From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 23:56:20 MST
> Saddam is the only leader in the world who wants weapons of mass
> destruction, invaded his neighbors twice, has a chance to control the
> world's supply of oil and has actually used chemical weapons
> on his own
> people and on others.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
Wait a second... the US has weapons of mass destruction (and seems to want
them), has invaded its neighbours, is fairly experienced at trying to
control the world's supply of oil, and has used chemical weapons on at least
its own troops and certainly on the citizens of other countries (think
Vietnam). I'm sure other countries would fit that bill, too. North Korea
would probably fit rather well if it had oil, which is morally equivalent
unless you propose that having power over some of the world's oil is somehow
morally damning.
Weapons of mass destruction are controlled by numerous world governments who
seem all too willing to threaten with them, even when they are proposing
suicide - eg: Pakistan and India. There is only one country that has
actually used them offensively, and it's not Iraq. The only difference
between Iraq and other countries wrt to WMD is that Iraq lost a war and so
pledged not to have these weapons, and Iraq is possibly the country in world
least likely to actually have WMD, given the lack of inspection of any
country barring Iraq.
The thing that scares me about the proposed war is its utter baselessness.
That our leaders must scrape for ridiculous excuses to engage in war is
preposterous; that their real motives are indiscernable is worse. IMHO, I'm
not alone in this; we've had wars before without the incredible protest
turnouts that we've been getting in the last few days (and the war hasn't
even started yet).
A really interesting thing about the protests is that everyone has been
suprised by the numbers, politicians and organisers alike. I don't think the
protest organisers can take credit for the turnouts; the simple fact seems
to be that people are generally against this war, strongly enough that the
mums and dads and grannies are coming out of the suburbs and walking the
streets to make their voices heard. These are people that ordinarily
wouldn't demonstrate, even for causes they support. The numbers are simply
too high to be reflecting rent-a-crowd protestors.
This waging war by governments, against the wishes of just about anyone you
ask, is the kind of thing that the resident libertarians usually scream blue
murder about. Where are you?
Emlyn
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