Only in the same way that someone arguing for opem markets is “in effect” arguing for the complete ecological devastation of the third world.
Besides, how on earth do you figure that opposing the sanctions is incompatible with an anti war stance? The sanctions should have been done away with years ago and reiterating how much damage they’ve done doesn’t magically transform the spectre of their continued existence into an argument for pre-emptive war. This isn’t Beetlejuice, arguments and things don’t just magically change if you repeat them.
No, and that’s one of the most pathetic strawmen I’ve ever seen. Congrats.
Although that one takes the cake.
Bzzt. Wrong. Try again.
You see, the terms of the sanctions were dictated by the UN, largely at the urging of the US. We were not powerless to change them. If people were starving, it was a simple matter to simply LET MORE FUCKING FOOD IN, now wasn’t it? When cholera outbreaks were killing thousands, we could have, oh, for instance, LET FUCKING MEDICINE IN. Sadaam had jack shit all to do with it.
The restrictions were not only alterable by the outside world, they were placed in such a way as to have maximum detriment to the civilian populace while Sadaam sat in his aforementioned mansions. In point of fact, that exact list of things that could and couldn’t cross the border was altered, several times at that.
You see, a sane, rational human being is capable of seperating the idea of punishing Sadaam and restricting the expansion of his military power from a specific piece of paper. If the specific set of banned items wasn’t a good idea, it was within the power of the UN to alter the list. And if it was killing people without sufficient offsetting cause, it was morally required to do so.
So we should have waited until the Iraqi population was of voting age, and then let them vote for an invasion? Was there a referendum process or something that we would have had to apply for? And do you have any reason to believe that such a referendum would fail?
Of course we had the right to make the decision. The reason that we had that right is because the Iraqi people didn’t have the ability to make the decision for themselves, and their inability to get rid of him affected us (although the amount that Hussein affected us is certainly debatable). It’s the same reason that the State can take away the children of an abusive parent: it’s for the good of the children, for the good of the state, and for the good of society as a whole.
I doubt the accuracy of many of these claims. But even if they were true, how is this worse than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Take a look at the link to the 2001 report that I provided above. It details the numerous ways that life in Iraq sucked under Saddam Hussein:
50% of all rural people had no access to potable water
Food may have cost 700% less (an especially dubious claim), but there wasn’t nearly enough of it. According to a UNICEF report, “32 percent of children under five, some 960,000 children [were] chronically malnourished.”
“The UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs report[ed] that Iraq’s public health services [were] nearing a total breakdown from a lack of basic medicines, lifesaving drugs and essential medical supplies.”
The functional capacity of the health care system has degraded further by shortages of water and power supply, lack of transportation and the collapse of the telecommunications system.
According to charges drawn up by Ramsey Clark, sanctions led to the Iraqi people being deprived of “essentials to support and protect human life. These essentials include[d] medicines and medical supplies, safe drinking water, adequate food, insecticides, fertilisers, equipment and parts required for agriculture, food processing, storage and distribution, hospital and medical clinic procedures; a multitude of common items such as light bulbs and fluorescent tubes; equipment and parts for the generation and distribution of electricity, telephone and other communications, public transportation and other essential human services.”
“Insurgents” may have not been blowing people up (as far as I know), but Saddam Hussein was killing thousands. And the overall rates of violent crimes now appear to be in line with many American cities (I’ll leave it up to you whether that’s good enough).
And in case you didn’t know, the conflict between the Sunnis and Shias pre-dates even Hussein’s regime.
I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean. “The world’s first ever mercy killing?” Has there really never been a mercy killing? Even if you characterize the collateral damage from a humanitarian intervention as “mercy killing” (and I don’t see how that makes any sense), surely you don’t think this is the first time that’s happened in the history of the world, do you?
And again, how do you suggest that we go about getting the “consent of the people we killed”?
You’ve cited to a preliminary judgment (on jurisdiction and other minor issues) issued by the International Court of Justice, an organization that the US does not recognize as legitimate. Are you suggesting that the US couldn’t have cared about genocide because they didn’t bring Hussein up on charges before an organization that they refuse to participate in?
I don’t. I was responding to elucidator’s charge that Bush & Co. had obviously figured that some number of civilian casualties was fine. I was pointing out that the anti-war crowd made the same determination.
I agree.
