>Indeed, past sins to which the US and its allies were a party make the obligation to put things right all the more imperative. What better gesture to make amends to those who have suffered under the Ba'ath regime than to be their liberators ñ albeit belatedly.
Indeed I think I would support that. But I guess it just didn't occur to me that this was an option. For some unknown reason I was under the impression that the object of the US would be the installation of a puppet regime, rather than the "liberation" of the Iraqi people.
Have I missed something? I don't recall any mention of an act of self-determination, any plebiscite of the Iraqi people, being proposed?
>Disqualification based on past conduct, remember, would have disqualified Australia from any role in liberating East Timor in 1999.
Of course the difference is that Australia intervened in East Timor (as part of a UN force) to help implement the outcome of an act of self-determination. I seem to recall that the US declined to get involved in that sordid task.
>Lest anyone is fooled into believing that ordinary Iraqis strongly support their nation's dictator Hussein, consider the work of Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans. In its informal survey of Iraqi opinion in September and October 2002 in large Iraqi cities, it noted that a significant number of the Iraqis interviewed, with surprising candour, supported the overthrow of Hussein, even if such a change required an American-led attack.
No doubt. But how many Iraqis would support the installation of a US puppet government? The choice between the devil you know and another devil seems a bit limited.
>The international community should meet its obligations to the people of Iraq to rebuild the country,
This is getting a bit rich. Sure, there may be some obligation to re-build the country that the international community destroyed in the first place. But bombing it yet again and then invading it, seems a very perverse way to go about re-building the country.
> to develop democratic institutions based on tolerance and to allow its people access to the benefits derived from its oil wealth. The price of that intervention must be that the international community is to be kept to its word in Iraq as much as in Afghanistan
As in Afghanistan? Not a very high standard.
> ñ even when more immediate issues distract the attention of decision-makers. This task to redouble the campaign for human rights, the rule of law, and secular, tolerant democracy is the far, far preferable option than do nothing.
Like charity, the "campaign for human rights, the rule of law, and secular, tolerant democracy" begins at home. Especially for Americans, but also for Mr Nolan it seems, the first step would be to consult a dictionary to learn the meaning of these terms. Because I don't think any of these admirable ends can come out of the barrel of a gun.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas