The US would consider water purification plants a legitimate target, and that’s where the government of Iraq wished to put several British human shields. Why didn’t they want to go? Water purification is important more to civilians in urban Baghdad than soldiers, and it is said that Iraq’s public infrastructure like water purification is in really bad shape because of the sanctions, the US bombing there will only make it worse.
UnuMondo
First off, whoever posesses the oil controls the oil. If you don’t buy it I’m sure someone else will be only too happy to. Most of the population of the planet are consumers, not just “the greatest country on the face of the Earth” (notice how George Bush doesn’t exactly improve the rest of the world’s opinion of America).
Secondly what’s all this about “expanding democracy and freedom”? It’s all in the phrase “regime change”. The replacement of one regime with another. (one presumably controlled by America, a country which, to me doesn’t seem quite so democratic and free as you seem to think it is.)
I, to quote the late great Bill Hicks am “in the unenviable position of being for the war but against the troops”.
By this I mean yes, I think we need to get rid of Saddam but that is all. What right does any nation have to go into another country, blow the shit out of them and then impose a “regime change”. It should be up to the Iraqi people to govern themselves, with all the responsibilities and problems that entails.
Any post war involvement by other nations should be restricted to providing aid.
I admit this is a little off the subject of human shields but that’s freedom and democracy for you apparently.
Psicological - first of all welcome. Second you said
The US military does not want to go in, blow them up, and change the Government to be like theirs. They want a regime change, be cause the Iraqi people can not govern themselves. They are governed by a tyrant. The US only wants that Tyrant our. George Bush doesn’t want to govern the people of Iraq. But the people of Iraq are certainly not currently free. What would you say if the person who governed your country killed anyone who went against him, or his beliefs? And then didn’t stop at just simply killing the person who went against him, but continued to kill their entire family, relatives, friends, and confidants?? Would you not want another nation to step in, and remove said dictator from power, and allow another more caring person in to take over the reigns?
**BTW I do not know who is in the front running for the new leader, so I am not saying they will be necessarily caring…
I didn’t preview, sorry for spelling errors… 4th sentence down that should be tyrant OUT. not tyrant our
cough cough France cough cough
shrug Then Americans in general don’t exactly improve the rest of the world’s opionion of us, because GWB is only expressing the the sincere belief of a majority of his countrymen. We haven’t let learned the masochistic European art of self-flagellation.
Sie sind Englischer, ja? Mussen Sie jeden tag Deustsch sprechen? Nein? Ach, bitte schön.
The famous European morality at work. :rolleyes: Why, those Arab chappies must live under a bloodthirsty dictator, daily living in fear of having one’s family shot, one’s womenfolk systematically raped, and one’s own self tortured, because they like it, what? And if not, well, they’re only wogs anyway, what? I say, what time is it? Is Baywatch on the telly yet?
BTW, if I were a Canadian, you could be sure that I’d feel that Canada was the best damn country on earth, and feel similar feelings of patriotism if I were Chinese, Indian, or any other nationality. I’d say that this peculiar guilt and dislike of one’s own country–even to the extent that one feels the need to haul down one’s own flag and hand over national sovereignty to a faceless bureaucracy in Brussels–is a peculiarly European affliction.
Neither are you, even if you so narrowly insist on defining the issue in terms of 2 sides.
Their naivete, and even wankerdom, are not in dispute, as you may have noticed. But that doesn’t make them entirely wrong, either - there’s a spirit that demands some respect by us armchair types, even if it’s misguided.
Clear now?
But the only spirit most of them displayed was a narcissistic self-righteousness that melted away in the face of “cold fear”.
Sorry, I still don’t see anything to respect.
Sorry, I still don’t see any narcissism, or self-righteousness. Do you think they did that to draw attention to themselves?
Actually no I’m not English, I’m from Scotland (which isn’t in England). And by the way WW1 started in 1914, not 1916 and WW2 started in 1939, not 1941 so don’t give me any of that “woulda’ been speakin’ German if it wasn’t for us” shit OK? Also I did not mean that we should leave Iraq with the same/another bloodthirsty dictator. What I meant was that rather than removing one regime only to impose another how about, oh I don’t know, overseeing the democratic election of a new Iraqi government. (That is to say an election which doesn’t limit the number of candidates COUGH COUGH)
And thinking about it, a good friend of mine is a Kurd whose family were forced to flee Iraq some years back so I’ve heard enough stories to know Saddam needs removing.
