Re: OT Hatred (was Re: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[John English <je@brighton.ac.uk>]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> 
> So apparently all you liberal folks are in agreement that it's
> NK's mighty armed forces which are keeping the US at bay. Kind
> of stands pacifism on its head, though.

Not at all. The point I was trying to make was about the US government's
double standards -- it says Iraq should be regime-changed because it has
ignored UN resolutions (as has Israel), has weapons of mass destruction
(as do Israel, N.Korea, India, Pakistan...), has invaded other countries
(over a decade ago, as have Russia, the US and others), has backed
terrorism (as the US did with the IRA, Contras and others) and is a
dictatorship (as is Pakistan and N.Korea)... but only Iraq out of all
these gets slated for regime change.

Other possibilities have been suggested as motives (to gain control
of Iraqi oil; to distract attention from the mess that remaining in
Afghanistan; to get Bush re-elected in a frenzy of patriotic fervour;
to distract attention from the continuing failure to nobble Osama bin
Laden); and personally, I find these a lot more credible than the
ostensible reasons that the White House is giving out.

Meanwhile we have the government of the land of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness being responsible for execution without trial of
some people in a jeep in Yemen, who they claim were some of Osama's
big cheeses (hard to verify now!) and hundreds more are locked up in
Cuba with neither trial, access to a lawyer or even the protection of
the Geneva Convention.

So it appears to many outside the US that the US government is acting,
not as a global policeman, but as a global school bully. It seems to
believe that it can imprison foreign nationals without trial, tear
up international treaties, and impose "regime change" on foreign
states (even if democratically elected, as in Chile) if it feels like
it. In the light of all this, you should perhaps try harder to
understand
why the rest of the world finds it easy to mistrust the US government's
motives. (Note that I distinguish the US goverment from its citizens --
why, some of my best friends are Americans... ;-)

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