Does Pro War also equate to Pro Asylum Seekers

[Oneeyedvic]

just curious - if you are pro war (and I do mean taking out tyrannical dictators), surely that must mean that we are going in to a country because of their human rights abuses eg Iraq, Zimbabwe etc.

Surely that means that we should offer help to people who suffer at the hands of these dictators - ie we should help out any asylum seekers - after all the cost of keeping asylum seekers must be (and I don't have the figures) a fraction of the cost of going to war.

Also, waht happens in Iraq if you were a supporter of Sadam - as an example in the 1930s Adolf Hitler was a democratically elected leader. This meant that he had a lot of supporters who were not necessarily nazis. In the same way, if you were not a member of the Baath party but quietly supported SH, could / should you claim asylum in this country?

[ICEMANSAV]

Pro War need not mean pro asylum. I think most pro war ( sorry if this is incorrect ) supporters believe that the removal of a tyrant will eventually leave the country self sufficent. Therefore no need for asylum, as their country would be safe and able to offer support.

[jimmer]

A rationalisation on the part of Hawks make them talk about regime change but this is seldom a real motivation for supporting war. It is simply an us and them mentality which motivates people to support military action. I think the same rational makes them less likely to accept asylum seekers.

jim

[jno]

iceman's right in the long run, but in the short term there tend to be a lot of refugees in times of war, people whose homes are destroyed, or who just fear being killed in fighting. I would have thought we had some responsibility to look after them until it's safe to go home (which most of them would want to do). Not sure exactly how it would be done, though.

[surfer mike]

If being in favour of getting rid of a odious, cruel tyrant responsble for mass murder, and torture on a vast scale gets you labelled as a hawk then i'm proud to be called a hawk..military action was lets face it the only way because sanctions which killed countless thousands of iraqis never worked..

[WaldoMcFroog]

Surfer Mike; Shouldn't we go after Omar al-Bashir of Sudan too, using your rationale? Al-Bashir seized power by military force. The country is in the grip of a 20-year civil war that has killed 2million and made 4million homeless. Al-Bashir's army routinely bombs civilians and tortures and massacres non-Muslims. He has also been accused of "engineering famine" in the regions that oppose him.

What about Mugabe? We all know the kinds of things he's done: His government has killed or tortured and displaced more than 70,000 people. The Supreme Court has carried out the dictator's strategy of silencing criticism and stamping on human rights, and has just blocked an official report on the massacre of 20,000 civilians.

Or how about Kim Jong Il? He actually stated that he did have WMD and would use them against the US at the same time as Saddam (and the weapons inspectors) said Iraq didn't have any. North Korea is the only nation to earn the worst possible score in Amnesty International's records for political rights and civil liberties for 31 straight years. An estimated 150,000 prisoners do forced labour.

The point is not that Saddam Hussein was up there with the worse of them. That was well established back in the 1980s when Britain and the US were courting him as a client for their weapons systems and using him to enforce their interests against Iran. He was probably a worse scumbag back then and we did precisely nothing other than thank him for his weapons orders. These invasions have precisely f'all to do with the human rights records of the dictators but everything to do with whether they usefully serve the needs of the west. If you're in any doubt, go and check out the human rights records of some of the really super-duper, happy-clappy  people with whom the US currently very happily does business.

[surfer mike]

Cannot disagree with you waldo, i know where you are coming from and i can see the precedent it sets and also the double standards in foreign policy over iraq in the past, but bush and blair cannot be blamed for that... in a ideal world i'd love for all those tyrants to be overturned too, but i think the world is all the better for the end of saddam, milosevic and the taliban..

[WaldoMcFroog]

We can, however, look at current double standards regarding dictators and ask ourselves why they aren't being taken out by Bush and Blair if they were genuine in their reasons for getting rid of Saddam. Or was "getting rid of a dictator" just a useful line to feed the public whilst they got on with securing the country for entirely different reasons? I believe it was.

[qapmoc]

Hi,  Well it seems that for the USA and some others that a dictator is only bad enough to remove if their country has ** OIL **,   nuff said.

[twiglet4frog]

i think if u go to war to help a people u have to take the refuggees on too, but that doesnt mean we have to give them a home in this country for life, just for the occupation of there country until its replaced with a peaceful goverment, in terms of iraq we should be bringing any refugees or victims here to britain and support them here for the short term until we have restored a government and peace to the region and then put them back in iraq! it might speed up Blairs attempts to set that governement up and bringing troops home in exchange for returning these people out of our country