Ahhr.. so little time and so many wrongs to correct here...
Briefly:
1) Moral obligation: Iraq's population rose up repeatedly at our calling only to find that we didn't come to their rescue. Instead we preserved the tyrant under UN rules, which saw thousands of Iraqis starve to death. We pretend to not have known, but the truth is that the UN saw no problems with moving "soveriegnty" to the side so that American troops oculd assist in the humanitarian crisis in the north for years and years while this was happening.
As if we have no moral obligations in Africa? The question was, why didnt we go there instead of Iraq, then you cite "moral obligations"... Dont know if I should cry or laugh...
2) Bigger picture: With the Israeli/Palestinian situation being the most important factor for Muslims before "peace in the Middle East" becomes a reality, Hussein funded Palestinian suicide bombing was a problem that wasn't going away.
Briefly... bigger picture is that many more people starve and die in Africa, and that the strategically best thing would be to get Africa on our side before it is too late.. 1 trillion and the effort of the Americans and the Europeans getting involved in a cooperation in this way, also commiting military forces would go a VERY VERY logn way to do this.. The Iraq war did nothing, except regime change and causing US economic disaster..
3) Regional threat: If we add Iran and Kuwait to his flying military jets over Jordanian and Saudi air space as late as 2002, that would equal "4" neighboring countries that he dismissed sovereinty over. If we wanted to factor in the true definition of "sovereignty," the never ending suicide bomber violence he promoted in Israel (brief mention of Gulf War rocketing) this invasion of sovereignty would be "5."
Yes yes, the middle east is not peaceful, but need to be approached in a very different way..
We really don't even need to go into to what a successful Democratic Iraq does for the region. But just with these three points, UN still saw nothing wrong with the status quo and the denial. Europeans and plenty of Americans still sought to tie their morality to a system instead of to true values.
Democracy isnt all that great, in many cases its awful and destructive... Iraq is a disaster and will never be stable nor good. If China invaded the US tomorrow and said how you should live and what system you should have after killing your wifes and children, do you believe the US population would just submit? Not in generations, maybe in decades of oppression...
BUT....enter the other theme of the Euro anti-American. America's treasure is a matter for them to decide upon and it ussualy demands that it be saved up for when Europe needs it. The fact is that America has been in Africa since 2004. The HOA is a hot spot. Bush and Blair were the loudest speakers in the West to get UN intervention into Africa's Darfur region.
What American treasure? The one in the Chinese central banks? The US debt in Europe, the US debt around the world? The newly printed debt-dollars?
So the question is...where is the EU? Where's the European nations who feel they can criticize our involvement with Iraq by using neglected Africa as a tool...yet also remain comfortably absent from Sudan and Zimbabwe themselves? Were this a European nation like say....genocidal Bosnia,...military intervention would be ordained by God and the American "Bat-Signal" would have been over European skies. If your argument that the world doesn't need America's meddling anymore is true, then where is the great European leadership leading the charge into Africa?
I believe Europe and the US should work together for solutions, and Africa should in my opinion be the main benefitiary..
The real truth is that if America ain't leading it, it ain't happening. Maybe this is why Europeans resent us so much. They know that their own governments just can't get a job done without us and without us leading, their is no leader.
Get real man, the US is heading for irrelevancy.. Europe and the US have always been the same and we have been allies for a long time(in US history), and we should help you and you us in changing things in for example Africa. nd if we combine our military might and economy, perhaps also this decade can be a western decade. I would hardly love to see the US desperately cling to power by advancing their military and nothing else, and doing wars around the world.. Not how I would like things to become...
The past? Rwanda and Sudan was just in the 90's...the same approximate time Americans were summoned to deal with genocide in Europe. Today, only America is concerned over the HOA and it took some Somali piracy to get only a few Europeans to raise their brow.
Many European countries are in Africa... European military vessels are the first one to be involved in protecting the seas outside the coast of Somalia.. They are even discussing a small European navy fleet to go down there under European flags rather than national ones.
Nobody, to include Europe, can change the past. But, nor can Europe change the present, which means it has very little to do with shaping the future. Without us, it's just not going to happen because our fuzzy ideas of international law are a matter of convenience. Either the sovereignty of governments get intervened upon due to their proximity (Bosnia, Haiti) or they get sovereinty enforced upon them because their slaughter and genocide matter not to Europe.
Euroep is the only one aside from China who is changing the current. Europe is undergoing great changes, China also.. The US is still stuck in its 1700 style political system, dumb wit politicians and arrogant and ignorant foreign policies.. How about actually doing some good things in your own country? Like getting rid of poverty and so fourth?
You just don't get it. Where's your black president?
Ok ok, I give up.. You are right about everything because the US is going to have a black president.. Sorry.. :roll:
Where's your civil rights marches? Where's your Civil War to end slavery?
We dont need to march for something we have, nor did we need to end slavery like the US did..
You see, the old fashion values is what created Europe's America. The old prescriptions of designation within a society came from Europe. It's been 'Americans' that have been casting this off and making the declaration of standard to the world. While America's solution to ethnic and religious difference was to force toleration and saturation, which would see the civil war and later civil rights marches, Europe's solution was always to simply cleanse the society of ethnicity or to suppress religion. This is a sort of denial for modernism and progression for a preference of keeping things the way they have always been. Well, you got a whole exponentially growing Muslim immigrant problem that won't allow themselves to be supressed forever.
I would say Europe is the most diverse society in the world, and we havent called black people "niggers" in a very long time.. I remember the US segregation ended just a few decades ago...
American ways of doing things are so 20th century...
Ha. "One" achivement. A large part of Europe is a cultural dead zone. Trapped in 19th century look and forever afraid of actual change.
Do you know ANYTHING about what is going on in Europe? Appearantly not... We are changing so fast that Americans have problems even observing it because you are so slow..
Is this a political debate or what? How is Americas political system changing exactly?
Visiting Europe is like visiting your grandma's house - nothing changes. Even the Louvre Pyramid was viewed as an obscene addition to a stagnated culture that only wishes to live in the past. You brag about how far ahead Europe is in regards to society and governance, yet where is your black guy? You brag about historical firsts, yet what happened in the twentieth century when America was heading into space? Innovation and exploration is laregely an American gig now.
Yep, there we go... Europe is old fashion and like visiting granmas house and stagnant culture, just because the US is about to have a black president. Then we cannot be progressing at all, because we have no black guy on tv that is going to be president.. Shame on us.. Exploration is mainly a Chinese gig now just to remind you of the reality..
Cavemen invented the wheel. But what have they done lately?
Bypassed the whole US air force, making them stand down while they flew two planes far of route into the city of New York and into your two tallest buidings, the ones with asbestos and fat new insurance policies..
I believe it would be less expensive and less of a burden for us if NATO dissolved. America doesn't need it to protect itself and it had never been the factor in protecting its interests. If Europe needs America, then we simply get on our planes and boats and come over. And since we conduct most of the missions and leave some just for European nations to get involved anyway, no NATO required.
Europe's best bet is to keep America in the fold with "NATO" or to create a European military worth a damn and work with America's forces. But this is unlikely, because this would be like placing your citizens under the charge of other nation's leadership. Who leads it? France? Germany? Belgium? Norway? Britian, which is viewed as an outsider? Do they take turns? Do they vote on the General? Does Biritian remain on the outside as its own entity? American forces never fall under the charge of a foriegn leader. I don't see all of Europe's tribes uniting like this. It would be just like a UN mission where all the individual nations bicker and complain about work load and burden sharing (which is humerously never close to what America's roles always are).
NATO and all this will have to be another discussion.. I just believe in a single European military force which can be in alliance with the US military force..