"They take you in there and you never come out."

by expatbrit 29 Replies latest social current

• 

  hillary_step

  SevenOfNine,

  Thank you for these links, strangely enough I was going to mention Amnesty in my posts above but it slipped my befuddled mind.

  I have been a long-term member of Amnesty International, even during all my JW years. I would thoroughly recommend their organization to any readers not just as a means of information but as a model of how education and public opinion can be used to achieve much bloodless change. They have struggled succesfully for many to remain non-political and have no agendas but justice and honr.

  Best regards - HS
• 

  hillary_step

  Dubla,

  As usual, more to agree with in your post than to disagree with. Much of what we discuss will be proved by time alone. I hope that both yourself and EXpat are correct in looking at a rosier future in the Middle East. With US plans to make Iraq the first democratized country in the Middle east, I have my concerns. Planting the hat of democracy on the head of the Arab with a traditional repugnance of Western life and its excesses is going to be like watching a tornado blow dry a persons hair.

  Thanks - HS
• 

  dubla

  h.s.-
  

  thanks, and i echo rems sentiment regarding your views on the topic. thank goodness there are some left on the board that can rationally discuss an emotional topic like war, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others....if only all of your counterparts on the "antiwar" side could recognize valid points while still backing their own stance.....sadly most cant (true of posters on both sides).

  you have very justified concerns re: post-war iraq, and i share them with you. youll notice i used the word "hope" when i spoke of the post-conflict middle east...and thats all it is....again, maybe too much wishful thinking on my part. this could end up getting a whole lot worse before it ever gets better, and i too fear it will.

  aa
• 

  expatbrit

  Hillary:

  I do hope for a rosier future for the Middle East as a result of the removal of Saddam Hussein. A rosier future doesn't necessarily have to include a full-blown democracy. Virtually anything is better than the status quo, though. But with Hussein gone, al-Qaida smashed, and the Palestinians looking to remove power from Arafat, the whole scenery of the region will change. As the Arab world becomes more moderate, so will the pressure increase upon the extremists in Israel to moderate their own excesses, and if they will not then more public pressure will come upon the US government to either force moderation upon them or reduce support for them. That at least, is my hope for the future.

  You're right that the question "why haven't you protested other wars?" has a reflection in "why haven't you supported ousting other dictators?". But the latter has been asked so often, and the former so rarely, that I felt it to be a valid question to bring up. I do think that much of the anti-war sentiment is fomented by other agendas than concern for "peace" and the average Iraqi. I'm not so naive as to believe that this war is being fought entirely to free the Iraqi people from Hussein, but I think it is a part of the reason. And as Englishman said, if the war is also being fought for oil, so what? I've yet to hear a reason why having resources essential to the World community in the control of a stable democracy is worse than having them controlled by a psychopathic dictatorship.

  The bottom line for me has always been: will a war mean a better future for the average Iraqi, the Middle East, and the World community, than a "peace" which leaves Saddam Hussein in power? In reviewing articles like the ones I cut and pasted, for me the answer must be Yes.

  Expatbrit
• 

  expatbrit

  Wasa:

  You asked:

  where is/was your concern for these people? Are their lives less valuable than the suffering Iraqis?

  What, precisely, is the responsibility of the USA in ridding the planet of oppressive leaders?

  To attempt an answer to your questions:

  No the lives of these other people are not less valuable than the Iraqis. If I had my druthers, the West would be doing far more to help people in all those places, economically and militarily. As an average person I do what I can (and that isn't much) in terms of donating to charities and also working quite extensively with a number of them in my professional field. My vote will also be heavily influenced by the foreign policies of the parties in the upcoming elections (when I get my citizenship, that is...lol).

  The responsibility of the USA to the world community is essential the same as the responsibility we have as individuals to our smaller communities, as I see it. If I'm walking down the street and I see a person being beaten up/mugged/raped, I have a responsibility to intervene and stop it happening, by force when necessary. That is my responsibility in a society based upon promotion of the common self-interest (which they all are). I enjoy the benefits of such a society, and I therefore incur that responsibility.

  The US is a member of the world community. It certainly benefits from that community in trade, culture etc. It therefore has a responsibility to promote the common self interest of the world community, by stopping the governmental equivalents of muggers/rapists etc. This is a responsibility that all have, not just the US. The UN was supposed to do this, but it's failed miserably. I for one am glad that the world's current strongest nation has, and continues to, live up to its responsibilities. The world is overall a much better place because of it.

  Expatbrit
• 

  Yizuman

  Elsewhere wrote: "And after we get Iraq's oil, we're going to go after North Korea's oil too!"

  Typical response coming from liberals who ducks behind curtains when exposed to the truth about the wrongdoings from Saddam and his goons.

  When I read Epatbrit's post showing the torture of the Iraqi people and I then see responses from folks just like Elsewhere who totally ignore the post and change the subject by stating the war is really for oil.

  I also posted about what Saddam has done to the Kurdish Villagers and how Saddam has gassed over 5000 Kurdish people, men, women and children and sometime back, someone posted the pictures of the Kurdish victims perpetrated by Saddam's chemical and biological agents that was launched against them. My post also was ignore and none of the liberals (or should I say, Saddam Lovers) bothered to reply to it.

  It's sad, it really is...

