Iraq
Richard Perle, in London, admits in so many words that the invasion of Iraq was illegal: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
Well, DUH!!!!
I doubt this will make any difference or that anyone will be held accountable.
Hell, I believe the American spinmasters will spin it thusly: they had their backs against the wall and it was the fault of Old Europe, especially the French that they "had to" break international law... in order to save the poor Iraqi people from a horrible dictator.
According to Perle, international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
I suppose since the Americans are now basing their foreign policy on the moral high ground, they should be in the last stages of planning the invasion to rescue the poor suffering people of Uzbekistan from an incredibly cruel and corrupt regime....
From George Monbiot's article: Tony Blair’s New Friend (footnote references removed by me)
There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.
His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learnt his politics from the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamic terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like dissidents in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.
But Uzbekistan, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was, is seen by the US government as a key western asset. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been competing. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.
More here.
Do you get a sort of deja vu feeling here?
I know I do...
Friday, November 21, 2003
Iraq
Richard Perle, in London, admits in so many words that the invasion of Iraq was illegal: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
Well, DUH!!!!
I doubt this will make any difference or that anyone will be held accountable.
Hell, I believe the American spinmasters will spin it thusly: they had their backs against the wall and it was the fault of Old Europe, especially the French that they "had to" break international law... in order to save the poor Iraqi people from a horrible dictator.
According to Perle, international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
I suppose since the Americans are now basing their foreign policy on the moral high ground, they should be in the last stages of planning the invasion to rescue the poor suffering people of Uzbekistan from an incredibly cruel and corrupt regime....
From George Monbiot's article: Tony Blair’s New Friend (footnote references removed by me)
There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.
His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learnt his politics from the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamic terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like dissidents in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.
But Uzbekistan, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was, is seen by the US government as a key western asset. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been competing. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.
More here.
Do you get a sort of deja vu feeling here?
I know I do...
Richard Perle, in London, admits in so many words that the invasion of Iraq was illegal: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
Well, DUH!!!!
I doubt this will make any difference or that anyone will be held accountable.
Hell, I believe the American spinmasters will spin it thusly: they had their backs against the wall and it was the fault of Old Europe, especially the French that they "had to" break international law... in order to save the poor Iraqi people from a horrible dictator.
According to Perle, international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
I suppose since the Americans are now basing their foreign policy on the moral high ground, they should be in the last stages of planning the invasion to rescue the poor suffering people of Uzbekistan from an incredibly cruel and corrupt regime....
From George Monbiot's article: Tony Blair’s New Friend (footnote references removed by me)
There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.
His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learnt his politics from the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamic terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like dissidents in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.
But Uzbekistan, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was, is seen by the US government as a key western asset. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been competing. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.
More here.
Do you get a sort of deja vu feeling here?
I know I do...
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Afghanistan
We had this unbelievable opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do serious good here: to help a free society evolve, to invest in the development of infrastructure, schools, a secure environment in which human rights could flourish... we could have helped the beleaguered Afghan people in the creation of a wonderful new world, a free world...
Instead we, the entire world, allowed our attention to be diverted from this important task by such an obviously transparent ploy that it would not have fooled a child, allowing the war in Iraq to happen by the very fact of giving the preceding US media campaign serious attention. Had we treated the hectoring with the contempt and hilarity it deserved, it would have died right then and there.
Once we accepted that war was inevitable, whatever the reasoning employed to get us to that point, Afghanistan became irrelevant. Although many aid organisations and the multilateral military force worked so hard to stem the tide, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen... a return to the old situation. This is happening now: the U.N. Refugee Agency is now withdrawing it's foreign staff from Southern and Eastern Afghanistan.
This is the beginning of the end, the rest is just window dressing. Perhaps there will be a bombing of caves at some point, some incursions to hunt down Taliban "terrorists" but truth be told, the battle is already over. It was already over the moment we started giving airtime to the drumbeat of war from America.
The world missed an awesome opportunity here to do good.
Instead, we have plunged this country into even deeper misery than it was in before.
In the end, the net gain was zero... or less, since Osama and his network still lives on and flourishes.
