News Focus - Is the balance right?

[Taz]

What about the gassing of Iranians by Saddam Hussein that was supported by the Americans (Donald Rumsfeld in particular)? You cannot reel back in horror and call someone a war criminal when he/she gasses Kurds yet stand idly by and support that same person when they are at war with one your enemies and it suits you!

Both are war crimes. The people that commit them and those that support them are war criminals. The neo-cons in the Bush administration always side-step the issue of the gassing of Iranian soldiers yet always focus on the gassing of Kurds.

Here are some links that the current US administration do not want people to read:

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=373

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/di...addam-hussein/

http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljust...705ignored.htm

http://www.democracynow.org/static/rumsfeldcloset.shtml

http://www.awitness.org/journal/saddam_rumsfeld.html

It's interesting to note that the gassing of Iranians by Saddam Hussein will not be one of the war crimes mentioned at his forthcoming trial? Why do you think that is?

[RVF500]

I am well aware that Saddam used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers. I also don't recall supporting it. I also know that the number of Iraqis killed by Saddam far exceeds the number that have been killed since. Does it make anything less right or wrong? No. I know that Bin Laden was backed by the CIA against the Russians during the Russo-Afghan war. I know that Britain sent troops to 'advise' the Mujahadeen. I was in the Army when all that was going on.

The answer to your last question is politics, dirty politics. But don't forget, throughout history the winners make the rules. I don't like it but until I can come up with a solution (which is highly unlikely let's be honest) or someone can come up with a workable solution that works that I can support in my own small way then I'll be supportive of those on the ground that have been put there and I feel are genuinely trying to make a difference given the situation they have inherited.
I also know 2 wrongs don't make a right. There is also more. There is no cut and dried right or wrong. Just the lesser of 2 evils. If you have an alternative solution let's hear it. I'm all for a peaceful solution. In case you hadn't noticed it's not politicians who die or are maimed when nations go to war but the soldiers they send and the civilians caught up in the conflict. But until someone comes up with a peaceful solution that works then I'll plump for the lesser of 2 evils every time. Even with the price that comes with it. Because the price of not doing something could be even higher.

[oralpain]

The US government (actualyl most governments) is a hypocrisy, pure and simple. Whatever is immediatly rewarding, or seems like it would be, to those in power is good and just, whatever casues them inconvience is an evil of the most vile sort and must be destroyed.

Also, the US government and governemnt funded institutions/programs have been and will be responsible for many deploreable acts agasint it's own people. My government has used insituationalized persons, minorities, and it's own soldiers as unwitting/unwilling guinea pigs in medical experiments (some of wich would make Josef Mengele proud). It has sterilized masses of so called "undesireables". It has descriminated agaisnt, or out right imprisioned enormous numbers of people for arbitrary reasons, in violation of it's own constitution. It has also habitually neglected or reneged on it's responsibility to it's people.

Anyway, might truly makes right in the real world. No one ever talks about attacking the USA and rescuing it from it's "violent and genocidal" regime.

Th lesser of two evils would have been to kill sadddam without invading, or to ignore Iraq totaly. I personally do not think Iraq, in the end will be any better off. I am personally worse off, so is the rest of my country.

The USA is going to take away all my rights, tax me out of all my money, then spend it on destroying the world, all because of it's collective, demented, ill concived, good intentions, that never turn out right.

[RVF500]

Seems the UK and US have more in common than I thought reading that. Except we don't have as much firepower as the US so Blair will just have to jump into bed with Bush to realise his goals.

An example of what I mean by doing nothing I think is what happened in Sarajevo while Owen (I refuse to call the spineless fool a lord) procrastinated for 3 years the citizens of Sarajevo where nickel and dimed until upwards of 3000 had been murdered (killed is far too civilized a word). Kids shot by snipers on the way to school. Families mortared in cemetaries as they buried those already murdered. Yet he had it in his power to commit UN troops to push the Serb militias back out of range of the City at least. He did nothing and the town of Srebrenica was slaughtered in medieval fashion. Some 10000 died when the town fell. A so-called UN enclave. Only the troops weren't allowed to defend the place under the UN Mandate.

