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A Wicked Old Man
Tony Blair tells BBC that he would have looked for another reason to invade Iraq if the weapons of mass destruction argument had not been available:
“I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat,” Blair told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast this morning.
Blogger reaction here.
54 Responses to “A Wicked Old Man”
Bush and Blair — winners of the war, will have the little puppies nipping at their heels for years. Both won reelection and the vindication of history. Blair rightly points out that Saddam's removal was justified independently of the WMD issue, and the AUMF passed here in the US by a bipartisan majority of Congress validates his point. There were numerous reasons to remove Saddam Hussein, not the least of which was the death of 50,000 children a year being caused by the Clinton sanctions according to the UN. Six years later, that's 300,000 Iraqi children saved by the action of Bush and Blair. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/418625.stm
Thank you President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and all the brave soldiers who saved these innocent children by having the moral courage to take definitive action in Iraq.
Can't tell if DaMav is being snarky. But, I will ask just who the hell made Bush & Blair, the U.S. of A. and the U.K. the policemen of the world, that they have the authority to invade and kill.
I am sorry that Saddam gassed the Kurds and killed many thousands of Iraqi citizens. But that was not worth the life of one American service member.
oaechief,
I think you're wasting your time because DaMav actually thinks he's speaking the truth.
He's auditioning for Michael Reagan's job as they're considering putting poor Michael in the booby-hatch.
The less time you spend trying to talk sense to the DaMav's (and Michael R's) of the world gives you (all of us) more time to spend with the Thurber's and other reasonable points of view.
More time for reason… More time for common decency… More time to better balance in the world we all live in.
I think the genocide committed against the Kurds is a good justification.
I disagree. Of course some might feel that a bunch of gassed Jews weren't worth removing Hitler over, not being worth the life of one American service member. I think most folk don't share such a view today.
You may be better off ignoring facts you can't refute but what's the point of you making up lies about me auditioning for something?
44% of voters now say they would prefer Bush as President to Obama, who gets 50%. 6% are indifferent. That's an awful lot of people for you to try to write off, even at this point in history. And the trend is clearly in Bush's favor. Especially when you consider that Obama basically adopted the Bush Playbook verbatim on troop withdrawal in Iraq.
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/12…
And where is all that moral outrage about the war now that the Democrats took Congress and the White House and continued the war? Funny we don't get headlines every month about US casualties any more, nor long detailed agonizing accounts of civilian deaths. We don't hear about Congress forcing the troops home, or Murtha's scheme to require rest rotations to starve the war of troops. Nothing much about a War for Oil either, outside of a few isolated voices.
It's pretty clear that most of the “moral outrage” about war was not an objection to war per se, but an objection to their being a Republican in the White House leading it. Once that problem was solved, it suddenly became no big deal anymore.
“I want you to know I can see through your masks”
- Bob Dylan
My comment has been edited (read portions deleted) without the “editor” [sic] having the courtesy of admitting the molestation.
My original post read:
Would someone explain why it was bastardized to:
What's going on?
That would be a whole lot more meaningful if there wasn't a picture of Hussein shaking hands with Rumsfeld after said genocide…
Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks
Amusing how one's morality and outrage can change so fast…
comment read
Two points:
1. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to save or help the Kurds. The U.S. in fact knew Saddam Hussein was slaughtering the Kurds with poison gas, AND we knew he was doing the same to Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war, and we did nothing. Not only did we do nothing, we were good friends with Saddam at the time. We knew exactly what he was doing, and it didn't matter.
2. The U.S. did not go into WWII to save or help the Jews. Far from it. The FDR administration ignored and buried numerous reports, diplomatic dispatches, and eyewitness testimony about the extermination camps, that Jews were being rounded up and taken to the East and never seen again. We did nothing. Not only that, the U.S. proactively worked to stymie efforts to bring Jewish refugees into this country, even though at no time during the war were immigration quotas filled. In every possible way it could show indifference, the U.S. showed indifference to the fate of the Jews. Britain did exactly the same thing, and so did other countries that were appealed to take in Jews (with the notable exception of Denmark).
Your suggestion that the U.S's purpose in entering World War II was to remove Hitler in order to save the Jews is 100 percent false. And in fact, it cannot accurately be said that the Jews *were* saved. Six million Jews out of a total prewar European population of about eight million were exterminated. The best that can be said is that Hitler's defeat came in time to keep about two million European Jews out of his ovens — and even of that number, many, many died in the first days, weeks, and months after the war's end.
I'm not saying WWII was not a just war, but it was not undertaken to save the Jews, and in fact saving the Jews was really not a priority at all.