But it does respond to your charge that Iraqis could have more worries now than with Hussein in charge.
Did that happen in Beetlejuice? I can’t remember that scene.
Oh, I’m sorry. Was it someone else that said “I’m sorry, but are we seriously suggesting Sadaam is to blame for the results of UN sanctions?” So I guess you actually meant that Hussein was to blame for the results of UN sanctions?
It was meant to be fascetious, Cruella.
But wait! Didn’t you just accuse me of constructing a strawman for insinuating that you’d said that Saddam had nothing to do with the effects of sanctions? And here you say exactly what I suggested you’d said?
. . . So I guess it wasn’t a strawman, after all?
But naturally, you have no point. Once again, I’d encourage you to read the 2001 report I linked below:
And since you seem to have forgotten, advancing coalition troops in Iraq found storehouses of rotting food and medicine from the UN’s “Oil for Food” Program. The UN had lifted sanctions sufficiently to let more medicine and food get in, and Hussein and his henchmen had foisted the medicine and food for themselves. They had grabbed so much, in fact, that the unused portions were literally spoiling, while Iraqis were starving and dying from lack of basic medical supplies.
So what makes you think that if we’d sent more food and medicine, it would have made it to the people that needed it, when the stuff we were already sending them wasn’t being allowed to get off the docks or out of the warehouses?
All sanctions effect the civilian population more than they effect the government being sanctioned. It’s one of the reasons that I almost always oppose sanctions.
Do you really think there were any sanctions that we could have levied that would have effected only Hussein and his government, but not the Iraqi populace?
And we’re back to my original point: if it was killing more people for us to not invade Iraq and we had no sufficient offsetting cause, then were we morally obligated to invade?
Crap. I just realized that by appending the word “Cruella” to the end of one of my (exhorbinantly long) messages, I may have violated the board’s policy on personal insults in GD.
I meant it only in jest. If I caused offense to you, laigle, I apologize.
I am also reporting my post to the Mods so they can take whatever action is appropriate.
Because the Iraqi people were suffering so terribly due to sanctions, sanctions for which the USA is largely responsible, it became necessary for the USA to invade and occupy Iraq in order to relieve the suffering created by sanctions.
Perhaps we have failed to get the message out. We listen closely for the glad hymns of praise and adoration. Or it may be just another example of churlish ingratitude for America’s noble sacrifice. Why, even to this day, the citizens of Nicaragua and Guatemala have been very subdued in their expressions of gratitude for our long campaign to protect them from the dread evil of socialism. And when have we gotten a nice Christmas card from Grenada?
The cite I provided establishes the factual matter, that the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide had been invoked with regard to Bosnia. Any subsequent piffle you posted, even if it was true, would not negate that fact.
You just made that up. The US does not recognize that the ICJ has compulsory jurisdiction over the US, which is an entirely different matter.
There’s two things wrong with that:
a) The ICJ is not the only forum available. The Security Council is also available to the US, if for some reason (e.g. to avoid accusations of hypocrisy) it didn’t want to use the ICJ.
b) Your claim that the US refuses to participate in the ICJ is simply untrue, i.e., you made it up. The US participates in the election of judges and provides judges to the court, e.g. Thomas Buergenthal. The US participates in cases, such as Germany v US which is mentioned in the Buergenthal link. The US provides evidence to the court, e.g. General Wesley Clark’s testimony:
I fail to see the significance of your bringing up the ICTY. Yes, the ICTY is distinct from the ICJ. It was established by Security Council Resuloution 827 on 25 May 1993. It was set up specifically to prosecute instances in Yugoslavia of:
Grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Violations of the laws or customs of war.
Genocide.
Crimes against humanity.
What was your initial point again? Oh yes, this:
No amount of weasling or flat-out lying on your part is going to change the simple fact that the convention was invoked, on multiple occassions and in multiple fora.
He’s on trial for Genocide. That’s the practical upshot of the Genocide Convention being invoked. Do you deny that he’s currently on trial? Do you deny that he’s currently in UN custody? Or are you trying to claim that he hasn’t been charged with genocide, on the basis of the indictment you cited? That indictment is only one of many, including this one:
On the “still running Serbia” thing, you must be unaware that Milosevic is still head of the Socialist Party, which currently holds the balance of power, and which is likely to soon form a coalition government.
