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Well, clearly the world is a more dangerous place than it was a year ago, Iraq has merely been turned from a docile but internally brutally repressive regime to an explosive virtual civil war, the atomic bomb cannot be prevented and WILL spread further throughout the world... I found the idea of America as seeing itself as some kind of Hobbsian Leviathan on an international scale is interesting (and the Leviathan is as much an influance on my political thinking as Das Kapital)... but my gut feeling is that this war was about oil most of all, but I think an element of it was an example to the rest of the world, a punishment beating, to show everyone - "if you disobey American power, you will be beaten, you will be destroyed".
of course, as much as we understand that this war was wrong and unjust and has killed thousands of civilians, we must also never keep out of mind that Hussain was a corrupt and blood thirsty butcher who was despised by most ordinary Iraqi's... in fact, the only thing that kept him in power was people felt they had to unite behind him because he could stand up to America (of course, he couldnt...)
I dont see any legitimate self defence motive for the war... the people who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia, so attacking Iraq made no sense... Iraq had no real WMD programme, we know this now, but they probably wanted one and would have tried to build one if the UN had left them alone... but there are many other states more dangerous to America who do have WMD's programmes, and the point is they CANT be stopped, the knowledge (and lets face it, these weapons were usually invented by either Russia or America) cannot be erased...
To me, the article was interested, and I think when we consider the motives for the attack on Iraq, it does give a very plausible possible explanation (other than the most obvious, which is either oil, or Bush really believed Iraq was about to launch a chemical weapons attack on America, and which one of those you find more believable probably depends more on your world view rather than logic)
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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."
The Gospel of Thomas
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