A while back, I read Mark Leonard’s ‘Why Europe will run the 21st century’ . I enjoyed his defense of the insidious usefulness of soft power, even if I found myself feeling a lot less sanguine about its potential limits. A short piece about Uzbekistan in yesterday’s Financial Times snapped those limits sharply into focus.
Next Monday, the European General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) will formally impose sanctions on Uzbekistan, almost five months after the massacre of protesting citizens in Andijan. What devastating blow will the GAERC deliver to the regime that slaughters protestors in their hundreds and boils dissidents alive? We will reduce the tiny amount of aid we now give Uzbekistan (about 8 million Euro p.a.), impose an arms embargo (though we sell them hardly any already), and stop issuing visas for ministers’ wives’ shopping trips to Paris. Soft power indeed.
The FT quotes a European diplomat saying “We’ve taken strong and determined actions which leave the Uzbeks in no doubt as to the strong feelings of the EU.” However, the Uzbek government already knew just how strongly the EU feels about its most recent actions and long decline into unapologetic authoritarianism. And it has known for a very long time that the EU has no bargaining or coercive power to effect any real change in Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan and its Central Asian neighbours suffer from “slow democratic transition, poor records of implementing human rights obligations, concern over Islamic radicalisation, and the proliferation weapons of mass destruction, demographic pressures straining the capacity of social services, lagging implementation of market-oriented economic reforms, poor business and investment climates, widening income disparities and poverty”. That’s a nice way of saying these countries are basket-cases.
Since 1991, the EU has delivered 944 million Euro in aid to the central Asian republics of the CIS (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan – an area about as big as the entire EU). The EU’s main objectives regarding Uzbekistan and its neighbours have been to promote democracy, human rights and the transition to a market economy. Sadly, 8 million a year to Uzbekistan won’t buy you a whole lot of democracy.
The rather unloved GAERC happened to be meeting ten days after the May 2005 massacre. It ‘strongly condemned’, ‘deeply regretted’, ‘expressed its sympathy’, and then, stirringly, ‘urged reforms’, ‘stood ready to assist’ and threatened to ‘consider further steps’. So now, almost five months later, we have a completely useless package of measures that Karimov and his kleptocratic cronies will thumb their noses at as surely as night follows day.
What else can be done? Not a lot. The US is slightly less impotent than us, but not by much. Until recently, Bush enjoyed a warm and mutually supportive relationship with Karimov and his ex-commie mates, and ran a military base near the border with Afghanistan. US aid to Uzbekistan alone runs at almost a billion dollars since 1992, including a recent $80 million to domestic law enforcement which the State Department certified as routinely using torture. (Though the US and UK’s willingness to use Uzbekistan as a site for the ‘rendition’ of terrorist suspects suggests law enforcement aid may have been delivered because of, rather than in spite of, the country’s reputation for torture.) The UK was also supportive, to the point of running its own ambassador out of Tashkent when he criticized the regime and (probably) leaked a report that MI6 used the regime to torture suspects. As Uzbekistan’s inward and regressive turn in the last few years has stemmed from a fear of fundamentalist Islam – and also enjoying its strategic importance vis a vis the war in Afghanistan – Karimov was given a pretty free reign.
No longer. The US is now being turfed out of its military base in Karshi-Khanabad in southern Uzbekistan – ostensibly because it joined the EU and UN in calling for an independent inquiry into the Andijan massacre. More likely, Uzbekistan’s decline in strategic importance following the end of the war in Afghanistan, and the growing difficulty of giving aid to an increasingly notorious ex-Soviet strong man have made Karimov less essential to the White House. Or maybe GW just looked into his eyes and found they didn’t get along so well after all. The US DoD will still pay $23 million for the rental of the base it’s been summarily evicted from – an amount slightly larger than the $20 million reportedly withheld last year because of Tashkent’s failure to improve its human rights record. But the bottom line of all this tortured accounting is simple. There is only one country with significant influence in Uzbekistan; Russia.
Which brings us back to soft power. Uzbekistan is too big, too troubled and too far away for the EU to do very much directly about. We can’t hold out the carrot of our neighbourhood policy to offer economic and trade incentives for Uzbekistan to behave well. We sell the Uzbeks much more farm machinery and chemicals then we buy their cotton and gold, and there’s no chance they’ll be moving up the value chain any time soon. Our links with them are too thin and too tenuous, and their economy too backward for the EU to be a major trading partner of the Uzbeks. And we can’t do much for their democracy in a post-September 11 world either – global insecurity and the rhetoric of the war on terror have only strengthened the iron grasp of hardliners like Karimov.
Europeans face a dilemma. Do we stay engaged, albeit minimally, with Uzbekistan, or do we remove ourselves from its corrosive effect? The tiny amount of aid we supply has very little beneficial effect to ordinary Uzbeks. It’s enough to keep us hand-wringing about a regime we may be helping to prop up, but not enough to really help the people who need it. It is, however, just the right amount to make us confront day by day our own impotence and hypocrisy, to make us cynical and despairing, to lose our sense of ourselves as Europeans in the world; diplomatic, seasoned, thoughtful, patient, constructive. It doesn’t do much for the standing of the Common Foreign and Security Policy either.
I believe we should stay engaged. Right now, we have allocated 50 million Euro a year in aid for the Central Asian republics. I know from people who work on the ground in those countries and others who work on the policy here in Brussels that it’s not enough. There are limits to the country’s technical and administrative abilities to absorb aid – and we have to live with the fact that some of it is siphoned off by corruption – but those limits do not seem to have been reached. The EU is now targeting its aid more closely, putting more of it through NGOs and focusing aid for structural reform on areas governments are at least willing to look at. This is good news. Small, but good.
But the real focus of European soft power when it comes to Uzbekistan should be on Russia. On Monday (4th October, 2005), an EU-Russia summit will be held in London. It will discuss a deepening of cooperation in four policy areas and probably make an announcement about EU visas for Russians. Uzbekistan is due to be discussed in relation to the ‘common space on external security’. I hope our EU leaders will remind Russia that the massacre of citizens and systematic human rights abuses in Uzbekistan are not, as the Russians have said, ‘an internal matter’. Karimov’s actions are fuelling the fire of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia – they threaten us all.
The EU is Russia’s biggest trading partner, and we’ve given Russia over 2.6 billion Euro in technical assistance since 1991. In return for cash and access to our markets, we’ve gotten Russian acquiescence to the accession of the former Soviet states and the enlargement of NATO in return. Not bad value for money. However, we’ve also scored nul points on our objection to Moscow’s prosecution of its war in Chechnya, so perhaps it is naïve to think we will achieve much by pressuring Putin to lean on his friend, Karimov.
But if Russia really wants the global respectability it seems to aspire to, being a force for good in its own neighbourhood can only help. Russia is Uzbekistan’s biggest trading partner, and in the last year or so Tashkent’s forgiving eyes have turned once more toward Moscow. Perhaps soft power is something the Russians could get the hang of too.
{ 42 comments }
abb1 10.01.05 at 5:28 am
…and stop issuing visas for ministers’ wives’ shopping trips to Paris.
That’ll do it.
Sebastian Holsclaw 10.01.05 at 5:52 am
“We’ve taken strong and determined actions which leave the Uzbeks in no doubt as to the strong feelings of the EU.”
Translation–We’ve taken what counts as strong and determined action in the context of EU action–which is to say almost nothing.
Peter Clay 10.01.05 at 6:02 am
Clearly we should invade and impose a regime change. What could possibly go wrong?
abb1 10.01.05 at 6:28 am
Invading to impose a regime change is so last season.
There’s a more effective way to teach savages to respect human rights: Pentagon document “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” calls for the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries in order “to ensure success of US and multinational operations.”
Barry 10.01.05 at 7:30 am
“Translation—We’ve taken what counts as strong and determined action in the context of EU action—which is to say almost nothing.”
Posted by Sebastian Holsclaw
As opposed to US actions – cutting off the torture fee’s that we were probably paying will certainly hit their police in the wallet.
Daniel 10.01.05 at 8:44 am
If anyone is thinking of putting together a compilation album of late-1980s tracks by Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Def Leppard et al, then I think that “Soft Power, Tough Love” would make an excellent title.
