From: John Croft (jdcroft@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri 02 May 2003 - 17:14:27 GMT
Jodees wrote
> > Hokay. I would just like to point out that the US
> > had to play dirty pool with friendly dictators in
> > order to effectively contend with the Soviet bloc
> > in the world arena, where they were doing the same
> > thing in spades. Once their totalitarian hegemony
> > crumbled, that unfortunate necessity was removed,
> > and our post-Soviet interventions have been mainly
> > about toppling despots and providing needed
> > humanitarian aid. Virtuous interventions (or
> > attempts at them in the third case, or urging and
> > support for them in the last one) since then:
> > Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti,
> > Panama, East Timor.
It is amazing who is on this list and who is off.
Panama was hardly a virtuous intervention since
Noriega was established by the USA in the first place.
The USA were hardly involved in East Timor - a little
intelligence info to us Aussies was about all. It is
also questionable whether places like Somalia were
better off after US intervention than they were
before. In fact in this case the "cure" seems to have
been worse than the disease. Although there was a
Kosovo intervention, the Bosnian intervention was also
highly questionable - just ask those that survived
Srebrenica. I don't know about humanitarian aid (or
despotic regimes) many of these are in Africa and
there isn't a single case on this list.
jodees continued
> It was only abut oil with the Russians, Germans and
> French, who had the multibillion dollar contracts
> with a now-defunct regime. The US was getting that
> oil anyway, through the UN oil-for-food program.
The USA has been angling at Iraqi oil ever since Bani
Sadr nationalised all oil companies operating inside
Iraq. Mossageq'a democratically elected Iranian
government was toppled for doing this and the Shah
installed in his place (later producing the Iranian
Revolution in that country). Saddam Husein was
supported by the Carter doctrine of the USA in his
ouster of Bani Sadr in order to 1. scrap the Iraqi
Community Party and their friendship treaty with the
USSR and 2. reprivatise Iraqi oil. He delivered on
the first but renegged on the second.
> The oil companies were opposed to the war,
> preferring the security of business-as-usual and
> caring not one whit about the people being
> oppressed or the terrorists being paid.
There was no connection between the Iraqi government
and Al Qaeda. Regarding the not caring about the
people oppressed, the USA did not care about the
oppression of Kurdis with poison gas imported from the
USA and Western Europe, when Donald Rumsfeld was busy
shaking Saddam's hand during the Iran Iraq war. Nor
did they seem to worry when Saddam put down the Shia
revolt after the first gulf war. Nor were they
worried about the fact that Perle and Wolfowitz et al
were busy planning an attack on Iraq *before* even
Bush became president, in order to secure oil. Just
as the Brits and the US were conducting military
exercises out of Diego Garcia for an invasion of
Afghanistan *before* September 11th.
So when you write
> Clearly, the US went to Afghanistan because that's
> where Al Quaeda was based, not because of some
> proposed pipeline.
It is interesting that as le Monde reported
"...Hamid Karzai, who is as comfortable discussing
sitting on a carpet as in a Washinton or London
"salon", has a profound knowledge
of the western world. After Kabul and India, where he
has studied law, he completed his studies in law in
the USA, where he acted, for a while, as a consultant
employed by the American oil company Unocal, at the
time it was considering building a pipeline in
Afghanistan..."
It is also interesting that the first agreement signed
by Hamid Karzai was a pipeline deal with Pakistan, the
USA, Unocal, and the ex Soviet states of Central
Asia. Interesting that!
> If Al Quaeda had been based in East Bumflick, after
> 9/11 the US military would've ended up there.
Al Qaeda was and still is largely located in the Saudi
Arabian province of Asir (just north of Yemen) where
most of the September hyjackers came from. No US
military have been sent there, despite US bases in
Saudi Arabia!
> Panama was just a case of an autocratic ruler
> deciding to make his fiefdom into Cocaine
> Transshipment Central.
It was interesting that this Cocaine pipeline was
originally set up as a means of providing funding for
the terrorist Contras, who were using this money to
arm themselves against the legally and democratically
elected Sandanista government of Nicaragua.
> The majority of the US post-Soviet assistance and
> despot-toppling has happened in Muslim countries
> simply because most of the countries ruled by
> despots or in need of humanitarian aid are indeed
> Muslim.
Oh yes, Liberia? Zimbabwe? Ruwanda? North Korea?
Tibet? Malawi?
It just doesn't add up. In fact in most cases of the
69 cases USA post WWI intervention, it has usually
been against the interests of the poorest sections of
the community in favour of the interests of the
richest. Johan Galtung, winner of the Alternative
Nobel Prize and founder of the Norwegian peace
research organisartion "Transcend: Peace and
Development Institute" reports some 12 million people
have been killed as a direct or indirect result of
this US intervention.
Hope this clarifies matters
Regards
John
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