Alan Yeo wrote:


> It was the West that armed IRAQ to fight against the perceived
> destabilising influence of revolutionary IRAN, who like it or not were
> just trying to throw off a monarchic system that many were suppressed
> under.

No, the West did not arm Iraq.  Or, at least, that's a horrendous
exaggeration.  Iraq overwhelmingly bought Soviet arms with its own oil
revenue and with money borrowed from other oil-rich states.  France did sell
some Mirage fighters to Iraq, but the United States maintained a complete
arms embargo.  Iraq did buy sophisticated technology from the U.S. and other
Western countries that could be (and was) used to manufacture chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons.

But, hey, it must have been our fault that Iraq invaded Iran.  It's not like
there were ever any wars in the world before the U.S. existed.  The fact the
U.S. and Iraq did not even have diplomatic relations at the time Iraq
invaded Iran was probably just a ruse.

> As other people on the list have already written the makings of the
> Taliband were helped by the west, we armed them when they were fighting
> the then enemy the "Russians" but then we abandoned them (or rather the
> innocent civilians) when they started squabbling about what faction was
> going to run the country.

No, the U.S. helped radical Islamic rebels, including bin Laden, but _not_
the Taliban, which did not even exist during the Soviet occupation.  The
Taliban militia was started by students of madrassas in Pakistan after the
Soviets left Afghanistan. Do you think (1) there were moderates who really
had any chance of success against the Soviets if the U.S. supported them,
(2) the U.S. could have stopped the civil war in Afghanistan after the
Soviets left or (3) Islamic fundamentalism would not exist without Western
help?

> We also created the mess that is the Israeli Palestinian state, and have
> done very little to help resolve the conflict there, and in the process
> have created many suffering people with a grievance against the West.
>

Isn't it odd that none of the terrorists seem to be Palestinian, then?

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *