blog roll
|
More Fun with Idiotic Examples...,
2003-04-08 06:50:06
| Main |
Leopardwitz's new spots...,
2003-04-08 23:24:05
Odious Debt and Iraq:
There's been a little buzz about forgiving Iraq's debt after the deposition of the regime, an idea I support wholeheartedly as a form of reparations. The Straits Times says
Russia, France and Japan are Iraq's biggest creditors, pointing out that it makes a convenient canard for making a vengeful attack on France and Russia for their recent refusal to support US imperialism. The New Yorker includes
Kuwait, Bulgaria, and the Korean conglomerate Hyundai as "jockeying for position" in the lineup to collect, and echoing the substance of a Brookings Institution paper calling for an international body that would judge whether regimes are legitamate. That takes care of a few nations that likely owe Iraqis compensation for their years of misery, but with Rumsfeld saying, "I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction" it would just be another example of victor's justice.
Forgiving Iraq's foreign debt would primarily serve to punish countries that haven't supported the war - which is fine, they're as guilty as the US in their support for the US imposed Ba'ath regimes of the past 40 years. It would be nice if they mentioned the hypocrasy involved if we forgave Iraq's debt after the war without at the same time cancelling the apartheid debt of South Africa, where the US was the biggest lender.
It's nevertheless positive that "debt cancellation has moved from the world of loony lefties to become as much part of everyday common-sense as the view that the US way of electing a President could do with an injection of democracy."
:: posted by buermann @ 2003-04-08 19:45:34 CST |
link
|
|
|
|