Dr. Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute on Deja vu All Over Again in Haiti:
The United States is a superpower that meddles frequently—either overtly or covertly—in the business of nations all over the world. Americans just assume that such interventions have a positive effect in the countries concerned. All too often, however, what seemed to U.S. policymakers like a good idea at the time turns out to be counterproductive, and sometimes disastrous, in the long-term. For example, in the 1980s, the United States helped Iraq, which had invaded Iran, defeat and weaken that chief regional rival—all the while looking the other way when Iraq used poison gas against Iran and Iranian supported Iraqi Kurds. No longer worried about Iran after that victory, Iraq was then free to invade Kuwait, and the result was 13 years of war between the United States and its former secret ally. Likewise, during that same decade, the Carter and Reagan administrations, to oppose their Soviet Cold War rival, funded and trained radical Islamic rebels in remote, non-strategic Afghanistan. After the rebels won that war, some of them turned on the United States and became al Qaeda—one of the most dire threats to the U.S. homeland in the history of the republic.
You can read the rest here. This entry also posted at Stand Down.
Dr. Eland might make more sense if he remembered that other superpowers have been “meddling” in world affairs for the last 400 years.
When the U.S, “meddles” it usually involves billions of dollars in aid, and the lives of our sons and daughters.
Dr. Eland doesn’t seem to accept issues of balance of power. He conveniently ignores that our support for Hussein was at a time in which Iran was gestating the modern virulent Islamo/Fascist infection currently afflicting the world.
Iraq didn’t “win” the Iran/Iraq war. It was clearly a stalemate, far preferable to an Iranian fundamentalist empire in the Middle East.
Iraq’s attack on Kuwait was repelled by America. Shame on us!
America supported the Taliban against the Soviet invasion. This is a bad thing?And Al Queda’s takeover of the Taliban and subsequent targeting of America…this makes us the bad guys how?
In Haiti, Dr. Eland asserts “Racing in with military forces to quell disorder merely rewards those local forces perennially initiating violence to draw in the United States. Paradoxically, if the United States declared that it would not interfere in Haitian society in any way under any circumstances, more Haitian lives would probably be saved in the long-term”
What? Says who? So…racing in to stop machete weilding mobs is the WRONG thing to do? Paradoxically, Dr. Eland believes that by NOT stopping the mobs, MORE lives would be saved.
This is so bizarre and illogical, I can only assume that Dr. Eland starts with a pacifist premise, then discards reason and intellect. The only consistent theme in his piece, is that the U.S. is to blame for the behavior of evryone.
I’m always amused by the same old tired attacks on America. Blaming the U.S. because the world is in turmoil. Blaming the U.S. when people we help end up being enemies.
It sounds like the old pacifist cant always does. Do nothing, and everything will get better. Peace just spontaneously breaks out on it’s own, and democracy is a natural evolution of society. It’s naive, it’s idealogical, and it produces a far more deadly world.
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 15, 2004 12:16 PM
Bosh.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Posted by ThomasWare on March 15, 2004 11:25 PM
Mr. Kessler: Bosh.
Posted by ThomasWare on March 15, 2004 11:27 PM
Robert
You conveniently forget that many of the gun toting mobsters on the streets of Haiti, like Guy Phillipe were funded by your own Republican party. Now we send our troops in to disarm them. Quite logical.
Blame America? No. In this case the Republican party is to blame.
And don’t you ever get tired of trotting out that ridiculous argument that anyone who disagrees with your party line is a mindless, America-hating pacifist/leftist. Is Pat Buchanan an America hating leftist? Yet he makes many of the same points Dr. Eland does from a right wing perspective:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18074
And as for your rhetorical question regarding the Taliban and our support -I’ve asked you this before: isn’t it a central thesis of Republican ideology that people are responsible for their own behavior? Isn’t that why Republicans think welfare, and spending on social programs and all the rest are bad things? So why shouldn’t American leaders who funded the Taliban be held responsible for *their* actions? Apparently only poor people need to be held responsible. Rich people who are government officials (or CEOs) are automatically absolved of all blame.
