The Saddam Files

[RandFan]

Saddam's Secret Files (http://www.msnbc.com/news/902240.asp)

They had lived all or most of their lives in a world where neighbors informed on each other for cash; where torturers multiplied their salaries each time they extracted a confession; where police made only $4 a month for catching crooks but could earn lavish bonuses by imprisoning people for their thoughts and words. I'll take democracy thank you. I don't know if the Mid East will ever be ready for it but I hope that it has a chance in Iraq.

[subgenius]

Originally posted by RandFan
Saddam's Secret Files (http://www.msnbc.com/news/902240.asp)

I'll take democracy thank you. I don't know if the Mid East will ever be ready for it but I hope that it has a chance in Iraq.

It'll never have a chance without seperation of church and state. Antithetical to democracy.

Thanks for posting the link. The truth must be known, perhaps most by the Arab world. You would think that publicizing the profligate excesses of Saddam's boys would go a long way in dispelling Arab support for that Iraqi regime.
I was for deposing Saddam regardless of oil or WMD's. Its a political/moral dilemma (addressed on "West Wing") that we need to face: whether to intervene solely on humanitarian grounds.
Like Nazi Germany, this kind of evil inevitably grows. How can any civilized country turn its back and say its none of our business?

[Kashyapa]

We have to balance humanitarianism with our own best interest. We can't be cops for the whole world, as that just makes us look bad. However, we can't turn our backs on rampant human rights abuse. It's ironic, though, that many of the human rights abusers in the world are ether US-funded, US-installed, or at the very least tacitly approved of by our government. Yes, I'm going to get a lot of crap for that one.... here it comes.

[RandFan]

Originally posted by Kashyapa
It's ironic, though, that many of the human rights abusers in the world are ether US-funded, US-installed, or at the very least tacitly approved of by our government. Yes, I'm going to get a lot of crap for that one.... here it comes. As well you should.

North Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Cuba, China, Sudan, Botswana and many if not most of the African Nations, the former Soviet Union and all of its satellites are examples of nations that we did not install nor did we aprove of their human rights violations.

The Communists murdered nearly 100 million people WITHOUT us funding them. Without us installing them or with the tacit approval of our (the US) government.

Throughout the Muslim world women are castrated without our funding or our approval or without us installing their regime.

In Africa there are countries that buy and sell humans without our funding or our approval or without us installing their regimes.

Such a statement is an example of seeing what you want to see. It demonstrates a lack of critical thought.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by RandFan
As well you should.

North Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Cuba, China, Sudan, Botswana and many if not most of the African Nations, the former Soviet Union and all of its satellites are examples of nations that we did not install nor did we aprove of their human rights violations.



You forgot that without the US war in Vietnam, millions of deaths would have been avoided. Without the war in Vietnam, Cambodia may not have been destabilised and Pol Pot allowed to take power.

You also forget Angola, the Shah of Iran, South America and the numerous countries destabilised there.

The former USSR had a lot to answer for, do not forget the US also has.



The Communists murdered nearly 100 million people WITHOUT us funding them. Without us installing them or with the tacit approval of our (the US) government.

Throughout the Muslim world women are castrated without our funding or our approval or without us installing their regime.



Nowhere in the Koran does it advocate genital mutilation of women, that is a cultural relic that has been assumed into Muslim teaching.



In Africa there are countries that buy and sell humans without our funding or our approval or without us installing their regimes.

Such a statement is an example of seeing what you want to see. It demonstrates a lack of critical thought.

Critical thought, yes. But critical thought does not involve just saying, he does it too. Lets just face up to all the facts.

I can find out quite easily the faults of the USSR, and what it has been responsible for the world. I would be greatly surprised if anyone argued them on this forum, for example.

The faults of the US are still open to debate, even the most obvious ones.

[Kashyapa]

Since we've proven ourselves to be such benevolent liberators, let's see some liberating going on in the countries you mentioned. No? Why not? They're all human rights hellholes run by dictators. Let's go kick some ass for the women and children. We ignore most of the human rights abuse in the world, either totally ignoring it or tacitly approving it with our economic relationships.

The government doesn't care about human rights beyond saying abusing them is bad and occasionally using them as a tool to sway the public to a war. It cares solely about power, industry, and influence. To that end, it has installed and supported a variety of regimes that absolutely trashed human rights, including:

Idi Amin
Saddam Hussein
the pre-revolution Shah of Iran
Pakistan
Tajikstan
Saudi Arabia
Afghanistan (both the Taliban and the current benign but utterly impotent government)
Chile (better now)
Liberia
Sierra Leone (indirectly, thru the diamond trade)


Plus started a long chain of ugly little undeclared wars in:

Panama
Grenada
Colombia (charming, that one- didja know the CIA has been involved with drug trafficking in Colombia and S. E. Asia?)
Vietnam
Cambodia
Laos
Thailand
Somalia
Iraq
the Koreas
Nepal (perpetuating and meddling with the Maoist uprising)
Haiti (not started, but interfered with)

Plus a whole bunch of ones we don't know about and probably never will. All of these wars and supported dictators have resulted in appalling human rights abuses. Colombia, S.E. Asia, and Iraq were the worst. Check all these out. We're more culpable than you'd like to think. We were the ones comitting the human rights abuses in a lot of these cases. (Thanks, Henry Kissinger!)

Sorry if this post is overbearing. But the fact remains that we at the very least do little to discourage human rights abuse, and at worst actively support the abusers. Is it all our fault? Of course not. But some of it is- and that is not acceptable to me.

I'd like to not get a flame war going here...I'm sick of arguing war and peace, as I got my fill in my fighting terrorism thread. Therefore, just take this as my opinion. I don't want this to derail the thread, and I don't want to have to argue this for a month.

[RandFan]

My perspective,

The part of the world that does not have democracy is a scary place for humans. Sadly it is a very big part of the world.

The United States is forced to work with this part of the world. We often must choose whether or not to side with one tyrant or another. That we work with tyrants and dictators does not mean that we encourage or even approve of the human rights abuses.

The stated goal of the United States is that democracy is the best way to stop Human Rights abuses. The United States has spoken out against such abuses and has worked to reduce such abuse.

Yes, the United States has intervened in ways that have exasperated conditions or inadvertently caused the rise of bad governments and even toppled one repressive regime only to have it replaced with a more repressive regime.

But to accuse the US of sponsoring or encouraging or approving terrorism is to fail to understand the nature of non-democratic governments.

Let's all work to bring democracy to the world and when the day is reached when there is democracy throughout the world then there will be no more slavery, no more castration, no more gulags, no more Chinese prisons, no more child labor or forced labor, no more forced starvation, etc..

[Kashyapa]

I agree. The way to do that is to stop fighting for it and start encouraging it- and return to it, fully and completely, here at home.

[dsm]

Originally posted by subgenius

It'll never have a chance without seperation of church and state.

That'll never have a chance in the Middle East. :p

Even as liberal as we in the US are, we still have a lot of connections between church and state ("in God we trust"), so what chance does the separation have in an area as religiously oriented as the Middle East?