RE: Off-topic, and not sorry one iota -- MIDRANGE-L



Folks,

As much as I understand and appreciate the patriotism and passions
involved here, this thread is off topic for this forum.

I would ask the primary principles to wakeup to this fact and conduct
themselves accordingly.

Thanks

Don in DC

-------------------------------------------------

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Jeff Bull wrote:

> I have been in the British military, and fought in a war ... though at heart
> I am a pacifist,
> and certainly not an appeaser.  Saddam needs dealing with in the same way
> that Hitler
> needed dealing with (for example).  Unfortunately, the historical reason he
> needs dealing
> with is often over-looked.  Remember appeasement ?
>
> In the 1970's and 80's, Iran was the baddy, many 'civilised' first world
> countries, the USA
> and many in Europe, were have to encourage Iraq to war with Iran, the
> profits from the
> sales of military hardware to Iraq were icing on the cake; though in
> reality, many of the
> weapons were not paid for by Iraq, the debts being picked up by the US and
> Britain.
>
> We (in the west) have piled weapons into the Middle East, Central and South
> America,
> Africa, Asia - and all in the name of the furtherance of Democracy (and, I
> suspect, a
> healthy profit for our armaments industries).  Of course, at one point, the
> bigger
> bogey man was the Soviet Union / Russia; these areas of conflict were often
> a proxy
> war against them.
>
> Until we get our polititians and fat-cat armaments industrialists under the
> control of the
> people, we will never have our true democracy or world peace.
>
> An analogy: How can there be gun-less crime on the streets of our cities,
> while the
> availablility of hand-guns / rifles is so easy.  Surely the logical step is
> to stop making
> and selling them.
>
> Now we have to deal with Saddam, and North Korea is making loud noises
> believing
> they will be the next world enemy no.1 .
>
> I for one will vote for any politian who stands on the promise of working
> towards the
> dismantling of the international arms trade - a first step to peace.
>
> I know that the planes that flew into the twin towers on 11/Sep were not
> products of the
> conventional arms industry, but it would be truly ironic if in the next such
> terrorist attack on
> the west utilised conventianal western munitions - a cruise missile into
> another high-density
> area of civilian population, or a patriot missile into a 747.  The phrase
> "hung by our own
> petard" comes to mind.  The British HMS Sheffield was sunk with a French
> missile, fired
> from a French aircraft, flow by an Argentinian.  There might be more British
> sailors alive
> today if our allies had not sold these weapons to Argentina.
>
> Lets show a united front on tackling the evils in our world, Saddam for now,
> and the arms
> industry.  If we must fight each other, lets put our national leaders in the
> arena against
> each other to decide the outcome.
>
> Jeffrey E. Bull
>
>
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