As always, your arguments boils down to: America (at least those who rule the country) is perfect, so even when America does really awful and/or stupid things which come back and bite us on the ass, it’s not our fault, because we are perfect and therefore inherently incapable of doing wrong. And that’s just so obvious that anyone who thinks differently or dares to raise even the mildist criticism has to be an American hating pacifist.
Now *that’s* logical thinking!
Posted by aronst on March 16, 2004 02:09 AM
Aron,
Of course it’s always easier to look backwards and pronounce what we obviously “should have done”, but life unwinds forwards, and answers are frequesntly best guess made under the pressure of time constraints.
Second of all, I don’t understand how you characterize the U.S.’s ongoing efforts to stabilize and secure Haiti as “It’s not our fault”. We DO take responsibility for our actions, and work to fix mistakes.
By the way, what do you think of the unfolding U.N. “blood for oil contracts” scandal?
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 16, 2004 01:07 PM
Aron,
Of course it’s always easier to look backwards and pronounce what we obviously “should have done”, but life unwinds forwards, and answers are frequesntly best guess made under the pressure of time constraints.
Second of all, I don’t understand how you characterize the U.S.’s ongoing efforts to stabilize and secure Haiti as “It’s not our fault”. We DO take responsibility for our actions, and work to fix mistakes.
By the way, what do you think of the unfolding U.N. “blood for oil contracts” scandal?
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 16, 2004 01:07 PM
Robert
There is nothing wrong at looking backwards and trying to learn from your mistakes, It is foolish however to try to whitewash the past.
You still seem to be missing the point in Haiti. America, like in many other places around the world, supported ruthless and brutal murderers and undermined a democratic regime. Going in now is like the fireman arsonist who sets the fire and then says, “see what a hero I am” when he rushes in to put it out. Or like the man who kills his parents and pleads for mercy as an orphan – you know, hutzpah.
Gazza and Robert
As for the sins of France or the UN or anyone else for that matter, I’ld like to add a couple of points to Brendan, Why go all the way to China? France is the other country that send soldiers into Haiti and helped undermine Aristede. But asking those who oppossed the war about the sins of the UN or France is guilt by association. Yes France oppossed the war. Yes I oppossed the war. Does that mean that I support everything France does? Of course not. Sure I like French wine and I I have a French girlfriend. So does that make me a supporter of French colonialist crimes? Of course not. We’ve through this many times. This is not logic, but a smear campaign.
Moreover, the implication always is that France is “soft on terror” and coddling of the Islamicists. Are you aware that France has commandoes in Afghanistan working alongside the US in the hunt for bin Laden? And the ban on the veil in schools (something I think is anti-democratic) is hardly coddling Islamicists. France does many things congenial to your militaristic ideology. If you want to pick on pacifistic countries go after the Scandinavians (although we can always dredge up their Viking past).
In any case, how does the mistakes and bad actions of others compensate for what the US is doing? The US is the undisputed Super Power, the leader of the world, as you yourself contend. It’s actions have more impact on more people than any other country. Wrong action on the part of France is wrong and harmful. Wrong action on the part of the US is wrong and can lead to world-wide catastrophe.
As an aside Robert, I already had a discussion on the UN oil sanction scandal with Gazza. Go back a few articles. No need to repeat it here. The short answer is that the US was heavily involved in that too, as attested to by a US embassy report I brought and extensively quoted.
Posted by aronst on March 16, 2004 01:27 PM
“Mo! Larry! Can o’ peas!”
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 16, 2004 01:11 PM
Robert
I found this quote which answers your points quite nicely.
‘BEFORE YOU CLICK on my face and call me naive, let me concede some points. Yes, the West needed Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yes, there were times during the Cold War when supporting one villain (Cambodia’s Lon Nol, for instance) would have been better than the alternative (Pol Pot). So yes, there are times when any nation must hold its nose and shake hands with the devil for the long-term good of the planet.
But just as surely, there are times when the United States, faced with such moral dilemmas, should have resisted the temptation to act. Arming a multi-national coalition of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan during the 1980s – WELL AFTER the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 – was one of those times.’ (EMPHASIS ADDED: In other words, don’t kid yourself that the US ‘didn’t know’ what the ‘Islamo-fascists’ were capable of or what sort of people they were).
