War Involvement Against National Interest

[Don K Dyck]

The Australian government is misleading the Australian people by promulgating five myths in favour of the U$-Iraq Imperialist War for Control of Middle East oil Reserves. This foreign war is NOT in the Australian national interest and will have detrimental on-going costs that will continue long after the U$ Occupation Government has passed ownership and control of the Iraqi Oil Reserves to U$ multinational oil corporations.

AUSTRALIA WARNED OF GROWING ISOLATION

 

[roxanne69]

Pretty lonely in here DKD. I think it's because it isn't about the US national interest.

*throwing my knickers across the room*

Come get me when this thread reaches the page 2 with no posters k? I'll be waiting *batting eyelashes*

 

[teddybear4play]

Much as I'd like to discuss roxanne's knickers and her current lack thereof, I hereby present this evidence that belief in Oz is hardly unanimous:

"Protesting millions are marching right into Saddam's hands"
Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald
Monday, February 17, 2003

The first mass turnout against the war took place in Melbourne and made the network news in America on Friday as a foretaste of what was to come. The ensuing 72 hours saw the protest movement globalised, with millions of people in hundreds of cities voting with their feet. The stakes just got much higher.

What starkly differentiates this anti-war movement from the last mass anti-war protests, against the Vietnam War, is that it doesn't have the moral authority derived from the horror of a bloody and protracted conflict with huge numbers of casualties. This movement is based on assumptions, principles and hypothetical casualties, while stepping around the bloody and protracted conflict and huge body count that already exists in Iraq.

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said on Saturday: "As you watch your TV pictures of the march, ponder this: if there are 500,000 on that march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for. If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started."

Blair is the intellectual key to what is unfolding in the West. While the focus, indeed the hatred, of the anti-war movement has been on President George Bush, his power lies with America's immense firepower and the wrath of a mighty nation in the wake of September 11, rather than his skill or leadership. It is Blair who is the intellectual, diplomatic and moral linchpin of the anti-Saddam alliance. He is the leader who has risked the most and given the most.

On a lower scale of intensity, the Prime Minister, John Howard, was pilloried as being poll-driven in his stand against illegal immigration, and now his ideological adversaries demand that he responds to the polls. Similarly, while Howard made a highly risky armed intervention in East Timor, which saved that country, he is portrayed as being without principle for joining an unpopular alliance with the leader of the British Labour Party.


What is unfolding is a massive clash of philosophies, a byproduct of globalisation, between the interventionists - the anti-Saddam alliance - and the passivists (my word) - the majority, who believe that sovereign nations should be protected from self-appointed global police forces unless there is an overwhelming compulsion to intervene.

If the interventionists are proved right, and it turns out that they have the technology, the military intelligence, the means and the will to liquidate Saddam and his cohorts without incurring major collateral damage to Iraq, the world will have changed. Sovereignty itself may be redefined, with a greater willingness to confront genocidal regimes early, rather than late or not at all, which has been traditional practice.

The traditional primacy of national sovereignty is already being redefined by the impact of globalisation and the communications revolution. Modern governments are already and increasingly constrained by the international financial market, the global currency exchange, UN conventions, the International Court, and the growing number of pan-national groupings such as the European Community and World Trade Organisation.

If the interventionist alliance is proved wrong, and any invasion of Iraq has tragic consequences, democracy will wreak its vengeance on the leaders of the alliance. So will Muslim fundamentalists, and so will anti-Americanism, fuelled by global resentment of a US superpower willing to invade Iraq yet unwilling to seriously confront the actions of religious fundamentalists and provocateurs on both sides in the West Bank and Gaza. This is the greatest single source of anger among Muslims and the greatest contributor to global instability.

It is also driving the anti-war movement. What is ambiguous about this movement is its timing. Twenty-three million Iraqis live under the jackboot of Saddam's vast apparatus of oppression (the remaining 1 million Iraqis are wearing the jackboots). Yet where were the mass street demonstrators when Saddam was gassing, murdering and displacing hundreds of thousands of Kurds? Or invading Iran? Or invading Kuwait? Or wiping out the Madan tribes?

Millions of people have taken to the streets in outrage at the prospect of Iraqis being killed by Americans, but the streets were empty as a million Iraqis were murdered, gassed, tortured, raped, imprisoned, arrested or dispossessed under Saddam. It's ongoing. Demonstrate against Saddam inside Iraq and you die.

Ambiguous times. The only people who think this is simple are the ones using slogans, such as "No blood for oil", as if the torrent of blood that has never stopped flowing since Saddam took power does not rest on a foundation of oil income and passivism by the West. As Saddam told an Egyptian magazine last November (picked up by Newsweek): "Time is working for us. We have to buy some more time, and the American-British coalition will disintegrate because of internal reasons and because of the pressure of public opinion in the American and British street."


TB4p

 

[Sillyman]

Pretty lonely in here DKD. I think it's because it isn't about the US national interest.

*throwing my knickers across the room*

Come get me when this thread reaches the page 2 with no posters k? I'll be waiting *batting eyelashes*

*steals Roxanne's knickers*

 

[Guest]

 

[Don K Dyck]

Much as I'd like to discuss roxanne's knickers and her current lack thereof, I hereby present this evidence that belief in Oz is hardly unanimous:

"Protesting millions are marching right into Saddam's hands"
Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald
Monday, February 17, 2003

<SNIP>

TB4p

Hi TB . . . the SMH seems to be having a bet both ways . . . normally they support the government regardless of the stupidity of the government decisions . . . but even the editor realises that 500,000 protestors marching BEFORE war has been officially declared means that the Liberal Party is likely to take a huge beating in the NSW State elections on 23 March when the people have their say at the ballot box . . . even the CIA will be unable to arrest the widespread disenchantment with an aussie Federal puppet regime . . .

The U$-Iraq Imperialist War for Control of Undeveloped Middle East Oil Reserves is NOT a war in the best interests of Oz . . . our government politicians are a weak kneed mob of sheep following Dubyah Shrub without getting any of the trade advantages that Turkey and other Central European nations have extracted as thier price for compliance . . .

 

[roxanne69]

*whine*

You all encouraged him

*lassoing Don with my bra*

You need some fluff in your life Don..follow me...

 

[Ladybird]

*whine*
You all encouraged him
*lassoing Don with my bra*
You need some fluff in your life Don..follow me...

* Removing the lassoo *

Hey roxanne... go find someone else to play with hon. I'll be providing the fluff for Don.

Don's all man, and he's all mine.

 

[cliffchuff]

Millions of people have taken to the streets in outrage at the prospect of Iraqis being killed by Americans, but the streets were empty as a million Iraqis were murdered, gassed, tortured, raped, imprisoned, arrested or dispossessed under Saddam. It's ongoing. Demonstrate against Saddam inside Iraq and you die.

If saddam is so awful why did the Us put him in power over a freely elected democratic system ?

If the Brits are so against the kiling of iraqi civillians why did they sell him chemical wepons?

Yes saddam is a very bad man But bombing civillians and installing some cousin from an oil company to run the place (see Afghanistan)dosen't wash.

People are sick of the hipocracy of wars being fought for Business interests.

While were at it lets dump loads of radioactve waste in the form of irridated shells, who cares if we kill our own troups over the next few decades they are working class anyway.

Now if Mr Bush (un elected so not president) was to go and fight it would be a differtnt matter, but no he went AWOL from his national service for 18 months and relied on his familys money to pay his way.