Humpty-Dumpty and all the King's horses
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Friday, February 24, 2006 22:47
VIEWED: 3294
PAGE 2 of 6
Quote:
Police Tied to Death Squads
BAGHDAD — A 1,500-member Iraqi police force with close ties to Shiite militia groups has emerged as a focus of investigations into suspected death squads working within the country's Interior Ministry.
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-deathsquad21feb21,0,66125
61.story?coll=
la-home-headlines
Quote:www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=ajvT4mo_6sK4&refer=europe
Samarra Mosque, Iraq Shiite Shrine, Damaged in Attack Feb. 22 (Bloomberg)
-Iraq's Golden Mosque in Samarra, sacred to the nation's Shiites, was badly damaged in a bomb attack that may increase tensions with the Sunni community as the country tries to form a government of national unity. The wave of attacks followed an early morning bombing at the Al-Askariya "Golden Mosque" in Samarra. The strikes, involving small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds, all happened between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., police said.
Quote:
Gunmen strike 27 Baghdad mosques, kill imams-Wednesday, February 22, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Gunmen targeted 27 Baghdad mosques and killed three Sunni imams Wednesday in the wake of a bomb attack at one of the holiest Shiite sites. The wave of attacks followed an early morning bombing at the Al-Askariya "Golden Mosque" in Samarra... Three of the mosques attacked in Baghdad were burned down, and in addition to the imams, three guards also were killed.
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Oh, just dandy!
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Wow. Didn't know that was such an inflamatory remark. So, in reponse the reponses:
7%,
LOL, and well said.
Hero,
Why is it our job? We are not the nanny-state of the world. We're not on a holy mission, this isn't a crusade. Even if it were a) something we could do, and b) something worth doing, I have so many problems with it:
1. Democracy is a flawed system. It has led to some of the worst disasters in history. While I believe in the basic idea, it is one which is far from perfected. Maybe it should go through a few more rounds of testing before we enforce it on the world. As a republican, and a pretty solid believer in my party's long standing platform, and though we control the house, the senate the executive and the judiciary, I am still not happy with the result. I think the reason for this is not a) I'm not really a republican or b) They're not really republicans, though I would say that about executive, not the other branches. The problem is that the system is seriously flawed, riddled with corruption, and not particularly representative of the will of the people. Regardless of what people think of Bush, virtually NO ONE in 2000 went out and voted knowing that what they were voting for was a preset agenda to start a war in the middle east, to drasitcally increase the size and scope of the federal govt., to drastically enhance executive power, or to make torture public policy, a long with a long list of other things. None of these issues, regardless of there merits or demerits, were discussed in the 2000 campaign, though all of them had clearly been decided on. I'm not saying Al Gore wouldn't have done these things, he probably would have, because he was almost as close to Clinton as Cheney, but they weren't discussed because they weren't vote getters, a line, which in itself, shows the true flaw of democracy.
2. There is no one-size fits all solution to the problems of the world. What works in a nation full of wealth, educated, culturally western christians will not necessarily produce the same results in a muslim nation of mostly peasant. Case in point: Hamas, whom I truly despise, has won an election in palestine. Their rhetoric best exploited the situation with Israel being overly aggressive, and they won. Objectively, I firmly believe that Hamas is not the best choice for the people of Palestine. If the people of Palestine should discover this two years from now, they might have to wait another two years to get rid of Hamas. They would not, for example, be allowed to weigh in on policies which were being directly affected at the time.
3. I think if something is given to you, or forced on you, by a greater power, you're not likely to cherish it to the same degree. The constitution of the united states will be defended to the death by pretty close to every man woman and child in America, (with the exception of Bush.) But the Iraqis will not feel the same way. This democracy will always be seen as a western imposition, westernization, and perhaps a puppet regime. I don't think, even if the idea was ideal and workable, that this would be the best way to help it.
4. It's really, really, not our job. The United States is not some all powerful God. The United States is a nation with problems, serious problems. It has a horribly flailing economy, an increasingly uneducated and unproductive populous, more debt than most people can imaging, is progressively losing ground on internation trade, and has a decaying, overinflated and seriously out of date healthcare system, to say nothing of its welfare, and transit systems. Added to that, we have embarked on this christian democrat crusade which has made us hated by the world.
Not only do we not need to do this mission, we need to not do this mission.
