Pro-war? You are being lied to!
Why do I waste my time trying to point out the lack of substance to all this pro-war commentary? because some of it is very clever at using some selected historical facts and twisted interpretations of others and it needs to be challenged.
You pro-war chest-beaters are so woefully uninformed and so convinced by your own circular logic you cannot cope with the fact that anti-war protestors are:
1) Not pro-Saddam but pro-Iraqi civilians
The sanctions prevented any country from exporting food or medical supplies to Iraq. Voices in the Wilderness activists were harrasses by police and military for taking food and medicines directly to the Iraqi people. The oil-for-food program arranged for a limited transfer of those resources DIRECTLY TO SADDAM'S REGIME.
In summary the UN/ US imposed sanctions resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands of Iraqi civilians while entrenching Saddam's regime.
Iraqi's are taking advantage of the chaos the US/UK soldiers are causing to loot Saddam's military warehouses and good on them. But that's hardly the same as welcoming the murdering savages as 'liberators'. The US already has a plan for 'reconstructing' Iraq, including no doubt a puppet-goverment of ex-Bath'a military high-ups and World Bank loans, complete with the same IMF-style 'structural adjustment' that has rooted this country (Watch 'Someone Else's Country' and 'In A Land of Plenty' if you don't believe me).
2) Not anti-American but anti-US-military-industrial complex
The same corporate shareholders currently controlling the White House also own the companies that gave Saddam US-subsidized weapons during his war against Iran.
The same corporate shareholders stand to personally profit from the munitions used and military equipment destroyed during the invasion of Iraq and the refurbishment of the US military in its wake, thanks to Bush's defense spending increases.
The same corporate shareholders own the US energy companies that sell the US military the enormous amounts of fuel its vehicles chew through and will profit from the theft of Iraq's oil from its people and the leverage it will give them against the European energy giants who couldn't convice their governments to muck in for their share of the loot.
The same corporate shareholders own the mass media (CNN, Fox etc) from which you no doubt obtain your facts and opinions.
3) Not fans of 'communist' dictatorships like China, N. Korea, former Soviet Union etc
Here's the arguemnt: to criticize the US military is to criticize capitalism. An opponent to capitalism is a communist. All communists support any dictatorship or regime that claims to be 'communist' or 'socialist'.
There are so many holes in the net of this logic you couldn't catch a bus in it.
Check out the 'Stand for Peace and Justice' statement on the front page. Have a look at Parecon or the World Social Forum. Still think we're all unreformed Stalinists? even those of us born after Stalin's death? Take off the ideological blinkers and look again.
4) We are not protesting Chechnya or any of the hundreds of other small-scale genocides against ethnic minorities for the benefit of global commerce because there are just too damn many. We have lives to run too.
We are protesting this invasion particularly because unlike the Russians with Chechnya, Spain with the Basques, Britain with Northern Ireland, Mexico with the Chiapas, China with Tibet etc etc The US are asking nay threatening our government to get involved and that affects us personally. When the invasion hype is over and corporate/consumer capitalism goes back to business as usual we will continue to protest these quieter injustices and the elitist economic and political systems that fuel them.
Neither are we unsympathetic towards the Iraqi Kurds who are currently being slaughtered by the Turkish with the complicity of the US to prevent them from forming their own independent nation and splitting the convenient resource package that is Iraq. Why was Saddam tolerated for so long? Because he kept that package together and the oil flowing.
Finally if you don't think the Iraqis could have toppled Saddam without being ivaded, take a look at Indonesians colonies like East Timor and West Papua or anywhere in South America. You will find determined people's liberation militias fighting dictatorships who are being armed and supported by the US as Saddam was (see my explanation of the dynamics of this above.
Without support and often initiation from the global dictatorship in Washington (look at the installment of Pinochet in Chile for example) there would be few dictators left on the planet.
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Comments
so.....
admit you lost this fight
better luck next time US-bashers.
Now shut up Brian!
Thanks for the concise summary.
Agree with all but just add that the sanctions have caused Hundreds of thousands of deaths, not hundreds or several thousand - figures courtesy of the (imperialist)UN.
Also to add to what you said about people fighting dictators, in 1991 soon after the gulf war, there were mass rebellions in much of Iraq with control of the areas taken away from the Iraqi regime. What happened? The u$ stopped people from arming themselves by preventing them going to munitions stores. Then the Iraqi regime was allowed safe passage in order to crush the uprisings, all while the u$ was in the area! Read more about it in a book called "War plan Iraq" by Milan Rai published in 2002.
If the sanctions weren't in place, which didn't effect the rule of the dictator one bit, it's very likely that the regime would've gone under by the Iraqi people themselves. Instead what we'll see is a military dictatorship not much better. Just look at whats happened in Afghanistan. It's no better in most of the country than when the amerikans went in.
Imperialist interventions rarely solve problems.
Hands of Iraq! Hands of the World!
hmmm
'hands of' or 'hands off' ?
Firstly the US stopped short in '91 under UN resolutions. US policymakers wanted to go into Iraq but thought better of it as the UN was still seen as a viable organization at that time. Sanctions are another UN invention.
And if I had a dollar for the number of times i've heard the word 'imperalist' bandied around i'd be a millionaire. 'imperalist' is 'crypto-facist' for the 00's!
So how about...
...why not go the whole hog...Running Dog Capitalist Imperialist Lackey!
Josh - what's wrong? Don't like other kids playing in your sandpit?
Hands off the whole fucking world
Lets Bring The War Home!!