‘By no means was Osama bin Laden the leader of Afghanistan’s mujahedeen. His money gave him undue prominence in the Afghan struggle, but the vast majority of those who fought and died for Afghanistan’s freedom – like the Taliban regime that now holds sway over most of that tortured nation – were Afghan nationals.
Yet the CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan made famous by Rudyard Kipling, found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to “read” than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, along with a small group of Islamic militants from Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian refugee camps all over the Middle East, became the “reliable” partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.’
In other words, the CIA could have used genuine Afghan fighters (freedom fighters if you will….some of whom even entertained notions of democracy and pluralism). However, they chose not to do that, and instead chose to ENCOURAGE the influx of Islamic fundamentalists into an already volatile situation.
‘It should be pointed out that the evidence of bin Laden’s connection to these activities is mostly classified, though its hard to imagine the CIA rushing to take credit for a Frankenstein’s monster like this.
It is also worth acknowledging that it is easier now to oppose the CIA’s Afghan adventures than it was when Hatch and company made them in the mid-1980s. After all, in 1998 we now know that far larger elements than Afghanistan were corroding the communist party’s grip on power in Moscow. Even Hatch can’t be blamed completely. The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its “mission,” had conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy director Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet military and technological capabilities in its annual “Soviet Military Power” report right up to 1990.’
As anyone who has any sense knows, CIA ‘estimates’ (or ‘fantasies’ as they used to be called) were ALWAYS political documents, whose sole purpose was to gain more power and money for the CIA. Giving our elected leaders worthwhile insight into the geo-political situation such that they might be able to make intelligent decisions was never an important consideration.
‘Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money – and most importantly – the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.’
http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1
As Moran puts it: ‘What’s intelligent about this?’. The answer is: nothing. It was a completely stupid, misguided policy that led to the creation of modern Islamic terrorism, and was, over and above that, the result of a complete inability to cope with the real world: a realpolitik that wasn’t even real. I might add that we know what we know only through unclassified files: it is likely that the full story, as yet classified, will be even worse.
What we know already is bad enough: For example: it is not true that the US began to fund the ‘resistance’ as a result of the Soviet invasion:
‘One of the most fascinating items of Internet samizdat is a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, conducted by the French publication Le Nouvel Observateur. In the interview — translated by author and CIA critic William Blum — Brzezinski boasts that the CIA was supporting guerilla activities inside Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention, taking steps to “induce” the Soviets to intervene:
BRZEZINSKI: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
LNO: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
BRZEZINSKI: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? ‘
My own personal opinion is that Brzezinski should be forced to explain to each and every relative of everyone killed in 9/11 and explain his comment about a few ‘stirred up Muslims’. But perhaps that’s just me being ’emotional’ and
‘irrational’ (Perhaps the CIA will overthrow me).
And finally: whatever the motives for US involvement in Afghanistan, morality wasn’t part of it.
‘As a U.S. State Department memo stated at the time: “The United States’ larger interest would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.”
http://www.fair.org/extra/0112/samzidat.html
‘Blaming the U.S. when people we help end up being enemies’. Bin Laden et al were ALWAYS our enemeies and only a foreign policy hopelessly biased towards the totalitarian state of Saudi Arabia could have missed it.
Posted by Brendan on March 16, 2004 09:02 AM
Speaking of Countries sticking their nose in other Countries business.
What’s your opinion of FRANCE JOINING WITH CHINA in an effort to intimidate Taiwan???
“China and France will hold rare joint naval exercises off the mainland’s eastern coast on Tuesday, just four days before Beijing’s rival, Taiwan, holds presidential elections.
China’s official Xinhua news agency made no link between the exercises off Qingdao — about 780 miles from Taiwan’s northernmost point — and the election.
But the show of military strength and solidarity signaled China’s desire to isolate the self-governing island before the vote and its first-ever referendum, which Beijing views as a provocative step toward independence”.
Don McArthur observes: “Either the world is insane, the French are insane, or I’ve gone insane . . . the French are joining the Chinese Communists in an attempt to intimidate a Democracy?!?!”
