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Old 02-06-2004, 09:45 PM   #148
ISiddiqui
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Decatur, GA
Quote:
Why? What good would it have done? A country like France just wanted to preserve its own self-serving interest as the being the major importer of Iraqi oil, not for humanitarian and democracy reasons.

We didn't need them on board. All we needed was for them to disagree less forcefully. The French, Germans, etc, were adamant and vocal in their opposition because of the way we were going about it. If we worked through diplomatic channels and were symphatic to their ideas and didn't treat them like the red-headed stepchild, they may have disagreed, but not so loudly, and their citizens wouldn't have had mass protests in the street.

Look at Kosovo and the Russians. They disagreed, but weren't going to make a big, huge fuss, as long as we treated them with respect.

It's how you play the diplomatic game. You may disagree, but if you are treated nicely and listened to, you won't try to make it too big a point. Bush has much to learn about diplomacy. HELL, he almost didn't go to the UN to make his case.

And if we had sold it on humanitarian grounds, or the fact that Saddam was paying Palestinian bomber families, we would have gotten more vocal support and much less protests. We focused on the wrong thing to build our case, and it'll KILL us. Next time we'll want to go to war because of something, other countries are going to be much more wary of our intentions.
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Last edited by ISiddiqui : 02-06-2004 at 09:46 PM.
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