What's Up With This?

[adios]

Iraqi Stored Food Supplies

If so many children were dying due to the sanctions, how come this food didn't get to them? Methinks this is another one of Saddam's outrageous acts against his citizens.

[MMMMMM]

As I have said all along, the sanctions didn't kill those children: Saddam did. He deliberately withheld food from them (apparently in vast warehouses), he diverted from the oil-for-food plan, he smuggled oil, and he pumped every dinar he could find into his military, his WMD programs, his palaces and statues of himself, his secret police and torture jails, and his own pockets. The children were expendable pawns in Saddam's PR campaign to get the sanctions lifted. The more kids he could starve, the better his chances of getting the sanctions lifted.

I think a lot of people don't yet realize the true monstrosity of Saddam Hussein. As more discoveries are made, the true scope of his crimes against humanity will be revealed, and the world will be tremendously appalled.

Wake up liberals: the enemy today is totalitarian regimes (and Islamic militant terrorists), not the USA.

A secondary enemy is beginning to appear in the politics of the U.N., and is especially noticeable in France's Gaullist duplicities. This enemy seeks to mitigate what is right and just, and what is for freedom and human rights, by according despots and totalitarian regimes a large say in setting forth policies and guidelines for the world. It does this under the cloak of U.N. legitimacy. The danger is that the world will blindly accept its authority in ever-increasing measures. But I say this: only freely elected governments have moral legitimacy, and only the votes of freely elected governments merit legitimacy in international organizations such as the U.N. Else we are simply empowering despots and dictators in what appears to be a legitimate political process, but which at base is not.

[Michael Davis]

"This enemy seeks mitigate what is right and just, and what is for freedom and human rights, by according despots and totalitarian regimes a large say in setting forth policies and guidelines for the world."

This sounds like US foreign policy as well. Why aren't we overthrowing the oppressive Saudi regime, clearly as far from a democracy as you can get? The reason is because, while the benefits of Saddam's elimination may be great, they do not outweigh the negative effects of an outrageously belligerent foreign policy. Why do we see our opinion, our view of the world as some sort of moral touchstone? From whence does this opinion foment? (I'm seriously asking this, not trying to sound pompous, though I've done both. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img])

[MMMMMM]

All things in due course. Hopefully developments will, over time, bestir some countries to effect regime change, or at least to effect sea changes in how they run their countries.

There is a key phrase in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but it isn't applicable only to the USA.

"...to these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (italics mine, and if I misquoted slightly, apologies: it is from memory).

If you think about this, you will see that it is a true and just statement, for all peoples, regardless of nation or race. It is true for all humanity: that governments are only just when they derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

Is this so very hard to see, and to agree with?

It isn't "our" view of the world versus "their" view of the world: it's fairness and representation versus varying degrees of enslavement and brutality.

[Ray Zee]

m, you are so right about this. its amazing more people dont rally behind this type of cry.

you do know of course this is a liberal view and you may have crossed the line into the realm of a free thinking individual, with caring and a heart.

[MMMMMM]

Thanks, Ray.

I grew up very liberal, in a liberal city in Massachusetts. Maybe that's why it so confounds me to see today's liberals taking a position which effectively supports everything they claim to be against, exemplified in the regime of Saddam Hussein.

[Cyrus]

You realize, of course, that the provisions in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and its Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, do not have universal applications ...according to United States policy!

Citizens of a number of countries can testify to that. Elections have been manipulated or even nullified, coups d'etat have been instigated, invasions condoned, supported or started -- all in order to disabuse citizens of other countries that they can shape their own destiny, as free men.

And before you say "Communists!", "the Cold War!", "Extreme circumstances!", or "Self defense!", you should know that the world's current sole superpower has been abusing that power practically ever since it was born. Long before Lenin learned to write! Spain, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines, and a host of other nations had being forcibly "liberated" (read : invaded) by American troops. Chile, Iran, Greece and other nations have their own stories of U.S.-sponsored dictatorships and regimes as evil as Saddam's.

You should realize that the world is extremely cautious of American intentions with reason.

The Declaration of Independence