Ohmygosh. I'm glad you said this, SteveK, because your comment made no sense at all as it was written, and now I understand why.
Thank you Kathy. Could (would) you please see if you can find out what's happening?
My response was also edited in which I asked what your point was in spreading a lie about me auditioning for something as part of your ad hominem attack. I see you put the attack back up after the moderators removed it. Then kathykattenberg thanked you for repeating the personal attack on me with the false information.
Interesting eh? Nothing I plan to lose any sleep over
I think what you should do is email Dr E. or Tyrone, or both. They are the ones who monitor the comments for problems. That's what I would have to do to find out what was going on anyway.
Then kathykattenberg thanked you for repeating the personal attack on me with the false information.
No, I didn't. What are you talking about?
Your response to SteveK repeating his diatribe about me was: “Ohmygosh. I'm glad you said this, SteveK…” You will note that most of the repost was a personal attack on me.
For the record, I complained to nobody about SteveK's comment except SteveK in what was deleted from my post, i.e. I didn't flag anything. I'd say it's water under the bridge and it ought be allowed to flow downstream. But if someone is going to say things about me that aren't true, I feel no remorse in pointing that out to them.
Now peace and pleasant dreams.
Thanks Kathy, I did that the last time.
I wrote Tyrone, Joe, and dr.e… As always dr.e did what she could (I like her a lot… bless her heart) but there was no reply from either Tyrone or Joe.
It's as if something new is running things here at TMV. A new policy statement would be nice but it seems that this change wants to be subtle… and doesn't want to be acknowledged (or seen) as a change.
DaMav you don't always have to come across as being a jerk.
I said “Ohmygosh. I'm glad you said this, SteveK,” because when I read the edited comment it did not make sense to me. When he told me it had been edited, and I saw the original, I understood why that had happened. I was not focusing at that moment on what he had said to you originally, only on being glad to know why the first comment didn't make sense.
Capiche? I understand your point, but you were attributing a motivation to me that wasn't there. I wasn't even thinking about you at that moment.
Yes, peace and pleasant dreams.
Joe has nothing to do with the comments section. He would only have to pass questions on to Dr E or Tyrone, as well.
Okey doke kathyk, I'll accept that it was a misunderstanding. I see your point. Thanks for seeing my point as well.
bridge
——–
water
Well, if it was my life, it wouldn't be worth it and if it was one of my children's lives, it would not be worth it.
You could enlist and volunteer to go over there.
“Not only did we do nothing, we were good friends with Saddam at the time.”
I get you are trying to make a point but then you come up with this absurd crap that basically trashes anything you say for anyone who knows squat about the situation. The gassing of the Kurds was done after '91, the first gulf war. Sure he used gas before but that is the commonly mentioned gas attack on the Kurds. We were never good friends with Saddam and the idea that there was ever a time after '91 when we were is ludicrous. The idea that we were before is pretty silly also if you look past talking points int what was happening in the world in the 70's and 80's, but not as bad as the idea that we were buddies after the first Gulf War.
“Far from it. The FDR administration ignored and buried numerous reports, diplomatic dispatches, and eyewitness testimony about the extermination camps, that Jews were being rounded up and taken to the East and never seen again. We did nothing. Not only that, the U.S. proactively worked to stymie efforts to bring Jewish refugees into this country, even though at no time during the war were immigration quotas filled. In every possible way it could show indifference, the U.S. showed indifference to the fate of the Jews”
That's true but it's also without perspective. In '38 the US had some 25% unemployment and was isolationist to a point that is impossible to understand today. The govt had loaned millions out in WWI that were not repaid and people were desperate just to feed and clothe their families, they didn't want to hear about anything outside. Also there was more than a little disillusionment over the false propaganda in WWI. The whole baby on bayonets , rapping hun thing that was put out about the Germans to rev up public support and later found to be false. In '43 the US govt said that Hitler was trying to kill all the Jews. The whole “final solution”. 50% of Americans didn't believe it.
The idea the FDR was anti jew is absurd as he and many others did what they could. At the time you couldn't emigrate if there was a likelihood you may be a public burden “likely to become a public charge” was the term and during the depression with no jobs to be had almost everyone would fall in that category. US diplomats were told to loosen their interpretation of the “LPC” clause and give German Jews priority as early as '35. In 1939, FDR went against legal procedure didn't allow fifteen thousand German refugees who had come to the United States on visitor's visas to be deported when they expired. The President had given instructions to extend their visas an additional six months and thenceforth to renew them for as long as might be necessary. His “Pro Jew” stances were a political liability but he continued on. In '44 when shown that the State Department was obstructing the migration of anyone FDR set up the War Refugee Board, with a mandate to rescue Jews and the authority to circumvent the State Department.
