Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-93-124.uninet.net.mx (148.233.93.124) on Saturday, December 28, 2002 at 6:16PM :
In Reply to: 'No Third Way' for U.S. Iraqis posted by Jeff from d53-25-237.try.wideopenwest.com (64.53.237.25) on Saturday, December 28, 2002 at 5:05PM :
I donīt buy the "murderous dictator" thing any longer. I question where the facts come from. Hussein became the villain in the piece because he was the one willing to take the strong hand it needs to run a country split fifteen diferent ways...with a West waiting to exploit every division and hatred.
The Shah had the same problem...
We forget that our democratic institutions that were, didnīt spring fully formed from the head of George Washington...but were a long and hard fought culmination of a variety of experiments and failures with a mild success here and there. We didnīt go from Feudalism to full blown democracy. We drowned women for being witches, we gave diseased blankets to Natives...we also had a death march through the snow that ended at Wounded Knee, South Dakota instead of Turkey...we too massacred villagers and stole land and lied and swindled and cheated...and that only a couple of hundred years ago...at a time when Europe was just gearing up for the French Revolution and all of its bloodshed and the Napoleonic Wars to come and the hundreds of thousands of fellow Christians slaughtered...to lead into Franco Prussian Wars and First and Second World Wars...then to our private murder of innocent Koreans and then soon after the murder of innocent Vietnamese...
Where in hell do we get off calling anyone "murderous"?
I may not like Saddam if I ever meet him...but I donīt know which ruler over there I would like...certainly not Sharon or Chalabi. The United States has loved no one more than a murderous dictator...never met one it didnīt like...and they liked Saddam and the Shah and Batista and Somoza and Rios-Mont and Savimbi and any other number of cold blooded calculating murdering thugs. Why so squeamish all of a sudden...whassamatter...the pay back not big enough?
-- pancho
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