Its interesting to see how another Western, English speaking bloke can have such an opposite view of events, and interpretations of culture. Not a criticism, just an observation.
Frankly, I dont much care about what Dr Williams has to say about stuff, cos he is coming from a religious standpoint and that has no truck with me at all. So for differing reasons, we agree that his comments are irrelevant.
As for the WMD’s and all that, I’m not arguing about that. I can fully understand that this is the real world, and its got some very harsh realities we all need to face up to. Compared to some of his neighbours (most obviously Iran with Hamas and Hezbollah), Saddam’s Iraq was not that great a danger to the world, certainly if we are to go for a state that posed a lethal threat to the UK and US.
As for my point about the US having an economic empire, don’t be so afraid of the term. It means you have influence and stature. All nations eventually lead through to imperial powers, as they try to find markets for their ever growing economies. Its simple stuff, but sometimes you US’ers get a little scared when Empire is mentioned, automatically thinking of the term in a negative context. We British certainly dont view our time as the biggest, greatest, empire the world has ever known in a bad light. It did wonders for our nation, and brought industrial, social, political and ecnomic advanced to all nations under the Crowns dominion.
I appreciate your comments. For the most part they are well thought out. I appreciate your perspective on the term" empire". Certainly the British empire in my view was a positive thing for mankind - not negative. So we certainly agree there.
On Iraq though I view your statements as a tad simplistic. This has been rehashed over and over and not sure why I burden you with this but you and/or others may not be aware of all the facts. Some searches here at Free Republic will yield a wealth of info on this Iraq saga. But I'll restate some key points.
- Iraq invaded Kuwait and Saudi Arabi and was poised to take over the Saudi oil fields.
- A world-wide coalition put Iraq back in its box and exercised restraint in allowing Saddam to stay in power. (this was a mistake)
- Iraq possessed and used WMDs. Iraq refused to allow international inspectors to see what was going on.Iraq had a nuclear and biological WMD program although with all the sand in Iraq we are not sure how far they got.
- Iraq was a brutal regime that fed people into shredders feet first.
- Iraq attempted to assassinate former President of the U.S.
- Iraq trained terrorists to hijack airplanes in a manner identical to the 9/11 hijackings.
- There were communications between 9/11 terrorists (Atta) and Iraq.
- Al Qaeda has operated inside Iraq and continues to do so
- Iraq refused to abide by dozens of UN resolutions and the terms of surrender from Gulf War I and shot down U.S. planes in no-fly zones
- Iraq was small enough that it could be dealt with without spawning a world war. We simply cannot use military force as we did in Iraq in all areas of the world, e.g. Soviet Union, China, NK, etc So Iraq was "fixable".
After Iraq's embarrassing rout in the first Gulf War Iraq had a motive in getting back at the west. This was demonstrated by their attempt to assassinate a former U.S. President, our current President's father. So the cumulative case against Iraq warranted action after 10 years of talk. What good are UN resolutions if they are just empty talk? Libya gave up on WMDs because they didn't want to be invaded also. So Iraq was a two-fer as we fixed Libya at the same time. And the war in Iraq redeemed the U.N. from itself by enforcing its resolutions.
I understand there are different perspectives on Iraq. I can understand people saying we shouldn't have gone in because they are scared of what the muslims will do (in essence cowardice) or because they view it as too complex and difficult. But I just disagree with those who do not feel it was justified or that Iraq was not a threat. Having said that we cannot fix the world nor should we. I believe Iraq was a unique situation with a long history. Iraq started it and the coalition finished it. Had Iraq not gone into Kuwait I doubt any of this would have happened.
My apologies for a long post. Cheers.