A job for the Euroids!

[Patrick]

You had massive demos when Bush invaded Iraq to (sob! wahhhh!) depose a murderous dictator. How dare anyone unilaterally, er, I mean with 30 allies, depose a murderous dictator! Ahhhh, the shame of it all .... whimper!....just a sec while I get control of my emots here ......

Now, according to Time Magazine (yaaa, I know - the editor's second cousin once worked in the mail room at Haliburton) probably 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur, along with scores of burned villages, thousands of raped women, etc. According to Time, this situation DOES meet the criteria of the international genocide treaty, which calls upon the signatories to oppose it with armed force. (yaaaaa, I know a delegation of euroweenies made a quick visit, stood in the middle of the corpses, and announced this is NOT genocide. ).

Now, the U.S. military is stretched thin. Why don't you euros send a few armies down there and stop it? You're always whining about the thousands of civilians killed in the Iraq war, but what about the tens of thousands deliberately targeted and killed in Darfur? Where's your massive demonstrations about that? This is why most euros have no credibility as fas as most americans are concerned -- your behavior shows your real problem is with america, not war per se, not civilian death per se.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

What about the Congo? 50 000 is small potatoes compared to 4 million. Does that fit the definition of genocide? Maybe Europe should intervene in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Which side should they take? Then there's Indonesia, India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Russia-Chechnya... No end to the number of world conflicts that Europe could intervene in.

Why is Darfur the conflict du jour with the strident right? Well, whatever the reason, it's nice to know you care and you think someone should do something about it. Register your protest with the relevant authorites. The war on Iraq was still wrong- you cannot lightly overthrow the soverignty of a nation.

You do raise interesting questions, though. Darfur didn't exactly happen overnight. If overthrowing despots was the reason for the Iraqi war all along, why didn't the Bush administration prioritise a little better? We may, as the righties like to say, never know.

 

[Jim Lennox]

You had massive demos when Bush invaded Iraq to (sob! wahhhh!) depose a murderous dictator.

Hate to correct you on that one, you p*ssies had to get another 30 countries together before you were ready to fight him.

your behavior shows your real problem is with america, not war per se, not civilian death per se.

I was thinking the same about you..

 

[peptoabysmal]

You're always whining about the thousands of civilians killed in the Iraq war, but what about the tens of thousands deliberately targeted and killed in Darfur? Where's your massive demonstrations about that? This is why most euros have no credibility as fas as most americans are concerned -- your behavior shows your real problem is with america, not war per se, not civilian death per se.

This part I agree with. This isn't specifically a euro problem, we have plenty of people here in the US who demonstrate their feelings in the same way. One of them is trying to get into the White House as we speak.

 

[Patrick]

What about the Congo? 50 000 is small potatoes compared to 4 million. Does that fit the definition of genocide? Maybe Europe should intervene in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Which side should they take? Then there's Indonesia, India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Russia-Chechnya... No end to the number of world conflicts that Europe could intervene in.

PICK ONE! (P.S.: comparing Darfur with Sri Lanka earns you the Moron-o'-the-Month Award!)

Why is Darfur the conflict du jour with the strident right? Well, whatever the reason, it's nice to know you care and you think someone should do something about it. Register your protest with the relevant authorites.

Riiiiiiiiight, like the euros have to be "notified" about genocide in Darfur. Wait a minute - come to think of it, with their ultra-bureaucracy in Brussels, someone probably DOES have to notify them!

 

[MRC_Hans]

Psssst! The differences between Iraq and Congo are: Oil, and distance to Israel.

It is as simple as that, live with it.

That said, I think most of us would applaud intervention against genocide, evil dictators and such, provided we had the slightest clue about how you do it without suffering and inflicting heavy casualties and ending up confounding the situation instead of solving it.

I think the basic problem is that neither evil dictators or genocides are the root cause of anything. The root cause is the situation that allows evil dictators to exist and genocides to happen, and while you can topple the dictator and stop the genocide, the situation persists.

Hans

 

[Camillus]

Two points.

