So basically, when the world wants us to intervene, we should intervene. When the world doesn’t want us to intervene, we shouldn’t intervene. Boy, that’s some independence we have there.
So your assertion is that our “independence” should allow us to do anything we want while other countries’ independence is subjugated to ours?
Fang, there is a difference between intervening and invading.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by december *
[ol][li]Both interventions could be justified on humanitarian grounds. Both countries suffered from dreadful governments, although Saddam had caused a much greater number of deaths.[]Both interventions are risky, open-ended, and potentially expensive. Iraq is likely to have a considerably greater cost.[]Iraq was a big potential threat to much of the world, due to Saddam’s desire to acquire and use WMDs. []It was important that Iraq’s oil resources not be controlled by the evil Saddam.[/ol]1) As even sven said, Iraq was at peace; Liberia is not. My personal take is that the breakdown of civil order is worse than all but the worst tyrannies.[/li]
For instance, Saddam is believed to have killed roughly 290,000 Iraqis out of a country of 22 million. That’s evil and not small potatoes, but the reality is still that daily life went on for most Iraqis: work, eat, sleep, raise children, socialize with friends.
The breakdown of civil order sweeps even that away: there is no safety in living your life quietly and staying out of politics. And that is why civil wars such as those in Liberia or Congo are worse than tyrants like Saddam.
It’s also why the potential existed, and remains today, for us to make life worse for most Iraqis than it was under Saddam. When will be pull out, and what will happen then? We don’t know. What will we have to do there to ensure that civil war doesn’t break out upon our departure? We don’t know.
But in Liberia, every direction is up: even a temporary restoration of order will give the people of Liberia at least a respite from civil war, and it may enable them to keep it from resuming once we’re gone. Argued in humanitarian terms, Liberia makes more sense.
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Can’t argue with you.
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Bush didn’t expect to find significant WMDs. I’ve been over this in probably eight or nine threads now, dating back to the second week of May, including these two active ones. (Hint: it’s the war plan, stupid.* :))
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Why was it important that Iraq’s oil resources not be controlled by Saddam? We weren’t letting him sell much oil anyway.
Strategically speaking, the containment operation we’d been running on Saddam since Gulf War I was much cheaper than running Iraq is, in terms of military resources. Plus, we’ve pissed off the world. Meanwhile, we still have real threats to deal with, like Iran and North Korea, and we’re burning out our troops babysitting Iraq. We don’t have much left in the way of military or diplomatic resources to bring to bear on Iran and NK, and our military action in Iraq has reduced our credibility in Iran, which has to reduce our diplomatic options in dealing with their nuclear program.
I’m all for defending our genuine security interests where they exist. I’m all for realpolitik, but I want real realpolitik, rather than the pretend crap we’re getting from the White House. Invading a country to deal with a trumped-up threat, then having to keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers there for years afterwards in a difficult nation-building exercise that we really should have had the sense to avoid, is delusionpolitik, if you will.
But I think it’s in America’s overarching strategic interest to involve itself in periodic altruistic interventions, to the extent that it doesn’t endanger us in more immediate ways. We’ve had a bad long-term track record of having freedom and democracy at home, but exporting ruthless authoritarianism to the Third World. We’ve gotten better from the mid-1980s on, but we’ve still got a ways to go, as demonstrated by our current support for governments like those of China and Pakistan. Nobody’s going to believe us when we claim we went into Iraq due to our concern for the well-being of Iraqis; they’re only going to laugh. We need to develop the sort of track record that would make such a claim believable. In the long run, that will protect us better than any number of troops.
- Note to december: JFTR, I’m not calling you ‘stupid’. I’m just playing off of Clinton’s long-ago phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
What makes you think it’s an either/or situation? :dubious:
To address the OP – while I’m not thrilled with the idea of getting into another firefight already, at least we’re being invited into Liberia to clean up the mess there, and we would be doing it with real international support (none of this “Coalition of the Willing” bullstuff). It might get ugly, but at least it’s a morally correct kind of ugly.
I gave my answer to this question a few days ago in this thread.
For that matter, we may like a crack at Charles Taylor on Noriega-esque grounds: the last time Taylor was in this country (where he spent much of his youth), he was a street thug who escaped from a Massachusetts prison.
I gave my answer to this question a few days ago in this thread.
For that matter, we may like a crack at Charles Taylor on Noriega-esque grounds: the last time Taylor was in this country (where he spent much of his youth), he was a street thug who escaped from a Massachusetts prison.
I gave my answer to this question a few days ago in this thread.
For that matter, we may like a crack at Charles Taylor on Noriega-esque grounds: the last time Taylor was in this country (where he spent much of his youth), he was a street thug who escaped from a Massachusetts prison.
Independence? Since when did independence mean you get to behave like a lynchmob when hosted by others? What has independence to do with being a guest?
Oh, I see, the only independence that matters to you is that from the law. You want to be independent of legal constraints.
Could I just say how glad I am to see that there are still plenty of Americans who believe in the principles on which the USA was founded rather than in the current prevailing twisted and hypocritical version of them that the Bush administration favours.
There is hope yet for “peace, justice and the American Way” the way that Superman meant it! Just make sure that you lot rid yourselves and the world of Dubya and his cronies next year. I’ll see what we can do about Tony.