USAir757 said:
I'm arguing the human's natural desire to lead a free life. Are you saying that there are nations of people in this world who would rather live under a brutal dictator, or have their lives controlled, rather than be free?
[post="190910"][/post]
History is full of cases, such as Germany in the 1930s and Russia today, of peoples who have chosen just that. In fact, when the Baath party originally came to power in Iraq in 1959, it was chosen by the people of Iraq.
In choosing the current government for Iraq, we have completely disregarded the intertwined role that religion and government have in an Islamic society, and also the fact that there is not really one Iraq but three: a Shiite Iraq, a Sunni Iraq and a Kurdish Iraq. These three groups have been trying to control each other, and often exterminate each other, for almost a thousand years, yet we seem to expect that they will put all this aside and join hands? It is naive, at best, to think that Jeffersonian Democracy will spring whole from the bloody Iraqi soil, yet the Bush administration seems to feel that January's elections will fix things and the job will be over. They see them as an end rather than what they really are - just the end of the beginning.
What will we do if the people of Iraq use their newly won freedoms to choose just such a regime again? Not in this election, of course, but next time? What will we do if they choose to set up a government similar to Iran's? Just how free are we willing to allow them to be? Do we really have the right to have a say?
I agree with you that not every nation wants democracy, and that it is unnatural for us to understand that.
It's not always so much that every 'nation' doesn't want democracy as much as that not every society is able to reconcile it with their social or religious systems.
I remember clearly how frustrated the USAID people in Vietnam were that the Vietnamese people did not abandon the village-based social system they had known for centuries and rally to the Saigon government. When the villagers tried to explain that they prefered to take their orders from the village elders as they always had rather than someone they didn't know appointed by someone else they didn't know, the USAID people looked at them like they were speaking in tounges. Freedom means different things to different people, I guess.
Now we are trying to imprint our political system on a society where most of the people are Islamic, a further complication. On top of having their social system upended they also have to reconcile the new political systems we are giving them with the Koran, which places political systems subservient to their religous ones. This dichotomy is the main reason that there are not more Islamic democracies in the world today, yet nobody seems to even be addressing it.
It is easy to throw around words like Freedom and Liberty, and easy to say that anyone who does not accept the massive changes we have made in Iraq and acts against us 'just hates freedom' or 'is a terrorist', but that does nothing to address the underlying issues. Keep in mind, however, that to the British our founding fathers were also 'terrorists'.
No, because if this movie had been about Clinton, then I would still not support it.
But many, many would have.
What good did that movie do? Marred with inaccuracies and quotes taken out of context?
If nothing else it made (some) people look at the issue from a different perspective and more people ask questions. I know of no one who has seen the movie that accepts it as 100% true, no more than they take they claims of the Republicans as 100% true, but it has caused them to think about, and talk about, the issue.
We've been over the inaccuracies dozens of times. We might as well agree to disagree.
Agreed.
But let me ask you this, are you planning on watching FarenHype 9/11?
I'm sorry, I thought I had made it clear; I've not only seen it - I own it. This is why I feel confident stating that it is not the clear refutation many think it is.
Every single time it is mentioned that Iraq harbored terrorists, it goes unanswered.
Because it is immaterial. Many nations 'harbored' terrorists, including ours, before 9/11. Some, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, may still.
Every time it is mentioned that Saddam's secular dictatorship and Al Qaeda's could never effectively work together because of their massive differences, it also goes unanswered. Every time it is mentioned that the Saudis have been supporting groups like Al Qaeda for years it goes unanswered. Every time it is mentioned that Pakistan was caught red-handed selling nuclear secrets on the open market it goes unanswered.
The Bush administration did not say that the reason we were going to invade Iraq was because Saddam had had contacts with Al Qaeda, or (as they should have) that it was because Saddam was a horrible murdering dictator and the Hitler of Middle East. Saying, after the fact, that this is why the invasion was a good thing is an exercise in flawed logic.
The response is almost always, like some sort of built-in mechanism democrats have: Saudi Arabia.
Because the government of Saudi Arabia has been openly funding organizations like Al Qaeda for decades as long as they keep their fundamentalism away from the Saudi oil wells. Meanwhile Pakistan was actively supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan as they aided and sheltered Al Qaeda. Where are the Iraqi crimes to compare with those? They met? They both agreed that we are bad? Please!
But the serious difference between the Pakistan/Saudi Arabia and Iraq is that they were not defying the UN weapons sanctions and inspections like Saddam was for over a decade. Plain and simple
It's interesting that the UN is used as the justification for the invasion but the US invasion was not sanctioned or approved by the UN and was carried out in spite of UN objections. The fact that the Bush administration reduced the question to two choices - either for us or against us - certainly helped. If we are going to use the UN as justification then we have to be willing to allow the UN to say 'when''.
I've said it before, this guy was trying to call out our bluff.
So has Castro, when do we get him? Taking a nation to war and committing it to an occupation that could take decades should rest on more than a matter of having your 'bluff' called.