America needs fixing. Its democracy, its infrastructure, its financial situation, and the competitive state of its population. For me, the difference between myself and democrats on this point is that I vehemently disagree with them on *HOW* we should fix it. But i think that the overwhelming majo
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Quote:
Jenny:
Iraq and countries like them , live and breath religion , its who they are
Jenny,
I think that this is less true of Iraq than other mideast countries, but this is a serious issue, and you're basically correct with the live and breath thing. I think this is true for a lot of the southern US. It can't be underestimated that to some extend what we are witnessing is a revival of the Crusades.
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Oh... and (of course) this:
Quote:
Originally poster by Hero:
Prior to 1945 no culture on earth was more ingrained against Western values then Japan.
It's these special moments you have to savor. Makes me feel like Snyder.
OMFG Hero. Have you actually ever read any history? This is the western industrial capitalist constitutional republic of Japan we are talking about, for about 90 years prior to WWII.
Japan has been solidly a western nation since 1855. In fact, they were a capitalist industrial nation when they made the switch.
And 7% is right, culturally, Japan was more similar to the west before it was ever a western country than Iraq is today, and much more than Iran, which, BTW, is already a democracy.
Finn,
all of these countries were free beforehand, we just removed the oppressor. I think the nation building efforts were definitely successes, though, I grant you that.
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Signym,
Civil War. What fun.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
OMFG Hero. Have you actually ever read any history? This is the western industrial capitalist constitutional republic of Japan we are talking about, for about 90 years prior to WWII.
Actually I have studied Japan (not just watched Shogun or The Last Samauri, but really studied). By the 20th Century Japan had adopted western economics, industry, military doctrine, and political structures. But Japanese culture did not fundamentally change until after 1945 (sure they slaughtered Tom Cruise's samauri buddies, but that was part of Japan's cultural evolution more then western influence).
Japan had a rigid feudal caste system enforced by a code of conduct more conservative and strict then the one presently favored by the Islamafascists. Like today's Islamists suicide was a noble act, beheadings were a form of justice, and there was little tolerance for any notion of social equality (the echoes of that still remain if you look hard enough).
Certain Japanese scholars, Yukichi Fukuzawa being my favorite, were enamored with western idea, but immersed in their own culture. It was that single minded military culture that allowed Japan, as a nation, to trasform itself from a backwards agrarian nation to a world power in less then 100 years (a transformation that would have been impossible in western systems who took hundreds of years to do what Japan did and for some, like Russia, who hadn't even succeeded before Japan overtook them).
It was this same cultural system that allowed them to transform their society a second time after 1945, even though that transformation diminished the rigid Japanses social structure by forcing them to adopt the forms and later the substance of liberty and western Democracy. This is what could and should happen across the Middle East. Liberty will change them, if we show them its virtues. If we shrink away, then what virtue liberty that gains a nation prosperity at the expense of honor?
H
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Hero,
Why is it our job? We are not the nanny-state of the world. We're not on a holy mission, this isn't a crusade. Even if it were a) something we could do, and b) something worth doing, I have so many problems with it:
Its our job becaue when we sit back and mind our own business bad people tend to do bad things like conquer Poland and wipe out the Jews or bonb our navy bases or hijack planes and crash them into our buildings.
An isolationist policy you advocate would leave the world at the mercy of would be despots and petty dictators. It would leave those we call our friends, such as Isreal, alone and surrounded by those who seek not just to conquer them, but to wipe them from history. It would place our economic security, currently dependant on the free flow of oil at market prices in the palm of those oppose our fundamental principals. It would be an insult to the millions of people around the world who yearn for freedom.
Freedom is like a drug. Once you've sampled it, smelled it, even heard of it you want it for yourself. You want it for your children. Freedom drives men to fight. Freedom drives men to abandon all they know to go in search of it. Men will travel ten-thousand miles for the mere chance of freedom. For freedom men with nothing have challenged all powerful tyrants. For freedom men have stormed hostile beaches and burning buildings, stood alone before armies and won victories for humanity even on those occaisons, all too many throughout history, when the dream of freedom was not enough to secure victory.
In America freedom found a home. In us freedom has found her champion. We cannot, must not stand aside and abandon freedom to fight alone on a thousand battlefields around this world, for the legacy of that dishonorable course is to find that on some dark night in our time of need we find freedom has abandoned us.
H
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No one's advocating isolationism.
The fact is we are not stopping the Nazis here. We are the Nazis. We're not stopping the real agression in the world which is China. We failed to defend Hong Kong, and now we're failing to defend Taiwan. On the genocide front, we failed to defend Rwanda, and now we're failing to defend Darfur. We failed to defend the jews or go to war with Germany. We in point of fact, went to war with Germany as a strategic move to block the Soviet Union, which was a good move.