There is a temptation to view peoples actions not in the context in which they lived but in the here and now. No one is served by that and little can be learned without true understanding of the times. If there was one man who had more to due with the defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany than any other it was FDR and did save millions of jews.
This comment gets to the crux of it though, Kathy. Is it or is it not morally correct to go to war in an attempt to save people who being slaughtered by their country's government?
You're right that the decision wasn't made to enter WWII for the purpose of saving the Jews, although certainly many people did argue for that during the years before the US entered the war (and there were some actions taken to support the Allies prior to Pearl Harbor) but largely the US sentiment was isolationist (that we should mind our own business.)
So how does that differ from saying that we should have minded our own business with regard to Saddam Hussein?
The point is that US foreign policy has shifted through various administrations use of realpolitik, isolationism, and intervention. What's being described here about Saddam being befriended, specifically by Rumsfeld, reflects a realpolitik approach. It's not that dictators in those situations are truly considered friends, it's simply the old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in action. That Rumsfeld took this approach is no surprise because he is more from that realpolitik school (he opposed the nationbuilding that others in the Bush administration wanted to engage in after the invasion, and that's why his decision was to send lower numbers of troops.)
One could go on and on with the different schools of thought regarding foreign policy, but again the point is whether one makes these decisions about 'just wars' based on realism or idealism. Was FDR a monster for not committing US forces earlier in the course of the war, or was he being a realist based on lack of public support and the fact that the US wasn't militarily prepared (since part of realism AND the rationale for just wars is whether or not the mission has a reasonable chance of success?)
Instead of looking at Blair's comment in the same light (making decisions about when it is morally justified to intervene even if there's not the element of direct threat to one's own country) though, you consider him a 'wicked man'. Why is that? It seems you're only looking at things in hindsight, according to how the Iraq war was actually carried out, instead of considering what the leaders had to consider about the status quo (including Saddam's actions and as DaMav mentioned, the children of Iraq starving as a result of a failed and corrupted sanctions program.) The morality of the situation is far from black and white.
“who the hell made Bush & Blair, the U.S. of A. and the U.K. the policemen of the world?”
I'm pretty sure that simply happened when the USSR fell.
And you may not feel that the Kurds are worth “the life of one American service member”, but you know what? I do. It's worth MY life – which I gladly laid on the line in 1991 (2003, and 2007). To the best of my knowledge, ALL of my comrades felt the same way then. It would serve you well not to speak for the lives of others. If you didn't support the war, that's fine – it is your right. Do I like the politics that goes along with all of this? No. But there are times when servicemen gladly offer up their lives for others – especially when they are being slaughtered by evil forces.
“That would be a whole lot more meaningful if there wasn't a picture of Hussein shaking hands with Rumsfeld after said genocide… “
You are absolutely correct in that statement, Don. (well, sort of).
But the genocide happened before Rumsfeld was SECDEF, so I'm not sure what you're point is.
Does the handshake mean that Rumsfeld supports Kurdish genocide? No more than an Obama-Chavez handshake/hug means that Obama supports Venezuelan policy.
When you undertake diplomacy, you must shake hands with both good and bad sorts – even when that person makes you want to puke. FDR and Churchill felt it with Stalin I'm sure.
“The U.S. in fact knew Saddam Hussein was slaughtering the Kurds with poison gas, AND we knew he was doing the same to Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war, and we did nothing. Not only did we do nothing, we were good friends with Saddam at the time. We knew exactly what he was doing, and it didn't matter.”
That is an absolute lie, or at least a misunderstanding of military history, Kathy.
In 1991, after the end of Desert Storm, the US imposed no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq (which stayed in place until our invasion in 2003). This kept Hussein from further gassing the Kurds and Shiites. Every time the jerk attempted to move troops toward Kurdistan, we knocked the hell out of them. These were called:
1. Operation Provide Comfort (1991-1996)
2. Operation Northern Watch (1996-2003)
3. Operation Desert Strike.(1996)
4. Operation Desert Fox (1998)
So please don't speak to things of which you are ignorant.
“You could enlist and volunteer to go over there.”
Thanks for your permission, Chief. I already have. I can't seem to stay out of Iraq.
As I said on another thread…. MY life is worth the life of one protected innocent. Always will be. That goes for Iraqis, Afghanis, and ESPECIALLY American innocents.
In 1988 Saddam had this little village gazed, it only killed a mere 5 to 10 thousand civilians.
