spb: I'm afraid I felt your reply was a bit unfair in places, I hope I have misunderstood.
spb said:
From what I saw in Europe in 2002 I can't say that the US image was too hot to begin with. There were still people in Denmark protesting the US involvement in Vietnam and a museum display opposing the US escalation of the cold war with the USSR.
I seem to remember a fair number of people in the US protesting against the war in Vietnam too! There is nothing wrong with expressing that opposition, it is simply freedom of speech. But a couple of displays in Denmark doesn't mean that all Europeans saw the US as being in the gutter. George W. Bush was/is
really good at pushing things in that direction! There are things that Europeans will dislike about US foreign policy and there will be things Europeans dislike about European foreign policy too. One should not confuse opposition to a particular policy/incident as being tantamount to opposition to a whole nation and its people.
spb said:
The Afghanistan war was unavoidable
Really? The war in Afghanistan is quite a different issue from, say, Iraq, but I'm still a bit surprised you would say it was unavoidable, as that is quite a strong statement.
spb said:
and I believe that any war would be opposed by Europe, unless there were a payoff.
I have to say that view amazes me, and it sounds a bit like you are trying to take the moral highground... Would the US only go to war too if there was a payoff, or are you only levelling this at Europeans? The US has a long history of going to war or supporting oppressive regimes, for self-serving reasons, and often its actions severely harm the local populations.
You can see the list of the "coalition of the willing:"
Afghanistan,
Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan,
Bulgaria, Colombia,
the Czech Republic,
Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea,
Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia,
Hungary,
Italy, Japan, South Korea,
Latvia,
Lithuania,
Macedonia,
the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines,
Poland,
Romania,
Slovakia,
Spain,
Turkey,
United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.
I think that includes a fair number of European countries...
Europe has been torn apart by two major wars (both of which, incidentally, the US was slow to get involved in
), within living memory of some, and so it is natural that Europeans are most cautious about going to war these days. Being hesitant about going to war is no bad thing. That is not to say Europeans never support wars, they are just less rash and gung-ho than the US currently is. If you were really saying that Europeans are greedy and oppose war out of self-protection, but will go to war for profit, but the US is moral and altruistic and goes to war for noble reasons (!), then I think I will need to reply to that later!
spb said:
The most vocal opposition of the Iraq war were making the most money in the Oil-For-Food scandal
Hmmm, looking at the facts...
From
Wikipedia:
Wikipedia said:
The Oil-for-Food Programme, established by the United Nations in 1995 (under UN Security Council Resolution 986) and terminated in late 2003, was intended to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to rebuild its military.
The programme was introduced by the US Clinton Administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarisation of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War. The sanctions were discontinued in 2003 after the United States invasion of Iraq, and the humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
...
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations assigned to investigate the scandal has also concluded that
"The United States (government) was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."
The report also found that individuals and companies in the United States accounted for 52% of all oil-voucher kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein. The largest of these recipients, Houston-based Bayoil and its CEO, Bay Chalmers, have been indicted by the US Department of Justice for their actions.
Are you really singling out a European nation (I'm presuming you have mainly been alluding to France [and Russia], if you see Germany as being different) and making a sweeping generalization about all of Europe based on that, and then telling me the US was innocent with regards to this issue?
Another article (originally from a British newspaper):
...
Through various control mechanisms, the United States and Great Britain were able to turn on and off the flow of oil as they saw best. In this way, the Americans were able to authorise a $1bn exemption concerning the export of Iraqi oil for Jordan, as well as legitimise the billion-dollar illegal oil smuggling trade over the Turkish border, which benefited NATO ally Turkey as well as fellow regime-change plotters in Kurdistan. At the same time as US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was negotiating with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov concerning a Russian-brokered deal to end a stand-off between Iraq and the UN weapons inspectors in October-November 1997, the United States turned a blind eye to the establishment of a Russian oil company set up on Cyprus.
This oil company, run by Primakov's sister, bought oil from Iraq under "oil for food" at a heavy discount, and then sold it at full market value to primarily US companies, splitting the difference evenly with Primakov and the Iraqis. This US-sponsored deal resulted in profits of hundreds of million of dollars for both the Russians and Iraqis, outside the control of "oil for food". It has been estimated that 80 per cent of the oil illegally smuggled out of Iraq under "oil for food" ended up in the United States.
Likewise, using its veto-wielding powers on the 661 Committee, set up in 1990 to oversee economic sanctions against Iraq, the United States was able to block billions of dollars of humanitarian goods legitimately bought by Iraq under the provisions of the oil-for-food agreement. And when Saddam proved too adept at making money from kickbacks, the US and Britain devised a new scheme of oil sales which forced potential buyers to commit to oil contracts where the price would be set after the oil was sold, an insane process which quickly brought oil sales to a halt, starving the oil-for-food programme of money to the point that billions of dollars of humanitarian contracts could not be paid for by the United Nations.
The corruption evident in the oil-for-food programme was real, but did not originate from within the United Nations, as Norm Coleman and others are charging. Its origins are in a morally corrupt policy of economic strangulation of Iraq implemented by the United States as part of an overall strategy of regime change. Since 1991, the United States had made it clear - through successive statements by James Baker, George W Bush and Madeleine Albright - that economic sanctions, linked to Iraq's disarmament obligation, would never be lifted even if Iraq fully complied and disarmed, until Saddam Hussein was removed from power. This policy remained unchanged for over a decade, during which time hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions.
It did also seem odd to me at the time that American conservatives were making such a big deal about this issue and trying to take the moral highground, at a time when the US was under scrutiny. The best defense is a good offense?
Also, if you are referring "Europe" and then only implicating France (Russia is not really considered "European," or is only partly considered to be European), you can see that
France is only one part of Europe, so I don't think you should make sweeping generalizations about so many nations. My view is no nation can claim a moral highground overall. European nations have their hands dirty in some matters, yes, as does the US. My concern is when people complain about other nations (eg. being "cowardly" or "selfish") and advocate their own as leading the way in moral terms.
spb said:
In general its all OK here.
So you don't mind "disappearances" in the US, detention without trial, torture, increased Presidential powers, erosion of civil rights, increased powers of surveillance, making it easier for the President to impose martial law without the approval of local authorities, a culture of fear, the administration contradicting itself about important facts (eg. dangers and priorities), and a war being started in the name of a phoney cause?
And, in the interest of fairness, I'm presuming you also think it is absolutely OK for, say, insurgents or other nations to detain US troops without trial, for years on end, without access to their families or the Red Cross, for their rights under the Geneva Convention to be denied, and for the captured Americans to be "forcefully interrogated" or sent to other nations where the "interrogation" methods are a bit harsher. After all, it would not be OK to think it is acceptable for the US to do these things to others, but not acceptable for others to do it to US citizens.
