Wirt wrote :

> If disobeying or ignoring UN resolutions were to be
> considered reason enough
> for invasion, we should be attacking Israel instead of Iraq.
> Israel has
> steadfastly ignored UN resolutions passed 50 years ago demanding the
> Palestinians' right of return, as well as more recent UN resolutions
> demanding Israel return to the 1967 borders and evacuate the
> West Bank.

Attacking Israel may not be such a brilliant idea. But taking action, yes,
of course. UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 come to my mind. Can anyone help me
locate the texts for those ?

> If engaging in ethnic cleansing, the systematic suppression
> and humiliation
> of whole peoples, and the development of weapons of mass
> destruction were
> sufficient to be considered crimes, we should be attacking
> Israel instead of
> Iraq.

Humiliation of Palestinians by the Israeli army happens daily, like
destroying the houses of civilians. There's ample TV footage to confirm it.
How such actions will help restore peace totally escapes me. Systematic
suppression may be a bit of a stretch, and WMD development, while widely
suspected, remains to be proved. A UN-mandated inspection team could be a
relevant idea in that perspective.

And a DMZ between Israel and Palestine could be a good idea. After all, it
stopped the bloodshed in Bosnia in 95. With the participation of the US
Army, IIRC.

> Life is not nearly as simple as the current administration is
> making it seem.
> Perhaps more relevant, nothing Iraq has done lately has posed
> any threat to
> either the United States or any of Iraq's neighbors.

True.

> Saddam is 65 years old now,

True too, but what does that prove ? Does mildly old age make a dictator
more palatable to the rest of the world, or less dangerous ? How old was
Stalin when he let millions of his own population die ? He died at, IIRC,
age March 5th, 1953. Pinochet is still considered dangerous, and he's 86.
And general Franco, the late dictator of Spain, famously said in his old
years "Enemes ? What enemies ? I don't have any enemies - I killed them
all", and he was 70-something

> he has no active WMD programs,

The UN Inspection team is currently in Iraq to help determine that. We do
not know for sure at this moment if that's the case.

> and he governs an army that is only 30%
> to 50% the size it was during the 1991 invasion of Kuwait.
> The situation in
> Iraq will come to an end in another 10 years of its own
> accord.

Perhaps.

> Containment
> as a policy worked for the Soviet Union,

Yes, definitely. The USSR was sort of "priced out" of the arms race in the
early-80s, when it simply could not keep pace with the USA. So it folded up
it's cards and withdrew from the game.

> Lybia,

No. There was a direct US attack against Lybia in 1986. Whether it sparked
antagonism that later culminated in the blowup of two airliners (the famous
Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland and the French UTA flight over
Sahara) in 1988 remains to be proved, but we may harbor reasonable
suspicion. However, there never was a second attack against Lybia.
Containment ensued, not retaliation. A lesson learned ?

> and it would work for Iraq.

Perhaps.

> The most pro-western Islamic country in the region is now Iran, and it
> became so on its own, primarily because we left it alone.

This is very true, but isn't the US undoing with its present bullishness
what its patience has achieved over 2 decades of containment ? In other
words, doesn't linking Iran to a still-to-be-proved "axis of evil" do more
damage than good ?

> Would Iraq be better off if it were liberated from Saddam?

We should ask the Iraqis. Of course democracy is good, and the US would like
the rest of the world adopt its system. But let's not forget that, so far,
nobody in the region is asking for that. In other words, the US may be
attemting to sell an idea that noone is willing to buy.

Hey, let's get back on-topic for a second : it's the same with HPe3000s !!!
I know for sure they are excellent systems, and I would love all my
customers to buy them, but at this moment they simply do not want to buy
them, period.

> The most powerful
> answer to that question is the Baghdad Stock Index. The BSI
> has steadily
> risen since the first rumblings of a new US invasion; the
> business and middle
> classes of Iraq sees great hope resulting the coming war and
> the rises in the
> BSI reflect that -- in the only manner that public opinion
> can be expressed
> in Iraq.

That's a possibility, yes. But since the BSI is not as widely considered as
a barometer of public opinion as, say, the DJIA, the Nasdaq or the CAC40, it
may or may not exactly reflect that.

> But will we and the world be better off if Saddam is toppled?
> Things never
> turn out as badly as the worst predictions suggest, nor do
> they ever turn out
> as well as the most optimistic proponents suggest. They
> always seem to take a
> middling, confused course, probably no better or worse than
> if a course of
> containment had been followed, but without the costs in lives
> or money that a
> war will require.

As you said, containment worked marvels for the USSR. Not a single drop of
blood was shed over a 4-decade long "conflict". That's a mighty achievement
by any standard.

> Wirt Atmar

Christian

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