lies.
Why can't you wish for a successful transition to a peaceful democracy in Iraq and at the same time condemn the US and Britain as unlawful and brutal combatants and wish their leaders are brought to account? The two concepts are not mutually exclusive you know...
Really? The only 'democracy' I can think off hand of it undermining is possibly Chile and even then the publically available evidence isn't nearly as strong as some people think it is. Unless of course you believe that places like the People's Democracy of North Korea really are democratic.
Now has it supported some pretty unsavoury regimes - without a doubt. But even then you can't just leave it at that without mentioning the context in which it did so - in WW2 it supported Stalin because Hitler was worse, it then supported some pretty nasty right wing regimes because the communists were worse and now it supports some pretty bad regimes because the alternatives are worse.
That's the way the world works - you support democracries and nice fluffy countries if you can, but sometimes the nasty real world means that your choices are not morally pure. Actions (or lack of action) has consequences and what looks morally pure in the short term often may not be in the long term.
And to be honest given a regime which at times suffers from hypocrisy and another who tortures it citizens to death I'm going to go for hypocrisy I'm afraid.
Not totally exclusive, but pretty much so. If you do support democracy in Iraq, perhaps you should make it clearer and then think about whether the actions you support make this more or less likely (for the record I think they make it less likely - which comes to not supporting democracy in Iraq to me)
The only crime the democratic country of Chile ever commited was to democractically elect a leader who was a bit too left of centre and outspoken for Washington's liking.
Last I looked I didn't notice any free democratic elections in North Korea that could possibly merit such comparison.
Anyway, Chile is not the only one. Ask the people of Venezuela, for instance.
And you can ask the people of other South American countries, democratic or not, who have the disfortune of sharing the same continental mass with the Land of the Free.
We really need to make our mind up here. Was Iraq bad or not? One minute you go on about how it was right to wage war, even though it was illegal and have caused untold yet totally predictable suffering, death and misery to the Iraqis, because Saddam was a really bad man. And the next minute you suggest supporting just such people is not such a bad thing when you look at the alternative.
Which one is it? What made Iraq change from convenient ally to evil regime that must be destroyed?
And what about the people of Uzbekistan? What 'alternative' are you speaking about that could be worse than child-slaver and mass murderer President Karimov? How about Guatemala in 1954, Panama in 58, Indonesia in 65, Lebanon in 82, Grenada in 83, Iran in 87, Lybia in 89 etc etc etc?
Face it- in the immense majority of the dozens upon dozens of military interventions by the US over the last few decades action was prompted to protect the interests of a certain political vision in Washington and had no concern whatsoever for the effect it would have on the locals- which in many cases was to leave them worse off than before.
So torturing other countries' citizens is somehow more acceptable than torturing your own?
But I support a democracy in Iraq. A free, impartial and fair democracy- if it is what the Iraqis want.
And for that democracy to happen:
- the illegal occupation of Iraq must end
- the illegal invaders must be brought to justice
- an apology and substantial compensation should be made to the people of Iraq
- an apology to the rest of the world and to the UN wouldn't go amiss either.
Until we have the above I doubt Iraq has much chance of having a representative, fair democracy- or any democracy at all.
Or Italy...
Which only backs up his argument about there being no such thing as "ethical" foreign policies. In the 80s, Saddam was a better bet than Iran, so he was backed. That doesn't mean that any Govt thought he was "an okay chap really", it was just expediency.
It's the same concept for the backing and support for USSR in WW2 even though the US/UK hated Stalin. To bring it up to date, it's why we will deal with China.
You missed an important step. The first thing which needed to happen was the removal of Saddam so that the Iraqi voices could even be heard...
It was during the 80s when Saddam was amassing the much trumpeted arsenal of WMDs. Iran, in the meantime, amassed no WMDs.
It was during the 80s when Saddam did most of the gassing and certainly as much killing and torturing as during later years, if not more. Iran, in the meantime, gassed nobody.
No. The only thing that prompted the change in policy was the dog turning on its master and suddenly ceasing to be a useful idiot in the region sitting on massive oil reserves and becoming an annoyance with billions of lovely barrels of oil at stake.
Let's not pretend that he was the lesser of any two evils or that the welfare of anyone was ever considered- we're all too intelligent to entertain such ludicrous possbility.
Frankly, the people of Iraq under Saddam would probably have had a lot better chance of seeing a functional and fair democracy in place in 2015 than the people of present day Iraq do.
I've never been a believer of 'the end justifies the means'. IMO there is such a thing as too high a price to pay, and IMO that has already been reached in Iraq.
Invading a country which the UK and US were friendly with, which had oil, which also put him close enough to invade Saudi too. Basically they couldn't trust him with that much power over oil supplies. So he became the next bad guy.
As you can see, we have more than one now
At the time, he was the enemy of an enemy. That is enough when you want your enemy to be tied up so muach that they cannot consolidate.
Think about it, what better way to undermine the new revolution in Iran than to have it fight a war?
But by advocating a "do nothing" approach you are saying that the end justifies the means. In your case the end was the same as ours - democracy in Iraq - just that your means was the continuation of a Baathist regime which tortured and killed it's own people.
There was never an "easy" way for change to happen in Iraq - each would be bloody.
