On 29/08/2003 7:58 am, “Garold”
> I am sorry to hear your low opinion of the United States.
Ahh, nope! I love the USA, I love American culture, writers, films and of course music. And some of the nicest people I’ve ever met have been Americans. So I don’t have a low opinion of the US.
I have a low opinion of the US *government* which is a different beast altogether! US people = ordinary people, US government = ….well, as corrupt and evil as my own government. To check what I think of my own government, have a look here:
Knowledge or Certainty?
> I have to
> admit, I’m at a point to where I don’t know what to believe. May I
> please correct you on one thing. The United States has never had a
> strategy of ruling the world. I think the politically correct term is
> lead the world.
Hmmm…that’s a very minor semantic difference. Leader is another word for ruler. And the world doesn’t need “leading.” I prefer democracy 🙂
For another view, here’s an excerpt from an interview with Noam Chomsky which addresses precisely the point you raise:
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ANDY CLARK
This email is from Don Rhodes, from Melbourne, in Australia, and he says: “I do not believe that the US wants to dominate the world. The Americans have been attacked on several fronts, 9/11 being only one of them. Someone has to bring into line rogue states and it is the USA alone that has the capability to do this. Without such a ‘world policeman’ the world would just disintegrate into warring factions. Look at history for examples of this.” What do you make of that sort of statement?
NOAM CHOMSKY
The first sentence is simply factually incorrect. The National Security Strategy states fairly explicitly that the US intends to dominate the world by force, which is the dimension in which it rules supreme, and to ensure that there is never any potential challenge to this domination. That was not only stated explicitly, it has also been commented on repeatedly, right away in the main establishment – the Foreign Affairs journal in its next issue is pointing out that the United States is declaring the right to be what it calls a “revisionist state”, which will use force to control the world in its own interests. The person who sent the email may believe that the US has some unique right to run the world by force. I don’t believe that, and contrary to what was stated I don’t think history supports that at all. In fact the US record, incidentally with the support of Australia, since the period of its global dominance in the 1940s, is one of instigating war and violence and terror on a very substantial scale. The Indochina War, just to take one example in which Australia participated, was basically a war of aggression. The United States attacked South Vietnam in 1962. The war then spread to the rest of Indochina. The end result was several million people killed, the countries devastated, and that’s only one example. So history does not support the conclusion and the principle that one state should have a unique right to rule the world by force. That’s an extremely hazardous principle, no matter who the country is.
Chomsky interviewed on the Amsterdam Forum, June 02, 2003. Radio Netherlands’ interactive discussion programme.
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Chomsky for President! 🙂
> I can’t say I’m happy with the true price of any war.
> But let’s get real, who in their right mind could defend Saddam’s
> dictatorship. and the evil he did. The main problem is Bush senior
> didn’t finish the job back in 1991.
Who would defend Saddam? Well, Rumsfeld, Bush Snr. et al who installed him for a start. Hussein is merely another US-govt.-installed/supported petty dictator who slipped the leash and bit the hand that bred him. The same as Pinochet, Noriega, Marcos…well, you get my point. It’s the very idea that the US government has a right to interfere and install regimes it prefers wherever it wants that created the monster of Hussein in the first place.
And now they’ve ousted him and installed yet another puppet regime which has no support from the people of Iraq. Ask yourself – would an army of liberation still be facing such hostility every day from ordinary Iraqis if they were truly seen as liberators? Look at the newsreel footage of how well the US army was received by the French after they ousted the Nazis – I don’t see the same joy and gratitude on the faces of the Iraqis. They see the US+UK forces as being new dictators. How long before Chalabi or some other US appointee becomes the new Hussein and starts killing his own people?
What I would like to see in Iraq is democracy. Hell, I’d like to see that in the UK.
> Bush junior is a far from perfect leader. I do think if somebody like
> Saddam was your dictator you would feel differently.
How would you feel if you were an Iraqi and suffered under Saddam and then *the very same people* who installed this brutal murderer and supplied him with chemical weapons invaded your country? Would you feel grateful to them for remedying their “mistake” (after years of support) or would you feel terrified as to who the replacement would be? After all, you know they don’t care about you or else they wouldn’t have applied the sanctions which starved your children to death. What else is in your country? Ahhh…oil…
There were no weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Iraq was not to liberate the Iraqi people (as they well know, hence the continuing attacks on US forces). It was a first step in the implementation of the far-right National Security Strategy which baldly states that the the US govt. can do do as it pleases since it’s the biggest, toughest kid on the block.
> Peace,
> Garold
I’d like to thank you again for emailing. I hope my reply hasn’t seemed aggressive or hectoring – I’ve just tried to address the points you raised, as best I can.
Again, I am *not* anti-American, just as I am not anti-French, British or whatever. I am anti-government when that government does not represent the people but rather is the stooge of big business. I am pro-democracy and I feel what little freedom and democracy we have in the West is being ripped from our hands by the actions of our respective governments and the corporate media hounds,
love and kisses,
Jyoti