Re: [A-List] Habermas on Iraq

["annewilliamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

On May 12, 2003, James Daly posted an excerpt from the Habermas List:

20 The comparison with the intervention in Kosovo also offers no
exoneration. It is true that an authorization by the Security Council
in this case was not reached either. But the retrospectively obtained
legitimation could be based upon three circumstances: on the
prevention - as it seemed at the time - of an ethnic cleansing in the
process of taking place, on the imperative - covered by international
law - of emergency assistance holding erga omnes for this case, as
well as the incontrovertibly democratic and constitutional character
of all the member states of the ad hoc military alliance.

What a crock!  To excuse Clinton's unilateralism - bombing aspirin
factories, Afghani caves, and an entire nation - weakens the author's
justifiable and largely on-target argument against of Bush's attack on
Iraq.  It's clear now - and it was clear then for anyone who cared to
look - that the US shamelessly set up the Serbs with a staged massacre
and the outrageously unacceptable demands that harridan Albright
put forward at Ramboullet.

Oil was behind the Kosovo outrage, just as it is in Iraq.  Yugoslavia
had been designation as the venue for the EU's energy grid.  Just
look at the pipelines and refineries being built there, examine the huge
contracts Brown and Root have been awarded, the refineries being
built.  Additionally, all those pipes and refineries are directed towards
one, enormous customer, i.e. Germany.  Could this be why the EU
so quickly fell into step with Bubbaboon's unauthorized, unnecessary,
and cruelly destructive war?  I believe it is.  "Retrospectively-obtained
legitimization" indeed!

State hypocrisy is not a uniquely American characteristic.

Anne