Quote:
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Originally Posted by Lothar5150
If we are only cleaning up the mess that "we" created, then at least we can agree that there is a mess that needs cleaning. Honestly, I am less concerned with fixing the blame and more concerned with fixing the problem.
To be analogous I am less concerned with bends in the river and more concerned where the river ultimately ends. As a student of history and warfare, I have seen many wars the start off with one pretext and end with a new meaning. Our civil war is a prime example. Starts off about secession and ends being about slavery. Afghanistan is another example. It started being about payback for 9/11 and is ending in liberation and democracy for the Afghan people. The river took many twists but it ended in the right place.
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OK, given that this is a proper counter-argument
, and makes good sense to boot, one more reply...
I agree with your view that where the river ends is more important than its bends, so to speak. But at some point the river (to stick with the metaphor) is in danger of taking too many twists and turns and drowning too many lives for it to end anywhere that you can look back and say: "But wasn't it worth it though?". Sometimes the end does not justify the means, because the end
is the means. Democracy cannot be imposed (sic) when, and only when, it suits us.
About blame: I'm not pointing fingers to the US (or the UK, or Holland for that matter) and going: "You were a bad boy!". For me it is a matter of not forgetting the past so we are not forced to repeat it. Examining where we went wrong, and making sure we learn from this in our foreign policy,
is part of fixing the problem. An ounce of prevention, you know?
See, Bush would have gained far more respect in my eyes if his let's-invade-Iraq speech went something like this:
"My fellow Americans. As you know, there is an evil dictator at work in Iraq. He is a threat to his neighbours, and an oppressor of his people. He kills men, women and children without regard. More seriously, he has been able to do so because past governments in the West supported him, or tacitly condoned his actions.
I am not shirking off our share in the responsibility for this. Past US governments have supported this dictator, and sold him arms. But today this is going to change.
Today, we, the present United States goverment, will accept responsibility. The US is a Nation that is prepared to admit to its mistakes, to learn from them, and to change its ways. It is prepared to make amends and to be an example in a new world policy where justice and responsibility prevails over selfish interest and economic greed. We are going to make this world a better place, a just place for everyone, where terrorism will find no fertile soil in the discontent and suffering of disenfranchised people.
And we are going to start by cleaning up the mess that we, the Western nations of this world, helped create. We will depose the dictator Saddam Hussein and do everything in our effort to return democracy to the Iraqi people."
Instead, we get contrived shit like "Oh, that oblong shadow in this aerial photograph
just might be a WMD laboratory... And Saddam
just might have some spurious connection with the 9/11 terrorists, like occupied the same world continent at some point in time...". If his motives were so pure and noble, why didn't he just say what they were?