Lets fight the capitalist pricks that endorsed and profited from this war. It's only with their backing that this, and any future wars, would occur. With that in mind, lets target the source of the problem, not the governments that simply do their bidding.
it must be tough picking the wrong side...
... but toughen up, losers.
Next stop? Damascus or Poynyang?. Hah hey!!
But you're mistaken, our side will win
As Mao said a while ago, U$ imperialism is a paper tiger.
The people of the world dispise what's happening. Many people within the belly of the beast dispise what's happening and their numbers are growing daily with rising unemployment, reductions in social spending as a result of U$ imperialist actions.
The battle may have been lost today, but the war is far from over and victory for our side, the side of the mass of the worlds population, is certain.
..
Revealed!
Josh wrote:
"The battle may have been lost today, but the war is far from over and victory for our side, the side of the mass of the worlds population, is certain"
The battle may have been lost today? Good on you for nailing your colours to the mast. So what is your rallying cry now? All hail Dear Leader Kim Jong-il!
I mighht point out that Mao may have said that US capitalism was a paper tiger but his descendents have said "to be rich is glorious" - of course, they are probably nothing but class traitors.
The masses don't give a continental you-know-what about your causes. They are interested in havning a life free from the risk of torture and death at the hands of the state, the ability to make a buck and the chance buy a few creature comforts. Of course, you socialists know better - you always seem to know what is best for everybody.
See you at the Cake Tin tomorrow night for the Hurricanes game. Oh, I forgot, you probably still think the 81 Tour is going on.
Josh
Hitler was apparently welcomed when he arrived in Poland initially. So were the British when they went into N.Ireland in the 60's. Things changed rapidly however. Not only that but from stuff I've read today, the crowds 'greeting' the invaders were tiny. You'll always find some people supporting some issue, the real issue is how many? I don't expect to see the Iraqi people rejoicing when their natural wealth is expropriated as is planned, for the benefit of the bosses and bankers on Wall Street.
As for the above comment, I don't support the various dictators in the countries under attack, however if the imperialists attempt to invade their countries, steal their wealth and kill civilians, I'll fully support those defending themselves against the US empire and honestly hope for their victory.
I don't live near wellington so won't be able to meet up with you but hope that you attent the anti-war protest on saturday. I'd love to hear all about it from those comrades down there.
That's me writing above.
Sorry for the error.
Proving my point
Do any of these self-congratulating little knee-jerk reactions raise a single fact or argument to challenge a single point I made? Nope. All these people are interested in is mudslinging. Don't take them any more seriously than they take the deaths of thousands of Iraqis AND non-iraqi journalists killed and maimed in the latest round of US bombings.
The trouble with your one-eyed view is...
...that you see nothing!
Some journos were killed - for Christ's sake they were in a war zone. There are three thousand media people in Iraq, most of whom are trying to get close to the action to get good stories, photos and film. The day before that Yank tank fired a shot into the Palestine Hotel an Iraqi soldier fired a missile at American troops that killed two Journalists. It is war - that sort of thing happens. In Italy on Friday 13th April 1945, the New Zealand Divisional Artillery dropped a barrage on A Company, 22 Battalion, wiping out almost all of my Dad's platoon. I asked him how he felt about half his mates having been killed or wounded by his own side and he said, a typical soldier's response - that was war!
It is the same in Iraq - people die in war. The casualties in this war have been miniscule compared to other comflicts going on around the war at the moment, let alone conflicts in the recent past. 900 were massacred in Congo a few days ago in a few hours of butchery. 250,000 died in former Yugoslavia. Half a million in Chechyna. Look at older conflicts - the US marines had nearly five thousand casualties taking Tarawa from the Japanese and that atol was a mile long and half a mile wide! The Russians lost three million prisoners and God knows how many dead between Jun and September 1941. The British lost 60,000 on the first day of the Somme, July 1 1916, most in the first hour of the battle.
Have a thought for teh American tank commander - bullets pinging off his turret, he scans around and sees people pointing something at him from a building in the direction he thinks the fire is coming from. Hell - who can blame him for shooting.
the trouble with your view is..
it seems to allow the u$ in invade at anytime, anywhere just as long as they hype up their story to suggest they're there to 'liberate' people. Such action can only lead to a more unstable and dangerous world.
The question remains, if the regime in washington really cares about human rights, why don't they divert some of their huge military budget into poverty reduction, free drugs for those with aids or any other disease or other actions. They infact try and make the poorest people pay big bucks to the drug companies rather than allow them access to cheap generic drugs.
Their selective interventions around the world suggest alterior motives, such as stealing resources, rather than any real humanitian ambitions despite their claims.
But I suspect you're not here for constructive reasons and aren't willing to change you views, so perhaps arguing with you is a waste of time.
Busted again!!
Josh - I think that you are in fact David Channel. How else can you explain the timestamps on yoru posts?
Hey - if you aren't DC then sorry but he levelled the same accusation against me.
I wont change my views? Would you change yours?
Why don't you answer our criticisms?
No I'm not David Channel. I'm just lucky to have access to a computer almost all day so can freely post whenever I want.
Now, the important point, Why aren't you answering any of my points rather than deflect attention? Like for instance:
"Their selective interventions around the world suggest alterior motives, such as stealing resources, rather than any real humanitian ambitions despite their claims".
would love to but...
have to earn a buck during the day so only have time to knock off a few lines at a time. Too much internet usage and access priveleges taken away. Have more time in the evenings/weekend so will look at your post again during the weekend and get back to you.
See you on Saturday.
West Papua news
Harian Cenderawasih Pos, 26 April 2003
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