Quite right, Steve-O...War is pure barbarism. All of it.

Beardedbruce, you wrote:

LittleHawk:
"The USA and Britain have been actively engaged in attacking Iraq (directly or indirectly) ever since 1991"

I think the Iraq invasion of Kuwait might have had something to do with that.

The Iraq invasion had to do with a number of things, and it prompted a thoroughly effective direct response by the USA and a coalition of other countries in 1991...the Gulf War. That direct response cost Saddam all of his air force and the larger part of his army, and his forces were ejected from Kuwait. That was a huge defeat for Saddam and his military never recovered from it.

You don't think that's enough? Is it really necessary to continue persecuting an already crippled country with an impotent military and starving its people for another 12 years or so, and bombing it now and then throughout that period, and dominating 3/4 of its airspace?

Good Lord, man, maybe you feel we should still be bombing Japan too? (I'm being facetious...)

Look, it's about oil, not about righting wrongs done to poor little Kuwait. :-) The USA doesn't give a shit about the Kuwaitis and their corrupt monarchy. Never did. But they give a shit about the oil, brother!

Now, let's go back some in history. Iraq is a country that was arbitrarily created by drawing a bunch of straight lines on a map after the First World War, when Turkey lost their Arabian Empire to the British and French. In so doing, the western politicians created an apparently insoluble mess...because that area is inhabited by 3 groups of people (Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds) who don't get along with each other! It was a recipe for further trouble. The British tried to occupy the area for awhile, but met resistance. Eventually it got too costly and they left. Some time later in the history or Iraq, Saddam Hussein came to power in a coup. Now in the meantime, the British had carved out a little enclave out of former Iraqi territory and CALLED it Kuwait. The Iraqis regarded that as theft of their land, but weren't militarily powerful enough to stop it at the time. Kuwait was formed to provide oil to the British Empire. There was no other reason whatsoever for such a place to exist.

Now, any arbitrarily created entity (like a nation-state or a corporation or a church) starts trying to enlarge and strengthen and perpetuate itself once it's established. It's natural. So the Kuwaitis did that and the Iraqis did that, but the Iraqis looked forward to the day when Kuwait would once again be returned to Iraq.

When Saddam attacked Kuwait, he was doing essentially the same type of thing as:

1. The Argentinians when they occupied the Falklands/Malvinas.
2. The Jews when they occupied Palestine and took it over.
3. The Germans when, in the late 30's, they re-occupied the Rhineland and other enclaves they had formerly managed under the Kaiser.

and so on...

If the Israelis have a moral right to return 2,000 years later to a place and say "This is ours and we shall take it by force." do the Iraqis have a moral right to return to a place a few decades later and say "This is ours and we shall take it by force." ????????

Think about it.

I say that neither one of them had the right to take ANYTHING by force, but notice that there is a double standard being practiced.

The USA supports a Jewish nation taking other people's land by force, but it does not support an Iraqi nation doing so. Why?

Why? Pragmatism. It's got nothing to do with right and wrong. It has to do with strategic interests in the region.

Israel is an ally of the USA. Iraq used to be an ally, but is no longer. It's that simple. If Iraq still was a favoured ally in 1991, then it would have been just too bad for Kuwait...Kuwait would have been the portrayed as the "bad guy" (for human rights abuses or something like that) and Iraq would have been portrayed as the "liberator" in American media.

It's all subjective. It's all prejudice. And it's mostly lies. Wars are fought over money, land, oil, gold, market share, military postioning...not over right and wrong.

- LH