Shame on us all!
We had this unbelievable opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do serious good here: to help a free society evolve, to invest in the development of infrastructure, schools, a secure environment in which human rights could flourish... we could have helped the beleaguered Afghan people in the creation of a wonderful new world, a free world...
Instead we, the entire world, allowed our attention to be diverted from this important task by such an obviously transparent ploy that it would not have fooled a child, allowing the war in Iraq to happen by the very fact of giving the preceding US media campaign serious attention. Had we treated the hectoring with the contempt and hilarity it deserved, it would have died right then and there.
Once we accepted that war was inevitable, whatever the reasoning employed to get us to that point, Afghanistan became irrelevant. Although many aid organisations and the multilateral military force worked so hard to stem the tide, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen... a return to the old situation. This is happening now: the U.N. Refugee Agency is now withdrawing it's foreign staff from Southern and Eastern Afghanistan.
This is the beginning of the end, the rest is just window dressing. Perhaps there will be a bombing of caves at some point, some incursions to hunt down Taliban "terrorists" but truth be told, the battle is already over. It was already over the moment we started giving airtime to the drumbeat of war from America.
The world missed an awesome opportunity here to do good.
Instead, we have plunged this country into even deeper misery than it was in before.
In the end, the net gain was zero... or less, since Osama and his network still lives on and flourishes.
Shame on us all!
Afghanistan
We had this unbelievable opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do serious good here: to help a free society evolve, to invest in the development of infrastructure, schools, a secure environment in which human rights could flourish... we could have helped the beleaguered Afghan people in the creation of a wonderful new world, a free world...
Instead we, the entire world, allowed our attention to be diverted from this important task by such an obviously transparent ploy that it would not have fooled a child, allowing the war in Iraq to happen by the very fact of giving the preceding US media campaign serious attention. Had we treated the hectoring with the contempt and hilarity it deserved, it would have died right then and there.
Once we accepted that war was inevitable, whatever the reasoning employed to get us to that point, Afghanistan became irrelevant. Although many aid organisations and the multilateral military force worked so hard to stem the tide, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen... a return to the old situation. This is happening now: the U.N. Refugee Agency is now withdrawing it's foreign staff from Southern and Eastern Afghanistan.
This is the beginning of the end, the rest is just window dressing. Perhaps there will be a bombing of caves at some point, some incursions to hunt down Taliban "terrorists" but truth be told, the battle is already over. It was already over the moment we started giving airtime to the drumbeat of war from America.
The world missed an awesome opportunity here to do good.
Instead, we have plunged this country into even deeper misery than it was in before.
In the end, the net gain was zero... or less, since Osama and his network still lives on and flourishes.
Shame on us all!
We had this unbelievable opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do serious good here: to help a free society evolve, to invest in the development of infrastructure, schools, a secure environment in which human rights could flourish... we could have helped the beleaguered Afghan people in the creation of a wonderful new world, a free world...
Instead we, the entire world, allowed our attention to be diverted from this important task by such an obviously transparent ploy that it would not have fooled a child, allowing the war in Iraq to happen by the very fact of giving the preceding US media campaign serious attention. Had we treated the hectoring with the contempt and hilarity it deserved, it would have died right then and there.
Once we accepted that war was inevitable, whatever the reasoning employed to get us to that point, Afghanistan became irrelevant. Although many aid organisations and the multilateral military force worked so hard to stem the tide, it was pretty obvious what was going to happen... a return to the old situation. This is happening now: the U.N. Refugee Agency is now withdrawing it's foreign staff from Southern and Eastern Afghanistan.
This is the beginning of the end, the rest is just window dressing. Perhaps there will be a bombing of caves at some point, some incursions to hunt down Taliban "terrorists" but truth be told, the battle is already over. It was already over the moment we started giving airtime to the drumbeat of war from America.
The world missed an awesome opportunity here to do good.
Instead, we have plunged this country into even deeper misery than it was in before.
In the end, the net gain was zero... or less, since Osama and his network still lives on and flourishes.
Shame on us all!
