The UN, US and Iraq IV

Timber's feeling optomistic today!

Yes Saddam's a bad man ok. But that's not why we went to war.

Whether Saddam is guilty of ten or a thousand immoral actions, that does not justify the US to kill thousands of innocent Iraqi's.

Isn't it cool to be part of "Those Folks"?

In Timber's world, if you insist on calling the government on its deceptions - if you insist on compliance with the rules of the UN when it concerns declarations of the UN - if you fear a world in which America's example will encourage any country to "pre-emptively" declare its own wars against rivals and enemies that might just attack them (or be planning to develop the weapons with which they could attack them at some point in the future) - then you must be "Those Folks", of "Bush Bashers and those consumed by Anti-American Angst".

<sighs>

Well, nimh, if that's the way you perceive and characterize my position, I guess you truly don't "Get it". It is not about Bush, the UN, WMD, justifications, explanations, or perceptions. It is about what is morally and ethically right, and what is required by The War on Terrorism, which, despite all opposition, criticism, distractions and misdirections is the paramount issue confronting civilization as this Century opens. Like it or not, we're all in it. Participation is not optional. All one may choose is the nature of one's participation.

Timber, don't you realize you are defending the man shaking Saddam's hand in this picture?


According to the hearing reports (which are available on a current website: www.chronicillnet.org/PGWS/tuite/default.htm) among the chemical weapons which had been sold to Iraq were some of the very most lethal available: Sarin, Soman, Tabun, VX, Lewisite, Cyanogen Chloride, Hydrogen Cyanide, blister agents and Mustard Gas. Some of the powerful biological agents sold included anthrax, Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma Capsulatum (causes a tuberculosis-like disease) , Brucella Melitensis, Clostridium Perfringens and Escherichia Coli.


http://www.counterpunch.org/green02242003.html

The US is still the leading seller of weapons in the world, therefore, getting money on both sides; bet the Carlyle Group get money coming and going. I think there is a name for this..............

That is what it is all about!

Sorry ....
http://www.chronicillnet.org/PGWS/tuite/

No, lookit. I understand that you (now) think other rationales for war were more important - and constituted more than enough valid justification. And, I must say (and I was going to say so in a follow-up post, but I got distracted by Lola in a parallel thread first), your "top 10" of valid reasons to attack Iraq is pretty convincing. I can break down quite a few one by one, but all in all, there is a case to be made, and you rightly outline its main points.

I can safely say that because I, for one, believe that reason #10 all by itself can constitute a legitimate justification of military intervention (though in the case of Iraq, it constituted less a legitimate justification in 2003 than probably at most every ten years earlier). So my post above was not my full characterisation of all of your position.

However, your position also includes a specific part that truly exasperates me, time and again. And thats the part that I immediately jumped on to, cause it just gets stuck in my throat - and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

See, there may well be a case to make for the war against Iraq. But its not the case our governments made - and in making the case they did, they went through a series of public deception and international bullyism that, in itself, has come to pose a danger to, what have you, democratic order and world peace, as significant as any Saddam posed.

And theres a case against the war to be made, too, of no more frivolous a nature than your case on Iraq, and that case is strongly based on how Bush c.s. have come to use the (bogus) "WMD" and "Iraq/911" threats to launch and justify entirely new, and highly destabilising concepts of international politics ("pre-emptive war" etc).

You may think it would have been wiser for the government to focus on other rationales, and I commend you for it. But it didnt, and in focusing on WMD and the supposed Iraq/911 link, it has changed the face of world politics - and made it a lot more scary.

Those are very valid concerns, yet all our references to them are time and again swept aside in your posts as just more of "Those Folks" with their "Bush-bashing and Anti-American Angst." If thats indeed how you see them, I would likewise suggest that you truly don't "Get it".

Because your "It" may "not [be] about Bush, the UN, WMD, justifications" - but my world has become significantly more dangerous through the destabilisation of the UN, the launch of a hundred government deceptions aimed at sending us into a war of their choice, the pioneering of the concept of "pre-emptive war" and the insistence on running a US-only governed, occupied Iraq. Criticizing that reckless increase in danger - an increase which seems to have, on top of everything else, done the War on Terrorism no good at all, is "about what is morally and ethically right", too.

By the way you contemptuously brush aside all those issues, which to us loom as menacingly at the start of this new Century as any of the ones you mention, as just more trivial "Bush-bashing and Anti-American angst", you show the same mule-headed insistence as your President and his administration do in rejecting the perspective of other countries, parties, peoples as somehow by definition insincere or unserious. And the consequences of his insistence on doing so are no mere "distractions and misdirections"; they brought us, to speak with Kofi Annan, to "a fork in the road [..] a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself".

Well, a focus on other rationales could have brought some troubles, like "why Iraq and not ...".
An answer like "... has no oil" hadn't convinced so many countries as are now following the USA.

"National Interest" is the codeword for "Oil"

That's true Bill, but then it doesn't make it any less important, unless you were thinking of giving it up?

Or, killing a lot of people in it's name

I'm not saying its right, and I positively hate the smoke and mirrors trickery involved, buts its a fact that governments will always act in what they perceive to be the national interest. America is a fossil fuel junkie. And addicts will do anything for their fix.

They just love the smell of gasoline in the morning.

Steve, this 'national interest' is a Republican Party platform. Foreign policy should not be decided by politics - especially when it kills people!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you said, "it doesn't make it right", in fact, it is terribly wrong.

Right and wrong seems to get a little hazy when it comes to determining the fate of nations. What was that Italian guy called, Machiavelli?

The first great political philosopher of the Renaissance was Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). His famous treatise, The Prince, stands apart from all other political writings of the period insofar as it focus on the practical problems a monarch faces in staying in power, rather than more speculative issues explaining the foundation of political authority. As such, it is an expression of realpolitik, that is, governmental policy based on retaining power rather than pursuing ideals.

Oh yeah .... the Italian guy that nvented chili mac .... didn't he open up a diner somewhere in Joisy?

Sounds a little Bushiavellian to me Or, would that more likely be Roviavellian in the name of the prince