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Originally Posted by punky
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Originally Posted by Graham
How many times have I expressed my views on human and civil rights in these forums? Do you *honestly* think that blatantly misrepresenting my position like that is a way of taking a debate forward?
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It doesn't matter what you say, if aren't prepared to back it up with action. |
Firstly it matters a lot if what I say is misrepresented.
Seconly just because I don't agree with *your* proposals for action does *not* mean that I am in favour of doing nothing.
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No, but as Matt has pointed out you were claiming that France would veto *any* second resolution regarding Iraq when actually it was any resolution aimed at triggering war with them.
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See first point.
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See my second point above.
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And what does a sweeping generalisation like "The UN has been thoroughly impotent for years" have to do with Iraq?
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Actually, everything, which is why I am bringing it up. The UN's shamefully lackluster attitude to Iraq and its citizens are precisely why we have this mess. They put sanctions on Iraq, patted themselves on the back, saying they did all they can do. How many children were dying under sanctions that wern't working?
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Unfortunately even with programmes like the "food for oil" one, it's impossible to enforce them on a country or a ruler who doesn't care.
So what are the options? Remove the sanctions and give Saddam a victory and make the UN look even weaker? Or invade any country that's abusing human rights and killing its own population in which case Iraq is only one on a very long list?
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I said the UN needs a lot of new staff, but thinking about it earlier, it needs a bit more than that. It needs a whole new change of attitude. The UN was created to prevent another world war.
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Which is *not* the same as acting as "The World's Policeman"!
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That translates to "peace at any cost". That means so long as regimes aren't warring, what they do to their citizens go largely untouched. It needs to be proactive in protecting the citizens of countries, who, when they needed it most, never recieved it. I.e. millions of Iraqis in the 1990s.
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As I said above, in which case Iraq is only one of many. And the UN is not there to be The World's Policeman. Were it to try to be "proactive" it would only succeed in being revealed as a bully and a hypocrite by attacking small countries whilst ignoring ones like China who engage in massive abuses of rights, but which couldn't be touched.
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And what the UN was doing might not have worked, but they were *also* trying. Of course it's always easy to criticise something and say it didn't work with 20/20 hindsight.
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I have always said this. I have always had little respect for the UN, and I have resented it for his attitude towards Iraq. You call sanctions trying?
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As opposed to invading and taking over by force? Yes.
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It is amazing to think anyone would think sanctions would fix the problem
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It's amazing to think that someone would think that starting a war is really a good way of trying to fix a problem like this. (And don't start dragging in Hitler again because the situations are totally different).