RTFP, particularly the sentence condemning France and Russia. As for the PRC, see here (there’s plenty more where that came form).

Now, about that condemnation of the Republicans you were about to deliver …

It’s only the less substantial US support that gets any attention at CT.

I haven’t much interest in defending Reagan as he made some nasty deals with the devil in the name of stopping Communism. But this article looks like a mid-term hit piece on the Republicans.

And if you are looking for inconsistencies between Republican stances then and now, read some of Bush’s speeches about how maintaining the status quo was important then, but promoting Democracy is important now. The fall of the Berlin wall changed everything, it just took until 9/11 for the US government to realize it (clever eh? I just thought that line up with only this bottle of Jameson as help)

Maybe you missed the half-dozen previous comments where I said that I have no interest in defending Democrats on this. Based on my previous observations, the suggestion that House Democrats as a group offered only weak resistance to Reagan, Bush sr, Powell and Cheney on this crime, and that some actively collaborated, seems entirely plausible.

Given that the commenters who have pushed the line “the Democrats did it too” have passed up heaps of opportunities to condemn the Republicans’ support for Saddam, I think it’s clear that we can disregard anything they say about Saddam in future.

Maybe someone can find newspaper reports of this.

While I generally agree with Andrew in #27, I think it would be wise not to elide the very real differences in power and ideology of the state and non-state actors under discussion. Arms-dealing, G-8, permanent Security Council members like the US and France do have a significantly higher degree of responsibility for the global outcomes of their respective policies than, for instance, the Ukraine or Uruguay. And when their activities, in the form of sanctions, aid, war or diplomatic pressure, have serious, forseeable, negative consequences, then it’s the least we can do, as citizens, to protest and seek a redress of grievances. The fact that we do this does not necessarily imply partisan content to our speech. Nor of course does it imply a lack of partisanship.

Pretty much every politician everywhere should be in the dock right now for crimes against humanity, but that is hardly an argument against pointing out the most egregious violators (on which list I would certainly include the governments of the PRC and France and the UK and Russia as well as our own solons) in an effort to ameliorate at least some of the current and future harms they have caused.

Well, up to a point. I think that great powers are always “realists” of one sort or another; they all follow the maxim that necessity knows no law. But there are huge differences: in 19th century Britain or 20th century America, before some heinous action was undertaken, a case had to be made that it really was necessary. Not so in most autocratic regimes.

Galbraith ducks that issue when he says:

The Reagan and first Bush administrations believed that Hussein could be a strategic partner to the United States, a counterweight to Iran, a force for moderation in the region, and possibly help in the Arab-Israel peace process. That was, of course, an illusion. A ruthless dictator who launched an attack on his neighbor, Iran, who used chemical weapons, and who committed genocide against his own Kurds was never likely to be a reliable American ally.

Who’s he kidding? Stalin did far worse things, but when it mattered most he was the perfect ally: the guy who is prepared to shed his own troops’ blood to ensure the victory of the alliance.

To put it bluntly: Saddam could have remained an ally of the West if he had been properly managed after the Iran-Iraq war. The smart thing would have been to go on supporting him, but with the proviso that he behave at least as well as his counterparts in Egypt and Jordan. I suppose that’s what Pell & Co. had in mind. It stinks a bit, but a lot less than what the Administration did.

Well, one could begin by noting that the rationale for the policy is … the same one so many Democrats urge us to adopt as the basis for our foreign policy now. It’s the old Kissinger/Scowcroft plan, isn’t it? Not something I’d throw someone in the dock for, largely because I think it’s terribly important that we not criminalize the new Democratic platform.

Please provide evidence as to which Democrats are “urging us” to provide military aid to Saddam-like dictators, Thomas. I want specifics here.

I think I understand where you’re coming from here. When faced with a ruthless regime that brutalizes its own people, we have two, and only two, choices: (1) lavish them with financial credits, attack helicopters, and hearty handshakes; or (2) invade the country and overthrow the government, even if it means killing tens of thousands of people and touching off a civil war that effectively destroys the country. Craven appeasement or the “Bush Doctrine”: There Is No Alternative.

Life is a coloring book, and there are two crayons in the box: black and white.

Because some of us think that launching a war of aggression is a uniquely awful crime, Thomas. I realize that this needs to be pointed out repeatedly, because it’s a fact that tends to evaporate into thin air, but the pretext for the invasion of Iraq was not the gassing of the Kurds or other human rights violation, but its possession of nonexistent weapons.

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferencz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting “aggressive” wars – Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime,” the 87-year-old Ferencz told OneWorld from his home in New York.

Source

But hell, I’m sure Ferencz is just a rabid partisan Democrat, desperate to whitewash the bloody crimes of the monstrous Jimmy Carter.

If we are lucky, then what’s moral may map on to the national interest of a country (like stopping the holocaust), but it’s facile to assume that any one party or ideology is going to be more moral than another on the international relations front.

By small measure, you mean, “extensive political, military, diplomatic and economical help” right? They don’t get all the opprobrium: Chirac alongside his cronies gave extensive help to Saddam and they rightly deserves to end in prison for this (among other things). When the Bush administration said Saddam’s crimes deserved regime change, that was hypocrisy turned into an art form. When the Chirac administration said it wanted peace, that was hypocrisy turned into an art form as well.
However, reasonably well-informed persons in 2003 knew that Saddam had no significant military capacities and that invading the country using the proposed plan of battle would in all probability lead to massive sufferings, civilian deaths in the tens of thousands and a possible disintegration of Iraqi society (though on these three counts, I was rather surprised by the extent of damage). There was therefore very little ground to support the war.
I sincerely hope Chirac will end his life in jail, among other things for his involvement with dictators among the worst on earth. I am sure you Neil also hope that Rumsfeld and Cheney will end in jail for exactly the same crimes.