Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 00:16:29 -0600
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-mutualaid.org>
Subject: American foreign policy: rats, rants and tyrants


American foreign policy: rats, rants and tyrants

By Terry Lane
December 21, 2003


Well, whacko! They have caught Saddam. What a relief. Now the Iraqi 
people can live in peace, prosperity and perpetual happiness. Except the 
several thousand collaterally damaged ones, but you can't make omelettes 
without cracking Arabs.

One happy chappie writes to me: "And was (sic) a sorry day it is for 
weak, sniviling (sic) and gutless people like you. Terry- you are a sad 
and pathetic excuse for a man. You are a disgrace to all Australians. 
You should go and burry (sic) yourself in a rat hole along with Saddam. 
You should also appologise (sic) to all the Iraqi people for your 
shameful articles. It is spineless whimps (sic) like you who kept Sadam 
(sic) in power and caused extended suffering for the Iraqi people."

I know that it is rude to mock the illiteracy of the people you disagree 
with, but it is hard to resist.

The war-lovers hold the anti-war dissenters responsible for decades of 
Saddam tyranny. But how is this so? We are not the ones who armed Saddam 
to kill Iranians - that was the American government. It was not us who 
made Saddam a present of golden spurs - that was the grateful Donald 
Rumsfeld. It was Rumsfeld, as an emissary from Ronald Reagan, who went 
to Baghdad in 1983, knowing that Iraq was using chemical weapons against 
the Iranians, and said nothing.

But let's concede that the US and its lickspittle allies are not bad 
people, merely slow learners. After all, Saddam had systematically 
exterminated communists in Iraq and you can see how this would confuse 
the Americans. Even if they suspected Saddam was a crook he was their 
sort of crook. But eventually the penny dropped and they figured out 
that Saddam Hussein was a bad man.

Which is the nub of the problem. It is all very well to cheer the 
downfall of a tyrant, but since when do Americans have an aversion to 
tyrants? Most of their best friends are tyrants.

Let's see if I've got this right. Saddam Hussein was a bad man and it 
was worth killing thousands of Iraqis, destroying the country's 
infrastructure and wasting billions of dollars to catch him down a hole.

But the white supremacist tyranny that brought murder and misery to 
South Africa for generations was, according to American governments, 
best dealt with by patience. Did you notice that it was left to the 
South Africans themselves to sort things out?

What about Pol Pot? The most infamous mass murderer since Hitler was 
recognised as the legitimate ruler of Cambodia by the US because it was 
better than conceding that the wily Vietnamese had stepped in just in 
time to save the last innocent Cambodian from being killed. Best not 
mention Vietnam.

What about Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the military junta that 
terrorised Argentina? And the colonels who ruled Greece with an iron 
fist, to American applause? Or the thugs of El Salvador, Guatemala and 
Honduras where dictators are welcome if they protect the investments of 
American fruit companies? What shall we say about Saudi Arabia?

It is true that if I had my way Saddam Hussein would still be dictator. 
But that is not the whole story. The US usually deals with tyrants by 
supporting them or leaving it to their own people to bring them down. 
What was different about Saddam? Oil? War is neither the only nor the 
best way to topple tyrants. Every nation in the world, except for four, 
saw it that way. I'm happy to stand with the 97 per cent majority opinion.