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Iraq
The top US general in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez: "The most important message is that we are all going to get pretty tough, and that's what is needed to defeat the enemy, and we are definitely not shy of doing that when it is required."
Things are about to become supremely bad in Iraq... I feel so sorry for the people living there, this is the beginning of a downhill slide that cannot be stopped any more.
Too late for the UN, too late for legalising the Governing Council or for holding elections.
Too late for the Americans to make a clean exit.
Too late.
The shit is about to hit the fan.
The top US general in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez: "The most important message is that we are all going to get pretty tough, and that's what is needed to defeat the enemy, and we are definitely not shy of doing that when it is required."
Things are about to become supremely bad in Iraq... I feel so sorry for the people living there, this is the beginning of a downhill slide that cannot be stopped any more.
Too late for the UN, too late for legalising the Governing Council or for holding elections.
Too late for the Americans to make a clean exit.
Too late.
The shit is about to hit the fan.
Iraq
The top US general in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez: "The most important message is that we are all going to get pretty tough, and that's what is needed to defeat the enemy, and we are definitely not shy of doing that when it is required."
Things are about to become supremely bad in Iraq... I feel so sorry for the people living there, this is the beginning of a downhill slide that cannot be stopped any more.
Too late for the UN, too late for legalising the Governing Council or for holding elections.
Too late for the Americans to make a clean exit.
Too late.
The shit is about to hit the fan.
The top US general in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez: "The most important message is that we are all going to get pretty tough, and that's what is needed to defeat the enemy, and we are definitely not shy of doing that when it is required."
Things are about to become supremely bad in Iraq... I feel so sorry for the people living there, this is the beginning of a downhill slide that cannot be stopped any more.
Too late for the UN, too late for legalising the Governing Council or for holding elections.
Too late for the Americans to make a clean exit.
Too late.
The shit is about to hit the fan.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Iraq
After the third US chopper was downed by resistance forces / terrorists / Baath remnants (take your pick) the Americans are now bombing the area it happened in.
Now, that's logic... guerilla fighters are by their very nature mobile, they are long gone from there by now. What's left there are the locals... who are probably not growing any fonder of the Americans by being bombed. In fact, they are probably becoming more polarised with each American sortie. But hey, showing them you are tough is the American way... it's what got them in all this trouble in the first place.
Meanwhile, Turkey is testing the water:
"The US has promised to remove the terrorists," said the Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul. "We are still waiting for America to fulfil its promise. We believe that it will.
"But Turkey has the right to take pre-emptive action to defend its own security interests, just as Israel and the US do. The US Government must take this issue seriously."
I suspect that oil-rich region is looking mighty attractive to Turkey right now, all they need is an "incident" that would allow them to move in there and annex the area, "pre-emptively" of course, all in the interest of their national security. The Turks are not slow learners...
My guess is they will wait until the US presidential race is so heated not one of the candidates will actually dare to act in fear of losing votes. It is simply too tempting, all that oil and the "Kurdish problem" solved for once and all...
After the third US chopper was downed by resistance forces / terrorists / Baath remnants (take your pick) the Americans are now bombing the area it happened in.
Now, that's logic... guerilla fighters are by their very nature mobile, they are long gone from there by now. What's left there are the locals... who are probably not growing any fonder of the Americans by being bombed. In fact, they are probably becoming more polarised with each American sortie. But hey, showing them you are tough is the American way... it's what got them in all this trouble in the first place.
Meanwhile, Turkey is testing the water:
"The US has promised to remove the terrorists," said the Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul. "We are still waiting for America to fulfil its promise. We believe that it will.
"But Turkey has the right to take pre-emptive action to defend its own security interests, just as Israel and the US do. The US Government must take this issue seriously."
I suspect that oil-rich region is looking mighty attractive to Turkey right now, all they need is an "incident" that would allow them to move in there and annex the area, "pre-emptively" of course, all in the interest of their national security. The Turks are not slow learners...
My guess is they will wait until the US presidential race is so heated not one of the candidates will actually dare to act in fear of losing votes. It is simply too tempting, all that oil and the "Kurdish problem" solved for once and all...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