Now prior to that he had Operation Al-Anfal, a measly hundred odd thousand Kurds killed.
No one in the US lost any sleep over either event…
As a matter of fact, the US government was basically covering Saddam's back side at the UN and other various international forums…
All right JD, here are the facts of life, the US government practices Realpolitik and it really does not give a shit how many civilians, innocent bystanders get wounded, crippled, tortured or killed. Any time someone tells you hat the US Government intervened anywhere to save people, it was not humanitarianism that drove the US to it but short term self-interest.
I think the genocide committed against the <strike>Kurds</strike> Injun's is a good justification…
Let's hear from the John Wayne chickenhawk crowd…
Where did I suggest this? Sorry thats a strawman, but you already know that since you built it yourself.
What I point out is that leaders like Saddam and like Hitler cannot be tolerated and need to be removed. Sometimes it takes time to wake up a smell the coffee, but these acts of the past are justification to act in the present, along with other items such as invading another country who is an ally thumbing noses at UN resolutions, violating air space restrictions, and saber rattling about WMDs (even though he didn't actually have them). He asked for it he got it.
I have absolutely no problem with this viewpoint, it one of the reasons we have a volunteer army. No one is coerced into enlisting or re-enlisting Not putting your life on the line to carry out the decisions of political and military leaders is not a decision to be taken lightly, and you have to make it for yourself. I have no problem with any who make the choice not to do so, it just makes me appreciate those who are willing to do so all the more.
Have you served? If so I'll listen to what you say and give it some credit. If not I wont weigh your views over those who are doing so and believe in their mission. You can play Kumbaya to those brave soldiers when they return.. Its would be a better greeting than a friend of mine got returning to his home in San Francisco during the Vietnam War when peace activist screamed “Baby killer” at him and spit in his face.
Now you can find some soldier who oppose the wars and weigh their opinion higher than mine, I got no problem with that. But most of the military guys I know (quite a few of them) and the veterans I know, overwhelmingly support what we are doing. There might be differences of specific policies, but the vast majority of those I know and who I have spoken to, believe in the mission.
I think the genocide committed against the <strike>Kurds</strike> Injun's is a good justification…
Sure it would have been. I don't think any of the Europeans would have seen it that way at the time, because they pretty universally held to the idea of exceptionalism of the white race and considered members of aboriginal cultures to be 'savages'.
But if one or more countries had taken up the defense of the American Indians, would they have been on the side of justice or would they have earned scorn for being 'wicked'?
No one needs my permission. And I was not aware of your military service. I salute you. I have 35 months of combat time from the early sixties. My “combat time” was on Navy ships so I wasn't concerned with IEDs, snipers and the like.
However, my feelings about war, diplomacy and all that are more similar to kathy's than yours, it would appear.
Both my father and uncle served in Europe during WWII. But they didn't have the connections or poor health of John Wayne. Funny how he couldn't fight the Nazis , because of a medical exemption, yet made countless physically demanding movies…
You make us all proud, not just with your service, but with the eloquence in that one line.God Bless you Sir. You represent the finest aspect of our nation, and do so well.
<italic>But most of the military guys I know (quite a few of them) and the veterans I know, overwhelmingly support what we are doing. There might be differences of specific policies, but the vast majority of those I know and who I have spoken to, believe in the mission.</italic>
This hints at a different support:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3601542…
Reading some of these comments gave me a good belly laugh. Does anyone seriously think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc really invaded Iraq to “save the Iraqi children from those evil sanctions” or to save the Kurds, or because Saddam was a bad man? Of course not. The US invaded Iraq because our thirst for revenge against Muslims for 9/11 had not yet been quenched and because Bush wanted to be thought of as a consequential President. We don't give a hoot for the lives of Iraqis any more than do for the lives of the people of Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo etc. We sometimes intervene not out of compassion but only for power political and strategic reasons.
Stop with the rationalizations for our actions, it will look silly in the grand scope of History.
DaMav,
How is it moral courage to campaign on the premise of opposing nation building and then flip-flopping less than three years later and carrying out one of the largest nation building campaigns in our nation's history?
How is it moral courage is claim that the administration knows as fact that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD's when our own CIA expressed doubts to this claim?
How is it moral courage to order the bombing of a city of more than five millions people, leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians?
You can cite the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by Saddam Hussein all you want, but two wrongs don't make a right. The justification over invading Iraq might be debateable, but the facts are not. Bush flipped flopped on foreign policy, he misrepresented the certainty to which the administration believed Hussein had WMDs, and he ordered the bombing of a city with more than five million people. There is absolutely nothing morally courageous about that.
