From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 02 May 2003 - 18:15:39 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.
>
And when he turned into a narcocriminal, it was MORE morally
incumbent upon the US to rectify its error because of that fact, not less.
>
> The USA were hardly involved in East Timor - a little
> intelligence info to us Aussies was about all.
>
Also pressure on Indonesia.
>
> 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.
>
The US made the mistake of considering the Somali incursion as totally
and unchangeably humanitarian, rather than liberational. When Aidid's
forces decided to morph the mission into a conflict situation by attacking
food convoys and warehouses, the US did not have the firepower in
place to deal with the new threat, and Washingtn was loathe to provide
it. The should have; the Somali fighters were Al Quaeda trained.
>
> Although there was a
> Kosovo intervention, the Bosnian intervention was also
> highly questionable - just ask those that survived
> Srebrenica.
>
That was because the UN forces there (from european countries, natch)
refused to protect the Bosnian Muslims there from the Serb ethnic
cleansers.
>
> 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.
>
Zimbabwe, Libya and the Sudan are despotic, but the US has not dealt
with them. So are Myanmar and North Korea. I was not cataloguing
ALL the despotic regimes; only the ones with which the US has
attempted to deal.
>
> 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.
>
It had to do with spheres of influence and access to resources, and was
a cold war move. Now that the soviet bloc no longer exists, that
contention is seen as unnecessary, and the oil-for-food program was
making Iraqi oil available to the US consumer. As I said before, the
multinational oil companies opposed regime change, preferring a
continuation of that business-as-usual. Saddam was supported against
Iran mainly as a way to weaken them both through war, but also to
extract some measure of revenge against the Khomeini regime for their
seizure and imprisonment of 52 US hostages for 444 days.
>
> > 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.
>
Halabja was pre-soviet-bloc dissolution. However, it was dishonorable
for us to call upon the Kurds and Shias to revolt during GW I and then
refuse to support them after the had seized 14 of the 18 Iraqi provinces.
Saddam turned the Republican Guards we had let run back to Iraq
upon them, slaughtering hundreds of thousands - probably why they
were slow to aid the US in GW II. The US was not going to let them
down again.
>
>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.
>
It wasn't about oil in THAT way (as I explained painstakingly above); it
was about preventing a future nuclear-armed Saddam from reinvading
the Arabian Peninsula, seizing the Saudi, Kuwaiti and everyone else's
wells there and proclaiming himself a Saladinic caliph, daring anyone to
kick him out again (under threat of nukes smuggled through borders
and detonated onsite by Saddam's agents or third-party terrorists - no
need for ballistic missiles), and perpetrating global blackmail via a
stranglehold on the world's energy supply. He then would've had to be
expelled by the world community, at an incalculably greater loss of
blood and treasure. Like Hitler when he first went into Austria, better
sooner than later at greater cost
>
> Just
> as the Brits and the US were conducting military
> exercises out of Diego Garcia for an invasion of
> Afghanistan *before* September 11th.
>
Nope; there is always training going on. This sounds like you've
absorbed one of those dark conspiracy theory memes.
>
> 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!
>
Karzai became Afghani president because the people there supported
him; all the ties and education in the world wouldn't have helped him if
that had not been true. If a pipeline does eventually go through there,
its gravy, not the meat (that was Al Quaeda); we'd have gone after them
anywhere after 9/11.
>
> > 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!
>
Actually, Al Quaeda want from Afghanistan, to the Sudan, then back to
Afghanistan. The US captured and killed thousands of Al Quaeda in
Afghanistan and several leaders there and in neighboring Pakistan.
They have now fled all over; some to Yemen, some to Syria, some to
Lebanon, some to Somalia, etc., etc. Do not confuse Al Quaeda with
Wahhabism. Wahhabist ideology is the source for many Al Quaeda
recruits (and many, like Bin Laden's top two lieutenants, the dead Atef
and the living Zawahiri, were from Egypt), but Bin Ladin himself has had
his Saudi citizenship revoked. The News Media has been to that
province; the parents of the subverted youth are having a hard time
dealing with what happened to their dead brainwashed sons. Many
were recruited while studying abroad, several in Germany.
>
> > 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.
>
Actually, the Sandanistas and Daniel Ortega were defeated at the polls
by the persecuted newspaper La Prensa's Violetta Chamorro once truly
free elections were held. It may indeed be true that the money that was
made off the secret sale of weapons to Iran was multiplied through
cocaine sales before being sent to the contras, thus partially funding
the guerilla war on the backs of inner-city youth. But once again, this
was pre-soviet-bloc dissolution. And do not forget that several highly
placed US officials, such as Oliver North and John Poindexter, went
down because of it.
>
> > 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? Rwanda? North Korea?
> Tibet? Malawi?
>
Yes, there are others, but the US cannot contend against China for
Tibet's liberation, nor engage a nuclear-armed North Korea (another
argument for toppling saddam before he became armed like kim Jong
Il). The US is watching as other countries - some neighboring, some
European - attempt to reach solutions in the countries you mention.
Considering how closely Chirac embraces Mugabe, however,
Zimbabwe may have to wait a while for any help from Europe. The
Rwanda-Burundi massacre was a shame and stain upon the entire
world, and intervention came to late for a million Tutsi and Hutu dead.
>
> 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.
>
And what about post-soviet-bloc dissolution? The same case cannot be
made there.
>
>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.
>
And how many have been saved? More than 12 million, I'll wager.
Including many Europeans twice and some three times.
>
> Hope this clarifies matters
>
And I hope that this further clarifies them.
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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