I don’t know who it was in here who said America is not an imperialist country, but there’s a century of the US going into other countries and doing what Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld want to do to Iraq that blows your assertion right out of the water. Going in and arranging things so it benefits your country, no matter what effect it has on the local population, is imperialism, plain and simple.
Again, I’d like to ask a question that I have not yet received a satisfactory answer to. What gives the US the right to go in and force a “regime change” whenever and wherever it wants?
Let’s think of the practical effects of a war on Iraq. The country’s already been devastated by the Gulf War in 1991 and the ensuing decade of sanctions. Another war will further the destruction and ruin of a country that’s already falling apart. How in God’s name is the US supposed to “create prosperity” out of that?
And whether or not Saddam Hussein is hoarding supplies that do get into Iraq is irrelevant. Did he suddenly start acting this way when the sanctions hit, or was enough of a dictator to skim off the top when imports were flowing in? The fact of the matter remains that the US and the UN deliberately cut off the flow of imports into Iraq, which did little to affect Saddam Hussein himself but threw the majority of the Iraqi population into appalling poverty.
Finally, where was all the hoopla about Saddam Hussein being a threat to world peace in the 1970s and 1980s, when there was credible, hard evidence of Iraq’s use of WMD? I’ve already pointed out here how Rumsfeld conveniently seemed to ignore the UN’s report when he was in Baghdad trying to reopen diplomatic relations in 1984. He only started beating the war drum against Iraq in August of 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait - which illustrates the point that as long as Saddam Hussein was only repressing his own population or committing atrocities against countries the US regarded as enemies (i.e. Iran), then the US didn’t give a rat’s ass what he did. Soon as he threatened a country the US deemed vital, however, then he got slapped with the “new Hitler” label and the whole parade got started.
So, we have a country that wants to go in and change another country’s leader - and do so while ignoring the voice of the general populace, using methods that have already proven lethal to that country’s population, for reasons that are plainly hypocritical. One, two, three strikes - you’re imperialist.