(no subject)

[tinyjo]

My MP is going to be really fed up with me soon - at the request of Oxfam I have emailed him as well as Tony Blair to let them know my position on Iraq - not that they care, but that's not stopped me up til now.

I am deeply concerned that the human suffering caused by a war against Iraq will be horrific. There are enormous risks to Iraqi civilians' food supply, clean water, and safe sanitation, as well as the danger of many civilian casualties. No-one has shown an imminent threat to outweigh these risks.

While Saddam Hussein has done many appalling things as leader of Iraq, the rules of dealings between nations states mean that we cannot and should not impose a solution of our choosing on Iraq or it's people. We do not have the right to take that decision out of their hands, and we certainly should not be penalising them in the way that any war will for not taking that decision.

Although I have voted for Labour in the past, I regret to say that I cannot support a party or a government prepared to take international law into their own hands.

To Tony: I appeal to you NOT to start this war.
To Andrew Smith: I have also sent a copy of this letter to the Prime Minister.

To my shame, the last bit (having voted Labour in the past) is actually true. Way back in 1997 I was just young enough to vote, desperate to get the Tories out and living in a rural Norfolk constituency where the Labour guy was the only other one with any chance (and he didn't make it in the end). I remember how excited I was, both casting my vote and then the morning after. It was all going to be different.

Comments

hmmmm...

[(Anonymous)]

According to a recent edition of the New York Times, over 200,000 political prisoners have been murdered by Saddam Hussein; maybe the whole notion of Iraqis "taking a decision" about the regime is just wishful thinking. Along with SH deliberately firing the oil fields; draining the Tigris/Euphrates wetlands; gassing Iraqi Kurds; declaring war on Iran and on Kuwait; and starving his own people to build mosques, dams, roads, and palaces in his own honour. All of these are environmental disasters as well as social and moral evils; and this doesn't even enter into the speculations about his possible support for the terrorists who have hijacked Islam, his ability to lob missiles over all his neighbours, and his capacity to use biological warfare.

Maybe it's just too comfortable for all of us in the West to say "well, it's their country and they have the right to deal with it in their own way" when in fact most Iraqis may have that right in theory and have every reason to fear exercising it; maybe it's too comfortable for us to ignore the environmental and social devastation which already exists in Iraq, and to postulate that somehow war is worse. I say "maybe"; but if I were an Iraqi I would be terrified of the war and also terrified that the present state of affairs was going to continue unchecked.

Personally I would prefer dialogue - jaw, jaw instead of war, war - but it is possible that those of us against the idea of the war are both underinformed and a wee bit naive; and willingly blind, to reinforce our own self-issued credentials as enlightened, respectful, tolerant people. Maybe things in Iraq are indeed so awful that the only way, in the long run, to remediate them is to push the guy out through force of arms. Even Hans Blix - no pushover - isn't exactly optimistic about the way in which SH is dealing with this peaceful phase....

just a thought...