I don't want to digress here into a diatribe against the US foreign policy; the pertinent literature is too voluminous, the evidence too overwhelming to exculpate the US in the summary manner of your attempt to do so.
US's invaion of Vietnam was one of the worst atocity visited upon the world, post-second WW. There are more war criminals living in Miami than probably in the rest of the world, sheltered by the US from any accounting for their gory misdeeds. Henry Kissinger is probably the biggest war criminal loose in this world (read Chris Hitchens' utterly convincing book about why Kissinger is a fit case to be tried for war crimes. Incidentally, Hitchens is a hawk on the Iraq war and generally supports the Bush foreign policy.). The spectre of communism or radical islam that you so mechanically invoke was never really the case in many situations. Dulles brothers' (earlier incarnation of the likes of Cheney) theory of "domino effect" didn't come true in Vietnam. If anything, the rationale holds even less for the invasion of Grenada and throttling of Nicaragua, which you will discover, if you will bother to lookup, had much better quality of life for a vast majority of its impoverished populace under Ortega's direction. After the use forced a "regime change" there, Nicaragua has slipped into near chaotic conditions. I could go on and on. the record of US's perfidy, rapacity and blood-thristiness is too extensive to even be cursorily mentioned here.
You are factually wrong about the US never having been an imperial power, even in the limited sense of DIRECT political control. Phillipines was a colony of the US for approx. 50 years (app. 1896-1946. In fact, I am glad that you brought this up because Bush only the other day made an Irq-Phillipines analogy, saying that the Phillipines are a role-model for the US intervention in Iraq, thus making clear, that the US would like to put a client/puppet regime in Iraq (in the manner of the Marcos regime in Phillipines, which committed tremendous atrocities with tacit US approval) which will kow-tow to it in all important political and economic matters. In as much as the US use of nuclear weapons is concerned, there is ample documentation to prove that Japan was either on the verge of surrendering, or could have been intimidated into surrendering by dropping a nuclear bomb in the Bay adjacent to Hiroshima. It was done more with a view to send a message to Soviet Union, as even Eisenhower admitted when on the eve of his retirement, he famously warned Americans to beware of the Military-Industrial complex, and its capacity to destroy the democratic fabric of this country.
Overall, the fascist cabal in power in Washington is a greater threat to world peace than Palestinians, Hamas, or anyone else, a fact grasped clearly by the majority of the world's population today.
My point in writing about Uday's tragic death was simply to make a GENERAL statement about how we are leading increasingly atomized lives, where indivdual and social good are hard to define and even harder to integrate. In my view, someone working in Los Alamos lab on developing a chip that goes into making a "daisy cutter" is as liable for the consequences of his actions as the person who drops the bomb. We simply cannot hind behind the facade of "duty", "family pride", "proud tradition", "adrenaline rush", or whatever else as justifications for our actions. After all we are not being forced into these actions without our knowledge or consent.
I understand that there is a massive, multi-pronged, 24-hr, indoctrination campaign that goes on in this country, often with the full complicity of the media. As individuals, and privileged ones at that, however, we ought to use our free will and our ability to discern, to separate fact from propaganda. Let us not become apologists for the US imperialism and its predatory designs in the world
And for those who are feeling sanguine about the prospects of Saddam's trial and consequent redemption of US's past acts of omission and commission (wrt Saddam), here is an extrememly brief history of US past behavior in these matters (from another listserv):
"Let's see what happened in the past.
* Noriega was tried in the US, but very little was published about the trial. He was denied any right of a proper defense -- to call witnesses, etc. Of course he was seized illegally in the first place, by an illegal
invasion of Panama. Noriega had been on the CIA payroll for over 20 years, and was showing signs of independence.
* Bernard Couard, of Grenada, was tried in Grenada by the US puppet government put up there. He was granted no rights at all. He and his wife, who have now been in prison for over 20 years, have been repeatedly tortured. His wife has been driven insane by repeated
gang-rapes by her jailers.
I have a friend, Richard Gibson of the Sociology Dept. at San Diego State, who has visited them in prison and written about all this. It's a horror story akin to the horror stories about Saddam's torture chambers.
The US is 100% responsible; Grenada was, and is, completely controlled by the US.
* Milosevic is proving to be an embarrassment to the US and NATO precisely because he's being tried in Europe, where the governments are a little less brazen about violating every single right a defendant has, than they are in the US. Therefore, Milosevic's trial gets little
publicity here in the US, and his testimony has probably won him more supporters in Serbia than he had to begin with.
It's well known that the US supports the fascist Kosovo Liberation Army, who are every bit as brutal as the Serbs ever were."
Vivek Singh Tomar (Dec 20, 2003 10:30 a.m.):
US invasion of Iraq is a completely different topic with respect to Uday's honorable service. There is a thread devoted to it. It has to do with the previously growing continuum of support for terrorism, and the fact that if those that attacked on September 11 had WMD, they would not have hesitated to use them. There is considerable criticism about preemptive efforts done to prevent September 11, yet there was a lot more threat from Iraq to US, if they were to acquire WMD's and their ability to blackmail the US and the world...similar what North Korea is doing, except they do not have proximity to oil.
Yes its about oil, but oil is lifeblood of todays' economy. Without a regular dependable supply, you would have chaos, civil war, nuclear war, and untold deaths. You say that attack on Iraq was unprovoked. September 11 killed more lives than Pearl Harbor. This war against terrorism is a different war without boundaries. Saddam was not innocent...he was dining and wining Abu Nidal, and Al Qaida operative before he had him killed. Further he was a psychotic meglomaniac mass murderer who wanted to get even with the US for the first Gulf war.
Two days ago, Iraq's ambassodor chided the UN about looking the other way while Saddam killed millions, and currently squabbling about making money while Iraq needs security help.
US has supported many dictators, but the alternative has usually been communism, or radical islam. The policy makers have had to choose lesser of two evils, and sometimes the lesser evil didn't turn out to be so. They have never been an imperial power to rule over any nation such as Britain or France, and have actually helped the two nations it conquered (Japan and W germany)to become free and become more economical powerful than ever before. The same is the hope for Iraq. You criticises dropping of bombs at Hiroshima....howeever there is an equally compelling argument that it saved many more lives by bringing an end to a terrible war. Don't for once think that opposition would not have used them
You equated a soldier giving sacrifice and serving his unit to some underworld supari contract. It seems you have no idea what it takes to be a soldier. A supari contractor has no obligation to sacrifice his life for good of a nation. The usual operandus is to surprise the victim, hopefully from the back and pull a trigger. This is usually what's associated with a definition of a coward. Usually the highest bidder wins out with these people, and if the odds are even slightly against them...they run. They will never fight you in on one situation, and they fight for no civilized principle. Disrespecting Uday tantamounts to disrespecting any soldier of any country.
