History demonstrates that trusting America is insane. Ask what’s left of the Native Americans, or the Iraqis we encouraged to rebel, then stood by while the were killed. Never trust America.
No, we would have invaded anyway; at least one U.S. official stated so before the war in an Italian interview. And no, I don’t have a cite from so long ago, I’m going by memory. IMHO, every member of the Saddam regime could have killed themselves and we’d have invaded.
Nonsense. We don’t care how nutty they are.
It’s called appealing to the base. American politicians do it all the time.
No. they will sell or refuse to sell to whomever we order them to. That’s one of the major reasons we invaded, after all.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
First, there was a cold war on. The geopolitical situation was very different, and the Soviet Union was engaged in proxy wars and signing up Arab countries for their side. The U.S. had to play that game or risk ceding the middle east and the world’s main oil supply to a hostile power.
[QUOTE]
That argument appears to be justifying US actions from the US point of view. Do you really think that an would Iranian feel “Oh, that’s okay then, they had an ideological conflict and wanted oil,” about US intervention? Here’s another way to look at it: would Iran be justified in meddling in the US government because they felt pressing competition for our resources in some ideological struggle?
No, I think you’d be pissed at them. Certainly Joe Sixpack would be.
Let’s look at your very own formulation through the eyes of an imaginary Iranian mullah:
It kinda works, doesn’t it?
See, in theory, other nations view themselves as sovereign, and in their view (rightly or wrongly), if one country can justify itself by compelling self-interest in a global ideological struggle, another can as well. I realize that Americans might have trouble accepting that.
I am NOT defending Iran nor presupposing it has a moral right to nuclear weapons. I am strongly against proliferation personally. I merely wanted to point out that self-interest in a global conflict (cold war vs Communism could be seen as equivalent to holy war vs Liberal Democracy) is a poor justification indeed, and certainly won’t move the mullahs to roll over for us. You’ll have to argue better than that.
Bah, screwed up the quote tags. Should look like this:
That argument appears to be justifying US actions from the US point of view. Do you really think that an would Iranian feel “Oh, that’s okay then, they had an ideological conflict and wanted oil,” about US intervention? Here’s another way to look at it: would Iran be justified in meddling in the US government because they felt pressing competition for our resources in some ideological struggle?
No, I think you’d be pissed at them. Certainly Joe Sixpack would be.
Let’s look at your very own formulation through the eyes of an imaginary Iranian mullah:
It kinda works, doesn’t it?
See, in theory, other nations view themselves as sovereign, and in their view (rightly or wrongly), if one country can justify itself by compelling self-interest in a global ideological struggle, another can as well. I realize that Americans might have trouble accepting that.
I am NOT defending Iran nor presupposing it has a moral right to nuclear weapons. I am strongly against proliferation personally. I merely wanted to point out that self-interest in a global conflict (cold war vs Communism could be seen as equivalent to holy war vs Liberal Democracy) is a poor justification indeed, and certainly won’t move the mullahs to roll over for us. You’ll have to argue better than that.
I’d be able to accept that it was unintentional or mere benevolence on the part of the U.S. had it not been the only country to vote against condemning Iraq’s use of chemical weapons at the UN in 1986. So the Reagan administration, with strong opposition from the U.S. Congress as well as the UN, removes export controls that had been in place against Iraq simply because they felt Iraq must have weapons grade germs and chemicals for use in agriculture? Even after it was proven time and again that it was never used in agriculture, but rather, used as weapons? Are you testing the limits of credulity? Do you genuinely believe what you’re suggesting in the face of all that’s come to light since then?
Yes it was stupid and yes they did know full well what it would be used for. And even when it was shown what it was being used for, the U.S. continued to supply it right up until Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.