Erik 10.01.05 at 9:36 am
“Translation—We’ve taken what counts as strong and determined action in the context of EU action—which is to say almost nothing.â€
I have absolutely no doubts that the EU has been a much stronger force for improvements in human rights than the US in the past decade. For example, the EU now regularly includes human rights provisions in regional and bilateral trade agreements and enforces those provisions (it sends monitors, imposes sanctions, etc). It is also the driving force behind an international court (the ECHR) that enforces human rights obligations in 45 countries. The credibility of such an enterprise is strengthened by the willingness of EU countries to be bound by its decisions. Obviously, all of this doesn’t work perfectly but there is no denying that the carrots and sticks of the EU have given profound incentives to states in Eastern Europe, central Asia and the mediterrenean to change their ways.
P O'Neill 10.01.05 at 10:52 am
I suspect that you’re putting far more thought into EU policy towards Uzbekistan than the glorious EU leaders are. There is one other factor. It’s striking the extent to which Karimov seems to have put on his favourite FYBs as far as the West is concerned. And the noises from him and the other ‘stans is that they are hitching their wagon not to Russia, but China. Indeed, China has popped up as the last refuge of international scoundrels everywhere, including Mugabe. Apparently even some Turks in a huff over the stalling on accession negotiations are talking about China as a potential partner.
But in what, exactly? The Communists seem interested in signing deals for resource exploitation and trade facilitation, and not much else. However the idea that all these countries could define large areas of common policy with each other seems a huge stretch. It’s an open question what will finally bring Karimov down. But it’s not clear that China would do much to stop it when it finally happens.
Maynard Handley 10.01.05 at 1:05 pm
I don’t get the point of this post.
So there are awful leaders in the world and good people can’t get rid of them. That has always been the case, and it has little to do with soft vs hard power. The EU has the hardest of hard power, missile delivered thermonuclear weapons, but those aren’t going to solve the problem. They have less of US-style mid-range hard power, ie lots of bombers and cruise missiles, but that’s not especially likely to solve the problem either (cf Iraq).
Yeah, it sucks that this is the case, but the fact that it is so is hardly news. Why not accept that their are some things you can’t change, and work to get the EU doing good in such places as it can — Turkey is obviously the primary case, but also Ukraine, maybe even Belarus and North Africa.
Jason G. Williscroft 10.01.05 at 1:13 pm
Follow your thoughts to their logical conclusion and you realize what the majority of us in America recognize instinctively: that “soft power” isn’t power at all. It’s smoke.
Many thanks… it’s always gratifying to be present at the birth of apostasy. Welcome to the real world.
John M. 10.01.05 at 1:21 pm
The previous comment (dream #9) makes an excellent point. Until the advent of the neo-cons it seemed that it was a generally accepted tenet on all sides of the political fences that it was fundamentally hard, if not impossible, to forcibly create benefical change in other sovereign states – that all we have are inherently weak forces. It seems to me that this general view is recovering ground now, especially amongst the genuine conservative movement in the US, which is no bad thing.
John M. 10.01.05 at 1:23 pm
Oops…#10 beat me to it and clearly shows I’m wrong – “Hard Power” continuing to show its effectiveness daily.
Barry 10.01.05 at 1:38 pm
Don’t worry, John – in practice the US ‘hard power’, on a good day, might get you from the Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone safely. In an armored vehicle.
Walt Pohl 10.01.05 at 7:44 pm
One of the minor but real costs of George Bush’s foreign policy is that it has made trash talk like Sebastian’s look ridiculous. Since circa 1999 I was fond of mocking the pretensions of EU foreign policy, I keenly feel the loss.
Sebastian Holsclaw 10.01.05 at 10:26 pm
“One of the minor but real costs of George Bush’s foreign policy is that it has made trash talk like Sebastian’s look ridiculous. Since circa 1999 I was fond of mocking the pretensions of EU foreign policy, I keenly feel the loss.”
I’m not trash-talking. I’m all for doing nothing when you want to do nothing. I’m not for pretending to do something when you are actually doing nothing. I think it creates the dangerous perception that a problem is being dealt with when in fact nothing important is happening (or in fact things are getting worse for you–see Iran). The current status of the NPT is classicly in that vein. Europe gets to pretend it is doing something about proliferation while proliferation goes on pretty much unchecked.
The West gets to pretend to dislike genocide by signing pretty bits of paper, and genocide continues under everyone’s noses again and again and again.
It is far better to see a problem and admit you can’t or don’t want to be bothered to do anything about it than it is to pretend you are doing something about it. If you admit you can’t currently solve it, somebody might spend time trying to come up with a creative solution. If you pretend to be solving it, some of those people will be sucked into the fake process, and that will waste time which could have been spent either finding a real solution or working on some other problem.
