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Originally Posted by August
And thinking like yours kept the Coalition in Desert Storm from finishing the job that was started way back in 1991.
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Certainly not me. I have always criticised that decision to stop that war and leave Saddam untouched. I always sdaid that it was an unfisniehd job. And I always said that I regarded it as a betrayel of the troops that were enaged on that conflict.
And finally I never said anythign different from that 1991's silly decision was the triggering event that lost the Iraq issue once and for all in the next 15 years. It is like in chess, sometimes one player makes a silly move, and then can never recover from that stupid move, and thus inevitably looses the match.
Tell me one thing, what do you prefer: a brutal tyrant and suppressor ignoring democratical legitimation but by use of furce keeps fundamentalism in check, or a Sharia-based fundamentalist government with democratical legitimiation that nevertheless is hostile towards the West? Before making your selection simply assume that you cannot have both.
Your country was pressing hard on Mubarak to allow more democratical elections in 2005. the direct result is that mubarak now has to deal with a fundamentalist oppositon formed by the extreme Muslim Brotherhood, they increased their size and influence from 17 seats to 84, that's a factor of five. Their "parliament" has 454 seats. There are other minor extremist groups as well. If the election would have been fully democratic, you now would have one open enemy more in the ME.
I red the biography of Steven Kuhn, who was tanker in that war of 91 (he was member of that crew that won the Canadian Army Trophy 1987). He did a very impressive job in describing how the troops felt when seeing the massacre against the Shias and they themselves were not allowed to do anything about it while in their viewing range hundreds and thousands were slaughtered down and Iraqi soldiers laughed at the namercians on the other side of the red line. (Kuhn'S book
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASI...277241-5714605
is that critical and bitter that until today no american publisher was willing to publish his book, it is available in German only. Today Kuhn lives in Berlin, deeply disappointed, but still considering himself an american patriot. After he had broken down after the war, suffering from GWS, he once said: "America made me a man/male, but Germany turned me into a human"). It needs more than a star and a rifle to command men, I think. You also need the ability to "climb" inside your fighters heads and minds, you need to feel how they feel in their hearts. Both Bushs fail with flying colours in this, that's what makes them so miserbale leaders, they are clever in fishing people by using the right words, and that is all. That's why I call them the greatest betrayers to their own people since Vietnam. You may complain about Junior being called an imbecile by someone above, because he got elected and is in office. Okay, than he is an elected imbecile in the wrong office, then. Isn't it great what offices are in reach for such a man if only he has enough hundreds of millions of dollars to spend and enough contacts in the economy are supporting him for their own interests?
You are loyal to someone who does not deserve your loyalty, and who is lying to your people and is betraying your countrymen who in good belief sacrifice their lifes for this Zero. That way you put the interests of that man above the interests of your people. And this you call patriotism? I call it a personal cult. The american system, on paper, is a good one, but it also holds great risks. In germany we have no figure like your president, the power is more diverted, enabling the parties to act in their own interst to a greater degree, and preventing a strong "centre" to form decisions and see them through. That way political situation in germany often appears to be paralysed. This weakness was wanted by the Allied who insisted on the Grundgesetz beeing designed like that, so thta no central "Führer" shall be able to emerge again. The American president, on the other hands, is such a strong figure, that he can act with greater independence from the parties (of which there are only two), enabling him to impose his political course more easily on the country, and the parties. this comes at the risk of that this concentration of power is more easily abused and corrupted, because the mechanisms for countercontrolling the president (weakening him that way, like in germany: several german chancellors had not been brought down not by the opposition but their own parties!) are weaker. Unfortunately the current guy in the white house makes maximum use of this weakness, deactivating major principles of your constitutional order that way.
Concerning Germany's deals with Saddam - it was not alone in doing so. Your country did as well. And all Western countries supported Saddam and enabled him to build chemicals. And we all hailed him when he slaughtered the Iranians after his aggression, and we did not oppose when he gassed the Kurds. It is of no use to selectively pick up those notes only that fits your views. No Western country deserves any fame for it's role towards Iraq.