Does this guy know no shame?
He’s back pedalling like a circus performer. I still think they had other reasons besides just being against the war. Now that it’s done though they are just trying to weasel their way back in there to protect their interests.
I’m guessing that we’ll see France (and maybe some other countries) somewhat marginalized with respect to Iraq over the coming months. How much marginalization we’ll see will be interesting.
He’s “delighted” at the fall of Saddam’s regime. You know, I could respect his opinion that the war is wrong, but this is just bullshit. It all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Ya know, I was opposed to the war (I would have prefered that other, more peaceful options had been exhausted first - I don’t think they were), but I’m still pleased that Hussein is gone.
I really don’t get the vitrol. At all.
I see.
I suppose that peaceful means could have ousted Saddam. I mean, they seemed to be working. Maybe the coalition should have just given peace a chance. :rolleyes:
You see alice_in_wonderland, the vitriol actually has nothing to do with anyone being pleased that Saddam Hussein is gone. It has to do with you anti-US jerks being all anti-US and against the war.
Your missing a smiley right?
And all the people who were against this war and who aren’t “anti-US jerks” will wait patiently for you to finish beating up the Scarecrow and grow up.
Enjoy,
Steven
That seems reasonable. And it wouldn’t surprise me that he’s pushing for the U.N. to be involved as a mask for French influence. He knows damn well the U.S. and Britain would tell him to fuck off (in fact, I believe we already have) if France tried to take part openly. The U.N. is the only way he has to influence events now. How ironic, given that France led the charge to prevent U.N. involvement in the first place.
Still, I personally think the U.N. should be involved, and probably in charge, of rebuilding Iraq. And the U.N. forces in charge of THAT should be led by Australia, Canada, and Poland.
Hey, did you hear the French national soccer team hasn’t been able to practice to defend it’s World Cup title for more than six months? They lost all their balls.
Fer FUCK’s sake.
Now, I’m no fan of Chirac, myself. I think he’s a sly bastard that abuses his position of power in the international field as annoyingly as some other current presidents of large democracies I know.
But the mere fact that he and his government opposed the war does not mean that he was pleased to see a dictator oppressing a people. A dictator who was helped to power by one of the forces that are overthrowing him now, we might add.
When Chirac says he is delighted about the Iraqi people’s newfound freedom, he means it as much as any other democratic leader in the world. The fact that he opposed the means leading to this newfound freedom simply because he preferred to have the UN take care of it does NOT make him a circus artist, a back-pedaler, or what have you.
Regardless of your opinion on the war: anyone who thinks Chirac is not sincere in expressing his delight, is a fucking idiot, plain and simple.
Now, how many more of these intellectually stunted “I told you so”-threads are we going to have to debunk? I’m getting sick and fucking tired of it already.
Yes, I was joking… well actually not really as I do think that the OP has revealed his true sentiments…
Are you on crack? It would appear that Bush’s decision to go to war prevented the UN from carrying out their mandated weapons inspections. Not the other way 'round.
And Chirac is not using the UN as a “mask for French influence”, as he has backed a UN solution all along. Sheesh, how deluded can you get?
Who is the one on crack here? Bush prevented the inspections? Like Saddam had nothing to do with it, eh?
I think, as long as the US decided to thumb its nose at the world community and the UN and attack Iraq, the outcome of the war* is looking to be better than I expected.
I disagreed with attacking Iraq without UN support. I think our attacking Iraq sets a bad precident for the future. I’m not unhappy that Saddam is ousted, but I think we should have followed the rule of law in getting to this point.
After we attacked, I agreed that it would have been worse to pull out than to stay and complete what we had set out to do.
*Why is it called a war? Neither we nor Iraq declared war, shouldn’t it be a Korea-like or Vietnam-like Police Action?
Wow booka. You’re really an idiot, huh?
Perhaps you should get that looked at.
This seems a lot like typical European hair-splitting to me. I don’t doubt Chirac is delighted. . . . especially since he and his country didn’t have to lift a finger to bring Hussein down themselves. As for “having the U.N. take care” of it, bullshit. Many sincere efforts were made to get U.N. backing for this whole deal. They failed directly because of French oposition. To claim that “he wanted the UN to take care of it” is revisionist history, at best. When what you’re doing to solve a problem isn’t working (like sanctions) and someone else wants to try something else that will work, and you won’t let them, how can you justify claiming you actually wanted to solve the problem?
But that has all been argued ad nauseum in other threads. The point is, France and Chirac blocked the quickest and most efficient means of removing Saddam with U.N. backing, and are now applauding that he’s gone.
If he and his country had really cared so much about freeing the Iraqi people, you’d think he would’ve found some way to help. If they sincerely thought Saddam should’ve been removed all along, then everything Chirac’s government said before this war is exposed as so much hypocritical posturing.
The inspectors left Iraq because the US was getting ready to start their attack. I guess you expected them to stay and work through he explosions?
Vitriol aside, the U.S. government has offered many stories to the public to help justify the action in Iraq. The threat of WMDs, and the need for their discovery and removal. The evils of Saddam. The oppressed Iraqi citizenry. There have been others too.
But, they are just stories.
In effect, they’re similar to the Noble Lie that underscores religious beliefs. They’re stories that are offered to the masses that are intended to keep people generally “in line”, so that they can go on with their lives, go to their jobs, raise their families, be generally happy, and keep their countries running along. Without these stories, the masses would be so utterly confused, fearful, and unsettled that normal life would be disrupted and in some cases severaly impaired.
The truth that underscores these “stories” is that the U.S. government wants more control in the Middle East, so that it can establish more stability, so that it can drag this region into the 21st century, so that it can have more control of strategic oil supplies, so that our allies will benefit, and so that the region becomes a cooperating part of the global economy and neighborhood. At the nation-state level, this is typical and expected.
All nations want that which will help them survive and thrive, and nations do what they can do accomplish this.
The stories help justify this to the masses, but of course, the stories have big holes in them, just like the religious stories have holes in them (virgin births, invisible men in the sky, walking on water, etc. etc.) Yet, millions believe in these religions (because they are effective means of getting people through their lives), and millions of people believe the stories about Iraq that our government puts out there.
The point isn’t to rant and rail about the inconsistencies of these stories. The stories are by definition NOT CONSISTENT. Arguing the consistency, morality, or ethics of the stories is a silly waste of time.
The POINT is to see past the stories, and to understand that the U.S. is acting exactly like a dominant nation-state, NOT like an individual, and that is exactly how all nations act with regards to one another. Nations act solely in accordance with their own self-interests - period. If a nation is strong, it can assert itself differently than a nation that is weak, much like a lion can attack, say, a water buffalo, but a badger can’t. If the badger COULD attack the water buffalo, it sure as hell would.
To expect nations to act according to the norms and rules of personal interaction is naive.
Given this, I wish these discussions really could center more on debating the realistic effectiveness of the U.S.'s actions relative to the prime directives of U.S. and coalition national security, long-term vitality, growth, strength, and dominance, and and less on how people think they are unjust or wrong or mean or unfair. That’s a lot more interesting.
Is it useful to debate the righteousness or ethics or fairness of the lion as it attacks and eats a water buffalo? No, it’s not. They operate by a different set of rules.
I’m sure that people here already know all of this. I guess I just wanted to state the obvious, and see if we could move on towards more relevant and interesting shit-slinging and insults.
I’ll now wait to be flamed out of existence.
Sure. I mean, he only kicked all the weapons inspectors out of the country for years. But it’s really Bush’s fault. It’s all Bush’s fault.