Gray 10.01.05 at 11:01 pm
Saludos Maria
What a great post.
Still the best part is the commenters who are gasping like gaffed catfish because they can’t fit this into their worldview and the others who reflexively just starting criticising the USA, even thoyugh it has nothig to do with the USA – as they do for every situation . . . . ..
Soft power has a role but sometimes force is necessary too . . . . .
abb1 10.02.05 at 4:53 am
Soft power has a role but sometimes force is necessary too . . . . .
That’s what Mr. Karimov says too.
Antoni Jaume 10.02.05 at 7:29 am
My take, using someone else words, of what’s the cause of lack of hard power:
http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/001954.php#13500
Particularly :
Indeed, or as in Yes, Prime Minister:
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it’s worked so well?
Jim Hacker: That’s all ancient history, surely.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing (the EEC) up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it’s just like old times.
Jim Hacker: But if that’s true, why is the foreign office pushing for higher membership?
Sir Humphrey: I’d have thought that was obvious. The more members an organization has, the more arguments it can stir up. The more futile and impotent it becomes.
Jim Hacker: What appalling cynicism.
Sir Humphrey: We call it diplomacy, Minister
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Prime_Minister
DSW
Syd Webb 10.02.05 at 7:46 am
John M wrote:
Until the advent of the neo-cons it seemed that it was a generally accepted tenet on all sides of the political fences that it was fundamentally hard, if not impossible, to forcibly create benefical change in other sovereign states
If ‘beneficial change’ means ‘moulding them to be like us’, then yes. The 30 Years War taught Christianity the futility of conversions by fire and the sword in the modern world. Newer faiths, like Islam and Democracy, are still to learn this lesson.
Gray 10.02.05 at 1:12 pm
Abb
The barbarian is stopped at the moat.
Mr Karimov is a goon, how best to deal with him? Soft power or force . . .
abb1 10.02.05 at 1:47 pm
Well, Mr. Karimov certainly doesn’t think he is a barbarian. How do you know you aren’t?
Doug 10.02.05 at 2:06 pm
Perhaps soft power is something the Russians could get the hang of too.
Presuming, of course, that the present Russian government (1) wants to get the hang of it, and (2) has the same idea of what the goals of soft power should be as you and I do.
Last winter, Russia tried to use a whole bunch of soft power (I think the sum of promises was along the lines of $300M annually, but I could be off by as much as an order of magnitude) to ensure a certain outcome in Ukraine. Things turned out a little differently.
Karimov’s regime is a tough problem. Tougher still is that posed by Lukashenko in Belarus, who may well turn out to be Europe’s Castro.
Dan Simon 10.03.05 at 1:29 am
“Soft power has a role but sometimes force is necessary too . . . . .”
That’s what Mr. Karimov says too.
And Abb1, as well–as long as the force is being directed against America or Israel.
There are a few true pacifists in the world, to be sure, but nobody pays the slightest attention to them, because they have only “soft power”. The rest of the world divides itself up by whom it would prefer to use force against. Karimov likes to use it against his political enemies, Abb1 against Americans and Israelis, and American internationalists (sometimes referred to as “neoconservatives”) against ruthless dictators and Islamist terrorist organizations. Readers can judge for themselves whose target they consider most wisely chosen.
abb1 10.03.05 at 2:22 am
Dan, I don’t remember advocating use of force against anyone. People living under foreign domination do have a right to resist, that is a commonly accepted international principle, but the idea that stating this principle amounts to advocating violence is your erroneous interpretation.
The rest of what you said could be rephrased like this: Mr. Karimov uses force against Islamist terrorist organizations operating inside his country. American ‘internationalists’ (imperialists?) use force against foreign countries and groups who refuse to accept American hegemony in the world.
So, what now? How does it help you?
