From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Enforcing U.N. sanctions
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 07:39:20 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
  <1jes0iINNpbm@transfer.stratus.com> <73828@cup.portal.com>
  <1993Jan21.000746.5315@Princeton.EDU>

niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
>In <73828@cup.portal.com> L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno) writes:
>>jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann) writes:
>>>In article <1jeom3INNko7@tamsun.tamu.edu> enbal@aeroj.tamu.edu (James L. Heilman) writes:
>
>>>> Why do we (the U.S.) enforce U.N. sanctions against Iraq (an islamic  
>>>> country) while ignoring sanctions and resolutions against Serbia and  
>>>> Israel which are designed to aid people that are predominantly moslem?
>
>>>The implication that we don't help Moslems is wrong:
>
>>>1.  We drove Iraq out of Kuwait, which is a mostly (or entirely)
>>>    Moslem country.
>
>>	And *that's* a good example of how we help out Muslim nations?
>>Even Admiral Crowe stated that the U.S. amassed its soldiers in the
>>Persian Gulf to protect our chief national interest there - which is
>>oil, of course.
>
>So?  

	Oh?  You support Blood for Oil?  I thought only Bush believed his
own rhetoric about the brutalization of a "democracy" called Kuwait.

>It still helped Moslems.  The fact that there was another reason
>doesn't mean that it didn't help Moslems.

	Now isn't that special :-)

	The entire Persian Gulf War was a campaign to secure our interests
in a region that best served our needs.  The official reasons given were
total horseshit.  Are you somehow using "trickle-down" to justify the
amount of human and environmental devastation that was inflicted by the
anti-Iraq coalition?  The only Muslims that were helped were the rich
sheiks who fled as soon as their country (Kuwait) was invaded.  After the
war, the U.S. inspired the Kurds to the north and the Shiites to the south
to directly challenge the authorithy of Hussein and openly rebel.  The
rebellions were utterly crushed, and the U.S., the principal instigator,
stood by as thousands of people were arrested, tortured and executed.  Only
*after* the media showed scenes of fleeing Kurds dying by hundreds of
starvation and exposure on remote mountain tops did the anti-Iraq coalition
finally order Hussein to cease the persecutions and the first no-flights
umbrella was erected.  Please cite further examples of how Muslims were
'helped.'

>>>2.  We have been trying to enforce a no-fly zone, to prevent
>>>>    Iraq from killing yet other Moslem groups.
>
>>	In case people have forgotten, there's also a 'no-fly' zone over
>>Bosnia-Herzegovina as well.  But it's not being enforced at all, despite
>>the multiple violations from Serbian aircraft.  As for the Shiite Muslims
>
>True, but no one thinks this is anything except symbolic.  The Serbians
>have no fixed-wing aircraft, just some helicopters, and it isn't going
>>to help break the siege or end ethnic cleansing to shoot down these copters.

	Of course they can use fixed-wing aircraft.  Who do you think has
given the Bosnian Serbs all of their weaponry at the outset? The Belgrade
government, led by Milosevic, that's who.  As far as enforcing a no-flights
zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, you're missing the point on the significance
of such an action.  But rather than have me lecture (and I apologize if I
seem to) on this, I'll supply an example:

	If Iraq violates the U.S.-imposed no-flights zone in sourthern 
Iraq - which would result in having one or more of its warplanes shot down
- and then as retaliation, the Iraqi Republican Guard attempts to cross
over into Kuwait to punish whoever is closest, what do you think would be
the reaction of the anti-Iraq coalition?  Why, they'd blast them back all
the way back to Baghdad, that's what.  Therefore, the enforcement of the
no-flights zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina would necessarily require a steep
escalation of foreign troops in the area, and just like Mogadishu, U.S.
Marines (or whoever the task falls to) would have to disarm the Serbian
troops that are laying siege to Sarajevo.  A no-flights zone isn't just 
about shooting down aircraft.

>The other reason is that the troops on the ground are worried about
>being attacked if we intervene.  Like what got all those Marines killed
>in Beiruit -- we intervened on one side, got to seem partisan, and even
>though those Marines were peacekeepers, they still got killed.