  Yizuman
• 

  hillary_step

  Expat,

  Thanks for your note. As I am sure that you recognize by now I can see both sides of this issue, but still tend toward a policy that is more in keeping with trying to maintin a compromised stability in the Middle East without resorting to a brute force which as Hosni Mubarak says may well result in a hundred Bin Ladens. I believe agressive, intelligent and sustained diplomacy was never really attempted in the region since World War II. Alas it is too late to discuss such subjects, but perhaps we can learn from the past.

  I'm not so naive as to believe that this war is being fought entirely to free the Iraqi people from Hussein, but I think it is a part of the reason. And as Englishman said, if the war is also being fought for oil, so what? I've yet to hear a reason why having resources essential to the World community in the control of a stable democracy is worse than having them controlled by a psychopathic dictatorship.

  The oil is a tangable product and it does not belong to the world. It belongs to the countries that harvest it, that is why we have to pay for it and cannot expect it to be given to the West on humanitarian grounds. This may not suit us but it is a fact of life which the oil companies should have treated with a little more understanding in its earlier days when it chose to alienate the Arab 'wogs' by its arrogant and imperialistic, asset stripping mentality. We reap what we sow and eventually the Ferryman has to be paid. The history of the oil industry does not paint a very pretty picture and it is one very much contemporary to the Arab mind, we are just having to learn to live with yesterday. I fear the Middle East will be teaching us many lessons in fifty years.

  Air is not a tangible product. In fact eighty percent of the worlds air, another resource essential to the world community belongs to Brazil. Brazil is diminishing the worlds air supply daily by harvesting its forests that produce this air. Diplomacy over two decades has in great part failed to bring Brazil to book for its environmental terrorism and the murder of the Amazonian Indians who seek to protect their way of life. Now, I would certainly be behind an invasion of Brazil to protect our essential resources....but I digress....lol

  Best regards ExPatMan - HS
• 

  Valis

  I also don't see the logic behind the argument "why pick on Iraq when other countries do it too?" type of reasoning.

  eh that's dubbie speak when you go after them for their own abuses...just like children.."yeahbut..yeahbut see they do it too!...Why pick on us?"..

  war sucks all round and yes people will die until they decide to help themselves and get rid of the monster that is Saddam hussien, but for what its worth all you pundits out there who know the outcome, whether it be for oil, or if you want, American Imperialism, why not tell us how it will turn out so we can end this discussion? Yes, everyone in the US will benefit from more cheap oil...when and if the Iraqi oil starts to flow again I certainly hope you can tell the difference when you go to the gas pumps and take public transportation to avoid conscience issues..Do we also need to talk about the smuggled oil that came out of Iraq the last 12 years that made it to the US? Anybody drive in the past 12 years? All those presidential palaces thank you very much. No one seems to mention that for all the rest a dictator will stop torturing people in one part of the world. That is good enough for me.

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
• 

  hillary_step

  Dubla,

  thanks, and i echo rems sentiment regarding your views on the topic. thank goodness there are some left on the board that can rationally discuss an emotional topic like war, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others....if only all of your counterparts on the "antiwar" side could recognize valid points while still backing their own stance.....sadly most cant (true of posters on both sides).

  It is very strange that you mention this as I have reached a strange conclusion regarding many of the more crystallized views on both sides of this argument. It seems to me that much transference is going on here with the personal baggage that people carry around with them. I occasionally sit on Boards that deal with charitable concerns and am continually astonished by how many people do not seem to appreciate that there is a human tendency to hang on the clothes peg of the issue of the day, all manner of our own personal demons.

  It is very clearly seen with many who attack anything WTS shaped whether it be good or bad on the basis not of rationality but out of frustration, bitterness and especially self-loathing. Divorce ones personality from the issue and the air begins to clear.

  This happened to me as a young man. All my Grandparents were executed by the Nazis on the same summers day for supposedly shielding Partisans, I never knew them. As I young man I loathed everything remotely German including their literature, music and beer...lol My downfall came when I fell in love with a German women, a true beauty both within and without. It was several months before I would even countenance meeting her parents due to my ridgid viewpoints. My own parents, obviously closer to the events of WWII than I, attacked me with no mercy for drawing close to the enemy. It was at that moment that I uncomfortably realized that I did not really hate Germany or Germans, I hated myself for hating the havoc that two young soldiers wreaked on my life. Not rational, as if my grandparents had lived, these feelings would not have existed. As for the girl, well she is now a Jazz singer and has benefited greatly for not being attached to the likes of me….lol

  A very telling thread which I would like to see posted but which I lack the energy to control, would be to ask for honest comments as to what we really think about Arabs and their way of life. It may expose some of the personal agendas that both yourself and Expat, whose posts incidentally always strike me as very rationale, alluded to.

  Kindest regards - HS
• 

  dubla

  h s-

  again you make me stop and look at issues in a different light. thank you for sharing your story......looking at opinions through that analogy does bring to mind some alternate possibilities, on all issues...the war included of course. certainly the honest views of the arab world could influence agendas, no doubt.....so whos starting the thread? other possibilities of underlying motive/agenda immediately popped to mind after reading your post.......some may have been personally wronged/affected by...9/11, authority figures in general, past wars, the u.s. government, etc.......interesting.

  aa