Dutch commission determines Iraq war was unlawful

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My last comment was specifically responding to coins ascertation of the US becoming the 'planet's biggest moocher.' I find it interesting that the country which has donated more food, supplies and money to the world than any other country (perhaps even more than all of the European Union together) is considered a moocher.

It is rare when a national emergency hits the US we ask for aid -- in fact, aid is rarely offered (although several countries volunteered during Katrina). And yet when a catastrophe hits elsewhere in the world everyone complains that the US is not doing enough (even when the aid given by the US is by far the greatest percentage).

We do have a huge debt, one that has been compounded by both generosity and stupidity. I would not want the US to become less generous, but wouldn't mind if our leaders could reduce the stupidity factor.

Ragusa and joacqin: I was only stating the way it is. I'm a realist and understand how and why things are the way they are -- I don't always agree with them. In this case I was simply the messenger.

 

Do you seriously expect a rich country to receive foreign aid when an emergency hits? It's expected they can cover it themselves.

I'll reiterate what NOG just said. Relative to its size, the US is a good donor but not an outstanding one. You can't compare its generosity in $ terms to countries with a fraction of the population. The US is also a lot more likely to give tied aid or to chose the countries for political reasons. To be fair, this is an area where the absolute size probably does matter. A small country can never give enough to have much of an influence so there's no point trying.

US private aid is supposed to be very high. There's a much greater spirit of philanthropy in the US whilst Europeans expect the government to handle things like this.

 

Speaking of debt as a result of the war...Chirac was the smart one, it appears:

http://costofwar.com/

But try to get some health care for some American folks....

 

The US does give out more foreign aid than any other country in the world but it doesn't even come close to exceeding what the EU puts out. Measured in US dollars, the combined contributions of Germany and the UK alone match our tally. Taken as a whole, the EU more than doubles us, but even that isn't a fair comparison.

In dollar terms, we are clearly the largest international economic aid donor -- but we are the smallest contributor among the major donor governments when donations are calculated as a percentage of gross national income. The US gives a paltry .18% of its GNI out in foreign aid. France, the UK and Germany more than double that (giving a paltry* .39%, .43%, and .38% respectively), while Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands all give 4-5 times as much.

Regarding whether getting back every penny we've given out over the last hundred years or so would eliminate our national debt, the exact figures on what we've given out over that time are hard to come by. Nevertheless, it strains credulity well past the breaking point to believe we've given out anything even approaching the 13.3 trillion dollars that comprise our national debt. Our total foreign aid contribution in 2008 was about 25 billion dollars. The percentage of GNI that we give out in foreign aid has remained more or less constant since at least the 1970's, and our GNI is a lot higher now than it was then. On top of this, a lot of the aid we've given out over the years has since been paid back. Even accounting for inflation, I find it hard to believe that we've paid out one trillion dollars in foreign aid in the last 100 years, let alone 13.5. Even if we were to pretend that we've given out that same 25 billion bucks (adjusted for inflation) for the last 100 years (and we've come nowhere close) and ignored the fact that a lot of that aid has already been paid back, that gives us at most $2.5 trillion. Two and a half trillion bucks would make a dent in our debt, to be sure, but we'd still be in debt up to our eyeballs.

* Sorry guys, you may give more than twice what we give, but your contribution sucks, too. If you want to take pride in the fact that your foreign aid figures suck half as much as ours do, knock yourself out, but I'm still calling a spade a spade.

 

Of course, financial contributions aren't the only kind out there. I'm guessing the above statistics include material contributions (food, medicine, etc.) but the US also 'gives' military aid and a great deal of technical expertise. Mind you, I'm not sure how much the former is appreciated (I'm talking Gulf War, Serbia stuff, not Iraq) since we've caught flak for both helping and not helping over the years.

 

But isn't the U.S heavily in debt?

 

Lmao. It's a catch 22, Mordea.

 

Deficits don't matter.

 

I meant that rich countries don't bother giving aid to one another and poor countries are hardly going to give back to the rich. Even during Katrina the needs of poor countries would far outstrip that of the US. You'd just be creating a merry go round with far more money going out of the US than the US would take in.

 

How can the U.S be considered a 'rich' country if it's trillions of dollars in debt?

 

A high income country (what most would call a 'rich' country) is one that has an agross national income of roughly $12,000 USD per capita. USA certainly fits in that list, having a GNI per capita of nearly three times that amount. Despite debt, the USA is a rich country - to argue otherwise you would really have to be picking at straw.

 

Mordea, when you look at the US debt, domestic and foreign, as percentage of its GDP it's pretty much average, if not a little lower for a developed country. The 2008 predictions (from the OECD data) were for slightly under 75%. Given the current deficits AND low GDP due to the crisis I think that it might be in the 90-100% range.

This is a lot, absolutely speaking, but the US is as I said not an outlier at all. Japan, for example, as a debt-to-gdp ratio of nearly 200%. The UK has a notably higher ratio than the US as well. Yet if you think of rich countries, they and the US are often among the first to pop in your mind.

