Explain to me the difference between Iraq now and Clinton in Kosovo

Russia vetoed action in Kosovo, as I recall.

I have been thinking about Kosovo a lot. I think I was in favour of intervening in principle (it was a civil war, with the state clearly in the midst of genocide and there was little question of unpleasant ulterior motives for intervention and little chance of it enflaming tension elsewhere and a real chance of a post-war solution and lots of differences) but the lack of UN authority made me v.uncomfortable. In retrospect, it worked as plane, but was a big drip in the drip drip in the 'UN authority doesn't matter' mentality, which saddens and scares me.

Huh? The whole brouhaha with Turkey was about how Belgium, France and Germany said they weren't gonna give 'em NATO support!

Sounds good to me! How about Sack?

as in: Sack Iraq

america wants to loot (if that can be a verb in that form) iraq.

And that's all there is to it. You guys are like the Philip Glass of world politics. This war has NOTHING to do with biological and chemical weaponry, and there are NO terrorists hiding in Iraq, anywhere. Also Saddam is a big harmless pussycat who can be contained forever at minimal expense and danger. Bush and Blair's ONLY reasons for spending billions of dollars and risking their chances at re-election is to be jerks and watch things blow up, bcz people in their position would obv NEVER act in the interest of their people's security or safety.

http://www.anniemayhem.com/blog%20pics/HughHewitt.jpg

douche
douche
doucheeeebag!

You guys are like the Philip Glass of world politics.

This war has NOTHING to do with biological and chemical weaponry, and there are NO terrorists hiding in Iraq, anywhere. Also Saddam is a big harmless pussycat who can be contained forever at minimal expense and danger. Bush and Blair's ONLY reasons for spending billions of dollars and risking their chances at re-election is to be jerks and watch things blow up, bcz people in their position would obv NEVER act in the interest of their people's security or safety.

-- Millar (Millar), Saturday, March 8, 2003 10:05 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

this bullshit sarcastic post is pretty otm if you take it literally

haha i was reading it literally until about the last ten words threw me.

how long did it take millar to do a 180 to having a whole new grizzled & "realistic" opinion about the war

i think about as long as it took bush & co to say "mission accomplished", if i recollect with correctness

i was completely against the bombing of serbia, by the way

yeah i basically took the hitchens position on clinton in the 90s though i still maintain its a lot worse to build up insane jingoistic pro-war mania like bush did than clintons bashful, furtive bombings

http://www.anniemayhem.com/blog%20pics/HughHewitt.jpg
? what does Stephen King have to do with any of this

I think tracer is about correct
grizzled and realistic right or wrong that's me

you guys do realize a great deal was due to my own naivete about what "classified" information really amounts to, I had only been a spook for a year or so

Tomboto were you Millar?

No, he was ghost rider.

then I got married

Uh...OK.

(I should stop deliberately confusing people y/n)

It's very difficult for me to process on a Sunday morning.

you could argue that kosovo opened the door to iraq, a door that had been closed since vietnam - it broke the seal on the whole "we can bomb the shit out of countries that have nothing to do with us, out of the goodness of our hearts" thing

I've been a spook for thousands of years.

Also, I like Philip Glass.

who's the arvo part of world politics?

James Carville?

you could argue that kosovo opened the door to iraq, a door that had been closed since vietnam - it broke the seal on the whole "we can bomb the shit out of countries that have nothing to do with us, out of the goodness of our hearts" thing

-- Tracer Hand, Sunday, September 2, 2007 7:44 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

britain had been in the former yugoslavia since the mid-90s though, ineffectually overlooking massacres and whatnot, so it wasn't nothing to do with us, anyways. (and it was partly a failure of european diplomacy that allowed the thing to disintegrate the way it did in the first place.)

i think it's more a case of 'opened the door' than 'are easily comparable' -- though i'd be prepared to bet blair made the comparison. but still only in the sense of overt military action against the will of 'international' bodies. (vietnam hardly ended the international activities of the US military in countries it had 'nothing to do with'.)

i don't personally see how the nod of nato or the un makes any difference whatever to the moral or practical situation. iraq was a terrible idea because it had no hope of success and every chance of what has in fact happened. kosovo did not threaten that level of post-bombing civil war.

though it was murky, as intervention in a civil war tends to be.