Firstly the 1948 Genocide Convention only requires a country to do something about genocide ("prevent and punish" in the language of the convention) if it occurs within its own borders. Far be it from me to suggest that perhaps the realisation that this is the case has made it easier for governments to use the word, safe in the knowledge that the convention doesn't require them to do anything. Contrast the current language used by the US Adminstration over Darfur with their careful avoidance of the g-word during the Rwandan genocide because they believed that using it would commit them to action (the bit we're interested in is at the bottom of the first page).

Secondly there is a great deal of dispute about whether the reports coming out of Darfur are an accurate representation of the death toll (nobody denies that something very nasty is going on).

 

[Patrick]

That said, I think most of us would applaud intervention against genocide, evil dictators and such, provided we had the slightest clue about how you do it without suffering and inflicting heavy casualties and ending up confounding the situation instead of solving it.

Simplistic. There of course is NEVER a deposing of dictators without people being killed: for example 500,000 political opponents in mass graves and millions killed in wars of aggression when Saddam was in power, with certainly many more to come, vs several thousand iraqis killed in the Iraq war. A grim choice, but an easy one - for the rational. Before the war, there was a very clear and unconfounded situation - and a massively murderous one.

 

[MRC_Hans]

That said, I think most of us would applaud intervention against genocide, evil dictators and such, provided we had the slightest clue about how you do it without suffering and inflicting heavy casualties and ending up confounding the situation instead of solving it.

Simplistic. There of course is NEVER a deposing of dictators without people being killed: for example 500,000 political opponents in mass graves and millions killed in wars of aggression when Saddam was in power, with certainly many more to come, vs several thousand iraqis killed in the Iraq war. A grim choice, but an easy one - for the rational. Before the war, there was a very clear and unconfounded situation - and a massively murderous one.

Apart from your unfounded and probably exaggarated figures, no, it is not simplistic. You cannot say: "Hey this guy is gonna kill 100,000 people during the next 5 years, so let's kill 10,000 of his people and 1,000 of ours now, in order to stop him, and everybody will applaud the great bargain!".

First of all, the future deeds of a dictator (or the like) will always be speculative, secondly, the ones you kill might not agree it's suc a good bargain. And finally, as experience unequivocally shows, removing dictators and militias do not result in peace and prosperity in those areas.

So, I really think you are the one being simplistic.

Hans

 

[bobdroege7]

Evidence clearly shows that removing dictators works some of the time. Examples from the 20th century include Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and France.

Removing a Dictator can be based on his past behviors.

quote
originally posted by MRC hans
And finally, as experience unequivocally shows, removing dictators and militias do not result in peace and prosperity in those areas.

Main Entry: un·equiv·o·cal
Pronunciation: "&n-i-'kwi-v&-k&l
Function: adjective
1 : leaving no doubt : CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS
2 : UNQUESTIONABLE <production of unequivocal masterpieces -- Carole Cook>

 

[The Don]

I think that MRCHans' comments are very insightful. While it is laudable to seek to depose a leadership which is placing its people under a terrible yoke of oppression, doing so in a manner which does not further destabilise the situation seems to be nigh-on impossible. What does sometimes seem to be effective is that after a period of conflict, the "forces of good" (which is of course a phrase open to interpretation) can be given support to assume power and implement an acceptable government. Perhaps the current situation in the former Yugoslavia may be a case in point. Of course, like the old joke "the lightbulb must want to change". MRCHans highlights this and indicates that it's important to tackle the underlying factors that allowed a despotic regime to get power in the first place. These factors are different in each case. Maybe in the case of Serbia, it's the fact that the Serbs were heartily sick of war, their war leader and no longer felt sufficiently threatened by the other ethnic groups to swallow the rhetoric.

I'm not sure that the same is currently true of either Iraq or Afghanistan. It seems that there are still enough people who wish to hold power, who have a degree of local support, but who are not "suitable" to mean that the situation is still very volatile.

In other words, sweeping in, deposing a dictator and then attempting to implement democracy may not work for either the West or the locals. What, for example would we have achieved if the elected representatives were able to form a fundamentalist Muslim majority and then use this democratic legitimacy to go off and persecute the local Kurds ? Now, if a great majority of people just want to live peacefully together and co-operate then that's a different kettle of fish and the democratic process may just work.