I was hoping that was where the “Chief” in your name came from. I salute you back, brother. However, today's Navy isn't the same. Most of my service was on the ground beside the Army and Marines. The only time I've seen a ship was on the way to Iraq.
I'm not so naive to think that US interests don't play into ANY mission we deploy. They do. That comes from both Democrats and Republicans. The reason we “meddle” in foreign affairs is the protection of those interests.
I'm also not naive enough to believe that the US took profit from Saddam's genocide against the Kurds, nor did we profit from the Milosevic's genocide against the Bosnian Muslims. I'm sure our war machine profitted, but our interests were not served in the way you claim in either circumstance.
Do we intervene in every circumstance of genocide or humanitarian need?
No. Dharfur is proof of that. But if we ever claim those reasons for putting our troops in harms way, then we SHOULD do it every time. We should be in Dharfur now. We did the right thing (overall) with the Kurds – judging by the way the Kurds overwhelmingly support us there. We did the right thing in Bosnia as well.
It looks as if you are wearing cammies so I assumed U.S. Army. Are you Navy? What rating?
The reason we “meddle” in foreign affairs is the protection of those interests.
Whose interests? Large corporations? National security? Is our national life at risk or are the profits of some well connected billionaire going to take a hit?
“Maybe we should put some manacles on our foreign policy, on our international ambitions. America is going to remain a democracy and I have no alternative idea to offer. But if that makes wise action in foreign policy impossible, we ought to have a less confrontational policy. Instead of grandstanding, warring and constantly meddling in countries and culture we do not understand, we should have an attitude of detachment and soberness and readiness to reserve judgment.” from “The Hawk and The Dove” by Nicholas Thompson
Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Here is today's version of that by Glenn Greenwald, “The evidence proving this causation is now so overwhelming as to be undeniable. Waging wars, occupying, and dropping bombs in Muslim countries is the single most counter-productive step that can be taken to combat Islamic extremism (indefinitely imprisoning them without charges is a close second). It's akin to advising a lung cancer patient to triple the quantity of cigarettes he smokes each day. Yet we continue to do it over and over, and then point to the harms we cause as reasons we need to continue doing it.
Waging wars, occupying, and dropping bombs in Muslim countries is the single most counter-productive step that can be taken
…except for all the others? I'm no fan of war either, and I agree with you that it gives America haters plenty to point to. Perhaps you know of an approach that improves our reputation, lets us sleep at night without feeling we should do something about foreign genocides, and keeps us safe from bands of wackos and unstable regimes?
“Sometimes it takes time to wake up a smell the coffee, but these acts of the past are justification to act in the present, along with other items such as invading another country who is an ally thumbing noses at UN resolutions, violating air space restrictions, and saber rattling about WMDs (even though he didn't actually have them). He asked for it he got it.”
I've written the truth before: had Hussein been left alone and started a greater regional war, or worse, disrupted the supply of petroleum and raised its price (which certain people profess is needed and is overdue, until it actually happens to any extent at all), we know who'd howl the loudest and earliest at Bush or whoever else was President (moderated if it was a lib Dem in office) for Not Doing Something earlier.
Bush and Blair aren't the only ones who are subjected to it, I've long noticed –
“[...] will have the little puppies nipping at their heels for years”
There was no “real” need to go into Afghanistan in Sept 2001. Bush wanted to look tough. An intelligent person would not have taken that action. An intelligent person would have been patient and waited for an opportunity where the odds were much more in our favor.
Patience and perhaps some negotiating.
And as far as sleeping at night, the Bush administration became experts as purveyors of fear. I never in my wildest dreams thought they (the “terrorists”) would attack Hoover Dam or the airport in Des Moines. But Bush was selling fear and America seemed to be buying.
I'm really not a “hawkish” person, per se. Like you, I stand against the present “corporatocracy” we have instead of the democracy we have earned in blood. I also agree that our international ambitions (as well as the global economy) adds to the likelihood of our sending troops to protect those interests.
You have to understand one thing though….
As long as we continue to pursue the global economy/one world government goal, we must be prepared to send the troops out to protect individuals, corporations, etc.
That's why I'd like to return to a homefront industrial base, and put an end to globalism.
A homefront industrial base, with decent wages would be a very good thing. The Clinton administration screwed this up and “we” were so in love with him, we let him get away with it.
It wasn't ony Clinton. Both parties are responsible for the globalist policies. I realize that they think it is the only way to compete with China, but it is hurting the common man in the long run. The current fiat-money system we have isn't helping much either, but that's another debate. I truly feel that the globalism is what is keeping the status quo in many arenas.