So why should we have not started the war someplace else, like the Falklands
for example. Now that is something Keith and the others have not considered
about Tony Blair. I can just see the Cappo calling Blair and saying,
"Look here Tony, our Don Ronnie supported your government when you
Brits did the stupid number over that sheep island. He even broke that
'Monroe Dogma...I know, I know I was jest testin youse 'Doctrine.' Look
when we did Kuwait wit my Dad we hardly lost more than you did in that
stupid little bar fight. So look here, we supported youse and I want you
to return the favor. If Don Ronnie and my Dad could take a chance, you
can take a chance. You owe us. And if you don't then all of these
contracts for the new Condos under the bridge in Newark are off see.!"
George II.
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Karen Watters Cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Keith Hudson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Sequencing foreign policy
> Dictators are dictators and juntas are juntas. I've seen a prison, no
> longer used thank God, on an island off the coast of Brazil that I'm
pretty
> sure was as bad as anything that Stalin, Ceaus�escu, or Saddam might have
> used. In Argentina, people are still looking for lost sons and daughters.
> And there's Pinochet in Chile. It's not a matter of degree. People who
> maintain their power by denial of freedom, torture and killing are evil,
and
> I would find it very difficult to try to distinguish which of them are
more
> evil than others.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Karen Watters Cole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 1:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [Futurework] Sequencing foreign policy
>
>
> Hi Karen,
>
> Robert D.Kaplan's widely-discussed article (Nov 2002 piece in the Atlantic
> Monthly) really needs a thorough analysis and criticism, so shot through
is
> it with half-baked ideas and wrong historical facts. But much as I'd enjoy
> doing this, I have no time at present. Let me just dwell on one brief
> excerpt:
>
> <<<<
> But first the immediate issue: Iraq. The level of repression in Iraq
equals
> that in Romania under the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaus�escu or in the
> Soviet Union under Stalin; thus public opinion there is unknowable.
> Nevertheless, two historical cultural tendencies stand out in Iraq: urban
> secularism and a grim subservience.
> >>>>
>
> Nasty though Saddam is, it's just plain ridiculous to put him on the same
> scale as Stalin or Ceaus�escu. Stalin killed several million kulaks or
> "rich" (that is, enterprising) peasants outright in order to nationalise
> their land and cow the remaining peasants. He also killed or imprisoned a
> million or two intellectuals or those he imagined, in his paranoia, to be
> his enemies. There was scarcely a family in any city of Russia that had
not
> had one or more members of his family taken away in the middle of the
> night. As for Ceaus�escu, he razed thousands of villages to the ground,
> causing millions to starve or be forced into prison-like apartments to
work
> in heavily polluted metal extraction factories or coal mines. Both Stalin
> and Ceaus�escu both had an immense army of informers and secret police,
far
> greater proportionately than Saddam's appears to have been. Ordinary
> Russians and Romanians lived in a state of fear far beyond anything that
> ordinary Iraqis are described as experiencing by pre-war observers.
>
> Nasty though Saddam is, and even though he gassed large numbers of Kurds,
> turned tens of thousands of Shias out of their natural waterlands, killed
> many hundreds more, and no doubt tortured and executed many who were a
> political danger to him in Baghdad, he also poured money into education in
> the '70s when he nationalised the oilfields that were then being selfishly
> exploited by western oil corporations. The fact that Iraq is more
> pluralistic and liberal than any other Islamic country (except perhaps
> Turkey) with a sizeable professional middle class is due to Saddam.
>
> Nasty though Saddam is, Stalin and Ceaus�escu were at least an order of
> magnitude crueller.
>
> Keith Hudson
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> --------------
> Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
> Futurework mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
>
> _______________________________________________
> Futurework mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
>
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