There’s apparently no limit to what the French are willing to do in order to feel important on the world stage. That’s a form of insanity, I guess, though I suppose it’s possible that these exercises were entered into without thought of the Taiwanese elections, at least on the part of the French.
Posted by Gazza on March 16, 2004 07:39 AM
Listen, will you people grow up about the French? Despite the accusations of ‘cowardice’ the French have ALWAYS been incredibly ruthless in terms of their foreign policy objectives…especially in Algeria
http://www.codoh.com/newsdesk/960810.HTML
‘Known as an adept of “French Algeria”, he was in charge of making war againsy the Algerian nationalist movement known as the FLN. This war had been started by the French socialist governement in 1954, with Mitterrand as Home Minister, in order to smash the nascent anticolonial movement. As Prime Minister, Michel Debré took responsibility for the terrorist operations of the French Army. These mopping up operation were codenamed “Maintaining the Order”. Villages were burned to the ground, local farming populations were deported and put into concentration camps. Women were raped, burned and killed. Men were arrested and tortured. A flow of protest emerged in France itself and the government replied by censoring newspapers and banning a lot of books. In the United Nations, France was systematically condemned and got support only from Apartheid South Africa and Israel (of course).
The enormous, repetitive, massive crimes against humanity (against unarmed civilians) and war crimes committed by French repression forces were ordered or covered by Michel Debré in his capacity as Prime Minister. His direct responsability was involved.’
Then there was the Rainbow Warrier incident;
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=179002
‘French politicians tried to shower their secret service agents with gifts of cognac and fine wine just weeks after they had been sentenced for the Rainbow Warrior bombing, newly released documents reveal.
A previously top-secret dossier shows that a diplomatic spat broke out when New Zealand prison officials refused to give Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur the Christmas gifts sent from Paris.
The Weekend Herald can reveal that just weeks after the pair had been imprisoned for the manslaughter of a Greenpeace photographer killed in the blast, the French External Relations Minister, Roland Dumas, sent the agents a case of Bordeaux region wine for Christmas. The bottles were from his own vineyard. ‘ Other countries might complain or use the police against environmentalists. The French just blew them up. Those of you who think ‘the left’ are congenitally pro-French might reflect that it is not long since there was a (moderately) succesful buoycott of French products for their position on nuclear testing.
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/rw/testchro.html
And one could go on. However this condemnation doesn’t really go very far unless you see that other countries play the same game. After all, after the French had finished their neo-colonial games in Vietnam who took over? Well i think we all know the answer to that one.
I have noticed that pro-war websites concentrate a lot on the (appalling corruption) of the French political scene, and perhaps rightly so. However they tend not to dwell on a country even more corrupt and undemocratic, to the extent that some people doubt that it would actually be allowed into the EU were it not already in: Berlusconi’s Italy. In the same way, it is quite ‘politically correct’ to talk about the misuse of the media in Putin’s Russia (correctly, in my opinion). However this is in no way different from the use Berlusconi has made of his Media Empire…and as for links with organised crime, let’s not even go there.
So why the mysterious silence?
Posted by Brendan on March 16, 2004 08:36 AM
For those with the ability to pay attention, unlike certain serial posters, Dr. Eland is an anti-interventionist libertarian (like me), not a pacifist.
It isn’t that hard to understand.
Really.
Unless one is a chickenhawk, sitting in the safety of one’s own chair, incessantly clucking away (or making excuses for those who do) about how other men and women absolutely must risk their lives in a series of never-ending wars, police actions and “liberations.”
Of course, that’s just my opinion as an anti-interventionist libertarian Gulf War veteran.
Posted by James Landrith on March 16, 2004 11:02 AM
Can i just use James’ point to ram home something i have now said about twenty times: opposition to the war was NOT exclusively from the left. Many many people who have contributed to this blog would characterise themselves as being ‘centrists’ or even ‘conservatives’. Caricaturing those who opposed the war as being ‘leftists’ or ‘pacifists’ or ‘peaceniks’ or similar is ‘straw man’ ‘ad hominen’ arguing at its worst. I might also add that a few of the contributors (like James) have actually had some experience of war, as opposed to those who sit about watching it on CNN with a beer, cheering on ‘our boys’ as our boys get their legs blown off.