And another thing. I don’t consider myself European (it’s a continent, not a country), I’m Scottish, I like being Scottish, I love Scotland. It’s a beautiful country (we’ve got history and everything), but I’m not arrogant, and I’m not delusional so I realise that life isn’t all about who has the “best” country or whatever. And I wasn’t consulted on the whole European Union thing.
But without someone pushing through a “regime change” in Berlin–be it Harry S Truman or Uncle Joe–most of Europe would be speaking German today. Doesn’t that indicate that regime change by an outside power is occasionally justified?
I don’t doubt your sincerity, but how on earth could you ever oversee a democratic election in Iraq without first removing Saddam and his cronies by military force? Germany and Japan are democracies today, but they got that way only after lengthly occupation and denazification on the one hand and a complete rewriting of the constitution by Shogun MacArthur on the other.
Who are you coughing at? An unlimited number of candidates can run for the office of President or any other elected post, as far as I know. Whether more than two candidates have a shot of actually being elected is another matter, but how else can you structure the game in a country of nearly 300 million people?
Making sure the whole world knew what they were doing was definitely a big part of it. And them running home with their tails between their legs is more than just a PR victory for the hawks. It totally illustrates the two main components of the peace movement:
ignorance and/or cowardice
They believe that war is not the answer but they don’t have a clue as to what the answer is, other than ignoring it and hoping it goes away.
And when push comes to shove they don’t even have the courage of their convictions. When given the choice of continuing to live their lives in the comfortable west or dying in some 3rd world totalitarian shit-hole for their beliefs, I guess the poor Iraqi children are on their own…
I imagine that there will be far less targeting of civilian infrastructure than there was in the first Gulf War. A minutes thought will reveal why. In Gulf War 1, we weren’t going to occupy Iraq, we were going to leave Saddam in charge, or perhaps the guy who killed Saddam. So there was an effort to degrade Iraq’s ability to wage future wars, meaning wrecking the infrastructure.
In Gulf War 2, we’re going to be occupying the country. It makes no sense to blow up water purification plants if we’re going to have to rebuild the water purification plant a week later. In Gulf War 1, we blew up bridges to make it impossible for Saddam to move his troops around and reinforce his occupying army. It makes no sense to blow up bridges in Gulf War 2 when our tanks and troops are going to be invading over those bridges. We want to capture Iraq as intact as possible.
Which is why the Human Shields are so stupidly misguided. The only way they would be effective is if they believed that the US military was intending to massacre Iraqi civilians, them being dirty Ay-rabs, but would balk at massacring real people. Sure, civilians are going to get killed in the war. But would the presence of a western observer make a difference? If a bomb accidentally falls on a hospital, it won’t be stopped because some westerner happens to be staying there.
Of COURSE the Iraqis were going to use them for their own purposes. Any Human Shield who went to Iraq imagining that Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship wouldn’t use them, abuse them, and potentially murder them, pretty much deserves whatever they get.
Oh, and it isn’t a war crime to be a human shield, as far as I can tell. It would only be a war crime to EMPLOY human shields. If Saddam chains them to nuclear reactors then he’s guilty of a war crime. If someone sits on top of a nuclear reactor then he’s guilty only of stupidity.
OK maybe you have the same opinion as me. But to me “regime change” suggests, rather than replacing the regime with a democratic government, replacing it with another regime (i.e. not introducing any form of democracy)
Maybe I was misinformed. I was under the impression that the US had a 2 party system. Although I can’t remember where I heard that from. Oh well.
It might be a semantic issue, then. Isn’t Tony Blair’s government a “regime”? As well as GWB’s? And, BTW, neither is a “democracy” in the strict sense of the word.
Just as well that I don’t ask you to provide a cite, then. The “two party system” is a de facto, not de jure, arrangement. You must not have been paying attention to the 1992 and 2000 presidential elections. To which of the “two parties” did Ross Perot or Ralph Nader belong?
this just in…
it just keeps getting better…
Hahaha…I guess the owner forgot to ask Saddam to borrow his BP Credit Card! That’s the thanks you get for “shielding” all of those “civilian” targets!
I think of Europe as a continent too, but on my map it goes clear over to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
shrug
It is where the history comes from, though…