And thank you for that cite. You’ve helped dispel at least one portion of my ignorance. I wasn’t aware of the extent of US involvement in the civil portion of the ICJ. Again, thank you for dispelling my ignorance on those points. And you make a fair point about the US disputing the ICJ’s jurisdiction over its own citizens, but not over citizens of other countries.
But I appear to have been unclear on a few points:
Even if the US accepts ICJ jurisdiction on civil matters (I have a sneaking suspicion the US will accept jurisdiction only on matters that it doesn’t find too offensive to its interests, as will every other State), they still won’t submit to its jurisdiction on criminal matters. Merely allowing individuals to participate in criminal trials before the ICJ does not make US policy any more than allowing individuals to be participate in the Flat Earth Society. And it would be hypocritical (and arguably illegitimate) if they refused to recognize the ICJ’s legitimacy over themselves, but at the same time used it when it benefitted them.
I know there are numerous forums that could try Hussein for war crimes. One of those forums are the Courts of Iraq. Current plans are to try Hussein in those Courts. So why isn’t Hussein’s eventual trial sufficient to show that the US was concerned about genocide in Iraq?
The US’s failure to invoke the UN charter on genocide does not mean that the US does not care about genocide. Did every other country invoke the charter? Does your standard apply to other countries?
I was wrong about whether the UN convention had been invoked.
But I was right that the indictment was not the reason he stopped committing genocide. His indictment for genocide was merely a procedural prerequisite to trying him for genocide. It could have been done at any time, and it had no effect on his actions or on his eventual trial for genocide.
What stopped him from continuing to commit genocide were the actions of the UN and NATO peacekeepers keeping his troops at bay, the peace agreement brokered by US and (presumably) UN representatives, and the continued presence of NATO and UN troops that threatened the use of force if he didn’t shape up.
Same thing with Saddam Hussein. Merely invoking the UN charter would not have done anything until he was deposed and arrested.
I’m certainly not informed enough to handicap the future of government in the Balkans, but who’s this Vojislav Kostunica guy? Is he not currently the head of state? And what makes you think that Milosevic is still running the Serbian government?
Well, it counts Qusay Hussein’s son among the innocent civilian dead, despite the fact that all accounts have him firing an AK-47 from under a bed. Furthermore, it counts Iraqi civilians killed by the loyalists, which doesn’t help when one is counting those killed by the US or occupation forces.
To be fair, the site does say “deaths resulting from the military action in Iraq”, not “civilian casualties”.
The trouble with sites like that is they have a clear political bias, so its difficult to trust them completely. Scrolling through their database, I can see several places where they could easily be counting the same deaths more than once. Even allowing for that, its still a substantial body count. And it says nothing about the Iraqi military casualties (largely conscripts), and doesn’t make any attempt to estimate casulties for unreported areas. Their methodology does appear to be fairly sound.
Hopefully, having dealt with the purely factual matters regarding Bosnia, we can return to Iraq, which is the topic of this thread and which is covered in the rest of your post:
You make a couple of points above.
Firstly, the technically correct and quite obvious point that an indictment or a resolution is only a step in a process, and not the entire process. You’d have won the argument with that point alone, if anyone apart from you had ever claimed that “all we had to do was invoke the UN convention on genocide, and the genocide would magically go away”.
Secondly, the point that US is concerned with genocide now, so it’s irrelevant that the US didn’t show concern with genocide before. That’s the bit that I have trouble with.
The US couldn’t get support for a resolution on WMDs, and went ahead anyway. Turns out there were no WMDs. So the justification becomes genocide. Which the US hadn’t raised previously with respect to Iraq. Why wasn’t it raised previously? Surely, if the US had some evidence of genocide, it could easily have raised it in the Security Council, and bolstered its case for UN intervention.
You may think that such things are easily dismissed as matters of procedural nicety. Others do not, and suspect that the sudden US concern over genocide is as fabricated as its earlier concern over Iraq’s WMDs.
Resolution 688 uses the word “repression,” which is likely something less than genocide. But it certainly shows that “the US really gave a rat’s ass about preventing the deaths of Iraqis under Saddam.”
