Subject:
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Re: We'll take in your poor, your homeless, your oppressed...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 9 Jul 2004 02:54:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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1199 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys wrote:
> Its an example to show that you can't use a country's laws legally in another
> country. The UN had the resolution--the UN has to deal with enforcing it.
> The US, stating the UN resolution as reason to invade, but at hte same time
> acting against what the UN stated, started an illegal war. I thought it was
> clear.
The US didn't invade Iraq because Iraq was breaking US laws, though. The
justification for the invasion was because Iraq had failed to live up to the
sanctions imposed on them by the UN after the Gulf War. The UN set a deadline
by which time SH had to comply or face the consequenses...and then failed to go
forward with their own mandate. The fact that two of the five full
member-nations were alleged to have strong financial ties to his government made
that not so much of a surprise as it would have been in the case of, oh, say,
North Korea. Basically, though, the US went in with a UN-voted mandate, but not
with active UN support.
> Again, I recall when SH was committing atrocities--Kurds dying and such.
> However, I don't recall him making the headlines over the last couple of
> years.
When's the last time he let UN inspectors in? How can they report any
atrocities when they've been kicked out? Just because noone was able to report
them doesn't mean he wasn't still commiting them. After both the abandonment of
our Kurd allies in the Gulf War, and his brutal suppression of the subsequent
Shiite revolution, how likely do you think it is that anyone under his rule
would come forth and volunteer evidence while he was still in power?
> So if SH was a bad man *then* why wait until now for the invasion? And
> looking at the atrocities going on in the world today, why attack Iraq for
> past transgressions?
Bush Sr. didn't get voted in for a second term, so he wasn't around when things
went bad. Clinton just sat back and lobbed missiles at suspected targets
instead of threatening any real consequences. And due to the Florida election
fiasco, Bush Jr. didn't have the public support necessary to pull it off until
after kicking the Taliban out of Afghanistan.
> I'm being swayed by the 'sovereign nation' idea--I personally dislike SH but
> does that give legitimacy for another sovereign nation to invade, especially
> based on no 'imminent threat' to other countries?
His track record showed that he was willing and eager to be an "imminent threat"
to other nations. The only way to know if he actually was a danger was to have
UN inspectors constantly patrolling the territory looking for suspicious
activities. Unfortunately, they couldn't really help out on that front if they
weren't allowed in the country. There's only two real reasons for kicking out
UN inspectors that you've already agreed to allow in your country. The first is
because you're just sick of them and want them gone, but kicking them out is
just going to create more problems for you, not solve them. The second is
because you really have something serious to hide, and you're worried that they
might find it. The sensible thing to do in the former situation is let them
back in, prove that you're not a threat, and defuse your enemy's hand-grenade
before he can shove it down your throat. The stupid "macho posturing" thing to
do is keep them out so you can convince your neighbors that you've still got
some teeth, and hope that your real enemy doesn't drop the Hammer of God on you
for being a boneheaded moron. Saddam chose poorly.
> Just = legitimate or legal or even moral. The legitimacy of this war has
> been disproved many times over. Some may disagree on my idea that this is
> an illegal war, but Dubya did base this war on the breaking of UN res 1441
> (and others).
If he presented broken UN resolutions as his justification for entering into the
war, how exactly does that prove it to be an illegal war?
> And morality, eh, we already know the answer to that one.
Yes, we do. The US goverment is personally responsible for putting SH in charge
of Iraq three decades ago. We owed a moral debt to every one of his victims,
and making sure that he and his sons are unable to continue their reign of
terror is but a down payment on that debt.
Based on the behavior of various nations during various stages of this process,
I'm actually wondering if the UN didn't both know that this was the inevitable
outcome of their backpedaling, and secretly hope that this situation could be
resolved without them having to dirty their hands. Too many nations have
shifted from being vehemently opposed to going to war, to mildly opposed during
the early stages of the war, to congratulating the participants on the
successful deposing of SH's reign, to demanding their "fair share" of
involvement during the reconstruction, to sitting back and grumpily condemning
the US for doing something that they'd essentially threatened but failed to do
themselves. They all wanted him gone, and they had the opportunity to do it in
a truly united fashion, but they chose not to.
Now, I'm not saying that absolutely no dirty dealings went on to set the
situation up to allow a legal war, or that the whole situation couldn't have
been handled much better in many ways, but something needed to happen, and the
longer the UN kept failing to uphold their own mandates, the more explosive the
situation was getting.
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