From: bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: Foreign policy musings
Organization: The World
	<Bt6Dw1.9CF@world.std.com> <2796988236@dwetzel.mis.stratus.com>
	<BZS.92Aug18195036@ussr.std.com>
	<JTURNER.92Aug21202104@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu>
	<BZS.92Aug21234633@ussr.std.c
	<JTURNER.92Aug31224313@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 08:34:59 GMT


From: jturner@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu (Jeffrey Turner) [responding to me]
>> To my knowledge the US has not invaded Iraq. Do you know something
>> different? Or do you mean you consider Kuwait to be part of Iraq?
>
>	Well, if you don't count air space as belonging to a
>country.  But then I have felt that you are living in another
>century (or was that another planet?).

Strange feelings aside, your relationship to the english language is
tenuous at best. Next time you use a word like "invade" I will
remember that it probably means only what suits your current mood.

Somehow I suspect that had we invaded Iraq you would not have missed
that distinction.

>> Then why did the Allies limit themselves, within reason, to strategic
>> targets? How much was destroyed in Baghdad? (a lot) How many people
>> were killed in Baghdad? (not many) Why? Because much of the bombing
>> was confined to verifiably strategic targets, bridges, power stations,
>> communications hubs.
>
>	By whose count?  oh, and I suppose water purification plants
>and sewage treatment plants are military targets?

They sure are.

No one claimed that they were *exclusively* military targets. Ya know,
civilians drove on those bridges also, but I assume you can see why
they became military targets (even if you don't agree on some other
level)?

>> Obviously in many cases we even warned them to evacuate or bombed when
>> a facility was emptied (remember that footage of ``the luckiest man in
>> baghdad'' when they took another fly around to let a guy drive off the
>> bridge before hitting it? I know, you think it's hogwash, you don't
>> know why however other than you want to believe otherwise.)
>
>	Gee, a couple hundred thousand dead and they are so
>concerned about one civilian when they're on national TV.  Pure
>"sound bite" Amerikan conscience.  The US dropped more bombs than...
>go ahead, you pick a war.

You keep using this couple hundred thousand dead figure, yet you cite
no source for it.

Since not even Iraq claims this number it makes one wonder.

That we dropped a lot of tonnage really indicates little except that
perhaps you are impressed with the number.

How many died in those other wars? How many civilians? How many
soldiers?  How does that stack up to the gulf war?

In fact, it probably supports exactly the opposite conclusion from the
one you wish to draw.

>> Even much of that was calculated crap, the same Iraqi woman (who just
>> happens to speak English quite well) appears on videotapes at several
>> completely unrelated sites chastising the press and the US. That has
>> been independently reported here on the net by people who home-taped
>> CNN broadcasts.
>
>	Oh I see.  All the civilian damage was Iraqi hype.

No, I didn't say that.

But I can see how if I had you might have something to argue with.

>The US had no right nor moral justification for being there IF
>you do more than parrot the self-serving twaddle coming out of
>Washington.  So what does it matter how hyped it was THE US WAS
>WRONG TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Sez you.

But we've already determined that you hold Arabs in low esteem.

I don't.

>> Maybe Bush ain't no angel, I don't love the guy, but this Saddam
>> feller is one evil, brutal bastard with more blood on his hands than
>> you are apparently capable of imagining.
>
>	Did I defend him?  Did I leave him in power?  Why can't
>you see that two wrongs do not make a right nor that there are other
>ways to settle international differences than with military muscle?

You certainly seem to want to "comfort" him in the political sense of
the term.

It is too bad that Saddam Hussein did not listen to your advice viz
Kuwait first.

But I assume this goes back to your ``Arabs as incapable of making a
moral decision'' theory about the whole thing.

I suppose that if we accept your idea that only white europeans and
americans are capable of seeing right from wrong (and, hence, only
they may be held accountable for their actions) then you probably have
a point here.

I don't view the world that way, however.

>> Including 1 million deaths in
>> his war with Iran, gasssing of Kurdish civilians against all
>> international standards, the brutal and unrelenting slaughter of his
>> own people because they happen to be Shiite, random bombing of
>> uninvolved (militarily) civilian nations, the invasion and rape of
>> Kuwait, and the callous and reckless disregard for his own soldiers'
>> lives leaving them to literally rot in bunkers in Southern Iraq and
>> Kuwait for apparently no purpose other than to assuage his own ego.
>
>	To the US establishment, as exemplified by Bush, 1 million
>deaths is small potatoes.

I'm sorry, when exactly did Bush get us involved in a war with 1M
deaths?

Vietnam may have had that kind of casualty level for the North. WWII
certainly did, but we can hardly blame the USA for WWII. And WWI, and
the Civil War, tho the US was hardly involved in WWI to that degree.

So perhaps we have three wars in 215 years with 1M+ deaths which the
US was significantly involved in, two of them over 50 years ago.

So what is your point exactly?

>And none of those deaths
>bothered the US until a few thousand very wealthy and strategically
>allied Kuwaitis were killed or threatened.  Why do you believe,
>against all other available evidence, that the US was/is a moral
>actor on the world stage??

War is never moral.

At best one can hope to reach a conclusion that it was unavoidable,
but never moral.

Your point about ignoring the Iran/Iraq war is well taken. Of course,
in our defense, we can say that we didn't much like either side so had
no particular (moral or otherwise) interest in anything but the ways
in which it affected the US et al directly (e.g. the US patrolling the
Persian Gulf to keep the shipping lanes open.)

One gets the strange feeling tho that you have reached a damned if we
do, damned if we don't conclusion, no?

>> No thank you, it's unfortunate SH is still alive.
>
>	But doesn't THAT FACT discount all your blubbering about how
>horrible he is and how the US was right to try to get rid of him,
>even to the point of killing a hundred thousand Iraqis who weren't
>him before packing up and going home?

Well, at the very least we have a small accomplishment here, half of
these dead Iraqis have sprung to life since the beginning of this
message.

It doesn't discount the point, Hussein was being adventurist, that was
worth stopping. Sorry if it doesn't fit into your personal
psychosexual outlook which demands climactic release and resolution.

Obviously if the concern was that Hussein should not be successful in
his expansionist aims then, from the point of view of self-interest,
the analysis was quite accurate: Iran held him back without any help,
Kuwait could not.

If the US were to go in and take Saddam Hussein out I think I'd
suspend criticism. I'd prefer, as many do, that it came from within
Iraq so there were some political movement to fill the gap created.

I think that's the crux of the problem, unless you suggest we really
do invade and dissolve their government and replace it with an allied
command there really has to be something to fill the void from within
or else we really will have an expensive (in all senses of the word)
mess on our hands.

--
        -Barry Shein

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