From today’s Boston Globe:
According to his former foreign minister, Tariq Azziz, Saddam apparently intended to make an issue of western support in his trial. This could also have been awkward for some in the current administration. While serving in the Reagan or Bush administrations, some of the principals of the current war — including Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell — played down the significance of Iraq’s use of poison gas, including, in the case of Powell, against the Kurds. And months after the 1988 gas attacks on the Kurds, the current president’s father — with the apparent support of his defense secretary, Richard Cheney — doubled US financial assistance to Iraq.*ÂÂ
(*added for emphasis)
Ah yes, political pragmatism.
A dispassionate survey of the harm done to the social order of the world by bad political maneuvers might show that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld triumvirate beat Saddam in that venue, too.
Of course it was rushed — and botched.
After spending billions of dollars and thousand of lives trying to topple and capture Saddam, the U.S., in the latest blunder in a long list of stunning errors in judgment, turned him over to a phantom Iraqi government that proved to be just as incompetent as our own.
They couldn’t even carry out an execution!
Instead, they permitted a lynching that will now become the lasting image of our terrible misadventure.
Is there NOTHING that America can get right in Iraq?
There are definitely many good things going on but unfortunately, with these incompetents in charge, the bad far outweighs it and concurrently receives more media attention.
We are going to be reaching out to several Middle Eastern organizations in the next few weeks to find out what the locals all over the region are experiencing firsthand.
But Steve, I thought that turning Saddam over to the Iraqi government was an important symbolic gesture recognizing its legitimacy and autonomy.
On reaching seek biased points of view on both sides of the aisle. It should make for interesting debate.
Timing Saddam’s execution to take place on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, was an ill-considered provocation.
I imagine few Muslims will believe this wasn’t done at the behest of the Bush administration.
Hello Vince. How did your day go??
That’s quite a vivid imagination of yours! Quite a sweeping conclusion ascribed to the Pan Islamic community. I have been given to understand, and please correct me if I have been ‘misinformationed’, that Husseins’s execution was supposed to be carried out prior to the religious observance. If this was not done then it might be correctly construed that the government officials at the highest levels there have little self-respect in bowing to any pressure to the contrary, either internal or external. Also irresponsible are those who were in direct control of Hussein at the moment of his execution, and permitted a travesty to be perpetrated. Depending on whose ox is being gored it could be argued that he should, or should not have been permitted a dignified demise. Our cultural values would demand dignity and respect, no matter how offensive such a thought might be to some. One could cite the example of manner in which the Israelis executed Eichmann.
I will not argue that further here. There is no absolute answer. It is far too emotional an issue considering the extent to which certian individuals in that culture, consider killing to be justified. There is broad interpretation among Muslim clerics on that teaching and consensus will likely never be reached,particularly in the Fundamentalist/Extremist camps.
By the way, will someone over there get that time signature synchronized with respect to day and date. It’s 11;29 p.m on 5 January on my computer. Are you guys a number one operation or not??
….one more thing….when thinking on normalization of relations with Iran, keep in mind the recent demonstration of Shoah revisionist thinking on their part.
… also take a moment to recall Neville Chamberlain and Munich as we begin to collaborate with the Iranians in striving to reach common ground.
Read what I wrote again, D__(sorry, I just can’t write that).
My saying that “I imagine few Muslims
will believe that this wasn’t done at the behest of the Bush administration”, doesn’t necessarily mean that I believe it, though I certainly think it’s a possibility.
Please don’t attribute things I didn’t say to me, although I realize that’s like asking a right-wing zealot not to breathe.
Even though there’s no such thing as a pan-Muslim ‘zeitgeist’, I think there’s such a thing as a pan-Muslim suspicion of George W. Bush and the U.S. government.
My conversations with Muslims on the street in Morocco and Spain have reinforced this impression.
OK Vince…sorry for the slight…let’s look at pp4 above.
You write that “there’s no such thing as a pan-Muslim zeitgeist”, and support that statment by citing opinions you obtained on the street. THAT is statistically insignificant sampling for such an absolute statement.
A sampling of thousands, if not millions would be required to support that kind of conclusion. Of course, the bias’ in the sample population would have to be factored out in order to capture the pure data for analysis.
I for one would be comforted more by an overwhelming, well publicized outcry of protest by the Islamic community at large at the way a minority are distorting the faith to their own purpose and committing horrific acts in the process.
To the best of my knowledge, such an outpouring has not yet taken place. Failing that, I cannot share your confidence and belief that a pan-Muslim zeitgeist does not exist.
You’re quite incorrect, D__.
I did not support my statement, “Even though there’s no such thing as a Muslim zeitgeist” by citing opinions I obtained on the street.
I mentioned that as something I consider a given, because there are so many different factions and sects of Islam.
I didn’t purport to be conducting a scientific survey, I simply stated that my conversations with local Muslims in places where they’ve lived over a thousand years reinforced my “impression” that I think there’s such a thing as pan-Muslim suspicion of George W. Bush and the U.S. government.
Here again you misrepresent what I write. Saying that an ‘impression’ I have was reinforced by what people I met on the street told me, in no way implies that I thought I was conducting a statistically significant sampling.
Your comments here are absurd, and distort what I said.
I suggest that you read my comments more closely before you offer these non sequiturs in response.
To the contrary…I read you quite carefully and your words are explicit and clear. “Even though there’s no such thing a a pan-Muslim zeitgeist”..and your “conversations with Muslims on the street in Morocco and Spain have reinforced this impression.”
I must say that, syntactically you suggest that you were of this opinion prior to your ‘conversations on the street’ and these encounters served to re-enforce your opinion. That you state that your “impression” were re-enforced by these conversations suggests very strongly that your opinion predated those encounters.
The way you frame your reply and attempt at clarification seems to support my contention as well.
I simply reiterate that I, based upon this sampling on the street, could not be persuaded to feel confident that a pan-Muslim zeitgeist did not exist. The number is far too small to come to such a sweeping conclusion.
If you are at ease with it in your own right I am comfortable with that. I just do not agree.
It serves no purpose to be combative in an exchange of ideas. Pursuasion is not the goal here, rather, an exchange of opinions, nothing more.
I emphatically disagree with you, and I maintain that you continue to distort my words.
I think your argument is sophomoric and jejune, and I don’t wish to correspond further with you here.
Frankly, I don’t care for your style, D__.
These niggling post mortem dissections of “I said…You said…” are a crushing bore.
Most unfortunate