[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[Aloofi]

Europe can do nothing about the US, but the truth is that the US can do nothing about Europe too.

I don't think the US population would support any kind of war against Europe, unless Europe strike first, that is.

But the real thing is the cost of any US-Europe confrontation:
-Can Europe fund an army comparable to the US?
-Can the US fund an army to oppose Europe without relocating its troops already defending important strategic objectives?

In my opinion, none of them is really willing to go to the end. It looks to me like they have opoussed interests, but those interests are not unreconcilables.
Doesn't matter how much the Euros hate the US, their goverments know that the Empire can be oppossed, but not fought. At the same time, the chickenhawk brigade in the White House knows that they can bark at Europe all they want, but they can't bite.

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[ May 12, 2003, 15:44: Message edited by: Aloofi ]

[Aloofi]

Article:

Wrong Turn

by Abraham D. Sofaer (Commentary) May 12, 2003


Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration convened in Madrid an international conference on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

This was an event that political leaders all over the world had been pursuing as if it were the holy grail of international diplomacy. It set in motion a decade of "peacemaking" that included the treaty between Israel and Jordan but whose most visible fruit was the Oslo accords of 1993.

In recent months, three years into the bloody Palestinian assault on Israel that the Oslo peace process became, the same dynamic has once again been in play, as international diplomats and government officials have scrambled to take advantage of the anticipated defeat of Saddam Hussein by pushing forward their preferred solutions.

President Bush himself predicted in late February that "success in Iraq could . . . begin a new stage of Middle Eastern peace," while England and other European nations, keen to demonstrate their good faith to the Arab world, have gone much farther. In the very first week of the war, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, complaining about an alleged double standard when it came to "injustice against the Palestinians," equated U.N. resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein's threats to international peace with those condemning Israel on a range of less significant matters.

A more evenhanded view underlies the latest diplomatic initiative to address the Israel-Palestinian dispute. This is the famous "road map" prepared by the "quartet" of the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia. The road map, released earlier this week, proposes a two-state solution to the conflict, to be reached in three phases.

In Phase I, the Palestinians are to "declare" an end to violence and terrorism; undertake "visible" efforts to prevent attacks on Israelis, consolidate all security forces under an "empowered" interior minister, and restructure Palestinian institutions through numerous, detailed measures.

Israel, for its part, is to call for an end to violence against Palestinians; cooperate in rebuilding a viable Palestinian security force; cease all actions "undermining trust," including deportations, demolition of homes and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; take measures to improve the humanitarian situation; and immediately "dismantle" settlement outPosts erected since March 2001" and freeze all other settlement activity, including "natural growth."

All this is to happen by next month. Then comes Phase II, which foresees the "option" of creating a Palestinian state, with provisional borders, attributes of sovereignty and maximum territorial continuity; the completion date for this phase is the end of 2003. Phase III, which is to result in a final agreement between the parties settling all outstanding issues, is to be completed by the end of 2005.

The road map was given a major boost on March 14 when President Bush affirmed his support for it and promised to publish it as soon as the Palestinians appointed a new prime minister with "real authority." British Prime Minister Tony Blair promptly signaled his readiness to put pressure on Israel to move the process forward whether Palestinian violence ceases or not. Meanwhile, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have claimed to accept the road map "in principle"--a standard Middle East negotiating ploy--although both sides have major differences with it. In particular, Ariel Sharon's government has insisted that Palestinians must end all attacks before Israel is required to take any steps on the proposed "road."

Quite apart from its wildly optimistic timetable, many substantive objections can and should be raised to the road map. Still, it may be stipulated that the plan's aim--a two-state solution--is a reasonable one, accepted by the present Israeli government. But the mere recitation of a valid aim, even when coupled with a scheme for negotiations and escalating concessions, will hardly suffice to realize the peace envisioned by the road map's authors. The problem is that this road map, like many plans for Middle East peace, expects to bring an end to Palestinian violence against Israel without addressing the reasons why the Palestinians have deliberately and repeatedly chosen that path.

