in message <[email hidden]>, Anthony Cox
(') said:In message <[email hidden]>, Jon Senior
<jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk@?.?.invalid> writes
Quoted message said:Besides, just over 50% of the voters chose a man who's administration
has led them into two unwinnable wars, declared war on a noun, and
steadily removed an increasing number of their basic human rights in
the name of "safety".
On the other hand he has removed a regressive theocracy from power
leading to the first democratically elected leader of Afghanistan,
I have friends who sponsor a school in Afghanistan and who spent this
summer there helping with the construction of an extension, and other
friends who worked in Kabul (as aid workers) through the Taleban
period. Neither group would recognise your assumption that things in
Afghanistan are clearly better since the fall of the Taleban. On the
contrary, the Taleban controlled the warlords and virtually stamped out
organised crime, neither of which the present regime can do
(particularly as the US government is once again equipping the
warlords). Of course, the Taleban were, as you say, extremely backward
and repressive, but they were also pretty popular with the ordinary
Afghanis. They brought peace and stability, and those are important and
valuable things.
Quoted message said:and
removed a dictator from power who killed hundreds of thousands.
But we're getting close to the point where more Iraqi civilians will
have died since we removed the dictator than during the dictator's
reign; certainly more Iraqi civilians have died in the past year than
in any single year under Hussein.
Quoted message said:Elections due on January 27th there. Presumably, you'll be supporting
the Iraqi people's desire to have a democratic state?
Do they have such a desire? Do you know this? How do you know this? (I'm
with you in assuming that most people in Iraq probably would prefer an
uncorrupt democratic government to dictatorship, but my understanding
of the present situation is that if Saddam Hussein were to stand in
elections in Iraq today, he would almost certainly win - the present
situation is that much worse than it was under his rule).
Quoted message said:Of course I understand that it's more fashionable these days to
complain about the erosion of democracy in Western countries, while
simultaneously organising marches against its spread to oppressed
people in totalitarian states.
Things are not as simple as that; things are most certainly not black
and white. The chemical weapons which Saddam Hussein famously used
against his own people were supplied to him by his friend Donald
Rumsfeld, in a deal approved by Bush Senior. The Taleban were also
armed and equipped by the US government under Reagan and Bush Senior.
It's possible to view the old pro-soviet government of Afghanistan as
highly analogous to the present situation in Iraq - an attempt by a
foreign super-power to impose good governance on an unstable region
from outside. It didn't work. Of course, part of the reason it didn't
work was that the US administration was equipping the resistance. Now
it's (largely) the Saudi Arabians - our 'allies' - who are equipping
the Iraqi resistance.
It's also worth considering in what way the present resistance in Iraq
(resisting, as they are, a foreign invasion) differs from the French
resistance during the second world war. Are they any less 'heroic'? Are
they any less 'patriotic'? If so, how and why?
Quoted message said:By the way a noun did not fly into the World Trade Centre, and Bin
Laden declared the war in 1998, when Clinton was in power.
Bin Laden, who, let's remember, was also supplied and equipped by people
presently serving in the current US administration. Bin Laden who,
let's remember, funded a number of plots to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
The war in Iraq has nothing whatever to do with the War on Terror.
Hussein was not sponsoring terror; he had no weapons of mass
destruction. He was an unpleasant dictator, who had been sponsored by
the US but had fallen out with them, in a world full of unpleasant
dictators many of whom have been sponsored to one degree or another by
the US. He was an unpleasant dictator who happened to be sitting on top
of a lot of oil.
To be against neo-colonial wars is not necessarily to be in favour of
evil dictators, and to use unpopular foreign troops to topple an evil
dictator does not always or even usually improve matters.
--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Do not sail on uphill water.
- Bill Lee
