Re: [Leica] Terror

[ray tai <razerx@netvigator.com>]

Speaking of oil there is another necessity called water.  A photographer
friend did a story for NatGeo about 8 years ago on Israel from the
perspective of water.  It seemed the flash point was over something as
basic as thirst.

Ray

Johnny Deadman wrote:
> 
> on 9/13/01 10:47 AM, B. D. Colen at bdcolen2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
> 
> > Come on, JD, The War with Mexico, as utterly
> > unjustifiable as it is by today's standards of
> > international behavior, was pretty much typical for
> > its time.
> 
> I was just supplying an example of a largely economic war, not saying
> anything about whether it was typical or atypical.
> 
> You want a more recent example? The Gulf War was clearly motivated by the
> need for the West to safeguard its oil supplies. While the overt moral
> justification of coming the the aid of 'little Kuwait' certainly had
> content, does anyone really believe that if oil supplies had not been at
> stake that such a huge campaign would have been mounted? I can think of a
> dozen similar invasions around the world where the US did nothing.
> 
> I do not believe this makes the war 'wrong', any more than it was
> 'justified' by the plight of Kuwait, whose own rulers are hardly paragons of
> democratic virtue. It was a war. War is not about right and wrong. It is
> about realpolitik... the struggle for power in the world. If you wish to
> defend a way of life, sometimes you have to defend economic interests. And
> despite the propaganda war is very seldom about morality. Even WWII, which
> clearly had an enormous moral justification, was entered with enormous
> reluctance by the Allies. A rump of conservatives in the British government
> continued to think that peace could be reached with Hitler for months if not
> years after the conflict began, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury. And the
> US joined only when its own interests were directly harmed at Pearl Harbour.
> 
> Thank God they did. Realpolitik.
> 
> Bin Laden and his crew wish to increase their power over the world. I
> personally think they should be stopped and if force is the way to do it, so
> be it. Their acts two days ago made 'war' with them politically possible and
> probably essential in a way that it had not been previously (it would have
> upset too many nations the US didn't want to upset - Russia, China,
> Pakistan, Saudi Arabia). In a sense it was a huge own goal by the
> extremists, because it finally mobilized world opinion against them,
> something the Allies had failed to do for a decade.
> 
> But everyone should realise that arguing that God is on our side, or that
> Bin Laden or Sadaam Hussein are crazed madmen is simply rhetoric. God
> doesn't vote, period.
> 
> In the end it all comes down to imposing political will by force.
> --
> John Brownlow
> 
> http://www.pinkheadedbug.com