	What?  If you want use Beirut as an example, we should start a
different thread altogether! :-)  That was a *loaded* situation, if you
recall.  Anyway, if I did support the action in Beirut (which I didn't and
never will), then I have to say that the U.S. committed an enormous blunder
which resulted in the loss of 340+ young men. This blunder would *not* be
repeated again in Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf and Somalia.  The
blunder was sending in a battalion and concentrating them in an accessible
area.  The solution ever thereafter was to use 'overwhelming force,' a
strategy favored by both Admiral Crowe and General Powell.  You better
believe that if any country were to commit troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina to
supplement the enforcement of the no-flights zone, they would come in
massive numbers and loaded for bear (so far, that's been the U.S. among all
the allies).

	Now here's where everything suddenly becomes crystal clear. Anyone
wondering why Bosnia-Herzegovina can be permitted to be the hell hole that
it is, as all of Europe as well as the U.S.A. refuse to intervene
militarily, shouldn't wonder too much.  We only send 'overwhelming force'
into areas that are of direct national interest to us (i.e. Oil).

>>being protected by the Southern Iraq 'no-fly' zone, what do we really know
>>about them?  The media speaks very little of them (the *entire* basis of
>>the 'no-fly' zone there to begin with!), and as far as I can tell, the main
>>body that has worried the Iraqi regime are a terrorist group that is wholly
>>backed by Iran - right across the border.  I thought U.S. policy was not to
>>aid or protect known terrorist groups.  If the U.S. was so worried about
>>the fate of minority within a country, then what's the justification for
>>ignoring the plight of the Kurds before the Persian Gulf war?  Are we
>>*really* (as a country) that concerned with the suffering of Muslim
>>minorities?
>
>Not especially, as a country.  But we are protecting them here.

	Like I said, Kurds and Shiites are the U.S.'s last concern.
Punishing Hussein is the first priority.  Crippling his sovereignty is 
one tactic among many.

[Stuff about U.S. Marines fired upon in Somalia ommitted]

>>>As for our support for Israel, well, this is much more complex.
>>>But it mostly comes down to what should we do to a country
>>>that is our friend and acts very well most of the time.  Yes,
>>>Israel has done a few things I've disliked.  But most of the
>>>time they have acted in a reasonable and civilized manner, and
>>>thus we remain on friendly terms with them.
>
>>	Reasonable and civilized as long as you are not an Arab.
>
>Well, I don't think that the US normally recognizes those standards.
>Not when the people opposing Israel go around hijacking Italian cruise
>liners or American planes.

	What are you trying to say with that?  That sounds like vague
anti-Arab rhetoric.  It would be surprising to me, as I have read some
of your other posts in talk.politics.mideast in which you agree that
Israel is no angel, by far.  And it's interesting that you use the U.S. as
the measuring stick of "reasonable and civilized" in light of its own
blood-drenched history, which includes direct and indirect oppression
of native and non-native people. 

>>Interesting to note that the U.N. has ordered Israel to re-patriate the
>>exiled Palestinians (whom were ejected without due process or even a
>>hearing).  I don't see any no-fly zones being imposed over Israel.  Yet
>>*one* infraction against the U.N. committed by Hussein is cause enough to
>>drop million-dollar bombs on them and slam not-too accurate cruise missiles
>>up against Baghdad.
>
>*One* infraction?  Annexing Kuwait is kind of a big one.

	Yes, *one* infraction.  The reason given for launching 40 Tomahawk
Cruise missiles (at $1 million a piece) at an industrial complex near a
well-populated Baghdad suburb was because Iraq would not guarantee the
safety of the U.N. inspectors (who were still in Bahrain).  If Iraq does
not violate any of the U.N. resolutions that were imposed after the war, it
cannot be subject to repeated warplane and missile attack, as much as some
people (like Bush) would prefer.

	The attempted annexation of Kuwait occurred in August of 1990, not
January of 1993, in case you missed it :-)

>Everything since then has been personal between Bush and Saddam.

	At last, we are in total agreement with that point! :-)

>-- 
>David M. Nieporent   | "We don't need anymore [sic] wretched refuse.  It's 
>niepornt@phoenix.    |  time to send the Statue of Liberty somewhere else"
>   princeton.edu     |      -- Jack "Not a bigot" Schmidling, 1/7/93
>Baltimore Orioles 93 |

--Louis
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