Sebastian Holsclaw 10.03.05 at 3:20 am
What would you call using force against the Twin Towers?
abb1 10.03.05 at 4:24 am
International terrorism.
soru 10.03.05 at 6:46 am
Dan, I don’t remember advocating use of force against anyone. People living under foreign domination do have a right to resist
How can anyone utter those words without instantly coming to the realisation that they are talking nonsense?
soru
abb1 10.03.05 at 7:43 am
What’s the problem?
island 10.03.05 at 4:30 pm
Sadly I would have to agree with Sebastian (sp? my apologies) that we might as well get honest about our perceptions of human tragedy. Since Clinto said never again over Rwanda we’ve had 3 or 4 million dead in the Congo, a couple million in Sudan, first the south now Darfur, Liberia, Sierra Leone… now it seems Zimbabwe may be using starvation on uncooperative thnic groups…
Interferance is selective and it always appeals to decency, but there is a blatant cynical game in these heart rending outbursts over Kosovo or Iraq. Not that I doubt the accuracy of the matter, but ALMOST EVERYONE who makes these appeals as though it is some moral duty to do something about some revealed pain is immoral, they have ignored all the rest and now suddenly when it is in their interests to feel compassion they accuse those who don’t share their interests of inhumanity.
As for central Asia. Uzbekisatn is a member of SCO (Shangahai Coopperative Organization) which includes Russia, China and 3 other central Asian nations and very likely will soon include Iran. This area seems to be passing out of our sphere of interests. Hopefully as the powerful client states evolve, they will pressure for more humanity as the Us and Europe have done imperfectly with their allies. Various pressures on the bigger players may also have effect, but essentially it is more brutality in a brutal region.
The United States is losing it’s game around there. We’ve handed a good chunk of Iraq to Iran and Iran is having the nerve to institute an oil bourse next year which may succeed in taking a bit of the trade, weakening Bretton Woods 2 and opening up other commodities for trade in currencies besides the dollar.
Kragen Sitaker 10.03.05 at 7:34 pm
abb1, when you say, “I don’t … advocat[e] use of force against anyone. People living under foreign domination do have a right to resist,” what means of resistance do you have in mind other than use of force against the agents of foreign domination? Perhaps civil disobedience? Or do you mean that they have the right to use force, but you wish they wouldn’t? Or did I misunderstand your words?
Gray 10.03.05 at 10:12 pm
Island
I agree that interventions have been very arbitrary and selective. UN Veto holders and the UN’s general inertia have seen to that. Still it is the agency that should coordinate such efforts.
I believe that if the international community had intervened more robustly in the past then there would be less need for more interventions now. If the thugs knew the international community would take action more reliably then soft power would work better.
abb1 10.04.05 at 2:01 am
Kragen, according to relevant UN GA resolutions, they pretty much have a right to resist by any and all means at their disposal.
This is basically a case of self-defense against an existential threat, only on the national level.
When you acknowledge fundamental right to self-defense, you don’t advocate violence, correct?
Kragen Sitaker 10.04.05 at 3:37 am
abb1 writes:
Kragen, according to relevant UN GA resolutions, they pretty much have a right to resist by any and all means at their disposal…When you acknowledge fundamental right to self-defense, you don’t advocate violence, correct?
I wasn’t asking what the UN advocated, or what you thought I might advocate; I was asking what you advocated, because your original post seemed self-contradictory, but it was too vague to be sure. In the followup quoted above, you’re no less vague. So I will ask again, at much greater length in case my previous post was unclear. Do you hold the position that people living under foreign domination have the right to resist by means including the use of force against the agents of this foreign domination? If so, do you also hold the position that they should exercise this right?
To answer the question you have posed to me, acknowledging a right for someone to do something is advocating the position that they do not have a moral obligation not to do something, but it does not necessarily entail a belief that they have a moral obligation to do it. For example, a person who acknowledges a fundamental right to self-defense by means of violence may believe that such self-defense is permissible but not required. So that is one possible way to “acknowledge a fundamental right to self-defense” without “advocating violence” — by arguing that violence is permissible but not required.
People mean many different things by “self-defense,” and not all of them are violent. For example, fleeing, looking confident, bribing an attacker, verbal arguing, and deception are nonviolent methods of self-defense. A person could actively advocate these kinds of self-defense without advocating violence.
But in the common case — where “acknowledging a fundamental right to self-defense” means arguing that if you are attacked, you have not only a right but a responsibility to engage in violence against your attacker in order to protect yourself, at least under some circumstances, it self-evidently constitutes advocacy of violence. For example, if a goon is trying to break into my house to beat me up, and I have a knife, and you tell me that I should use the knife to cut the goon in order to avoid being beaten up, that is clearly advocacy of violence; cutting the goon with the knife is an act of violence, which may or may not be justified for reasons of self-defense.
