[Rhodes22-list] stirring the hornet's nest.... (political)

[Slim]

Never mind the spin or the rhetoric, forget about so-called intelligence,
never mind your own left or right stripes.  What does your gut really say to
you about this war?  Here's what mine tells me:

First the tyranny of Saddam. This is no reason to invade a sovereign state.
The US has ignored or even supported so many tyrants I can't count 'em.  But
just to name a few, Pinochet, The Shaw of Iran, Kim Jong Ill, even Saddam
himself was armed by the US.  So we say, "He's abusing his own citizens so
we better go in there and take him down."  Not only is this bad foreign
policy, but it's bullshit policy because we don't really care.  We didn't
care about the Shaw's death squads or Pinochet's.  Why now Saddam?  The
whole tyrant argument holds no water at all.

The same goes for the argument about spreading freedom and democracy. What a
load of crap!  Don't tell me that our government actually give a rat's ass
about an Iraqi democracy.  No, I'm not saying democracy itself is crap, but
why would we care about Iraq when we don't care about the dozens of other
non-democratic countries?  Why Iraq?  Why not invade Cuba?  Isn't Fidel a
tyrant?  Why not North Korea?  We know Kim Jong Ill is a tyrant.  This is
bad foreign policy.

I agreed with Mike Abdullah when he stated we had no business in Kuwait in
the first place.  We shouldn't be fighting other countries' border battles.
As Mike said, What was Saddam going to do with his oil?  Drink it?  He was
selling it on the open market and black market just like every other Arab
state.  That was bad foreign policy.

But whatever, then we had Saddam completely contained with the no-fly-zone
and the sanctions.  He was no threat to us.  Perhaps he was a "threat" to
Israel, but why go to war with someone you've already beaten?  This is bad
foreign policy.

Did we need to go in and hunt for WMD?  Do we need to go into ANY country
hunting for WMD?  Again, why not North Korea?  This is bad foreign policy.

Did we need to go into Iraq to control the oil?  No.  What have oil prices
done since then?  The exact same thing they would have done had we not gone
to war.  They've gone up.  Happy now?

Did we need to go into Iraq as a response to 9/11?  This is asinine foreign
policy.  Everyone knows Saddam had nothing to do with that.

Thousands are now dead or wounded so Halliburton could make a windfall.
Folks, the definition of Fascism is when government is in bed with business.
THIS IS VERY BAD FOREIGN POLICY!

Our government is despised by nearly every soul outside our borders.  And
over half those inside!  Do polls dictate our policy?  I think not.
Although I noticed the Indonesians' attitude towards us perked up a bit
after all the tsunami relief money that poured in.  But even our low-key,
happy neighbors to the north hate Bush.  The joke going around Canada is
that all you have to do to get elected is to be anti-Bush.  I won't go into
how mein furor is screwing Canada on the softwoods issue.  I'll leave that
for another thread.  But we buy lots and lots of oil from Canada so we ought
to be nice to her.  Guess who else wants Canadian oil?  China.  And lots and
lots of it.  Maybe we should invade Canada.  Yeah, that's the ticket, eh!

It's beyond me how anyone can favor this war for any reason.

Slim