Posted by Brendan on March 16, 2004 12:02 PM
Also, I must commend those who have come up with the phrase “anti-interventionist”.
It sounds so much more courageous and butch than “isolationist”, which of course always preceeds “appeaser”.
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 16, 2004 01:10 PM
Robert
apart from the fact that Bush was voted in on an isolationist platform, i do find the charge of appeasement mind boggling. What is US policy towards Saudi Arabia if not appeasement? Or do you think ‘collaboration’ is a better word? If we are talking about invasions, what about US policy towards Indonesia vis a vis East Timor? (And so on).
Posted by Brendan on March 16, 2004 02:02 PM
As an add on to Brendan’s last point:
Let’s not forget Bush & Co’s policy re; Pakistan. They are crowing about all the WMD they got from Libya, but who helped Libya get that stuff in the first place – Bush & Co’s great friend Mussharief. And go read Salon’s excerpts from the book about Bush & Co and Saudia Arabia. Even if it’s only 10% true it’s enough to make your hair stand on end.
The world is not black or white. Limiting military intervention is not the same as isolationism, nor is it at all the same as appeasement nor does it imply pacifism. But equating military adventures with legitimate self-defense is a position associated with totalitarian regimes, not democracies. So is calling anyone who disagrees with you a traitor.
Posted by aronst on March 16, 2004 04:20 PM
Okay, fellas.
Missing the forest for the trees again.
You don’t like the CIA working to overthrow a Soviet backed regime in Kabul?Okay. So you support the Soviets.
You can’t understand why we supported Indonesia against the Soviets to the detriment of East Timor? Okay. You don’t believe in a Soviet threat.
You don’t understand why we support the Saudi’s but not Saddam Hussein?Okay. So you don’t understand the difference between a ruling family that can be negotiated with, and a single-minded tyrant. Notice the current Saudi crackdown on Al Qaida. Hellllllooooooooooooo……
Limiting military intervention when the Soviet Union is running an active campaign to enslave the world, or Arab Fascists are blowing up trains and flying planes into building around the globe, is suicide.
You think you care because you cry for the innocent victims, but it’s a war. Innocent victims always die in war. Our enemies don’t give a damn. We do. But that doesn’t mean we can hunker down in a hidey hole and hope no one gets hurt.
The Left always says “If the United States hadn’t done this or that back then, then this or that wouldn’t be happening NOW.” That’s simple nonsense.
Let me throw this question out there:
What are YOUR suggestions for solving the world’s conflicts? And I don’t want proposals, I want solutions that you can guarantee will work, and that no one can look back on in the future and say “If we hadn’t done that then…..”
Posted by Robert Kessler on March 18, 2004 01:20 PM
Robert
ok so we are in this world of binary opposites now are we?
So therefore by definition (BY DEFINITION) in world war 2 we supported the Soviets. Sorry, no way out…we ‘handed’ Poland etc. to the USSR after the war. So Churchill et al were on the side of the USSR. By definition.
‘You don’t like the CIA working to overthrow a Soviet backed regime in Kabul?Okay. So you support the Soviets.’
Actually as i pointed out to you, the Afghanistan war was engineered by the US to draw in the USSR and get revenge for Vietnam (what the USSR had to do with Vietnam is anyone’s guess, but let that pass). However let that pass. So BY DEFINITION, you are stating that you were on the side of Osama bin Laden. If you have to choose you have made your choice.
‘You can’t understand why we supported Indonesia against the Soviets to the detriment of East Timor? Okay. You don’t believe in a Soviet threat.’
I have never, in all my born days, heard anyone serious state that the USSR had a plan to take over East Timor. However, again, let’s let that pass. So you are saying that if you have to choose, you backed and supported the genocidal regime of Suharto, and the slaughter of 500,000 people. Ok. At least we know where we stand now. Tell me, would you have killed these people yourself? I mean gunned down the children and women with a maching gun as they ran?If not, why not?
The problem here isn’t your conclusions: it’s your premises. You see the world (ironically? Perhaps not) as Lenin did. Lenin (as you will know from your vast reading of the literature on Soviet Communism) saw every situation as ‘kto-ktogo’: ‘who-whom’.
That is, every situation is essentially a struggle where one person stuffs it to another person.
Another assumption you have is that life is easily divided into binary opposites: ‘good’ ‘evil’ … ‘right’ ‘wrong’ etc. and that if you are not on one side you are by definition you are on the other.
Robert, that’s bollocks. Sorry but it is. It’s the way that children (and fanatics) think. I find it disturbing that a grown adult thinks that way. It’s perfectly possible, for example, to support the ‘war on terror’ (I don’t really like that phrase, if only because it recalls other triumphs like the ‘war drugs’….remember that? The war that solved the drug problem?) and not support the war on iraq. Equally it’s perfectly possible to support the war on terror in the abstract but disagree about specific tactics. In fact it is precisely because we can have disagreements about tactics that we are likely to win. Remember part of the reason the Nazis lost the war was because they had only ONE plan, and no conversation, no disagreement. Democracies tend to be more flexible than totalitarian states for this very reason.
You don’t have to go as far as Karl Kraus (‘if i have to choose the lesser of two evils i choose neither’) to realise that ‘lesser of two evils’ is extremely dangerous thinking. Who decides which are the two evils, and which is the lesser? The people actually being threatened? Obviously not, or we would not have backed Suharto. The East Timorese didn’t get a choice: they just got killed raped and tortured. Who, then?
Well in actuality we all know the answer to that one. It’s the US and Britain who decide. And so an elision is made: from the ‘lesser of two evils’ in the ABSTRACT sense to the ‘lesser of two evils’ to BRITAIN AND THE US. And so, Britain and the US always choose the ‘lesser evil’ that will be in their NATIONAL INTEREST. And that of course, includes financial and geo-political interests. There are also of course the ordinary working people who will have to be killed (gassed? perhaps) skinned and tortured in order to further our national interest, but many of these people don’t even have DVD players, and therefore only have a superficial resemblance to human beings.
Incidentally, Robert have you actually READ any of my posts? I have made at least four (maybe more i forget) concrete proposals for helping to make the world a better place. These include:
1: Following the example of the US in Britain such that arms deals (including for dual use weaponry) have to include ‘end user’ certificates: so the WHOLE SHIPMENT from beginning to end is legal under British law (to repeat, this is already the case in the US).
2: Closer cooperation between the CIA and FBI with a possible shared database to enable them to share terrorist information.
3: Support (if only verbal at this stage) for Saudi dissidents promoting democracy (as opposed to ignoring them because they are perceived as being ‘insufficiently friendly’ to the West).
4: I would also drop all sanctions unless there is an overwhelming case for them (the one exception, apparently was South Africa, but in any case there should be clear criteria for their use….they shoudl also be strictly targeted against the ruling elite, not the ordinary people).
ok thats four. I note that you have not proposed any solutions for anything in any of your posts. Why not?
Posted by Brendan on March 19, 2004 06:09 AM
Robert
Incidentally i can’t believe you are gullble enough to actually take the current Saudi ‘crackdown’ on Al-Qaeda seriously. Hellooooooooo…………..
‘ “There are substantial elements of the royal family that do not view the United States as an ally against terrorism,” U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., said when discussing the 9/11 report, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers. “Right now, Saudi Arabia is a far greater threat to Americans than Iraq ever was.” Wexler’s comments followed his recent return from a third trip to the kingdom…..
Saudi Arabia is a sacred cow. It’s sort of like Israel in this sense; it’s been defined as an ally. But since Saudi Arabia is the source of most of the money and most of the hijackers, they have a long way to go before they’re a true partner in this war on terrorism. Believe me, we would see it leaked in the press if they were providing the same help that the British, the French, the Pakistanis, the Egyptians, and all these other countries are — even Syria has provided more help than Saudi Arabia, and they’re not exactly friends of this town. ‘
‘Given that Syria are cracking down on Al-Qaeda more than Saudi Arabia, i take it you now think we should back the Syrians? Gosh the exciting world of geo-political realpolitik makes my head spin….
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/01/baer/index1.html
Posted by Brendan on March 19, 2004 06:19 AM