American foreign policy arguments are getting up my nose again, with the impending war on Iraq, and the constant American attempts to convince us that war is a good thing.
The main problem I have with American foreign policy, as I'm sure is the problem a lot of the world have, is its transparent selfishness, a perception that is perpetuated by the Yanks constant interference in overseas matters that have no noticable benefit for the indeginous population.
It's forever a war, whose aims are to protect freedom and justice and other buzzwords. Buzzwords that coincindentally reflect the buzzwords used to describe "The All-American way of life". So in essence they are striving to preserve the American way of life. Or in the countries that do not yet subscribe to this phenomenon, they are seeking to impose it.
And then they thinly disguise this imposition with poor arguments about trying to save people from oppression. The American way of life works in America because it is America. The British way of life works in Britain, because it is Britain. We think differently because we are different.
The thing is that the Yanks always seem to use the wrong words, the wrong arguments and often the wrong actions in the eyes of the world. Bush appears nothing more than a money-grabbing fool, of limited morals and even further limited brain capacity. And the American people argue their case poorly as well, always citing as an example of the success of their foreign policy that "you Brits should be grateful for us bailing you out from Hitler and his boys"
Well let me retort Mr Yanky Doodle. Your bail out is yet another transparent self-centred policy, which was not exactly selfless in any sense of the word. May I mention the words Pearl Harbour for example. It's not like you came in with the intention of bailing us out, it just looks good in hindsight to say that.
Also, had it not been for your kind intervention, the whole of Europe will have become a Nazi state with the power to put some very big holes in America and destroy the American way of life. What a coincidence.
I acknowledge that Saddam is a lunatic dictator and something must be done about him. But the UN ARE doing something. Unilateral action flies in the face of the values which the UN was set up to defend, and shows the US (and Britain) to hold the UN in contempt. When the rich can just bend international law at will, we are headed for an age of lawlessness, which cannot be a good thing.
Innocent people do not have die. We have the power right now to save lives, and it is our responsibility as human beings to do so.
Quote of the day comes from Imran Khan, the great Pakistani cricketer who says
"If and when this cynical war begins, other cricketing countries will have to ask themselves a tricky question: should they play England, a country quite prepared to visit far more destruction on Iraq than Mr Mugabe has ever visited on his own land?"
That hits the stumps.
