> From the article:
>> Although "Three Kings" recounts Saddam's crimes against his own people
>> and makes the case that the first gulf war should have removed him from
>> power,
>
> If that's not an endorsement of humanitarian intervention, I don't know what
> is.
Sure - that is. But was it in the movie? I didn't think so. I thought the film made the point that the US helped Saddam against his own people after the war, thus mounting what is an obvious and very savage criticism of humanitarian intervention. Think of the scene where Marky Mark (I forget his real name, thus expose myself as a pop culture junkie) is fed oil whilst his Iraqi captor narrates how he was trained by the CIA and how his daughter got blown up by a US bomb. "Freedom, my main man? You think this is about freedom? This is what it's about!" and he forces the oil down his throat. Chomsky could agree. More subtly, the soldiers only save the Shiites by taking them to freedom in Iran (!!!) and behaving unlike soldiers.
If that's not an indictment of humanitarian intervention, I don't know what is.
Luke also wrote:
> You're probably right. I wonder, though, if the Iraqis would've been better
> off after a successful internal revolution than they will end up during and
> after the current US occupation. I don't really know how to answer that
> question, and I suppose it doesn't have a single answer.
Oh yes it does - had there been a successful internal revolution twelve years ago, maybe we'd have a million less corpses on our hands. I can't believe that people think Iraqi liberation has come at such a 'cheap' cost in lives (the phrasing tells the story, really) What are people thinking? That ten years of sanctions and daily bombings wasn't war? What a cruel joke.
Thiago Oppermann