[B5JMS] Attn JMS: What about now?

[b5jms-admin at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: Robert Perkins <rob_perkins at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 20:32:44 GMT
Lines: 44

On 18 Dec 2002 07:35:42 GMT, jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5) wrote:

>Okay, I'm probably going to get cyber-mugged for this, but let me put in my two
>cents on the Iraq situation, and the reasons behind it.
>
>It is really nothing more or less than an attempt to re-draw the map of the
>Middle East.

True. I mean, there can be no doubt about that based on the actions
and reactions of all the parties involved. 

Then again, the map as it stands *now*, drawn by the inept stewardship
of the British protectorate governments of the time, is very badly
done.

> So suddenly the prices go down, profits go up, and (while fossil
>fuels last) everybody profits economically.

I wonder if that wouldn't be such a bad thing. If getting fossil fuels
gets naturally more expensive, because the supply is gone, we can move
on to better stuff. If we don't soak the atmosphere in pollutants too
badly before then.

>That, I believe, is their plan.  The only thing wrong with it is that it can't
>work; the region is too interlinked and impossible to govern from afar, and
>they haven't fully thought out the doctrine of unintended consequences.

There will always be unintended consequences. Al Qaeda is one of them,
from the Gulf War period. But part of the problem with Al Qaeda is
that we didn't do small things to keep them away from us years ago,
that we could have done. 

>If you say it's about oil, that's only part of the picture; if you say it's
>about weapons and terror, that's also only a part of the picture.  You have to
>stand well back from the tapestry and get a good look at the whole of it to
>recognize the thing for what it is: an attempt to redraw the map of the Middle
>East in its entirety.

Considering the fact that most of the governments in the Mideast are
barely-tolerable tyrannies as it stands, even among our "allies", I
don't know that that would be a bad thing to try and do, is all.

Rob


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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: 19 Dec 2002 19:10:15 GMT
Lines: 46

>>If you say it's about oil, that's only part of the picture; if you say it's
>>about weapons and terror, that's also only a part of the picture.  You have
>to
>>stand well back from the tapestry and get a good look at the whole of it to
>>recognize the thing for what it is: an attempt to redraw the map of the
>Middle
>>East in its entirety.
>
>Considering the fact that most of the governments in the Mideast are
>barely-tolerable tyrannies as it stands, even among our "allies", I
>don't know that that would be a bad thing to try and do, is all.

Which would be, on the face of it, a valid counter...except that the
governments we tend to install in our wake are often, or soon become, every bit
as bad as what was there in the first place.

We helped put in and prop up the Shah of Iran, creating a situation that was so
awful, so corrupt, so full of human rights violations, that it led in time to
the growth of the fundamentalist forces that overthrew him and gave us the
current Iran.

Remember that, because we didn't like the russians, we helped arm the Afghanis
and trained the people who would in time become the Taliban and Al-Quaeda.

When we didn't like Iran, we gave Iraq the very weapons that we're not
complaining about, in many cases.  When it looked like he might use (and may
have used) chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war, our government was decidedly
silent.  No one was making a big deal about it at the upper echelons of
government, because we knew he had chemical weapons but he was using them in
"our interests."

The bottom line, apart from all this, is very simple: is it the business of the
United States to go out overthrowing governments when and where we feel like
it?  Is that really what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the
Constitution?

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
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