Hmmmm...that's true. The U.N. has been passing resolutions against Israel for decades. Israel and the USA choose to condemn or ignore those resolutions. Hmmm. I wonder why? Because those resolutions don't suit Israel and the USA.

Same deal in Vietnam, way back then. The USA ignored the fact that after the French left there was to be an agreed-upon erasure of the temporary (one-year) line of division between the northern and southern half of the country and a national election. They did not permit either event to happen, but installed a government of their own choosing in the southern half...a government run by the Catholic Vietnamese minority under Ngo Dinh Diem.

Why? Because the Buddhist majority was going to vote for Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh. That was clear and the USA knew it. The Americans didn't like Uncle Ho, so they:

1. Prevented a legal and peaceful reunification of the country of Vietnam.

2. Thereby subverted the legal arrangements which the French had made with Vietnam a year earlier.

3. Prevented the national election and installed a local dictatorship in the South instead.

3. Got slowly and inexorably involved in the resulting civil war, to preserve that dictatorship and rule a primarily Buddhist country with a minority Catholic administration. They also sought out other minorities such as the Montagnards to help them fight the Vietnamese. This did not give them the winning combination they were hoping for, but it killed a great many people and exacerbated old hatreds in the country.

4. They finally lost the damn war anyway, at the cost of probably a couple of million lives (mostly Southeast Asian lives).

So...what does the US administration believe in? Democracy? No. Justice? No. Equality? No. National sovereignty? (other people's, I mean...) No. International law? No. Anything deeply idealistic whatsoever? NO!!!

The USA believes in WINNING, and it believes its own mythology of cultural superiority. Period. This is basically what Al Capone believed in too, and it's what Stalin, Napoleon, and Caesar believed in, and it's what Saddam Hussein believes in.

The actual truth of the matter is that the USA favours democracy and the rule of law when it is in the interests of the USA and doesn't when it's not. It's that simple. In this respect, the USA is much like most other countries...a hypocrite when its own interests are at variance with the truth.

It is the job of George Bush and Saddam and most other politicians to obfuscate these things, so that their public remains patriotic and supportive of their chosen agendas. (Some politicians are naive enough to believe even the most unlikely of their own propaganda statements, and might thus be called "honest men". I don't know if George Bush is that naive, but he may be. Reagan was. Saddam certainly is not.)

They accomplish that job it by thumping the drum of patriotism, and scaring the bejesus out of their citizens with tales of "enemies", foreign and domestic. This is the oldest trick in the book. An aggressive country NEEDS enemies, and constantly creates them by its actions. If there are no real enemies available it will manufacture some...usually on a prime piece of desirable real estate somewhere where there are valuable strategic gains to be made.

It's been going on for centuries.

Nothing new really at all.

The USA worries me more than Saddam, simply because it is very powerful and he is much less so.

In the same way, Imperial Rome would have worried me more than, say, the Celts in Ireland....had I been living in Egypt around 55 BC or thereabouts. I trust no national administration, but the ones that worry me most are the ones with the most long range firepower...and the most control of the media.

If I were a Kurd I would worry plenty about Saddam ("enemy" of America) and about the Turks (ally of America)...being a North American, I am far more worried about an irresponsible administration in the most powerful country on Earth...just across the border from where I happen to live.

- LH