My point wasn’t that invoking the UN conventions on genocide was only a step in the process. My point was that invoking the UN conventions on genocide has little or no effect on actually stopping the genocide. Invoking the charter doesn’t remove the genocidal maniac from power, and it doesn’t make it impossible (or even unlikely) that he will continue to commit genocide. It just makes it possible to prosecute him for that genocide after he’s been removed from power by other means.
And you disputed that notion here:
The fact that the charter was invoked doesn’t explain why Milosevic is no longer running Serbia. The fact that the charter was invoked doesn’t explain why Milosevic stopped committing genocide. The fact that the charter was invoked only explains the charges against Milosevic now that he’s been removed from power.
I’m beginning to get the impression that you haven’t even the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about.
It’s been obvious from the start that you didn’t know much about the convention, but now it’s become clear that you can’t even read or understand what its title plainly says: “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. Allow me to quote some of it.
Comprende? If you want the UN to act to stop genocide, or if you want to stop the genocide yourself (yourself being a party to the convention), this is the instrument that you use.
That’s not to suggest that there aren’t other ways of doing it, of course. You could, for example, make a diplomatic approach, and it might work. Probably wouldn’t, but the existence of the convention doesn’t prevent you from trying. Or you could, say, make up a bunch of bullshit about weapons of mass destruction, invade, have everyone learn that you lied about the weapons of mass destruction, then point to some vague unproven statements about totalitarianism, and claim that your real intention was to prevent genocide. There could be some credibility problems with that.
Oh, well, if the title says its on the prevention of genocide, then invoking it must prevent genocide, right?
And I suppose invoking the Patriot Act makes you a patriot.
Except it doesn’t. You can invoke the UN charter on the prevention of genocide 'til the cows come home, but until you take some action to prevent genocide – through diplomacy or the military or humanitarian aid – then you’re not going to stop genocide.
Ahhh, now I see. So if we had invoked the UN charter on the prevention of genocide, would Saddam Hussein have stopped committing genocide? Would invoking the UN charter have unified the world behind an arsenal against Hussein? Would France and Germany’s opposition to military action folded before the mighty power of the UN convention on the prevention of genocide? Would you have supported military action in Iraq if Bush had invoked the UN convention on genocide?
For some reason, I suspect the answer to those questions is “No.”
And I’m still waiting for you to explain why the US couldn’t have cared about genocide unless they invoked the UN charter on genocide. I just pointed out that Bush spoke to the UN about repression and human rights abuses before the war. So clearly your argument that it was made up after the fact has been proven false.
Are you planning to sprout another leg to stand on?
This is just about the most stupid argument I’ve ever come across.
You see, invoking the spectre of weapons of mass destruction didn’t achieve any of those things either, now did it? People wanted proof before jumping on the Bush machine.
If Bush had invoked the convention on genocide, people still would’ve wanted proof, and if Bush had any, he could’ve shown it. If the proof was convincing, and the extent of the problem serious enough, it’s entirely conceivable that UN backed military action could have resulted. But Bush would’ve had to prove the claim beforehand.
If he’d at least formally made the claim, argued his case and had it rejected, he might be on morally firmer ground now. Note that all the crap Bush said about “gassing the Kurds” and “mass graves” does not prove an on-going progam of genocide which requires urgent intervention. It indicates things that happened over a decade ago which the US did nothing to prevent at the time.
You haven’t proved an on-going program of genocide either, you simply made the claim that any deaths caused by the sanctions, which the US wouldn’t allow to be lifted, were entirely Saddam’s fault.
Wow! That made me laugh! I"m envisioning Bush a la Bluto in “Animal House:” “Who’s with me?!?” [Bounds off assembly floor and out of UN meeting hall. No one follows.]
There may not have been ongoing genocide when the coalition troops invaded Iraq, but there were ongoing human rights abuses. Maybe that’s why Bush talked about the human rights abuses in his UN address, his state of the union, and in his speech to the nation on the eve of war. Maybe that’s why he didn’t invoke the UN convention on genocide. But either way, you’ve clearly demonstrated that you would have criticized him no matter what he did with the UN convention on genocide.
Thanks again for the info on the US’s role in the ICJ.
I also want to point out that I never said this. In fact, I acknowledged that all sanctions have the effect of harming the common populace more than their governments, and that I almost always oppose sanctions for that reason.
This type of clear misrepresentation is a bit surprising from someone that seemed to take so much offense to my mistake on the US’s role in the ICJ.
