Tuesday, December 06, 2005

International Relations

Is Saddam really that evil, or is he just a scapegoat for secretive U.S. foreign policy? Surely he ruled his country with an iron fist, but what 3rd world country leader doesn't?

As for the torture issue, nearly every other country does it, so why can't we? Will it substantially weaken the fact finding agents of the U.S. who extract information concerning our national security from "enemy combatants"?

Another question, has anyone seen that bit on Conan when they put someone else's mouth on Saddam's picture and make him say stupid stuff? It's Nutrageous. And regarding the title of this post "International Relations", I'm not talking about your trip to Puerto Vallarta, Nate.

As for me, I don't really have an opinion on any of these questions, except I do believe that Saddam is a scapegoat...

7 comments:

  1. There's a difference between torture and systematic killing of people who oppose your regime. I've heard arguments saying things were better under Saddam... but there's always the question of "better for who." Is Saddam a scapegoat... he is for the moment as this trial takes attention away from our administration, the planning of the war, and the day-to-day problems the troops experience. He was a good scapegoat for going to war in the first place as well... with no WMD's found everyone said "well at least we removed Saddam and we'll help 'stabilize the region'.


    The problem with condoning torture by U.S. agents is our position in the world. Often times we play up our role as 'defenders of democracy' around the world. When we legitimize torture, we loose respect and

    Tangent: we often play up our role as 'defenders of democracy' around the world, whether or not people want it. Our history is really different compared to other nations, you can't just throw in US style democracy when no one's ever had it... look at Russia and other former Soviet nations... they've got a lot of social and economic problems and they've been trying democracy for almost 15 years now.

    These are just my thoughts of the moment...

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  2. I understand to problem of other nations relying on US intervention, we can't play 'Team America: World Police' and I'm not one to sue someone for helping out... but I think its important to Iraq as a different beast. We went to war because we thought Iraq had WMDs and was a threat to the US and our allies. So we put together a coallition of the willing and went against the UN since they were content with more sanctions and no fly-zones. Since then, the rhetoric used to justify the war has largely focused on fighting the war on terror, defending freedom, liberating the Iraqi people, and bringing in an example of democracy for the middle east.
    See 2002 State of the Union Address.
    Outside of our coalition of the willing, the rest of the world took a seat on this one.

    I know Alex has a done a lot of research on this stuff begining with the first Gulf War... feel like bringing your brain to the table, you out there?

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  3. Just noticed... my "important point" Should have read...
    "it's important to treat Iraq as a different beast."
    -rock on

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  4. There's probably other reasons for us going to war... hmmm let me think. What does Iraq have that we want? Just a wild theory, but maybe oil and money had something to do with our decision to bomb the heck out of a country that never attacked us.

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  5. Politicians who help set up the "New Iraq" can be sure to keep the financial well-being of their constituents in mind when deciding how to run the country. That's how bombing Iraq gets people rich. It also secures big contracts for all those who profit from war.

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  6. All this disucssion is great but I think we are debating the past, The real question is: What do we do now?

    We can talk all about whether it was just, how the intelligence community failed (optimistic view) or Bush lied (pessimistic view), who was making $$$$ off Saddam's regime then and who is making it now...

    A lot of this past discussion focus on what is called the law of inertia in history: Whatever happened seems like it was inevitable, and the alterante course always seems so dumb.

    BUT none of this answers the present question.

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  7. Ok, here's a quick way to fix most of the U.S.'s problems. First, demolish the Federal Reserve System and make all of our money based on precious metals. This will force the govt to "raise taxes" but it will stop govt overspending b/c we the people will be more consciuos of what our govt spends on.

    2nd, we need to put a cap on how much politicians can spend when running for office. This way we won't have Congressmen who owe favors to those who put him into office, especially when they will have to run for office agian in a few years.

    I realize that either of these would probably start a huge world war (especially #1), but I honestly think they are real solutions. The second one probably has some holes in it, I just thought of it about a week ago.

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