[cite]Posted By: RedZed333[/cite]Kosovo was like a small out of control camp fire threatening to turn the whole region into a raging out of control forest fire...
Bo it wasn't. Without western intervention the Serbs would have quickly crushed the Ksovon rebellion. It was purely a humanitarian intervention without any real economic relevance. The economic links with the Caspian based countries argument is surely a joke. I suppose if you cant fit the facts to your worldview you simply have to invent some.
There is far more to a war than just the fighting, in fact the fighting is probably the easiest part of all, just look at Iraq...
Have a shufty at the link below and then see if you can construct a valid an argument against it...
Always amusing to see communists sticking up for fascists like Milosovech. Just like when the communists had to flipflop when Hitler went from being Satan with a toothbrush to ally back to Satan again.
I haven't read the whole article - life is too short and work too busy. The basis thesis seems to be that America lauched the Kosovon war because it wanted to extend its power into Europe to prepare for comin wars against Russia and China. It's 12 years since the article was published and its bold predictions of such wars have not come to pass. Nor has there been any appreciable increase in American influence within Europe.
The article also downgrades the atrocities committed by Milosvech's regime against the Kosovans and argues that these were not sufficient to explain western intervention. It manages somehow to ignore the Bosnian conflict (except in relation to Croatian atrocities against the Serbs). So the impact of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia on the attitudes of western governments (especially the shame of teh Srebenica massacre) is conveniently ignored. No explanation is given for the reluctance of the United States to intervene in that conflict. If the author is correct in his analysis the US would have been straight in there.
It's about time other nations took part in UN actions rather than the UK which is involved in other conflicts. Nobody even puts their hand in their pocket. How much is this costing our bankrupt economy?
[quote][cite]Posted By: RedZed333[/cite]Kosovo was like a small out of control camp fire threatening to turn the whole region into a raging out of control forest fire...
The West needed to extinguish it quickly so as to preserve the important economic links they have made with Caspian based countries since the break up of the Soviet Union...
There are more coal, oil and gold and other mineral reserves in that region than have yet been utilised...[/quote]
Iraq - extremely convenient for the yanks that one. Murderous, insane despot - propped up, not coincidentally, by the yanks themselves for a decade prior to the first leg in the early nineties - then able to use the excuse of regime change to level the country and give all their contractors the lucrative chance of rebuilding it (all at the taxpayers' expense of course). Come on - seriously - this isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's a fact that the yanks (with us conveniently in tow) hid behind the fact that the f***er was gassing his own people to get shot of him and give Rumsfeld and his buddies a nice little economic boost. Of course, they did get rid of Hussein, so the war there certainly had a 'benefit' (just not to the hundreds of thousands who died in it).
Kosovo - arguably the most 'justified' example of foreign intervention in recent years. Milosevic was a murdering fascist c*** who needed stopping. I'm not buying the conspiracy theory on that - the West did what needed to be done.
Libya - no-one would give a shit about it if it wasn't for the oil. If they did, then they'd have bombed the f*** out of a similar regime in Zimbabwe aeons ago - the yanks would also have stopped one of the world's most murderous despotic regimes right on their doorstep (Duvalier in Haiti) long before hundreds of thousands of Haitians were wiped out.
Make no mistake about it - the Libyan intervention is nothing to do with the Libyan people, nothing to do with Gadaffi and nothing to do with islamic fundamentalism/terrorism. It's all to do with oil. Witness Sarkozy's otherwise out-of-character sending in of the French air force on a white charger. Just a coincidence that the French are one of the largest importers of Libyan oil?
Leroy, couldn't agree with you more.
The 'oil factor' also explains why we didn't help the plethora of African countries where genocide was the number one sport and the likes of the USA, UK etc knew all about it. I can also say, sadly and tongue in cheek, that the war is also good for many economies, given the amount of ammo and arms/planes/tanks that are used and need replacing........
[cite]Posted By: MuttleyCAFC[/cite]
It is very hard, especially as Libya has a terrible regime but western intervention causes more damage to the region than the problems it solves. Surely History throughout the last century and this has shown us that.
Not so. A year ago Iraqis had their first democratic vote for God know's how long.
As for oil in Libya - yes the french import oil, so why would they oppose the existing regime?
Comments
Have a shufty at the link below and then see if you can construct a valid an argument against it...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml
I haven't read the whole article - life is too short and work too busy. The basis thesis seems to be that America lauched the Kosovon war because it wanted to extend its power into Europe to prepare for comin wars against Russia and China. It's 12 years since the article was published and its bold predictions of such wars have not come to pass. Nor has there been any appreciable increase in American influence within Europe.
The article also downgrades the atrocities committed by Milosvech's regime against the Kosovans and argues that these were not sufficient to explain western intervention. It manages somehow to ignore the Bosnian conflict (except in relation to Croatian atrocities against the Serbs). So the impact of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia on the attitudes of western governments (especially the shame of teh Srebenica massacre) is conveniently ignored. No explanation is given for the reluctance of the United States to intervene in that conflict. If the author is correct in his analysis the US would have been straight in there.
The West needed to extinguish it quickly so as to preserve the important economic links they have made with Caspian based countries since the break up of the Soviet Union...
There are more coal, oil and gold and other mineral reserves in that region than have yet been utilised...[/quote]
And plutonium apparently.
I thought Blair was The Middle East peace envoy ? If so it appears he's only active when it's not really needed.
Kosovo - arguably the most 'justified' example of foreign intervention in recent years. Milosevic was a murdering fascist c*** who needed stopping. I'm not buying the conspiracy theory on that - the West did what needed to be done.
Libya - no-one would give a shit about it if it wasn't for the oil. If they did, then they'd have bombed the f*** out of a similar regime in Zimbabwe aeons ago - the yanks would also have stopped one of the world's most murderous despotic regimes right on their doorstep (Duvalier in Haiti) long before hundreds of thousands of Haitians were wiped out.
Make no mistake about it - the Libyan intervention is nothing to do with the Libyan people, nothing to do with Gadaffi and nothing to do with islamic fundamentalism/terrorism. It's all to do with oil. Witness Sarkozy's otherwise out-of-character sending in of the French air force on a white charger. Just a coincidence that the French are one of the largest importers of Libyan oil?
The 'oil factor' also explains why we didn't help the plethora of African countries where genocide was the number one sport and the likes of the USA, UK etc knew all about it. I can also say, sadly and tongue in cheek, that the war is also good for many economies, given the amount of ammo and arms/planes/tanks that are used and need replacing........
Not so. A year ago Iraqis had their first democratic vote for God know's how long.
As for oil in Libya - yes the french import oil, so why would they oppose the existing regime?