Dennis Ross, the former U.S. negotiator for the Middle East, recently admitted that ever since the Last Gulf War, he and other U.S. negotiators failed to take seriously the Palestinian Authority's steadfast refusal to end violence. (As Mr. Ross put it in State Department doublespeak: "The prudential issues of compliance were neglected and politicized by the Americans in favor of keeping the peace process afloat.") Instead, in the face of the continuing violence, the U.S. kept pressing Israel to make further concessions, thereby convincing Palestinians that they could go on cheating and killing and still procure the benefits for which they had been negotiating. In the end, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they might even force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza as it had been forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000.

But Palestinian violence is a much more serious and difficult problem than even Dennis Ross now admits. It is the product of an environment that fosters, shelters, encourages and rewards acts aimed at nullifying Israel's very existence. And that environment is itself the creation not only of the Palestinians, or of the Arabs, but also of the international community--including the U.S. To change this situation requires changing not just the actions and attitudes of Palestinians but the policies and practices of others, again including the U.S. No recognition of these facts, let alone any acknowledgment of the need to do something about them, has been made part of the road map--which is again why it shares the basic flaw of every Middle East peace plan that has preceded it.

The policies and practices I have in mind can be broken down into categories, of which the first has to do with terrorism.

The United States portrays itself, properly, as leading the world-wide effort to combat terrorism. Some longstanding American policies, however, have contributed to terrorism, and especially to terrorism against Israel. Although steps have been taken to rectify matters in the wake of September 11, terrorists and supporters of terrorism continue to be abetted by the U.S. in their determination to control the destiny of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Consider, first, the longstanding strategy of Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization to keep as many Palestinians as possible living under horrible conditions in refugee camps, close to Israel. The camps, first set up after the 1948 war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel, are administered by an arm of the United Nations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA now spends more than $400 million a year to assist a population that has swollen over the past half century to some 4.5 million, relatively few of whom are refugees by any accepted definition of the term. The whole system could not have been better designed both to endanger Israel's security and to damage its moral reputation.

In the late 1980s, when I was running the legal adviser's office in the State Department, my colleague Nicholas Rostow and I proposed to Secretary George Shultz that the U.S. move toward ending its financial support of UNRWA programs that perpetuated the exploitation of refugees as tools of the radical Palestinian cause. The "building"--as the department is called by insiders--rose up in opposition. Our diplomats acknowledged that the camps were awful places that bred hatred and terrorism. But, they claimed, it was too late to do anything about it, and anyway the camps would disappear once peace was achieved. They declined to consider the possibility that the camps were helping to prevent peace from being achieved.

What would an alternative look like? It would include plans for building permanent homes for Palestinian refugees within Palestinian territories on the West Bank or in nearby states. As the scholar Scott B. Lasensky has recently suggested, incentive programs could also be put in place to encourage refugees to relocate and neighboring Arab states to accept them. Such resettlement could commence immediately; as long as it does not, we will be continuing to aid in solidifying the sentiments that lead to terrorism.

Second, the Palestinian educational system is an abomination; it, too, is largely funded by the U.N., with the substantial support of American taxpayers. In their schools, Palestinian children are taught mendacious Versions of their own history as well as of Jewish culture, history and beliefs. Generations have been fed on propaganda that denies the legitimacy of the state of Israel while simultaneously glorifying intolerance, fanaticism and "martyrdom."

Very little that is actually useful--engineering, computer technology, science, finance--is taught in these schools. In the private, religiously funded schools, things are still worse. There, in the words of Itamar Marcus, "children have been taught to hate, and to die for Allah. Their childhood has been destroyed by indoctrination to hate and kill Jews as well as Americans and Westerners in general."

The U.N. and the U.S. have allowed these terrible practices to continue for years. Although efforts have been made recently to restrict the flow of funds to some schools, little if anything has been done to halt the teachings themselves. How can Palestinians realistically be expected to accept Israel as long as they continue to convey to their children that Israel is unacceptable, and that terrorism against it is a noble undertaking?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Sofaer, a senior fellow at Stanford Univerity's Hoover Institution served as legal adviser tp the State Department from 1985 to 1990. The complete article of the author appears in the May 2003 edition of Commentary.

