THANK YOU U.S.
Out of context: Reply #43
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whether you're opposed to this war or not, what is frightening (apart from the casualties on all sides) is the US attitude to international relations - this is taken from an article someone mailed me:
"This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it could be others.
The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war." Notice
that new norms are established only by the United States. So, for
example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention,
because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was strenuously opposed to that action.This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is
permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or imminent attack.The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the
United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may
sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world, including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition
to the war is unusually high. The Security Strategy said, in effect,
that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the imension - the only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S.
domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge." - ChomskyBeing the only superpower doesnt mean America should have the right to act in whatever way suits America.