BTW, although there is no argument that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Iraqis, the mass, mass graves have not yet been found http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1263901,00.html. Of course your average Iraqi political operator has probably worked out that there is much mileage to be gained from overstating the atrocities (or at least not understating them).

 

[The Don]

◊◊◊◊◊◊ up the post.

 

[Kerberos]

Evidence clearly shows that removing dictators works some of the time. Examples from the 20th century include Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and France.

Removing a Dictator can be based on his past behviors.

quote
originally posted by MRC hans
And finally, as experience unequivocally shows, removing dictators and militias do not result in peace and prosperity in those areas.

Main Entry: un·equiv·o·cal
Pronunciation: "&n-i-'kwi-v&-k&l
Function: adjective
1 : leaving no doubt : CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS
2 : UNQUESTIONABLE <production of unequivocal masterpieces -- Carole Cook>

Unless I misremember my Korean history (which is possible of course) you didn't remove any dictators in South Korea ,you just defended "your" dictator from another dictator, and the country then developed into democracy many years later. Also doubts can be raised if any of these cases can be compared to Iraq, though you're of course correct in stating it disproves that removing dictators never work out well.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Evidence clearly shows that removing dictators works some of the time. Examples from the 20th century include Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and France.

Removing a Dictator can be based on his past behviors.

quote
originally posted by MRC hans
And finally, as experience unequivocally shows, removing dictators and militias do not result in peace and prosperity in those areas.

Main Entry: un·equiv·o·cal
Pronunciation: "&n-i-'kwi-v&-k&l
Function: adjective
1 : leaving no doubt : CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS
2 : UNQUESTIONABLE <production of unequivocal masterpieces -- Carole Cook>

How did it work for France ?

WW2 Axis powers, yes, waging a world war does change things, but... we didn't have much choice there, did we?. South Korea? SK was invaded by the North and the invasion was repelled, that is not the same as going into a sovering country and removing its government. How about (in no particular order) Balkans, Afganistan (twice), Vietnam, Somalia, .. and of course, Iraq?

My point is, police action level operations just don't seem to cut it.

Hans

 

[Kerberos]

How did it work for France ?

The non-occupied parts of France were AFAIR ruled by a pro-nazi dictatorship, including France is dubious, but not entirely wrong.

 

[Giz]

you cannot lightly overthrow the soverignty of a nation.

There's a distinction between:

1) National soveriegnty, where the people are soveriegn (i.e. a democracy).

AND

2) A dictators desmesne. The Iraqi people did not have soveriegnty over Iraq.
Saddam and his thugs had power in Iraq - and had the same kind of moral legitimacy that Al Capone had in Chicago. "Might makes right.

Don't tell me that a sacred precept of national self-determination was violated when we went in there (unless you - disgustingly - wish to imply that the natural and just fate of Iraqis is to live in a dictatorship).

 

[Patrick]

Apart from your unfounded and probably exaggarated figures, no, it is not simplistic. You cannot say: "Hey this guy is gonna kill 100,000 people during the next 5 years, so let's kill 10,000 of his people and 1,000 of ours now, in order to stop him, and everybody will applaud the great bargain!".

First of all, the future deeds of a dictator (or the like) will always be speculative, secondly, the ones you kill might not agree it's suc a good bargain. And finally, as experience unequivocally shows, removing dictators and militias do not result in peace and prosperity in those areas.
.

Your "exaggerated figures" reminds me of how the liberal international media poo-pooed word of the extent of the Cambodian Genocide, until photos of the impromptu museums of death showed gigantic piles of skulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge, revealing attempts to wave away the extent of the murder just a straight-forward reality disconnect.

There have been all kinds of organizations who have documented the mass graves in Iraq, and the massive loss of life in just the Iran-Iraq war is unquestionable for any sane person. Indeed, Saddam's torture chambers, execution squads, rape rooms, etc were going full-blast up until the very end - "speculation" is not involved. Well, let me correct that - there is room for speculation about the motivation and/or mindset of people who deny the extent of the terror inflicted on the Iraqis and neighboring states by Saddam, probably the worst dictator since WWII, just as one may speculate about the post-Hitler Holocaust deniers.

 

[Patrick]

doing so in a manner which does not further destabilise the situation seems to be nigh-on impossible

What an absurd statement - as if "stability" per se had any value!