TeeJay said:
Isolationism?
Peace in our time?
Stand by and watch people be slaughtered and oppressed?
this is the most inaccurate and downright silly historical parallel of our time. As all sensible people knew at the time, the dabgers the NSDAP posed to the Jews, the German people and the world were one asnd indivisible. and as it is there in
mein Kampf, in black and white.
and I claim godwin's law, natch.
teejeay; get this straight; not all dictatorships are one and the same, and identical. In some cases, i certainly DON'T support isolationism - Rwanda certainly needed a bigger, better response from the west than it got.
But in some cases I do, and the Arab world is one of them. right now, every time.
Why? because there is a century-old legacy of colonialism (in effect, if not in name), exploitation & other western misdeeds that has left the arab world collectively furious with us; right now, if we wish for good relations with this part of the world, the best thing we can do is get out and stay out.
and if you want proof of that, look at what has happened; Iraq is in ruins. the country is in a state of civil war, virtually, and America's mission has now been admitted to have the look of a 10-year one. In fact, an end does not look even remotely in sight; the whole thing is a fiasco and catastrophe
but all this is ignoring the main flaw in your argument; that our mission in Iraq has been in any way humanitarian. If you genuinely believe that humanitarian reasons were in any way, shape or form the prime motive of Bush or Blair than you have got to be the most naive, deluded and gullible individual this side of the funny farm.
This war was NOT fought to liberate iraqis, it was done for 3 reasons
1) because Israel egged america on
2) Global hegemony (ie. "sortin' out them day-amn ay-rabs once 'n' fer awl, y'awl')
and finally the big one 3) OIL.
ALL of America's middle east policies of the past 60 years basically boil down to these reasons; the US economy is built on cheap oil.
So given that those were the real reasons, I think the 'humanitarian' card is a load of hogwash.
What kind of moral basis does this rest on? Some kind of fetish for the divine right of national borders? The idea that nationalism and national sovereignty is some kind of absolute that trumps all other considerations of human rights and human welfare?
err, I'll think you'll find that 'fetish' is one over which millions of people have fought and died; the right to run your nation''s own affairs, without diktat from a bigger power. without it, there is no democracy. And if you regard it as a mere 'fetish', then I am afraid you are simply a colonialist and imperialist; you believe in the right & duty of the west to walk in every one else's countries and sort out their affairs for them, which strikes me as a kinda liberal update of Kipling's "White Man's Burden" and that is far, far worse a thing to tolerate than Saddam.
And please cut out this 'morality' guff; our leaders have NOT been guided by morality not for so much as one second, so it ain't relevant.
Don't get me wrong; I am NOT a supporter of SH, or what the Ba'ath became. But sometimes there are no good answers, and for me the least dire one is the one I've argued for; contain, work with legit oppoes. But NOT invade.
