Quote:
Originally posted by Dragonlich
Zeld2.0, you seem to make the mistake of assuming that pro-war people didn't care about the human rights of Iraqi civilians. Well, FYI, I did care. I was pretty damn angry when I learned that Saddam had gassed his own people (I was too young to care when it happened), and was angry again when he murdered them after their uprising after the gulf war.
This war isn't "suddenly" about human rights, it has always been about human rights. It's just that some people seem to have a selective memory, and can only remember one reason at a time.
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Human rights rarely play more than a tangential role in American foriegn policy. Our leaders at the time (including Mr Rumsfeld) knew about Saddam's gassing of his own people, yet supported him anyway. The murderous regimes in Indonesia, Guatamala, Haiti, South Africa, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and many other countries have all enjoyed support by the US government. Our leaders rarely mention human rights unless there is another reason that they are interested in a country. Like I've said in other posts, the American public is just not that concerned. The primary reasons given for the war in Iraq were WMDs and the threat of Saddam. Human rights abuses were only peripherially mentioned until the other justifications fell apart. Do you think that the American public would have okayed a war if our interests weren't involved in some way? In fact, Bush campaigned as someone who would not be involved in Clinton-esque "nation building" and humanitarian interventions.