I'll address your points separately, Lori:
Lori wrote:
First, who appointed us "planet police," with the power to decide who should and should not be running countries? The majority of Iraq's citizens at least SEEM to respect and revere Saddam. This morning on NPR there was a story about the increase of gun sales to "ordinary" Iraqis, and a man being interviewed said Iraqis would defend their country, their families, their honor, and Saddam. Just as WE would defend Bush because he is our President (whether or not we like him or the job he's doing).
I don't agree that ordinary Iraqis support Saddam. All the evidence coming out of Iraq suggests that ordinary people are terrified of him and his circle. He rules by violence and terror. There is no free speech, freedom of association or any of the things we take for granted. The official state punishment (this is written into law) for criticizing him is to have your tongue pulled out. So naturally, people are going to say they'll defend him. My guess is they'll abandon him in droves as soon as the Americans turn up. This is a man who deliberately taught his son to become a psychopath, starting at the age of eight, by acquiring a sheep for him, taking it to an empty field, and showing him how to disembowel it, slowly over the course of an hour, so as to cause maximum pain without killing the animal. That son - Uday - now has his own torture chamber. Even Saddam has been shocked at Uday's behaviour (like when he strangled his father's food taster with his bare hands). Uday is well known for spotting women he likes in the street, ordering that they be brought to him, raping them and then killing their husbands if they object.
Lori wrote:The American Special Forces or British SAS would kill him if they could, but it's not as simple as that. You have to know where he is. You have to be able to get there undetected. You have to be able to overcome all his guards. Then you have to be able to get yourself out again. His circle is heavily fortified. The whole country is heavily fortified.
Second, IF Saddam must be removed from power -- for whatever reason --
why (other than its inepitude) can't the CIA send an assassin to take
him out? This bullshit that we don't assassinate is just that: bullshit. Sending in thousands of troups is simply assassination on a
massive scale. Bush is playing with a way bigger fire than he believes
he is, because the rest of the Arab world is not going to stand by and
do nothing while we march in and ... (I'll say it again) take the oil.
Anyway, it's not just Saddam that US-UK want to get rid of, it's the whole Tikrit circle. No point in killing Saddam and letting Uday into power, who is arguably worse than his father. The whole extended family (and there are scores of them) need to be deposed, and another government must be installed, or there will be widespread bloodshed. The Americans are doing the responsible thing by invading. They are liberating the country.
I believe the Arab world will do precisely as you say: stand by and do nothing. There will be terrorist attacks in future, but there are terrorist attacks already.
Yes, it's in part because they are of little strategic importance and in part because yes, we are afraid of them because they already have a nuclear capability. This is why Iraq MUST be invaded before Saddam develops one.Lori wrote: Now will someone please tell me why we're not stomping our feet harder about North Korea's recent actions?? Are we afraid of North Korea, or of China, or is it because they don't have anything we want?
Lori, what would you do instead of invading? Economic sanctions haven't worked. They cause hardship to ordinary people, while leaving enough of the economy intact so that Saddam can develop more weapons. Assassination of scores of his clan isn't practical, and would in any event leave a power vacuum. What else if not an invasion?
Finally, your point about America being the "planet police". The choice seems to be between America, or a United Nations that does nothing (and appoints Colonel Gadaffi as head of their human rights commission), or else let countries like Iraq, North Korea etc do whatever they want.
Someone has to be planet policeman, it seems. Better America than any of the above, in my view.
As to the oil: so what if America takes control of the oil? Better that than the current situation where an oil-rich country like Iraq is starving its people so that it can develop enough weapons to kill everyone on the planet many times over.
It was Saddam who nationalized Iraq's oil. It can be de-nationalized and handed over to responsible companies and a democratic Iraqi government who will use the profits to rebuild the Iraqi economy. If this process is overseen by a government of the type offered by the Iraqi National Congress (democratic, secular, pluralist and with women's rights guaranteed), and if there is any success in running the country and the economy that way, I think the other oil-rich tyrannies in the Middle East (most notably Saudi Arabia) are going to start quaking in their boots, and so they should.
Why are you so opposed to the possibility that democracy might spread throughout the Arab world? You know who is MOST opposed to this? The CIA! Anti-war campaigners are unwittingly supporting the CIA's position, which is precisely that talk of democracy is naive, de-stabilizing etc. Yes, it's naive, but it could work and the Iraqi people deserve the opportunity, as do the Arabs living under other dictatorships.
Sarah