Kinda of my point, actually
Yep and look at the context. there was the Cold War at the time where two power blocs with fundamentally differing viewpoints of the world were 'fighting' over whose viewpoint is correct. Places such as Poland, Hungary, North Korea, Afghanistan weren't particually well treated. Personally I'm glad the West won, which allows me the freedom to sit at an internet and post shit. It wouldn't have won if we followed an 'ethical' foreign policy.
That would two things 1) the end of the Iran-Iraq war and 2) the invasion of kuwait.
PS I've stated before its a misreading of history to call Iraq a US ally - US policy towards Iraq and Iran during the 80s was basically 'shame you both can't loose' and to make sure one didn't win - a Middle East dominated by either a socialist nationalist Arabic Party or fundamentalist Persians wasn't seen as a good thing.
How about Stalin? or the followign mass murderers? or North Korea?
Well done for pointing out the obvious. the trouble is that the vision that opposed it was much, much worse.
Bit of a jump of logic. I think the US can be hypocritical. I think Saddam tortured his citizens. I say the US is better - you don't.
Missed step one - Saddam and his apparatus needed to go. Until that took place there was no chance of a democracy happening - at least now it stands a fighting chance.
In the end, yes, true democracy is a bloody matter which has nothing to do with anyone other than the citizens of the nation in question itself. Your apologetic for invading nations for "democratisation" demonstrates all the more how shallow and uninformed you are on even the most fundamental principles of the term.
A simplistic blanket statement which has become so ingrained and regurgitated it means nothing. The present allegedly "democratic" regime tortures its own as well and no nation can out do the US in complicity with torture of citizens of nations the world over, both past and present.
Another cognitively dissonant demonstration from the jackboot apologist brigade.
Yeah, we're only helping to arm the Israelis.
I think a lot of people are quite well informed. Most people I speak to at least, aren't as blind and one sided as you are.
Inflammatory nonsense. It was inflammatory because it insinuated, without its signatories' having the candour to state openly, that in pursuing our policies and forming our alliances we get what's coming to us. And it was largely nonsense because it showed ignorance of recent international history. In the 1990s, our principal ally the United States had fought three times to rescue a threatened Muslim population - in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo - and also pursued a vigorous diplomacy to try to secure a two-state territorial settlement between Israel and an independent Palestine. Yet in that decade the Islamists had atttacked the USS Cole and blown up two embassies in East Africa.
Domestic muslim organisations should concentrate on affairs which concern them and not make pronouncements on things which they do not understand.
Half hearted, maybe.
Surely you don't fall for that? Only those who check for reds under the bed (of whom there are plenty in America, sadly) would believe such scaremongering.
The Middle East wouldn't be dominated by either actually. This is nothing more than US interfering for its own benefit and interest- not for the wellbeing of anyone else.
What about them? I'm not saying that the US is the biggest monster in history or that it has never ever fought a just cause.
It is wrong however to suggest the immense majority of its internventions in the last 60 years have been just or in the interests of freedom and democracy. They haven't at all.
Much worse to whom? To a bunch of ultra right wing commie-obsessed religious fruitcakes who saw anhything left of the Republican Party as a godless pinko commie? Or to the people of the countries in question?
I guess we'll have to disagree there.
At an unnaceptable price (in my opinion).
America can do no right. Isolationist, the US would endure constant criticism yet when the US does act, as it did in Kuwait and Bosnia she receives little thanks. My worry is that Americans realising the scale of anti-American sentiment in the world, in parts of Europe; especially among the liberal elites and elsewhere they will be tempted to revert to isolationism. Undoubtedly we face a grave threat from fanatical regimes, notably Iran and around the world there are terrorists committed to mass murder. The prospect of facing these challenges without America is frightening. The consequences of success in the ensuing years for the increasingly neo-isolationist Democrats could be catastrophic.
And lets remember it was America taking the lead in Bosnia. Britain, thanks to Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind (two figures that bring disgrace and shame on the Conservative Party) did nothing and tried to ensure no one else did anything. (And recent rantings from Rifkind show he hasn't changed a bit).
Not reds under the beds scaremongering to claim that the Soviet Union's long twerm aim was world communism and that they were pretty nasty about how they went about it.
perhaps dominate is too strong a word, but certainly have more control than was good for the world given that these were too of the most populous states with oil reserves.
But yes the US works for its own benefit, but here's a newsflash so does every other country in the world and like the US most of them dress it up as 'anti-colonialism, religion, freedom and democracy, protecting the weak and helpless' etc, etc.
You seem to be saying something pretty similar
No, but they were in the interests of keeping countries such as the US and its NATO allies as freedom and democracy
Often the people in the countries concerned. funnily enough the biggest support for the US is in many countries in the ex-Soviet bloc, perhaps they have a different view of religous fruitcakes in the Republican party vs Godless pinko commies.
Fair enough
Yeah that's true to a degree but surely there is a line in the sand somewhere that shouldn't be crossed. It's all very well trying to lobby, befriend and win contracts with other nations to obtain favourable terms, but if one were to take a step further and to use blackmail or even force to reach those goals that would be unnaceptable imo.
And yet I struggle to think of a single country in the Americas in which its citizens would be likely to side with US interference. They would not be alone either.