The Vancouver Scrum

On the move!

Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.

Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.

Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!

—Ian King, December 13, 2004

Friday, March 21, 2003

 
Some will see French President Jacques Chirac's call for the international community, not the US and UK, to have a central role in the rebuilding of Iraq as another cheap shot at the 'coalition of the willing'. That it may be. Certainly, that is how the France-bashers on both sides of the Atlantic, including in this country, will see it.

Chirac, whatever his motivations may be, has reasonable idea. The Iraqi people have been told for the last 12 years that it is the US and UK who have been the causes of their suffering, that the post-Gulf War sanctions that crippled Iraq's economy were the work of the Yanks. Is it true? Maybe. I'm not sure, but it the context of working with the Iraqi people after the overthrow of Saddam, it really doesn't matter. They believe it to be true, and they're not likely to trust countries that they believe to have screwed them over for as long as many Iraqis can remember. The majority of the country's population is under 25, and all they can remember is their country at war, and one must wonder what those Iraqis who can remember when the US was Iraq's friend think of the American government now. When one considers that, the case for having a UN-led reconstruction of Iraq, with prominent involvement of nations that the Iraqi people believe to be their friends, is a strong one.

It's certainly more likely to succeed than a new Iraqi regime designed, built, installed, and (initially) operated by the United States. That didn't work so well the last time it was tried -- it led to that fellow, whatsisnameagain.... right! Saddam Hussein!
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