MacHamish wrote:

> I think the system I live under is just great.

Well, it's the world's biggest economy, so that has to count for something.

> You're probably going to argue that not everyone is prosperous and that's
> just too horrid to contemplate.

No, I don't believe the world owes anyone a living. I've never been to the
US myself, but I know perfection is not of this world and I don't suppose
the US is significantly less perfect than a lot of other places.

> If the world were just a little less crazy

Well, that's a big if!

> I don't believe the Lancet's figure.

I neither believe nor disbelieve any of the figures. They are all estimates.
Some may be closer to the truth, some may be further from it. Still, we are
probably talking in terms of somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people,
many of them victims, not of the invading forces, but of the instability
arising from the invasion.

> its a damn shame that there are any figures at all to report

Indeed, but they are the inevitable consequence of conflict, so if you
support the conflict you are saddled with accepting responsibility for the
figures.

> I'm convinced Bush did exactly the right thing.  You have
>  to be completely horrified by that, but that's where I'm
> coming from.

I'm not horrified at all. You'd already made it clear where you were coming
from. If all wise people agreed then passage through life would be easy, but
the plethora of isms and ologies have been spawned - many of them - by very
gifted people who happen to differ. How can there be dialogue if Christians
"have to be completely horrified" every time they hear a Muslim, or
left-wingers "have to be completely horrified" every time a voice speaks out
from the right? And if there cannot be dialogue, what else is left to us?
Are we simply going to have to battle it out with our fists and WMDs, until
there are no dissenting voices left to horrify us?

> I'm about up to here with this multilateral/unilateral business.  In the
> first place, the US action is not unilateral.  There is a coalition.

Of sorts. The amount of propaganda surrounding the second Gulf War is quite
extraordinary. The US claimed "a coalition of the willing" consisting of 49
countries. In reality, many of the countries named depend too heavily on US
aid to be in a position to deny a statement of this kind, while others
(notably Azerbaijan, Colombia , Uganda, Ukraine and Uzbekistan) are not
stable democracies themselves, and scarcely in a postition to declare
themselves "willing" to impose democracy on another country. A handful
(Croatia, Slovenia, the Solomon Islands) embarrassed the US by publicly
disavowing their supposed "willingness".

In fact, only 19 of the 49 countries actually gave active military or
political support. These were Australia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland,
Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
To these may be added Saudi Arabia, which apparently gave a fair bit of
behind-the-scenes support, Kuwait and Taiwan (not named by the US for fear
of offending China).

Amazingly, in none of these countries was the majority of citizens actually
in favour of embarking on the war, making a total mockery of the democratic
values that Iraq was shortly due to be blessed with.

In the end, only Britain (the US's main ally), Australia, Denmark, Poland
and Spain (all playing only very minor roles) offered active military
support, a very far cry from the 34 countries - most prominent of which were
the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia - who sent
forces into the first Gulf War.

The list of opposing countries was much greater. France, Germany, Russia and
China were opposed from the start. The Arab League (which had condemned
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and broadly supported the coalition
against Iraq at that time) condemned it unanimously, as did all 52 members
of the African Union. Specific condemnation of the war also came from
Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Croatia,  the Czech
Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway,
Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Vatican, Venezuela and Vietnam.
Widespread popular protests and hints (sometimes heavy ones) of government
disapproval were made in many other countries.

(Main source for the above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governments'_pre-war_positions_on_invasion_of_I
raq)

> Bush went to the UN and presented his case.
> Certain members of the Security Council rebuffed him.

Quite rightly, surely? The main reason he was giving - that Iraq possessed
WMDs in defiance of the UN - would doubtless have swayed them *if it had
been true*. But it was not true. The secondary reason - that Saddam Hussein
was linked to Al Qaeda - is unsubstantiated and in all likelihood equally
hollow. So now we're down to, "Well, he was a nasty piece of work, and
Iraq's better off without him" - maybe so, but what business is that of the
US or the UK? - and, "He was *thinking* of acquiring WMDs" - as if Bush were
telepathic and thought was a crime.

> France's veto was particularly galling, if you know what
> I mean.

Not really. I've never really understood the US response to France's
position. France played a significant part in the first Gulf War and was the
first to urge the US and other countries to do something about the situation
in Kosovo. Its gallic (and to you galling) refusal to string along with the
lie that Iraq had WMDs seems pretty reasonable to me.

>  Where does Chirac get the authority to single handedly
> determine US defense policy?

I find that an incomprehensible response. Chirac does not and did not
determine US defence policy. He had the authority to veto a UN resolution
and he made it clear that, if push came to shove, he would do so. What's
wrong with that? The US has used its authority to veto US motions on any
number of occasions (routinely - until a recent abstention - where any form
of censure of Israel was concerned). It is part of taking one's place at the
conference table to accept that sometimes you will put other people's noses
out of joint and sometimes they will put your nose out of joint. Why does
this provoke howls of outrage?

> So, there was no UN Resolution beyond 1441 showing Saddam
> Hussein that the UN, representing the world community, was
> serious about enforcing its own resolutions.  It even made a sham
> of 1441, which did, in fact, call for serious consequences if Saddam
> continued to ignore the UN's demands.

Oh, come on! How many UN resolutions have been made a sham of by the US,
because they didn't fit with the US's agenda? And, anyway, it is highly
doubtful that 1441 was made a sham of. Iraq agreed to the provisions of 1441
on November 13th, 2002 (two days before the daedline), Hans Blix and Mohamed
ElBaradei led weapons inspectors into Iraq later that month, Iraq filed a
12,000-page weapons declaration the following month, on January 30th the
weapons inspectors concluded that Iraq had not complied fully with the terms
of the resolution, but on February 14th (St. Valentine's day!) they
concluded that Iraq had cooperated pretty fully, with a few remaining doubts
that needed more time to resolve. Pretty reasonable, I think, given that it
is always harder to prove a negative (and, remember, it *was* a negative;
the doubts were groundless).

