Gregory Lightyear (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lightyear) wrote,@ 2003-03-18 10:39:00 |
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By the pricking of my thumb...
I know that as a man who was once a military man (Navy), and one who took part in the command and control centers of one of the naval fleet which orchestrated much of the attacks during the first Gulf war, my ex-boyfriend has a very different set of opinions on this than myself. Historically, we've almost never seen eye to eye on the use of military force, and I've never been a proponent of supporting the political leadership just because they happen to be using military force and military men might feel bad if I don't.
As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, I seem to have a strange habit of picking up boyfriends who are distinctly more right wing than my socialist-leaning self. Hmm.
Anyways, I've been written with a note which basically makes fun of the U.N.'s Britney Spears impression (Oops I did it again / Hit me baby one more time) when it comes to the last 17 resolutions on Iraq.
So here's a bit of my point of view; while not the whole truth, it's the part of the truth I find most compelling, that part of the truth which most strongly shapes my opinions on what seems to be an inevitable war:
Bitch all you like about Saddam. After all, :
There's no denying he's a dangerous man. That's why none of the Middle East countries, surrounding this country that the U.S. and U.K. have decided they want to attack, actually support the war. And just about all of those who are allowing them to use their soil or airspace regardless of their lack of support are doing so for financial reasons.
E. and I have never seen eye-to-eye politically; and I guess I don't expect us to start doing so now. I was young - I was what, 21, and he was 31? There were ten years of difference, and ten years of life experience I didn't have; and yet I know I would have felt then exactly as I felt now, as I remember distinctly sitting paralytic in front of the television watching the previoustime we shelled Baghdad. I've never been a Patriot, and I've had but fleeting moments of feeling any particular love towards America; I was pretty sure I'd seen the worst that America could dish out when I was growing up. I'm not especially pleased to be living under the shadow of it darkening my skies once more' I thought I had left that behind when I left it. American nationalism has never been a force for good in the world - it lend-leased Britain during World War II into financial disaster and delayed entrance to the war until the last possible moment; it saved Europe from the German empire at the cost of the British one, and became the world's largest superpower on the backs of third world manufacturing and a mass media that's so tightly integrated into society that nobody seems to notice that the great majority of your media is run by either News Corporation or Hearst. America is a perfect example of a market-driven morality; the American media the perfectly shaped blinders that allow that market-driven reality to steamroll much of the world. And I honestly believe that America has probably done more damage in the last four months than fifty years of funding the U.N. will have done good - and like Germany today, should things go desperately wrong, it will spend another fifty years atoneing for the sins of their politicians.
The French have some pretty strange opinions (l'exception francaise, for starters); I know, I lived there for two years in Paris, and learned the language. The French have been responsible for more dodgy politics in Africa than you can shake a stick at, and have one of the most corrupt political systems in Europe at the local and regional, if not federal level. And for most of the misgivings of the French - much of which American media pays little attention to, or for that matter the British media - they've made an honest point and an honest stand. France is not in a position to argue with the 80% of its population who do not want war. Neither is Germany. Neither is the U.K., frankly, though it seems that we're close enough to the U.S. financially that our markets practically demand it now.
To pretend that the issue is anywhere near that easy to simplify is preposterous - I've seen world diplomacy at work, in person, and I can tell you that they're nowhere near that frivolous or stupid; the French position was made perfectly clear with the first signing, which the U.S. barely got its 'unanimous' decision on, that they could not condone the path to war, and that an additional resolution would be required. To say anything other than that took place is both political spin and a bald-faced outright lie - and if you don't believe me, go back and read the transcripts of the last UN meeting before the signing. The French haven't changed their position on this in four months now, and the U.S. and U.K. seem to be pretending that France has pulled a last-minute veto out of a hat like a drug-addled Merlin. They haven't. Their position has never changed. And frankly, it is no surprise that a country with close political and popular ties to Algeria, a current hot-spot of *real* al-Qaeda terrorist cells, and other troubled African nations, whose modern population is closely linked both in language and nationality, is unwilling to agree to that war knowing that the problems it would create with its modern population would be rife with difficulty and stir a hornet's nest. In the eyes of the French, this war is wholly unrelated to the real and important fight against terrorism, a fight which is more real to France today than to America. To them, this war is political and real suicide - and they made that clear in November, before and during the signing of 1441.
The fact is, Bush and Blair have not won support of the majority of the members of the council or their member nations, the majority of the European population doesn't support a war, the majority of the Middle Eastern governments don't support a war, and the majority of the Middle Eastern nations, save Israel, are made up of a population of people who don't like the U.S. or Western ideology.
