In the sense you describe, then all 24 million Iraqis were already "victims" of Saddam's terror. Of course, millions have aready been victims in the more serious sense that the German and other alarmists - of whom there were many, several quoted in the article, not just "one guy" - undoubtedly meant. I suppose there was some luck involved. There was also concentrated effort and expense, as well as substantial risk to the coalition forces. Indeed. We've made the case for it a hundred if not a thousand times by now on ET. I don't recall your ever having stated your position on what the proper policy should have been. Uh, who cares? Mass international dissension means nothing in itself. If the war was justified, then it would have been wrong to avoid it just because opponents made noise. What are you talking about? What do you think you're talking about? The $60/barrel oil that other alarmists, unmentioned in the article but given platforms in the German mass media, were predicting? French-US trade relations? What about the dire economic consequences of a US retreat from the Persian Gulf and from the world - and of leaving them entirely to the likes of Saddam Hussein and... France? We've seen what impotent gestures and quick withdrawls when confronted gets us - such as on 9/11, for instance. What about the economic consequences of that? Stability in itself counts for nothing. Some of the worst crimes the US ever committed were done in the name of stability. Stability for the citizens of Iraq meant terror and privation without end. Stability for us meant letting the Islamofascists grow in power and confidence. Fostering destabilization of a dangerous, unjust situation can be a good thing. As for the article and the predictions of negative effects on French-American trade, I agree that it would have been a lot better if France's leaders hadn't lied to, misled, and betrayed the US at the UN, sought to exploit and in turn whip up an anti-American frenzy, actively sought to organize opposition to the US, and colluded with US enemies. They certainly have a lot of repair work to do if they hope to prevent US investors and consumers from increasingly focusing elsewhere in the future.
lied to, misled, betrayed?? Are we living in the same dimension? Who lied to whom? My take is that Chirac was right to doubt the US's intelligence. It's funny to see all these top US Gov officials all say "Well the Iraqis did a great job at hiding those WMD, better than we expected, it's probably gonna take months, years to find them." LOL Hilarious! Better than Iraqis Information minister man. Woohoo. The collusion you are talking about is at best "blurry", we don't know what kind of info the French gave the Iraqis, it might have been things like: "we're sorry but ours allies the USA are gonna come in and bomb the hell out of your place so we need to pack up our stuff and leave (commercial interests) and such" You are being misled my friend. MISLED. Anything substantially more important would have exploded and created massive tensions. It is not the case and we have no further details.
The primary betrayal was clear: The French joined the US and the rest of the permanent and rotating Security Council members passing UN Resolution 1441 15-0, calling for "full and immediate compliance" with disarmament and related resolutions, vs. "serious consequences." No one ever claimed that the Iraqis offered full and immediate compliance. The argument from the anti-US front essentially amounted to "maybe we didn't mean it or anyway we've changed out minds" - a position that, among other things, would have left the US and UK, their militaries, and, not incidentally, the Iraqi people out to dry while the UN pursued its indefinite and unlikely inspection process, gradually transforming it from "compliance inspection" to hopeless detective work. In the ensuing "dissension," to use your word, France led international opposition to the US and the UK, its supposed "allies," especially by sabotaging the US in NATO and regarding Turkey, and by making common cause with Russia, another of Saddam's historical major sponsors (unlike the US). One of my favorite French lies was on a more trivial point: When De Villepin was interviewed on MEET THE PRESS, he was asked about anti-Americanism in France. Without batting an eyelash, he said, "There is no anti-Americanism in France." He was pressed on the issue, and repeated the statement emphatically. "There is no anti-Americanism in France. There is none." You may, of course, prefer to believe what you like about Iraqi WMD programs and aspirations. No one outside of Iraq knows what the real status of Iraqi arms programs was prior to the war: That was the problem, or, rather, one of the key ones. It was a condition that Saddam was obligated to clarify, and refused to. It doesn't matter which deliverable weapons Saddam happened to possess in late March of this year. He maintained the capacity to produce WMDs, and refused to allow transparency. The widely reported claim that he destroyed them on the eve of war makes perfect sense, once he determined that using them would do him no good on the battlefield, and that their discovery would destroy his strategy of uniting political opposition to the US. The truth will come out eventually. Whether those who are desperate to have been proven right about something will be wiling to accept it is another question. And I suggest you watch "Reign of Terror" on the History Channel this Sunday at 8 PM EST. It might give you some perspective on this dicussion, in particular on the regime that the French and people like yourself were - and still are - so busily defending. There is already more information than that in the public record as to French cooperation with the Iraqis - such as communication of information from confidential meetings, intelligence assessments of US intentions, and cooperative subversion of pro-Iraqi human rights conference. You can look it up yourself - some has been posted on ET already. There is no reason to expect that anything "substantially more important" would immediately be shared publically. There have been unattributed leaks of much more damaging material, but going on the record with something like that is not by any means a preferred tactic for the possessor of such intelligence - especially if it comes from a privileged source, but also for a number of familiar reasons. If and whenever the US decides it's in its interests to push the breach with France further, or to destabilize the French government, it could attempt something like that, but I don't consider such eventualities very likely.
It seems like your are referring to the UN as something distinct from the USA and that's where you're wrong. The USA is part of the UN, a big part at that. If it has such a strong case against Iraq, why couldn't they make a better case? Veto or no Veto, they would not have had majority and that's the problem. There is no anti americanism per se in France, just like there isn't any pro-French government in France. Trust me on this one, I know a lot of people in France who do not like US's foreign policy but have nothing against the American people. You are being misled. He is not lying. Anti americanism is a broad word to say: whatever is american is bad. This is not at all what's going on in France. Watch some more history channel shows. If you know French or German, I also suggest you read their media. I also suggest you read the BBC's website which is quite objective usually, while not always so. A lot better than the NY Post however or Fox news for that matter. I would also suggest you didn't point towards certain "sources" and make a case with real arguments that I can refute or concur. Throwing outside sources make it difficult to follow because they can be marred with semi truthes or agendas. I know you don't have an agenda so I know I can discuss things with you. I also know and respect your point of view and you probably know by now that nothing will change my mind unless something objectively and verifiably extraordinary comes to light. (WMD for example or a clean link to Al Qaeda or some real hard evidence that France was giving substantial information to the Iraqi government). If the French did give them information, they really did an awful job, lol Remember: the real red pill is out there but there are lots of phony ones and there are lots of blue ones. Some have decided to take the blue one to bring resolution to their inner torment. I hope you are open to the fact that the red pill may be lost, just like WMD's are.We may never know the truth, we can only rely on what we know for sure. Assumptions cannot be used in arguments. And to clear things up: I DO NOT DEFEND THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME. This is another of your false statements to invalidate my reasoning.
Due to the formatting of your post - I missed this stuff the first time around: Yes. Why shouldn't I? I don't require instructions from you as to what aspects of Saddam's terror regime justified the war - though I consider the internal and external aggressiveness of his regime to be of a piece. In my opinion there were multiple sufficient justifications for making war on Saddam's regime - including its support for terrorists and its non-compliance with disarmament and other Gulf War ceasefire/UN agreements. As for the larger moral issue, the Iraqi government stayed in power as a result of the international system and specific conditions that we and our allies put in place and supported. We owed it to the Iraqi people - of whom 1 million (conservatively) were killed by Saddam during his reign - to get rid of that government, and we did ourselves a favor, too. They were liberated. They were not destroyed, or anywhere close to it. They now have a chance to have a real government rather than a criminal gang running their country. As I said, I believe that WMD, support for terrorism, and state police terror were all of a piece in Saddam's Iraq. Liberating Iraq serves Iraq's interests as well as ours, and also happens to be our best chance to push the larger Arab world toward reform as well - with extremely positive effects on terrorism, social justice, and a number of other ills. You're panicking. Next you'll be tallying up the millions of casualties - and psychological victims, too - that these imaginary wars will cause. "Listening" is not a policy - it is a behavior that accompanies general passivity. Something had to be done about Iraq: Something was being done that wasn't working, and that kept the Iraqis living in poverty and worse, helped keep the Middle East boiling, and left Saddam and his regime in position to resume their historical pattern as soon as the rest of the world relaxed its attention. The proper policy is to listen to one's true allies, but, in any event, to do what one considers right. As for the UN, it has been exposed - not for the first time, but now rather definitively - as corrupt, impotent, and worse. It is not a world government, would not qualify as a democracy if it were a government, and has very little claim to legitimacy otherwise. It's effectively a terrorist-supporting regime - despite our best efforts to make it something better: If it were more important, we'd probably have to get rid of it. They were there for their own reasons, but