Now I agree that thee would have been deaths in the event of a military solution. Even a limited one designed purely to impose a buffer between the gunmen and the civil populace. These militias were little more than hillbillies in looted uniforms. They certainly had little or no restraint. However the casualties would have been largely military. As a soldier at the time (albeit reserve as my regular service ended in '91) I would have been quite willing to put my neck on the line to create such a buffer. More so than I would have been in the latest fiasco in the Gulf. But then we never did get a choice. Members of my reserve squadron did in fact serve in Srebrenica after the Serbs had moved out. Too little too late.

This is the kind of thing that I mean when one does nothing the price is higher than when one does something. Even if it is not by peaceful means.

Only history can judge if the west was right to depose Saddam in the way we did.

[iranu]

Funny to think that american planes dropping american made bombs paid for by americans stopped the Serbs after the EU and UN asked for help, showing what a bunch of useless f***ers they were.

At what point is American military involvement outside of the US justified? When it's a bit too late ala former Republic of Yugoslavia or pre-emtive strikes in Iraq and Afganistan without international support? When NATO decides it's right but the UN doesn't?

I'm pretty sure we would have all been screaming for American help if the Ruskies had marched west sometime in the last 4 decades.

Whilst I believe that on the whole the Yanks are a force for good I can't help but wish they would spend a bit more time thinking about what their actions will cause and how they are going to implement the peace.

[TheAnimus]

lets just all watch team america: world police.

[RVF500]

When those planes dropped a few bombs the Serb militias pulled back immediately. But didn't stay back as the effort was not sustained. Which goes to show that a properly organised effort would have spared a lot of civilian life. Some people were saved by individual actions that bent the rules a bit. One springs to mind of a British army patrol driving it's vehicle between militia gunmen and fleeing civilians that had been herded across a field for a bit of target practice. Basically inviting the gunmen to open fire on them so they could fire back. They thought better of it and left, no doubt to come back another day. But these were isolated actions of soldiers frustrated by political inaction who happened to be in the right place at the right time. A few minutes later and they would have had to watch the gunmen clamly walk away from a field full of dead civilians.

The EU is divided the UN is toothless. They both had the tools to do the job but lacked either the balls or the know how to use them. Probably both.

[Taz]

[Edit]: Talking of the UN, America reduced its funding of the UN quite a while ago and has rubbished it ever since. [/Edit]

The simple reason is that the UN invites opinion and discussion from 191 countries around the world to reach a consensus - an inclusive model that allows for debate and mutual understanding of different viewpoints and cultures.

This flies in the face of the current US Administrations foreign policy and the stated objectives of the Project For The New American Century (PNAC) in which America seeks world domination at any cost. Several of the neo-con hawks in the current US Administration are also members of the PNAC - a dangerous (for the world) ideology borne out of Straussian theory.

Here's a quote from Bill Kristol, Chairman of PNAC and a neo-con hawk, on the Web page of PNAC (http://www.newamericancentury.org/):

"The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

The Project for the New American Century intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world."

[iranu]

"Mr Bolton, like many US conservatives, notes that Washington is paying 23 per cent of the UN's bills. Its $3 billion (£1.7 billion) a year contribution funds 48 per cent of the UN's World Food Programme and 41 per cent of the UN High Commission for Refugees.

America feels that its dollars buy it the right to make the case for reform. Only last week the UN was described as incompetent, corrupt and in urgent need of change by the Volcker commission, the organisation's own report into the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Elsewhere in the organisation, Washington looks on enraged as countries such as China and Cuba are voted on to the UN's human rights commission." Sourced from here

Without American money the UN goes down the pan.

Let me ask you this - would you pay the majority upkeep for the people living in your street only to watch those people constantly sh1tting in your front garden and apointing the wife beating chav at No 4 to manage the neighbourhood watch scheme?

Now I'm not saying that the Yanks are perfect but I can understand their pov on the corrupt and morally bankrupt UN.