[oleg]

A bit of news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/3018063.stm

Now we know Iraq did NOT have any WMD whatsoever.
Public was duped by Bush & Blair. If I had any doubts, then none anymore.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
I don't think the US population would support any kind of war against Europe, unless Europe strike first, that is.

There is a more important reason this will not happen. Democracies do not make war on each other. "Free" countries do not make war on each other. It is an observable fact os history and our best hope for world peace.

Think of all the wonderful things we will be able to focus on when we no longer have to worry about national defense. Then, maybe, some nation can give Marx' vision a proper try.

[Loser]

Originally posted by oleg:
Now we know Iraq did NOT have any WMD whatsoever.
Public was duped by Bush & Blair. If I had any doubts, then none anymore.

I hope someone at least read that article.

they had consistently found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, or to have been looted and burned.

That doesn't mean nothing was there, just that it was destroyed.

The force will hand over to a new team, the Iraq Survey Group.

The matter is still being investigated, just by a different group. Likely a group more suited to the long term work it will take to actually find these things or conclusively prove they are not there.

"Why are we doing any planned targets?" said Army Chief Warrant Officer Richard L Gonzales, leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, reports the Washington Post.

"Answer me that. We know they're empty."

This guy knows why we didn't find anything. That pulled team was only looking in sites the U.S. knew of from before the war. Saddam's men would have had to have been fools not to move things that had been sitting there that long.

This kind of jump-on-what-you've-got behavior reminds me of some Bible-belt fundamentalist pointing at every failed attempt to pin down a 'missing link' as proof that evolution is bunk and as reason to teach creationism in school.

It's the same mistake being made by the other side. Every vague chance of an NBC (nuclear/biological/chemical) site is being reported as a 'find' before the determination could possibly be made. Both sides need to wait until word is really in. One way or the other the matter will not be decided before the passage of many moons.

[Edit: [qoute] is not [quote]]

[ May 12, 2003, 16:55: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Wardad]

Originally posted by Loser:
... Democracies do not make war on each other. "Free" countries do not make war on each other. It is an observable fact os history and our best hope for world peace....
[/QB]

The Iroquois tribes were a confederation of 5 tribes. Each tribe had it's own laws and government. They were more representative then most governments. If you consider the established shared influence of women as a hallmark of democracy, well then they were the most democratic of their time.

So what happened to the Iroquois tribes? They were split up and destroyed by siding on both sides of a factional fight between two almost democratic societies, Britain and the USA.

[ May 12, 2003, 17:19: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Wardad:
So what happened to the Iroquois tribes? They were split up and destroyed by siding on both sides a factional fight between two almost democratic societies, Britain and the USA.

Good point. I guess non-western democracies didn't count. Hope that's been fixed.

[Loser]

Wardad:
A matriarchal or matrilineal society does not a democracy make. There have been many cultures with matriarchal or matrilineal bases who were not anything close to democracies.

I understand a lot of western education may lead someone to believe that a government of women is somehow a better government, but it is not true. Matriarchies are not less likely to get in wars, promote slavery, or practice euthanasia. They are, however, less likely to survive.

The League of Five Nations, the Iroquois Tribes, whatever you want to call them, many have been close to a democracy, but that does not dispute the "democracies don't make war on each other" rule. Neither the English Colonies, nor the British Empire, nor the French Empire were democracies. Democracies will make war on other governments, but they will not make war on each other.

[geoschmo]

Loser, simply because they haven't in the past doesn't prove they never will. Up to this point in history Democracies are still fairly rare. They've been around for thousands of years, but it's only been in the Last 60 years we've had more than one or two running at the same time. The bunch we have now have all been pretty dependant on each other until the Last ten years to defend against the threat of the communist bloc, perceived or real. Now that that is gone we'll get a good test of your theory in the next 50 to hundred years I think.

Geoschmo

[tesco samoa]

oleg
perhaps the us inspectors did not get an email of Powell's PowerPoint Presentaion

So what was the reason again for war on Iraq ??