The U.S. and the U.K. lost their gambit. But the dangerous man in power in Washington, who didn't want to go to the U.N. in the first place, doesn't give a flying fuck what the other nations happen to think. And so Rumsfeld gets his war.
To call this war anything but a dangerous unravelling of the power structures that ensure peace in the modern world is folly. The U.N. was not created as a puppet organisation for the U.S.; it was specifically chartered, after the fall of the League of Nations, and the closure of World War II, for being a venue through which nations could discuss their differences to avoid war. It was meant to be an alternative to war. Not a conduit for committing one.
And to think that I could turn a blind eye to that and pretend that I support military action just to keep the boys in camouflage feeling perky and confident, and thereby offer that support to British and U.K. governments is unthinkable.
During the recent march in London, and the corresponding marches around the world against war in Iraq, the U.S. accused anyone who refused to support the military buildup as supporting Saddam by 'muddying the waters' as to the need of compliance. Now, more than ever, those of us against the war cannot be seen as 'muddying the waters' through declaring support for the men in the military and thereby condoning the unilateral actions of our governments.
For as long as this war goes on, I shall fight for my government (the U.K. government - I am powerless to help or hinder America) to end it. We owe those who will die in this war nothing less than our complete and total committment to have done everything we can to prevent their deaths from taking place. If that means that our military struggles on without our support, so be it - the spin doctors would ensure that any support for the military would be spun into support for the actions of our governments.
I know that as a man who was once a military man (Navy), and one who took part in the command and control centers of one of the naval fleet which orchestrated much of the attacks during the first Gulf war, my ex-boyfriend has a very different set of opinions on this than myself. Historically, we've almost never seen eye to eye on the use of military force, and I've never been a proponent of supporting the political leadership just because they happen to be using military force and military men might feel bad if I don't.
As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, I seem to have a strange habit of picking up boyfriends who are distinctly more right wing than my socialist-leaning self. Hmm.
Anyways, I've been written with a note which basically makes fun of the U.N.'s Britney Spears impression (Oops I did it again / Hit me baby one more time) when it comes to the last 17 resolutions on Iraq.
So here's a bit of my point of view; while not the whole truth, it's the part of the truth I find most compelling, that part of the truth which most strongly shapes my opinions on what seems to be an inevitable war:
Bitch all you like about Saddam. After all, :
- America put him in power.
- The U.S. supported his terrorist regime with CIA training to get him into power in the first place.
- Britain built his chemical factories.
- America sold him the anthrax facilities and chemicals.
- America then screwed the only revolt previously attempted in Iraq against Saddam and left those Kurds to be slaughtered by Saddam, thereby implicating themselves in their deaths; Americas hands, having blood on them from having put him in power, then gained blood on their hands from having kept him there. American politicians have some of the responsibility for the gassing of those Kurds. It's not as if they didn't know he was a madman, they paid for his CIA training, remember?
- Britain and America knew at the time of this revolt of both his posession of WMD and his willingness to use them.
- Germany then sold him parts for a big gun to shell Israel with.
- Britain gave loan after loan to the Iraqi regime during Thatcher's period in power, driven by BAE Systems and other UK military companies.
- The reason that 15,000 page document became 2,000 pages when it ended up in the hands of anyone who wasn't the main 5 members in the council is because the names of the companies who equipped him were listed an implicated there.
- The reason that this was old news is because the U.S., U.K., French, and German governments were required to grant their permission on those sales before those sales could take place.
- The power of the military lobby, at the time, was strong enough to lobby those things through, thereby continuing to prove that Western governments are rife with the kind of moral and political corruption that get us sponsored as Terrorist targets in the first place, and that we need to go through some serious restructuring of our political systems to end that kind of lobbying.
- No evidence that the 'big gun' ever worked exists. Lots of evidence it failed was found.
- The U.S. and U.K. made what the nuclear inspectors called "childlike mistakes" in their accusations of Saddam having obtained nuclear materials from Africa
- The U.K. lifted the majority of it's big intelligence report from a student, directly plagarizing most of the material. Many of the claims which didn't come from the lifted text have afterwards been proven false (the obtaining of nuclear materials) or no evidence has been found (U.N. inspections of the locations named in the report).
There's no denying he's a dangerous man. That's why none of the Middle East countries, surrounding this country that the U.S. and U.K. have decided they want to attack, actually support the war. And just about all of those who are allowing them to use their soil or airspace regardless of their lack of support are doing so for financial reasons.
