THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

nimh wrote:

Brand X wrote:

Quote:

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Gel, Westerners fought for and defend freedom, without freedom you can never reach superiority. The way I see it, the ideas and values of freedom have made the west superior.

Heh - I think that would be the point: that's how we see it - but it's not how many of them see it ;-)

That quote, taken out of context, could yield more than one meaning. I don't like the way it eludes to the success of the western world happening quite by accident, it was the wisdom of free minds, diligence and foresight.

Anyway, no arguemnt here, just wanted to clarify my comment on the quote.

Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show
Trip Followed Criticism Of Chemical Arms' Use

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A42

Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.


Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.

An earlier trip by Rumsfeld to Baghdad, in December 1983, has been widely reported as having helped persuade Iraq to resume diplomatic ties with the United States. An explicit purpose of Rumsfeld's return trip in March 1984, the once-secret documents reveal for the first time, was to ease the strain created by a U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons.

The documents do not show what Rumsfeld said in his meetings with Aziz, only what he was instructed to say. It would be highly unusual for a presidential envoy to have ignored direct instructions from Shultz.

When details of Rumsfeld's December trip came to light last year, the defense secretary told CNN that he had "cautioned" Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, an account that was at odds with the declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting, which did not mention such a caution. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Aziz.

Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said yesterday that "the secretary said what he said, and I would go with that. He has a recollection of how that meeting went, and I can't imagine that some additional cable is going to change how he recalls the meeting."

"I don't think it has to be inconsistent," Di Rita said. "You could make a strong condemnation of the use of chemical weapons, or any kind of lethal agents, and then say, with that in mind, 'Here's another set of issues' " to be discussed.

Last year, the Bush administration cited its belief that Iraq had and would use weapons of mass destruction -- including chemical, biological and nuclear devices -- as the principal reason for going to war.

But throughout 1980s, while Iraq was fighting a prolonged war with Iran, the United States saw Hussein's government as an important ally and bulwark against the militant Shiite extremism seen in the 1979 revolution in Iran. Washington worried that the Iranian example threatened to destabilize friendly monarchies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.

Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based research center, said the secret support for Hussein offers a lesson for U.S. foreign relations in the post-Sept. 11 world.

"The dark corners of diplomacy deserve some scrutiny, and people working in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Uzbekistan deserve this kind of scrutiny, too, because the relations we're having with dictators today will produce Saddams tomorrow."

Shultz, in his instructions to Rumsfeld, underscored the confusion that the conflicting U.S. signals were creating for Iraq.

"Iraqi officials have professed to be at a loss to explain our actions as measured against our stated objectives," he wrote. "As with our CW statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that U.S. policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel."

The declassified documents also show the hope of another senior diplomat, the British ambassador to Iraq, in working constructively with Hussein.

Shortly after Hussein became deputy to the president in 1969, then-British Ambassador H.G. Balfour Paul cabled back his impressions after a first meeting: "I should judge him, young as he is, to be a formidable, single-minded and hard-headed member of the Ba'athist hierarchy, but one with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business."

"A presentable young man" with "an engaging smile," Paul wrote. "Initially regarded as a [Baath] Party extremist, but responsibility may mellow him."

Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this article.

After eight months of fruitless search, George Bush has in effect washed his hands of the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, in whose name the United States and Britain went to war last March.
David Kay, the CIA adviser who headed the US-lead search for WMD, is to quit, before submitting his assessment to the US President in February. The departure of Mr Kay, a strong believer in the case for toppling Saddam Hussein because of his alleged weapons comes as a particular embarrassment to Tony Blair...

...Despite the capture and interrogation of many senior Iraqi officials, there has been no break through. Saddam is said to have told investigators what Iraq told the UN before the invasion: that it no longer had banned weapons.

Brand X wrote:

nimh wrote:

Brand X wrote:

Quote:

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Gel, Westerners fought for and defend freedom, without freedom you can never reach superiority. The way I see it, the ideas and values of freedom have made the west superior.

Heh - I think that would be the point: that's how we see it - but it's not how many of them see it ;-)

That quote, taken out of context, could yield more than one meaning. I don't like the way it eludes to the success of the western world happening quite by accident, it was the wisdom of free minds, diligence and foresight.

Anyway, no arguemnt here, just wanted to clarify my comment on the quote.

Here, let's put windowed quotes inside more windowed quotes. Anyone who honestly believes the core statement about the west and organized violence is hopelessly naive and/or ignorant. Virtually every major technological development of western civilization before 1600 was first devised in China. What did the Chinese do with the clock, gunpowder, astrolabes, etc.? Sweet f*ck-all. Western nations eventually came to dominate the world militarily and economically because of a basic freedom of individual action which meant that "inventions" were invented time and again in different places, and actively exploited in many times and places. Oriental despotisms were largely the norm in the world outside the west, where the conditions were not actually savagely primitive. Such societies were inimical to change and innovation. Such societies indeed were familiar with organized violence, on large and sometimes even vast scales. They were not familiar with innovation and adaptation. They could not adjust to change within generations, let alone within months, or even weeks--an attribute of western societies which the explorers and colonists were able to exploit to survive, and eventually to triumph. Cortez and his Spaniards were not more violent or warlike than the Toltec societies of the central Mexican plateau, and in fact, came from a less warlike society. But Cortez himself, and most of his followers, were adaptable and open to change and experimentation. Yes they used organized violence; they also used diplomacy, exploited mistrust and jealousy, learned the local languages and made allies--in short, they adapted, survived and eventually triumphed.

One last minor point--no other civilization in history had so thoroughly studied and mastered the art of sailing, and the technology thereof. All things considered, western societies exploited many ideas, and displayed a consistent adapatability that left the rest of the world's civilizations in the dust. The original quote about organized violence is specious; it is, however, a wonderful rationalization for cultures which continue to resist change, without consideration of the potential value of such change, and which continue to long for the slumber of the ages, as opposed to recognizing the potential of and embracing the promise of the future.

Please, think before you post such hopelessly nonsensical tripe.

Well, Gel, i would question that assertion as well, which is why i specifically mentioned the Toltec cultures in Mexico. Bernal Diaz reports that he and a companion counted the skulls on the base line of a pyramid of skulls in Tenochtitlan, and calculated that the pyramid consisted of more than million skulls. One may suggest his math was poor, but one cannot ignore that the Toltecs suffered no inferiority in "applying organized violence." I was also taking issue with the statement that there was no superiority of ideas. There was indeed, and it accounts for why Europeans exploited inventions so successfully. The Chinese invented a reliable clock centuries before that innovation in Europe. It remained a broken down toy in the Forbidden City. By contrast, Europeans constantly refined the invention, and eventually produced clocks sufficiently accurate to allow successful navigation to any place on earth washed by the seas.