not because they were right. Again, your opinion. Whether or not Saddam played any direct role in 9/11, it remains relevant for a number of reasons, and his support for terrorists more generally and his role in the larger Islamic-fascist project cannot be doubted. $60/barrel referred to an alarmist prediction played up in Germany about the supposed effects of the war in Iraq. Please read more carefully. The "lost opportunities" and "diplomatic failures" don't amount to much compared to the likely effects of ceding the field to the Saddam and Chirac. You seem either to be deliberately misunderstanding me, or to be very confused. My statement regarding de-stabilzation addressed a very simple concept. It stated no absolute rules. It merely responded to your own fetishization of political stability as an end in itself. It seems self-evident to me that there are many conditions in human life, including international relations, whose stability would not be worth preserving. The attempt to transfer the term to a new context, regarding war aims (as stated by whom?) and the fate of the Iraqi people, is sophistry. In short, the phraseology that you appear to find so pathetically stupid is one that you made up yourself. If you can't understand what I wrote on this subject, or are merely determined to score some illusory debating point, then I'm not sure there's any point in arguing any further with you.
To say that there is no anti-Americanism in France is an obvious absurdity. Books have been written on the subject. It is a time-honored French tradition - not, by any means, the only French tradition on America, but to deny that reflexive dislike of American influences, products, policies, ideas, customs, etc., exists among substantial portions of the French population is ridiculous. I do, and I do, and I consider the article I posted above - as well as other articles and observations I have posted on ET - to be accurate. Matters of opinion. Many observers consider the BBC's coverage of Iraq to have been disgraceful. I didn't even like that movie very much. But you did and you do - first by minimizing its evils and the dangers it posed, but, more important, by supporting policies that effectively defended it, and seemed designed to perpetuate its grip on power indefinitely. Once upon a time, defenders of democracy and human rights, primarily from the political left, cheered the defeat of fascist dictators. In possibly the proudest events in the history of the international left, they formed brigades of armed volunteers to fight facists when no one else would. Now they send pathetic "human shields" to defend them. It is a critical point.
If i tell you I'm white, or you going to argue I'm not? Pointless to argue with someone who does not even follow the basic rules of argumentation. French anti americanism is not real, it is fabricated, go to France and make up your own mind. I talk from experience. If you meet one guy who is anti american, does that mean 99.99% of France is anti american? What about Saudi Arabia? What about the UK? Your way of saying: if you're not with us, you're with the enemy is typical of the unilateralistic US government. Why would i argue with such a hard headed person in the first place? You are discrediting yourself more than you are discrediting me. My arguments are the same and do not "evolve". Your arguments are mutants. You assert things that are completely wrong, such as associating Iraq with terrorism. This is unfounded. I'm not arguing anymore, find someone else to counter your unsubstantiated stubborn posts. Oh and I love the argument "Books have been written on the subject" LOL Which also means 9/11 was a government conspiracy because "books have been written on the subject!" Ridiculous. Thank you and goodnight.
Again, again and again: the ones who hate Usa in Europe are manly comunists (because Usa stop their dream of a total comunist tiranny on this planet) and some other left party, but for other side a big part of european society - I think is the majority - know well their freedom come from usa, who fought in europe against nazifascists and communists.
And for the record, this is what anti americanism is: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism Difference of opinion between Europe and America does not necessarily mean anti americanism. Everything is not black and white, only naive fools see the world that way.
http://www.lepoint.fr/edito/document.html?did=129302 Le bloc-notes de Bernard-Hneri Lévy Chirac et Villepin auront-ils le courage de désavouer l'antiaméricanisme qui déferle ? EXCERPTS: Translation into English, from Cinderallabloggerfeller: http://www.cinderellabloggerfeller.blogspot.com/ (post of May 1, 2003)