E. and I have never seen eye-to-eye politically; and I guess I don't expect us to start doing so now. I was young - I was what, 21, and he was 31? There were ten years of difference, and ten years of life experience I didn't have; and yet I know I would have felt then exactly as I felt now, as I remember distinctly sitting paralytic in front of the television watching the previoustime we shelled Baghdad. I've never been a Patriot, and I've had but fleeting moments of feeling any particular love towards America; I was pretty sure I'd seen the worst that America could dish out when I was growing up. I'm not especially pleased to be living under the shadow of it darkening my skies once more' I thought I had left that behind when I left it. American nationalism has never been a force for good in the world - it lend-leased Britain during World War II into financial disaster and delayed entrance to the war until the last possible moment; it saved Europe from the German empire at the cost of the British one, and became the world's largest superpower on the backs of third world manufacturing and a mass media that's so tightly integrated into society that nobody seems to notice that the great majority of your media is run by either News Corporation or Hearst. America is a perfect example of a market-driven morality; the American media the perfectly shaped blinders that allow that market-driven reality to steamroll much of the world. And I honestly believe that America has probably done more damage in the last four months than fifty years of funding the U.N. will have done good - and like Germany today, should things go desperately wrong, it will spend another fifty years atoneing for the sins of their politicians.
The French have some pretty strange opinions (l'exception francaise, for starters); I know, I lived there for two years in Paris, and learned the language. The French have been responsible for more dodgy politics in Africa than you can shake a stick at, and have one of the most corrupt political systems in Europe at the local and regional, if not federal level. And for most of the misgivings of the French - much of which American media pays little attention to, or for that matter the British media - they've made an honest point and an honest stand. France is not in a position to argue with the 80% of its population who do not want war. Neither is Germany. Neither is the U.K., frankly, though it seems that we're close enough to the U.S. financially that our markets practically demand it now.
To pretend that the issue is anywhere near that easy to simplify is preposterous - I've seen world diplomacy at work, in person, and I can tell you that they're nowhere near that frivolous or stupid; the French position was made perfectly clear with the first signing, which the U.S. barely got its 'unanimous' decision on, that they could not condone the path to war, and that an additional resolution would be required. To say anything other than that took place is both political spin and a bald-faced outright lie - and if you don't believe me, go back and read the transcripts of the last UN meeting before the signing. The French haven't changed their position on this in four months now, and the U.S. and U.K. seem to be pretending that France has pulled a last-minute veto out of a hat like a drug-addled Merlin. They haven't. Their position has never changed. And frankly, it is no surprise that a country with close political and popular ties to Algeria, a current hot-spot of *real* al-Qaeda terrorist cells, and other troubled African nations, whose modern population is closely linked both in language and nationality, is unwilling to agree to that war knowing that the problems it would create with its modern population would be rife with difficulty and stir a hornet's nest. In the eyes of the French, this war is wholly unrelated to the real and important fight against terrorism, a fight which is more real to France today than to America. To them, this war is political and real suicide - and they made that clear in November, before and during the signing of 1441.
The fact is, Bush and Blair have not won support of the majority of the members of the council or their member nations, the majority of the European population doesn't support a war, the majority of the Middle Eastern governments don't support a war, and the majority of the Middle Eastern nations, save Israel, are made up of a population of people who don't like the U.S. or Western ideology.
The U.S. and the U.K. lost their gambit. But the dangerous man in power in Washington, who didn't want to go to the U.N. in the first place, doesn't give a flying fuck what the other nations happen to think. And so Rumsfeld gets his war.
To call this war anything but a dangerous unravelling of the power structures that ensure peace in the modern world is folly. The U.N. was not created as a puppet organisation for the U.S.; it was specifically chartered, after the fall of the League of Nations, and the closure of World War II, for being a venue through which nations could discuss their differences to avoid war. It was meant to be an alternative to war. Not a conduit for committing one.
And to think that I could turn a blind eye to that and pretend that I support military action just to keep the boys in camouflage feeling perky and confident, and thereby offer that support to British and U.K. governments is unthinkable.
During the recent march in London, and the corresponding marches around the world against war in Iraq, the U.S. accused anyone who refused to support the military buildup as supporting Saddam by 'muddying the waters' as to the need of compliance. Now, more than ever, those of us against the war cannot be seen as 'muddying the waters' through declaring support for the men in the military and thereby condoning the unilateral actions of our governments.
For as long as this war goes on, I shall fight for my government (the U.K. government - I am powerless to help or hinder America) to end it. We owe those who will die in this war nothing less than our complete and total committment to have done everything we can to prevent their deaths from taking place. If that means that our military struggles on without our support, so be it - the spin doctors would ensure that any support for the military would be spun into support for the actions of our governments.