Do you mean “advocate violence” in some sense that does not include arguing in favor of cutting the goon in the above scenario?
abb1 10.04.05 at 4:55 am
Yes, violence is permissible but not required.
When a nation is invaded and occupied, it’s not analogous to a goon trying to beat you up; it’s analogous to a goon trying to enslave or kill you. You’re quite justified in using a knife or a gun or anything else, but I don’t think it’s your moral obligation; if you prefer to lose your sovereignty and become a slave (perhaps in exchange for money, like, say, American Samoa) that’s your choice. Few do, though.
Sebastian Holsclaw 10.04.05 at 9:32 am
“I believe that if the international community had intervened more robustly in the past then there would be less need for more interventions now. If the thugs knew the international community would take action more reliably then soft power would work better.”
Well, yeah. But since the international community does not in fact use force reliably, soft power does not in fact work well against genocide.
Which is a large portion of my point.
abb1 10.04.05 at 11:45 am
The thugs, in the most recent cases of genocide in Rwanda and Sudan, are not people who you could reasonably be expected to worry about anything international community would or wouldn’t do.
These things are as likely to be prevented by force as gang violence in LA by more SWAT teams.
This idea that force is some sort of panacea against bad behavior is an odd utopian concept. You’d have to believe that, say, Mr. Karimov and his government are some kind of evil creatures whose only goal is to inflict suffering on ‘their people’. In fact, it’s nothing like that; there are real economic, religios, ethnic, political, cultural and other reasons for these people to act the way they do, just like there are reasons for the LA gangs to exist. That’s why force is not likely to solve anything, you can’t fix a radio with a hammer.
These things seemed obvious to almost anyone until just a few years ago, I don’t know what’s happened…
Jason G. Williscroft 10.04.05 at 12:07 pm
These things seemed obvious to almost anyone until just a few years ago…
Are you kidding me?
A few years ago, the notion that violent thugs will concede to any argument other than overwhelming force directed at them personally smelled exactly as it does today: like horse pucky of the very first water.
It isn’t about trying to fix a radio with a hammer, abb1. It’s about putting down a dangerous maniac with a hammer. Until you can get your metaphors straight, perhaps you’d be better off using plain English.
Nobody’s asking you to compromise your delicate sensibilities by taking up arms and manning the ramparts with the rest of us bloodthirsty knuckle-draggers. We’re just asking you kindly to keep the hell out of our way while we protect our own families and way of life… and, incidentally, yours.
You’re very welcome.
jet 10.04.05 at 12:15 pm
Abb1,
I’m sorry, but on this one you are absolutely wrong. One of the “crimes” against the West that came from the Rwandan genocide was that if they would have even have bothered to do some saber rattling, the genocide would not have happened. The mere threat of a response from the West could have saved a million lives. The Rwandan Hutu’s were extremely sensitive to any perceived military reactions from the UN/US.
abb1 10.04.05 at 12:17 pm
Well, Jason, you don’t have to trust me with my delicate sensibilities:
Uncle Kvetch 10.04.05 at 1:19 pm
We’re just asking you kindly to keep the hell out of our way while we protect our own families and way of life… and, incidentally, yours.
First, I wish you wouldn’t bother. The war in Iraq has made us all patently less safe.
Second, I’m a citizen of this country. With all due respect, my only response to “kindly keep the hell out of our way” is a hearty, Dick-Cheney-approved Go Fuck Yourself.
[I won’t even get into the question of people like abb1 and myself expressing our opinions constitutes “getting in the way” of your lovely war. Frankly, I don’t want to know.]
Jason G. Williscroft 10.05.05 at 10:09 am
abb1, well done: you have successfully demonstrated that the years 1991 and 2003 occurred in different decades, and that a military campaign deemed a marginally poor idea in one decade can morph into a very good idea within the context of another.
Or was that not your point?
P.S. Kvetch: you’ve long since demonstrated that your notion of intelligence is entirely a matter of angry ideology. So, right back at you, tough guy: no point wasting my time.
Antoni Jaume 10.05.05 at 12:57 pm
Now if the Iraq war has been a “very good idea” to you, then your idea of good is different from mine.
DSW
Comments on this entry are closed.