All right, I have to take issue with this. I wasn’t going to politically blog today, but some things simply must be said in regard to this ridiculous article.
“A few years ago, they killed four million Vietnamese by dropping millions of tons of explosives in a country that was more than 15,000 kilometres away from them.”
Yeah, we went to Vietnam. We bombed the crap out of the place. From a historical perspective, that was probably a mistake. But it is likely a decision I would have made as well had I been in the shoes of our nation’s leaders at that time. I know a lot of other Americans feel the same way.
“Clearly, the United States deliberately went outside the Security Council and took unilateral action that was not in conformity with the Charter. And this is why Annan says from their point of view and the UN Charter point of view, the invasion of Iraq was illegal.
It is sad that the United States, a country that is prepared to punish others for not abiding by the United Nations’ decisions, deliberately acted in a lawless manner and invaded another sovereign country with impunity.”
Yes, we went to Iraq. Was our going to Iraq illegal according to UN resolutions? Well.. that is honestly a matter that is in a very gray area.
From my perspective, Hussein hadn’t disarmed. He had been making plans to restart his WMD programs at some point in the future. To me, these are clearly violations of the UN Resolution that was passed sanctioning Iraq following the Gulf War.
Hussein was systematically slaughtering the Kurds. This is what we call Genocide. For those of you (the author of this article in particular) who don’t understand what Genocide is, it is the destruction of an entire race. Hussein was a bad man who frightened the Iraqi people into submission, rather than ruling them with fairness and bringing them to prosperity.
“We have also not forgotten that this same country in 2002 frustrated the Durban Conference on Racism.”
As far as the conference on Racism. As I understand it, that conference was designed to put sanctions on the United States that would require it to make reparations to the descendents of slaves from the pre-civil war era. Not only would verifying such descendents be impossible and costly to the citizenry as a whole, African Americans included, but a majority of people here feel that 150 years is plenty of time for a family to recover from the damages caused by slavery. And is it fair to tax those families who did not own slaves by using their tax dollars to pay those reparations?
I for one, can comfortably say that at no point in time did my family own slaves. My family history on both sides has been traced back past the revolutionary war. None of us were ever southern plantation owners, nor were any of us ever rich enough to have been able to afford slaves.
Would it be fair to ask me to pay reparations to a family that my family had no part in damaging? How do you determine who should pay those reparations and who should not in order to maintain a fairness to all? Many people can’t trace their family trees beyond the start of the 19th century. I am one of the few lucky ones who can.
And if we are going to go into reparations for past historical events, how about reparations for the Witch Trials? Lots of people have a relative that was burned at the stake during the witch trials. He deserves something for that damage done to his family, doesn’t he? Or does he? How is it that one decides?
Starting down this road opens the door for more abuse and offers little assistance to families who really need it. I feel sorry for the people who fail to recognize this fact.
Do I feel awful that slavery happened? Yes. I do, it was a horrible and dark part of American history that should NEVER be forgotten. And it isn’t. The horrors of slavery are taught in every American classroom. Why slavery was wrong is the subject of hundreds of novels, including some classic works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beacher Stowe. We will never forget the darkness of our past. We will also never forget that we came back into the light.
“Is this the type of democracy and values the world should adopt, the world should learn from the United States? Bush has proved to be more dangerous than Saddam, he has the capacity – and a destructive mind – to destroy the world several times over”
When will other nations walk into the light again? For some, that is a question that George W. Bush has answered by taking our country into war and liberating them from oppressive regimes. Today, many Afgahnis and Iraqis are walking in the sun. They too, will never forget the day they stepped back into the light.
If accepting the hard times that come when one is building a democracy is what it takes to go back into the light, give me the light. I refuse to live my days in darkness with my creativity and my heart stifled by fear of what might lie on the other side.