The US seized on these remaining doubts as a pretext to go to war. Britain
went along with that. Given that the doubts proved groundless, isn't it to
the credit of France and others that they dissented, rather than to their
discredit?

> Of course, now we know what was going on behind the scenes
> with the Oil-for-Food scandal.  I would submit to you that no
> decision with a corrupted premise can be a correct decision.
> France, China, and Russia were  bought agents of Saddam Hussein.

Oh, come on again! Sure, there's a scandal here, but we're looking at "270
former government officials, activists, journalists and UN officials from
more than 46 countries charged of profiting from oil-for-food program"
(http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?se
rvice_id=5851). No one is suggesting that the governments of these countries
were involved. The total amount of money is alleged to be $1.7 billion
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52682-2004Oct21.html), much
of which (presumably) would never have left Iraq. Sure, the money Iraq
dished out in kickbacks would keep you or me in luxury for the rest of our
lives, but to suggest that it was sufficient to buy the loyalty of France,
China and Russia is surely ludicrous.

As for decisions based on corrupted premises, I'm sure you're right. I'm
sure the extent and nature of US interest in oil made it impossible for it
to make a correct and impartial decision over Iraq.

> the anti-war marchers where demonstrating by the
> thousands in the all major cities of the west and it's
> outlying locations around the world, including the
> USA.  In all of those demonstrations, I never once
> saw a sign criticizing the regime of Saddam Hussein
> and calling for him to step down.

Well, one knows that dictators aren't going to listen to that kind of plea.
One directs one's pleas towards democratic leaders because they are supposed
to listen to the voice of the people.

> Virtually all of the more vocal demonstrators' anger
> and invective was directed at Bush and Blair.  How
> could Saddam not have believed that he had the world
> community on his side?

He'd have had to be pretty blind to believe that. The prevailing tone
amongst the protestors (barring, perhaps, some Islamic ones) was, "We do not
agree with the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but that does not mean that
you can allow foreign powers and armies to invade Iraq, bomb its cities and
kill innocent people there"
(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/demo-o28.shtml).

> That's the ultimate irony of the piece.  The leftists/
> progressives/liberals were actually acting on behalf
>of a regime that does all the horrible things  to its
>  people that they would otherwise decry in a paroxysm
>  of righteousness.

No one (except, again, some Islamic protestors) was actively supporting
Saddam. Disliking him and his regime is a quite different thing from
accepting a US policy of "pre-emption", the logical extension of which is to
wipe out everyone because one day they or their descendants may turn on you.

> This will completely floor you, but I think the demonstrators were
> dupes, useful idiots, to a bunch of Marxists (see the first
> paragraph of your reply).

I'm not completely floored, since I believe a lot of political manoeuvring
is based on the hijacking of decent sentiments, but I can't quite see why
Marxists would be sticking up for Islamic dictatorships.

> To sum it up, I think it's outrageous that we don't have UN
> support and the complete cooperation and full participation
> of every freedom loving nation in the world.

Harsh as it may sound, my country (England) was subject to tyrannical
despots like Henry VIII and it had to bend down and pick itself up by its
bootstraps to get where it is today. It had to suffer the oppression of its
rulers, go through a revolution, behead its king - the whole gamut
(including, unfortunately, setting off to impose its power and its views
around the world in a way not dissimilar to what the US is doing today). To
imagine that you can save people from that kind of process by going in and
imposing your values on them ("holding their feet to the fire" was Bush's
latest phrase on this subject, I believe, spoken in the context of imposing
democracy on the Palestinians) is simply wrong. You can disapprove - and
there are plenty of countries the US has no intention of invading whose
dictatorial governments I disapprove of heartily - and you can certainly
boycott, embargo, etc., etc.. But the current state of the world is that you
can't legitimately invade another country until that country takes military
action outside its own borders or, alternatively, it becomes clear that the
abuses within the country amount to genocide.

The US can buck against that as much as it likes. In the end, though, if it
doesn't want to accept this truth it will drag itself down and destroy
itself.

> Instead were niggled about unilateralism that isn't unilateralism.

'Tis too! The US had the explicit condemnation of some 100 countries, and
the active military support of only five, four of which only played a token
part.

> we should always act from sound principles, especially
> when the rest of the world has gone off like a
> bunch of lunatics.

"The rest of the world" is an extremely varied and disparate range of
humanity. It has no underlying cultural or political cohesion, nothing that
would explain a spontaneous widespread reaction affecting millions of people
across the globe. If substantial opposition to US policy is emerging from
this broad base of humanity it would be wise to consider that it is just
possible that if there is any lunacy at all it may actually be affecting the
4% who happen to be American, rather than the 96% who are not.

> Sorry, but there are times when appeasing the world community
> is the wrong thing to do.  This is one of those times.

Well, the proof of that pudding will be in the eating. I'd like to think
that 10 or 20 years down the road I might be able to agree with you or, at
least, to feel that your ideas did not cause too much long-term damage,
but - not having a crystal ball - I remain unpersuaded.

> You've seen a little bit of where I'm coming from on these
> matters, so you can safely and correctly extrapolate that I'm
> so far on the other side of what you've written here that we
> might as well end the discussion.

As I stated somewhere near the beginning of this posting, if we are not to
discuss, what are we to do?

> I'd like to address all the points you've made, but it would be just
> too tedious and  a total waste of time.

You mean, if we think differently it isn't worthwhile saying what we think?
But if we thought the same there would be no *need* to say what we think!

> Best wishes to you, John.

And to you, too.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com