 

Economic Warfare

I'll try not to get too cynical when you mention military 'aid'... what do you mean by it?
I'm assuming you don't mean stuff like Vietnam, Korea or Iraq, because that would be very obnoctious.
So, you're referring to the placement of military bases all over the world? Most countries don't like it when the US encroaches on their souvereignty, so this is often done as a bilateral agreement, when the US agrees to refinance their debt.

Spoiler

This article has focused on the Worldwide development of US military power.

The US tends to view the Earth surface as a vast territory to conquer, occupy and exploit. The fact that the US Military splits the World up into geographic command units vividly illustrates this underlying geopolitical reality.

Humanity is being controlled and enslaved by this Network of US military bases. .



The ongoing re-deployment of US troops and military bases has to be analyzed in a thorough manner if we wish to understand the nature of US interventionism in different regions of the World.

This militarisation process is charactersied by armed aggression and warfare, as well as interventions called "cooperation agreements". The latter reaffirmed America's economic design in the areas of trade and investment practices. Economic development is ensured through the miniaturization or the control of governments and organizations. Vast resources are thereby expended and wasted in order to allow such control to be effective, particuarly in regions which have a strategic potential in terms of wealth and resources and which are being used to consolidate the Empire's structures and functions.



The setting up of the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases turns out to be an extraordinary means to oppose the miniaturization process of the Planet. Such Network is indispensable and its growth depends on a commitment of all the People of the World. It will be extremely difficult to mobilize them, but the ties built up by the Network among its constituant resistence movements are a positive element, which is ultmately conducive to more cohesive and coordinated battle at the World level.


The Final Declaration of the Second International Conference against Foreign Military Bases which was held in Havana in November 2005 and was endorsed by delegates from 22 countries identifies most of the major issues, which confront mankind. This Declaration constitutes a major peace initative. It establishes international solidarity in the process of disarmament.

Less obvious methods don't have to be implemented bilaterally, so use is made of the World Bank and IMF. Their Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP, appropriately) are conditionalities for refinancing debt. Their stated purpose is to increase trade liberalization, privatization, economic stabilization and poverty reduction. But their success rate has been very low, 40% on average. All they usually end up doing, is putting impoverished countries deeper into debt.

 

Deise, the way I look at it is that it's less about the raw money than it is about the willingness to pitch in and help out a friend in a time of need, even if the friend is a rich friend.

 

Actually, I was more thinking of the US role in (somewhat) recent years as a global police force. That means places like Kosovo, Kuait (Desert Storm), and the like. In that sense, I think Korea may well count, as we were actually supported by the people, even if we saw it as a proxy war. Vietnam less so, as that becomes less a support of the freedoms of people, and more simply a political war (which may have something to do with why we lost that one ). The other big criteria is that these military actions are typically made at the behest of and/or in support of UN peacekeeping forces, though the US forces typically become the primary movers. This is, of course, to be expected since the US is the largest military power in the UN by a long shot.

Ho-boy, here we go again. I'm sorry, but when you say the US military is enslaving the world, that's kinda off the deep end (and beyond). You want to know why the US military splits the world into geographic command spheres? It's because they recognize that the US military is actively spread across the entire world. No one commander could command all those troops doing all those different things, so they break them up. This isn't a new tactic, nor is it evidence of a global conspiracy. As evidenced, of course, by current opposition from places like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and by political opposition from Japan, Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, and other places.

Off-topic, but this is due to entirely different reasons.

 

Did you count the people of NORTH Korea in that estimate, NOG? These are civil wars in which we decided to take sides - You know, the sides who wanted to be most like us.

 

Chandos, from what I've heard of the history (which isn't 100%), the people of N Korea were uncommitted, while the people of S Korea desperately wanted to stay seperate. Compare that to, say, Vietnam, where the citizens of S Vietnam were attacking US troops to drive them out, and I think you'll know what I mean.

 

I'd say the peole of North Korea were quite committed to communist rule for the entire region....

I've also never heard of the people of South Vietnam launching an offensive against the US troops. There were individuals in the south who sided with the north, but that's always the case in civil wars (the same problems existed in Korea as well).

 

In 2002 Britain's Lord Goldsmith warned ministers that Iraq war would be illegal

There currently is also an inquiry into the war in Great Britain which has now made public a document written by Great Britain's then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.

On March 24, 2002 Geoff Hoon, then the defence secretary, stated in a television interview that war could be justified in international law. Four days later Lord Goldsmith wrote a letter to Jack Straw, then the foreign secretary, suggesting that Hoon would have been well advised to have asked his office for legal advice before offering legal opinions of his own.

Goldsmith he states that he did not see a clear justification for the war under international law.

Of course Goldsmith is correct. I have to repeat again that that is the result any conservative and sober lawyer would have to come to under international law.

Any claims to the contrary have been the result of 'creative lawyering' in the tradition of what lawyers would do for a private client - namely creatively finding innovative solutions for their client's demands - creative interpretations of the law (think of the fine print in credit card contracts). Government lawyers dealing with international law (or constitutional law) don't work that way, and if they do, things get messy.