Posted on 09/02/2012 3:18:57 PM PDT by NYer
Groan.
Via BBC:
Tony Blair and George W Bush should be taken to the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the Iraq war, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said.
Writing in the UK’s Observer newspaper, he accused the former leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction.
The Iraq military campaign had made the world more unstable “than any other conflict in history”, he said.
Mr Blair responded by saying “this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say”.
Earlier this week, Archbishop Tutu, a veteran peace campaigner who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his campaign against apartheid, pulled out of a leadership summit in Johannesburg because he refused to share a platform with Mr Blair.
The former Archbishop of Cape Town said the US- and UK-led action launched against Saddam’s regime in 2003 had brought about conditions for the civil war in Syria and a possible Middle East conflict involving Iran.
“The then leaders of the United States [Mr Bush] and Great Britain [Mr Blair] fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us,” he said.
And if they do he should see if they were manufactured by the only other Baathist regime in the area. After that he should drink a nice big cup of STFU!
Regards,
GtG
Blair yes, Bush no.
Desmond Tutu simply doesn't like Americans. frontpagemag.com website commentary from Jan 2003::
Moral equivalence. We’ve seen it a million times since the attacks of 9-11. It is the "peace" movement’s dogma, holding that the collateral, unintended killing of Afghan civilians during the US military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the moral equivalent of the 9-11 mass murders in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC. By extension, America’s military response is deemed unwarranted "vengeance" that merely perpetuates "the cycle of violence."
A leading proponent of this view is Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work against South African apartheid. "Might is not right," says Tutu. "If it is utterly reprehensible that innocent civilians were targeted in New York and Washington, how could we possibly say it doesn’t apply elsewhere in the world?" Last week he lamented how "sad" it was "to see a powerful country [the US] use its power frequently unilaterally" to bully the rest of the world.
Tutu characterizes America’s war on terrorism as an exercise in "vengeance" rather than justice. Subtly underlying this assertion is the unspoken axiom that the enemy that struck on 9-11 was not animated by premeditated evil, but was itself responding to America’s original injustice. While acknowledging that al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, Tutu maintains that many of its followers are "not lunatic fringe [but rather] are quite intelligent," and that Americans need to ask themselves why such people "should be willing to pilot a plane and go to their deaths" to strike a blow against the US.
To that question, Tutu himself provides a ready answer. The 9-11 attacks, he says, were caused by the "poverty, hunger, and disease" plaguing the Third World, which he blamed, by implication, on the United States. He has even gone so far as to say that if a visitor from outer space were to survey the international scene on earth, such a creature would recoil in horror at the manner in which the wealthy, presumably exploitative US spends so much money on its war-making capabilities and so little on humanitarian causes. "A minute fraction of these defense budgets would ensure that God’s children everywhere would have clean water, enough to eat, a decent home, a proper education, and accessible and affordable health care," says Tutu. In short, if only America would give up its selfishness, the have-nots of the world could live better.
One wonders why Tutu chooses to assign responsibility for the poverty of other nations to no one but the United States. One further wonders why he fails to note that America has historically given far more humanitarian aid to foreign populations than has any other nation on earth. Indeed Tutu makes no mention of the vast sums our country has recently sent to the needy in such far-flung places as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Nicaragua, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and Kosovo – to say nothing of the $848 million in aid to Afghanistan last year. And finally, one wonders whether the vaunted Nobel Prize winner or his mythical "space visitor" have ever contemplated what additional disasters might have befallen the targets of aggression in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kuwait – if not for the intervention of America’s "war-making capabilities."
While Tutu’s estimation of American culpability for international crises is obviously quite high, the reader may find it refreshing to learn that he considers all evildoers to be ultimately redeemable. Addressing worshippers at Boston’s Episcopal Church of St. Paul last February, for instance, Tutu asserted that it was wrong to categorically depict America’s enemies as "evil." "We’re giving up on a fellow human being when we demonize a fellow human being," he said. Exhorting his listeners to remember that Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda members are also children of God, he stated that "the Christian God we worship gives up on no one." But it is nothing new to hear Tutu complain that America is too quick to condemn people. Indeed during a 1999 speech, he told an audience of more than 1,300 that "some of the greatest saints in the Christian firmament were notorious sinners," and wondered aloud whether such people as Mary Magdalene and St. Francis "would have survived indictment" in the United States.
Eager though he may be to pass judgment on American policies, this same Desmond Tutu has openly proclaimed not only compassionate understanding – but unabashed admiration – for Winnie Mandela, South Africa’s so-called "Mother of the Nation." Prominent in the Soviet-sponsored African National Congress (ANC), which was closely aligned with the South African Communist Party, Ms. Mandela used her notorious bodyguards in a protracted reign of terror, torture, and murder. The ANC committed innumerable atrocities in the name of liberation, prompting a 1988 Pentagon Report to list it as one of the world's "more notorious terrorist groups."
Me either. His title is "The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa" I looked it up once, and Anglicans make up a whooping 6% of the population of South Africa. When will the media rush out to determine how the former Lutheran Synod President of St. Louis, Missouri feels about the Iraq War and gay marriage? He's got as much religious authority as this guy.
Tutu wants to give a pass to Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Sandy Berger, Carl Levin, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Bob Graham, Robert Byrd, Jay Rockefeller, Henry Waxman and Hillary Clinton who ALL urged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?
FUTUTU.
Racist old bugger!
F TuTu and Mandela.
They are both hard line communists, coming out of the Soviet sphere of manipulation.
They both should have been taken out to a wall and a bullet put to the back of their heads.
stupid things like this remind us that any idiot that supports giving up our sovereignty to the un or some world government should be tried for treason.
blessings, bobo
The final bloody moments of Muammar Gaddafi’s life were still shrouded in confusion today as conflicting reports emerged about who fired the shot that actually killed him.
Islamists have been emboldened by the likes of Mr. Tutu and Ubama. Barack's foreign policy has been decidedly pro-Islamist.
The War on Terror has been ended by an anti-American in the White House.
If things are "unstable" it's because the violent face of Islamic imperialism has been revealed and no one wants to confront the evil theocratic agenda of an anti-Christ cult.
Why isn't Mr. Tootie wringing his hands over Barack's assistance in the murder of Mandela's pal Gaddafi?
Why isn’t Mr. Tootie wringing his hands over Barack’s assistance in the murder of Mandela’s pal Gaddafi?
Who’s running Libya now?
They made off like a bandit because Libya had no national debt and is sitting on mucho light sweet crude and was set to start using fossil water that took him over 20 years to get out of the ground.
Thank goodness we have nothing to do with the Hague. I am actually surprised we haven’t joined this since Obama has come into office. Bush should go on TV and say, “FU Desmond...we don’t follow the Hague.”
Why Blair. That God for that incredible leader or we would have been completely on our own. Blair is a hero in my book. I think you were being sarcastic.
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