We're on a blind rampage of zion. It's greed for oil power money and twisted socialist ambition. This is lunacy beyond lunacy. US intervention is best done small scale, taking out the bad guy or preventing him from advancing.
If Bush wanted my support for his action in Iraq, he had a chance. There was a moment when the Kurds captured Saddam and then handed him to us. At that moment, our chief opposition was Moqtada Al Sadr, a truly reasonable man, and one who we could have called in the next day. We could have said to Sunni, Shiia and Kurd leaders, okay, come in, you guys are Iraq, let's make a govt.
Instead Bush went ahead with his lunacy, and now it's spreading, and we have that lunacy headed for Iran. We're the expansionist evil empire. I'm not saying this to be anti-American, I'm probably more pro-American than most people here, and I'm not saying that it's always been true, I don't think it was true until we failed to give Iraq back to the Iraqis after the fall of Saddam. Why we didn't is that we want to control the outcome. We want to control it in Palestine, Iran, and on the Arabian penninsula. We've become, quite recently, the evil empire, and I'm only saying so because it's true. The emperor has no clothes. Wake up. Smell the reality. When your country is constructing concentration camps and torturing prisoners: "You're the bad guys!"
It's always a possibility you have to always be open to. It's the German's failure to identify this which prevented them from stopping themselves. Oh, and this:
The Us converted Saddam Hussein's 'Pleasure Palace,' a place where he entertained guests, international diplomats and the sort, into an 'Interrogation Center' read: Torture Chamber.
WTF?!!??????!!!!!!! But this is really true. Here's the question I have. Do you mean to tell me that Saddam Hussein did no have enough extant torture chambers, or interrogation centers, to meet our demands?
We're evil. Our govt. is just f^&king evil, at this moment. If we the people don't rise up and burn them down, then we too, are evil.
"All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove:
We failed to defend Hong Kong
Hong Kong was attacked?
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
You should never give powers to a leader you like that you’d hate to have given to a leader you fear
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Hero
Quote:Oh wow Hero, are you running for office? I can imagine you standing at a podium, finger stabbing the air (no, not THAT finger... the INDEX finger) proclaiming in ringing tones. (Ringing tones are better than dial tones.)
In America freedom found a home. In us freedom has found her champion. We cannot, must not stand aside and abandon freedom to fight alone on a thousand battlefields around this world, for the legacy of that dishonorable course is to find that on some dark night in our time of need we find freedom has abandoned us.
Sorry for the humor but I'm having a hard time matching your proclamation with reality.
First of all, our initial rationalization for invading Iraq was WMD, not freedom. Fighting Al Qaida was the second rationalization. Freedom, however you define it, was the third or fourth purpose in the Administration's various shifting explanations.
It's hard to figure out how we are bringing- or even INTEND to bring - freedom (however defined) to Iraq at this point. After years of trying to strike a fire, Al Qaida appears to have finally provoked a self-sustaining internal conflict between Shias and Sunnis. Fundamentalist Iranian Shias are using Iraqi Shias a proxies to fight fundamentalist foreign (Jordanian, Saudi, Turkish, Pakistani etc) Sunnis who have taken over the previously internal Sunni insurgency.
There are several possible resolutions to this:
(1) Either fundamentalist Shias or Sunnis win, gaining significant oil resources for their own anti-American, anti-Western campaigns.
(2) Both factions continue to bleed each other for the forseeable future, locking everyone out of the oil fields - even the Iraqis themselves. Other nations might "officially" be drawn in, leading to a Mideast-wide conflict.
(3) We break Iraq into three and kick out all external parties, enforcing the boundaries between them.
Up until last week I thought option (3) was possible. Now I think that option (3) was dead a year ago. I hadn't fully appreciated how deeply the native Sunni insurgency had been taken over by Al Qaida. Although numerically small, the foreign fighters apparently have terrific funding. (Wonder where they get THAT from? UAE? Saudi Arabia? Syria?) Nowhere do I see "freedom" for Iraqis as an even remote possibility. They have been blessed- or cursed- with oil fields that have made them a target for every larger power from Britain to the USA to Iran to Al Qaida. I think we now can see why Bush Sr never "finished the job".
EDITED TO ADD: I'd be curious to hear other possible scenarios for this mess. Does anyone see a ray of hope?
BTW- The Demographics of Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Islam
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Free as in freedom, not beer.
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