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The FIRST Gulf war was because of this.
The second one, WE INVADED, preemptively by Shrub's own admission. What were we preemptively striking against?
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---By any standard of behavior we had every reason to invade Iraq at any point since 1991. NOT ONCE did saddam comply with the articles of his surrender.
This happened before with germany following WWI. Treaty of Versailles forbid germany from having the massive, advanced military they had in 1939. But the allies chose to ignore the violations of the teaty.
Saddam went as far as kicking the UN inspectors out in 1998 which should have triggered an immediate invasion. But we had european Oil For Food corruption feeding the euro's and a president here too busy getting head from fat chicks to be bothered with global politics.
By any definition our invasion was a decade late. It's not a matter of whether we should have, it's why did it take us so long?
When you get sanctioned that is 'world law' and to not enforce it is to make the UN truly as useless in practice as it is in concept. Saddam violated every single tenent of his surrender. We had not only the legal right to invade, but the responsibility to the same way a cop is responsible to stop criminal offenders.
Now- as for historical relativism, you still aren't making any points against using bad guys on occasion. It has a long history of fairly successful short term gains, spotted with the occasional long term backlash.
We pay off bad guys all the time to catch bigger fish in organized crime. We put John Gotti away by letting known murderer Sonny Gravano have a new life as a free man. Backlash- Sonny used his connections and gov't protected identity to run a huge Ecstacy ring later that is believed to reult in the deaths of teenagers at rave's.
So we have the same dilema. Dealing with a bad guy to work against a bigger bad guy.
One of the reasons we had such poor intelligence in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to the war was that we had virtually NO ground (HUMINT) intelligence in place. Clinton was against dealing with bad people, which is the exact kind of person you look for to sell out their own country/cause.
We dealt with Noriega for YEARS in Panama. It was a neccessary evil to keep the Panama Canal open to the US, which of course is VITAL to the economy of the US.
The list goes on and on of times where climbing in bed with bad people has paid dividends in dealing with even worse people. Yes, backlash occurs. It is the inevitable result of messing with vipers that eventually you get bit.
But it's the price paid by those willing to lead. It's easy to be france and essentially ride the coat tails of countries that are actually important to the world. Benefit from those big brothers but then run to mom to complain about them being 'big bullys'.
Easy for Canada to have social medicine when they have a pretty pathetic military, knowing that the US is monitoring and defending the entirety of north america. We pay to defend their country and they use the savings on medicine for their people and complain we don't have that too. rolleyes....
Don't know where this pollyanna view of the world comes from but it's just not so Mary Poppins as that. There are bad people out there and dealing with some can negate the actions of others.
And lastly- let's not forget that the Shah of Iran was no better than Saddam when it came to repressing his people with secret police, torture, kidnappings, a state controlled press, etc. He was at his most powerful when? Under president Jimmy "I talk about human rights now after I contributed to their abuse for my entire term" Carter.
The shah wasn't overthrown so much for his US backing and secular views. The ayotollah gained support by raging against the human rights abuses of the US backed govt. He used radical islam as a rallying cry, but it was the abuses of the Shah that gave the ayotollah supporters.
So we tried to cover one mistake and made another essentially. Armchair politicians have a way of trivializing the most complex international affairs to the point they actually think they can make a reasonable point.
Anyone that utters 'War for Oil' has invalidated their point thru sheer ignorance of exactly oil 'is' to the modern world. It demonstrates a fatal lack of deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
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