Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: L'Iraq e' una dittatura? Si,ma...

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301iraq.html
As the administration's rationales for invading Iraq--such as
Baghdad's alleged ties to al Qaeda and claims of an imminent nuclear
threat--have crumbled under closer scrutiny, the administration and
its allies in Congress and the media are increasingly emphasizing a
point that cannot be disputed: the repressive nature of the Iraqi
regime.
While the threat from Iraq has been greatly exaggerated, the nature of
the Iraqi regime has not. President Ronald Reagan's claim that
Sandinista Nicaragua was a "totalitarian dungeon" was hyperbole in the
extreme, but it is not an inaccurate description of Baathist Iraq.
Comparisons put forward by proponents of a U.S. invasion of Iraq
between Saddam Hussein and Adolph Hitler are misleading for several
reasons: Germany was the most advanced industrialized country in the
world during Hitler's reign and was part of an axis of other major
military powers. Iraq, by contrast, is an internationally isolated
Third World country whose military and civilian infrastructure was
severely damaged in a devastating six-week U.S.-led bombing campaign
in 1991 and has been under the toughest international sanctions in
world history ever since. Unlike Nazi Germany, the ability of Iraq to
do much damage beyond its borders in the foreseeable future is
extremely limited.
At the same time, Iraq under Saddam Hussein is arguably the closest
approximation in the world today of a genuine fascist state. The level
of repression, militarization, cult of personality, forced mass
political mobilizations, and ethnic chauvinism are all hallmarks of a
fascist system.
The level of brutality of the Iraqi regime has declined markedly since
the 1980s, not due to any lessened ruthlessness of the regime, but
because the ability of the government to oppress
opponents--particularly those in Kurdish regions--has been
significantly reduced. In addition to impact of war damage, sanctions,
and inspections on lessening the machinery of repression, the
internationally backed autonomy for the Kurdish regions has also
limited Saddam's bloody reach. It is noteworthy, however, that at the
height of Iraq's repression during the 1980s, the United States not
only refused to call for Saddam Hussein's overthrow but provided the
regime with military and economic assistance that supported the
repression. Furthermore, when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to
massacre thousands of Kurdish civilians in Halabja and elsewhere
during this period, the U.S. government tried to cover it up by
falsely claiming that it was the Iranians--then the preferred
enemy--who were responsible. Therefore, Bush administration claims
that a U.S. invasion of Iraq is necessary because Saddam Hussein
"gassed his own people" cannot be taken seriously.
In addition, the United States has no credibility as a proponent of
democracy in the Middle East. For decades, both Democratic and
Republican administrations have supported authoritarian regimes
throughout the region. Yet despite the U.S. role as the primary backer
of the Mubarak government in Egypt, Israeli occupation forces in the
West Bank, Moroccan occupation forces in Western Sahara, the family
dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, the medieval sultanate of Oman, the
military regime of Pakistan, and the crypto-communist rulers of
Uzbekistan, the Bush administration self-righteously claims that it
has the right to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its
government because the Iraqi people, in President Bush's words, "have
the right to choose their own leadership," the very right the U.S.
government has helped deny to hundreds of millions of others in the
region.
Furthermore, the leading candidates the Bush administration has put
forward as possible replacements for Saddam Hussein in a
U.S.-installed Iraqi government are former generals of the dictator
who have been implicated in war crimes during the 1980s.
Saddam Hussein's government does not hold the record of modern
dictatorships in terms of massacres of civilians. That dubious honor
belongs to the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the late
1970s, which was responsible for up to two million deaths. When
Vietnam invaded Cambodia in early 1979 and overthrew that genocidal
regime, the United States denounced the Vietnamese as aggressors and
successfully led international efforts to impose sanctions on Vietnam.
For more than a decade, both Democratic and Republican administrations
insisted that the Khmer Rouge thugs, whose control had been reduced to
remote jungle hideouts near the Thai border, were the sole legitimate
rulers of Cambodia and blocked the recognition of the
Vietnamese-installed government. The reason, according to U.S.
officials, was that no matter how repressive a regime may be, it does
not give another country the right to invade that country, topple its
government, and install one of its own choosing. Clearly, the U.S.
government does not believe such rules apply when it is the one doing
the invading and regime changing.
Another government whose body count far surpasses that of Saddam's
Iraq was that of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, responsible for at
least a half million deaths of suspected leftists in the aftermath of
the general's seizure of power in a 1965 coup and of another 200,000
East Timorese following his invasion of that island nation in 1975.
Suharto's primary military and economic backer during his 34-year
reign of terror was the United States. At the height of the repression
in the mid-1960s, the New York Times referred to Indonesia as "the
bright spot in Asia" while, as late as the mid-1990s when the scale of
atrocities in Indonesian-occupied East Timor became widely known, a
top Clinton administration official referred to Suharto as "our kind
of guy."
In short, until the United States ceases its current military,
economic, and diplomatic support for repressive regimes and formally
apologizes for its support of such regimes in the past, it has no
right to unilaterally launch a devastating war in the name of
liberating a people from repressive rule.
So-called "humanitarian intervention"--where outside military force is
utilized to end particularly egregious cases of repression by ousting
repressive regime--may, under certain extreme circumstances, be
justifiable. Such interventions, however, will have little credibility
unless they are done through the United Nations or some other legally
sanctioned international mechanism. If it is instead led by a
government like the United States, with its record of supporting
repressive regimes around the world and growing dependence on imported
natural resources located within the country in question, it will be
seen--rightly or wrongly--not as an act of humanitarianism but an act
of imperialism.
Still, Saddam Hussein's regime--like all such repressive regimes--must
not remain in power. The growth of democratic rule that has swept
Eastern Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Africa over the
past two decades must come to include Iraq as well.
How has the downfall of scores of such autocratic regimes in the past
twenty years been accomplished? In no case was it done through foreign
invasion. In only a handful of cases was it done through internal
armed revolution. In the vast major of cases, dictatorships were
toppled through massive nonviolent action, "people power" movements
that faced down the tanks and guns and swept these regimes aside. Some
succeeded in a dramatic contestation of public space that toppled
dictators in a matter of days or weeks, such as those that brought
down the Communist regimes in East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
overthrew Southeast Asian strongmen like Marcos and Suharto, and
ousted military juntas from Bangladesh to Bolivia. Other pro-democracy
movements engaged in more protracted struggles that eventually forced
dramatic democratic reforms in such countries as Poland, South Korea,
South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, and Chile. In the fall of 2000,
nonviolent action by the people of Serbia did in a matter of days what
eleven weeks of NATO bombing a year and half earlier could not: oust
the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
Why hasn't this been successful in the case of Iraq? Most of these
successful nonviolent pro-democracy movements have been centered in
the urban middle class. In Iraq, however, thanks to the devastation to
the country's civilian infrastructure during the U.S. bombing campaign
twelve years ago and the resulting sanctions, the once-burgeoning
middle class has been reduced to penury or forced to emigrate. It has
been replaced by a new class of black marketeers who have a stake in
preserving the status quo. Furthermore, with sanctions forcing the
Iraqi people to become dependent on the regime for rations of badly
needed food, medicine, and other necessities, people are even less
likely to take the already extraordinary risks of challenging it.
Many Iraqis believe that if United States had pursued a more rational
policy over the past two decades, regime change would have taken place
years ago as a result of initiatives of the Iraqi people themselves.
The sanctions have not only had serious humanitarian
consequences--resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi children from malnutrition and preventable diseases--but have
actually strengthened Saddam Hussein's grip on power.
The key to regime change without the horrific consequences of war,
then, rests in the United States allowing the United Nations to lift
the economic sanctions that primarily impact ordinary Iraqis while
maintaining military sanctions and strict monitoring of dual-use
technologies that strengthen the hand of the regime.
The bottom line is this: While the repressive nature of the Iraqi
government is all too real, it must not be used to justify increasing
the suffering of the Iraqi people through war.

 East Timorese following his invasion of that island nation in 1975.
*ROTFL*
-Stefano

 -Stefano
Hai risposto al clone di Torrieri.
ciao
k.


NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.196.188.92
----
Mi mostreresti da dove vedi che e' un clone? :)
-Stefano

 *LOL*
Per esempio qui'...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-412617,00.html
....
But what the current debate fails to address is why we should be shocked
more than 14 years after the massacre at Halabja. At the time all three
British newspaper journalists present in Halabja - David Hirst of The
Guardian, Norman Kirkham of The Daily Telegraph, and me - made front page
news with our stories: there was also a harrowing television report by Terry
Lloyd of ITN. When we returned to Tehran, Western ambassadors invited us to
brief them on what we saw. Evidence was collected by experts in chemical
weapons and a documentary team which recovered soil samples from the site of
another attack.
The Government response, however, was far more ambiguous than it is today.
After initially expressing its horror at the use of chemical weapons and
summoning the Iraqi ambassador for a minor dressing down by a junior
official at the Foreign Office, the Conservative Government, under Margaret
Thatcher, did not let the matter cloud its relations with Baghdad.
Four British ministers actually travelled to Iraq after the attack on
Halabja to help to secure trade deals with Baghdad, supported by generous
loans guaranteed by the Government.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir Geoffrey Howe, then Foreign Secretary,
said in response to a question in November 1988: "We have certainly been
appalled by the suffering inflicted as a result of the large-scale
displacement of Kurds from their homes in Iraq. We have proclaimed the
evidence of CW use as compelling but not conclusive."
Despite the overwhelming evidence before him, he chose to look the other
way. London and Washington also launched an official whispering campaign to
try to discredit the reports about Halabja by suggesting that perhaps Iran,
at the time regarded as the West's main threat to security in the Gulf, may
also have had a hand in poisoning the Kurds. The propaganda worked, and
until Saddam invaded Kuwait and became the West's biggest enemy three years
later, Halabja was largely forgotten by the West.
Until a recent dinner party hosted in London by an Arab ambassador, I had
only circumstantial evidence that our reports of the massacre were being
deliberately undermined. American, British and Arab officials spent the
evening debating Iraq and the two US diplomats cited Halabja repeatedly as
evidence that Washington felt justified in acting against Saddam today.
I asked them why, when the crime had actually happened, neither the Reagan
Administration nor the British had wanted to know. The Americans sidestepped
the issue and pressed on with their argument.
After the dinner, however, two former senior British diplomats came up to me
and apologised.
"I am so sorry," said one. "We did try to cover for the Iraqis. I have
always regretted what we did then. It was a terrible mistake."

the Gulf, may also have had a hand in poisoning the Kurds.
Ora facciamo un confronto tra le due cose :))
- Sopra si parla di US Government.
  Sotto di entrambi i governi: US e UK.
- Sopra si parla di "the Iranians were responsible"
  Sotto si parla di "may also have had a hand in poisoning the Kurds".
Mi pare che gia' basti per mostrare che sono due versioni contrastanti e
che nessuna delle due porta prove relativamente alle loro versioni :))
*LOL*
-Stefano