Madeleine Albright famously laid down the "acceptability" gauntlet in 1996 when she said on 60 Minutes, of the 500,000 Iraqi children killed to that point in time by sanctions that, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."
While Albright's sadism may be untoppable, the mind still boggles at Tony Blair's reaction to a Baghdad marketplace massacre: "We have always accepted that there will be some very regrettable civilian casualties."
What sort of depraved mind could devise such an argument, and what sort of depraved culture could accept it without comment? Is there not one commentator in the mainstream media able to point up that since Iraqis are the ones enduring the suffering, the acceptable level of suffering is theirs to determine, not ours?
An indication of the degree to which the mindset has suffused the culture could be gleaned the morning following V-S day, as a Seattle-based talk show emanating since war's inception from Doha interviewed a Qatari student strongly opposed to the war. Caller after caller regally scolded him that since the military action had freed the Iraqi people (or, alternatively, that Saddam's regime would have killed more people if left in power), then the number of concomitant civilian casualties was hunky dory. (It goes without saying that we're morally obligated to kill as many Iraqi soldiers as possible.)
No doubt the callers -- unlike Blair and Albright -- were well-intentioned, and certainly believed the pretexts. But even allowing for this, and even were both or either true (clearly not the case), we still can't escape the underlying truism evinced by the callers: niggers shan't be allowed to determine their own fates.
Yep, you said it. of course its acceptable for some civilian casualties, after all they aren't worth as much as us whities are they... Thats what all this bleating by Tony and the rest says to me. EACH life,mine, yours, the 17year old Iraqi conscript, the little Iraqi children deformed by DU fallout, ALL of us are worth exactly the same. We are all human beings.
Apart of course for Tory plan B (Tony Blair, if you can't work out the anagram) who is a piece of proto-sentient slime. He believes in God so lets all hope that he has arranged a nice hot hole for him in hell.
Posted by: stef on April 12, 2003 07:11 AMWell put Stef. Meanwhile here in Ireland the government have been campaigning vigorously for the award of "most aligned non-aligned country" in the Anglo-American aggression. (see http://www.zmag.org/content/AntiWar/dubinsky_resistance.cfm or http://refuelingpeace.org/)
Posted by: Eoin Dubsky on April 12, 2003 03:29 PMHEY DONT YOU REMEMBER 911? WHATS WRONG WITH YOU. IRAQ IS ARAB AND ARABS DID 911, what ARE YOU STUPID?
Posted by: fred on April 13, 2003 05:29 PMI wonder if Albright would find the benefits of sanctions acceptable if they killed a half million American kids.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died for no benefits; sanctions failed to overthrow Saddam or prevent a war. If Saddam really has been developing WMDs then they didn't stop that either. Guess that was a regrettable policy mistake, but now we are willing to pay the price of bombing Iraqis to fix that mistake. A heavy price to pay, but one we will accept. I just hope the Iraqis are grateful that we are willing to pay the price.
Posted by: bob on April 14, 2003 12:22 PM