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Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
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Originally posted by Skunk:
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You do not judge the Iraqi government as wrong? The Taliban as evil? or any form of religous and/or culture that allow's abuse/torture/murder of any of their people wrong?
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No less evil than countries which do these same things to the citizen's of other countries. *No-one* can claim a moral righteousness in this war.[/QUOTE]Which means the solution is to -- DO NOTHING ????? [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]That's quite a jump to make - there was never any suggestion that we do nothing. Indeed, I would suggest that we clean up our own house first. What do I mean?
The United States certainly does have laws preventing human rights abuses from happening on
domestic soil (although the Patriot Act has eroded some of these rights, as Joe Padilla discovered to his cost). In GM bay we have held some 600 people without trial and without access to judicial process for 18 months. They are held because they are 'terrorists'; dictatorships usually just call them 'enemies of the state' - but the results are the same
But that is not the worst of it.For more than 50 years the United States (often with a little covert help from the UK) has supported foreign regimes and paramilitary organisations that do commit such crimes against humanity as a matter of normal policy. And that support has come back to haunt us.
For example, the US and UK installed the Shah of Iran - and helped keep him there. During his reign of terror, thousands were arrested, put to death and the population brutalised until a popular revolution ousted him. The new government to arise was religious but with a strong reformist element. Because the US was worried about this new powerful anti-US state, it armed and supported the local tyrant next door (Saddam Hussein) with conventional and
unconventional weapons and then convinced him to wage war with Iran.
During the war, Saddam used the opportunity of 'national neccessity' and excuses to 'treason' to wipe out the last vestiges of opposition to his rule. In Iran, the Ayatollah did the same, putting the reform movement back by 10 years.
It was only three years after the war (which claimed more than a milliion lives), when Saddam invaded Kuwait, did the US/UK finally end their support.
Today, the US supports Israel to the hilt. So they detain thousands without trial, engage in torture, steal tland, murder and starve people, develop nuclear weapons and flaunt more than 60 SC Resolutions? Doesn't matter - Israel is important to our strategic Middle Eastern interests - so we'll toss them a few billion every year and arm them to the teeth.
What? Egypt, the police state that uses torture as a method of 'dissident control' is complaining? Give them a couple of billion a year, 'forget' their human rights abuses and they won't complain anymore - hell, they'll even torture any of their own citizens that do.
Then 9/11 occurs and many people yell "They're just jealous of our freedom". Perversely, they may be right.
[ 04-07-2003, 05:33 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]