All you righties can toast to the Iraq War success. Oh...no you can't.
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Saturday, March 28, 2026 18:21
VIEWED: 7463
PAGE 5 of 8
Quote:And you could stop posting nonsense anytime you wanted to, but you don't stop either....
Originally posted by Geezer:
They have free will. They could stop any time they wanted.
Why is that?
Will's cheap, but not free Chrisisall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I read somewhere that Buddha would never have been the Buddha we all know and love if he hadn't been well-off, and didn't have time to contemplate his navel due to poverty and lack of education...
That's just the thing--where has democracy flourished? The west, during two periods: 4th and 3rd century BCE and 18th-21st century CE. Look at both those periods: times of relative peace and luxury in the respective areas, where people could sit back, luxuriate and philosophize; and they dreamed up a new system of government based on original ideas and systems of thought. But when times are hard and food's scarce and someone might just try to plunge a sharp piece of bronze between your ribs, there's just no time to philosophize and come up with new and novel systems of thought and government. You've got more pressing matters: getting fed and keeping safe. And if a tyrant (or a lunatic, or a zealot, or whatever) will make that happen, so be it. The Iraqis have to get through the slaughtering each other phase and get to relative stability. Then they need to get prosperous enough that some of them can sit around and think (about their own stuff or other people's). Then they have to acheive relative freedom of thought and expression so the ideas of the thinkers can get around. Then there needs to be a crisis that will propel the ideas of the thinkers into action.
I have a feeling that that is just not all going to happen in the next 12 months. And that's not being defeatist--it's being realistic.
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Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
if I remember correctly, none of those people (except the Baath party) were killing anyone in the pre-invasion Saddam era.
Absolutely right. And they could have just kept on not killing people. Most of us don't kill people all the time, although we have the means to do so.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:12 years would be an optimistic guess.
Originally posted by Causal:
I have a feeling that that is just not all going to happen in the next 12 months. And that's not being defeatist--it's being realistic.
But not impossible Chrisisall
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Quote:Anger Management, Geezer?
Originally posted by Geezer:
Absolutely right. And they could have just kept on not killing people. Most of us don't kill people all the time, although we have the means to do so.
Your weapons ARE locked up for when you have those fits of rage, right?
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Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were Balkanized by colonialists al la Africa and, in Roman times, the Balkans. That's why you have a geographically contiguous group of Kurds running through Turkey, Iraq, Iran and on into Afghanistan. And so on for other groups. The lines were drawn - intentionally I might add - to maximize disunity.
The US fought it's own regional war a mere 140 years ago, give or take, 90 years after becoming a country.
And somehow we castigate the 'ragheads' for 'their' cultural deficiencies in the face of a problem they didn't create. Do I detect just a hint of a trace of racism?
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were Balkanized by colonialists al la Africa and, in Roman times, the Balkans. That's why you have a geographically contiguous group of Kurds running through Turkey, Iraq, Iran and on into Afghanistan. And so on for other groups. The lines were drawn - intentionally I might add - to maximize disunity.
And these "colonialists" were Americans? I don't think so.
Quote:
The US fought it's own regional war a mere 140 years ago, give or take, 90 years after becoming a country.
So civil war is inevitable? Then it's obviously not our fault.
Quote:
And somehow we castigate the 'ragheads' for 'their' cultural deficiencies in the face of a problem they didn't create. Do I detect just a hint of a trace of racism?
Who's castigating the Iraqis as a whole? Most Iraqis just want to have a life. A few want to run everything exactly their way, and consider purposefully killing non-combatants and blowing up necessary infrastructure the means to that end. Just like anyone else, the "let's blow up stuff" folks are responsible for their own actions. If they hadn't started blowing stuff up, we'd be out of Iraq now and this discussion wouldn't be happening. I consider purposefully killing non-combatants and blowing up necessary infrastructure so you can run things exactly your own way to be bad things, regardless of the race, color, or creed of the people who do it.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Absolutely right. And they could have just kept on not killing people. Most of us don't kill people all the time, although we have the means to do so.
So we each bear 100% responsibility for the things that we do, and no one else can be blamed for the things that a free individual does? OK, you could be right about that. If that's the case, the U.S. bears 100% responsibility for creating the conditions in which these people have the freedom to act. Before: not able to kill with impugnity. After: able to kill with impugnity. So while you may be right that they are responsible for their acts of killing, we are certainly responsible for our creating conditions that made that a live option. This is why people get mad when repeat criminal offenders are let out of prison: the justice system may not be responsible for the convict's crime, but it's damned sure responsible for his being on the street. Same sort of thing here. U.S. responsible for their acts? No. U.S. responsible for creating the conditions that make those acts possible? Bet your bippy. You're just throwing out a red herring by insisting that they could have refrained from killing. The point is: we created an nearly lawless environment in which they have freedom of action. We created that environment.
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Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
And somehow we castigate the 'ragheads' for 'their' cultural deficiencies in the face of a problem they didn't create. Do I detect just a hint of a trace of racism?
With all due respect, nobody's castigating anyone. I think it's pretty clear there are cultural differences. I think it's pretty clear we don't share idea systems (that is, the intellectual archetecture of their culture is different than ours). The point I was making was that there seem to be a certain cluster of ideas that a society needs to have before it undertakes the project of democratic government and some of these seem not to be deeply held in the middle east. I'm not saying they're bad on that count, nor irrational, nor even (gasp) that democracy is something everyone should have. I'm saying that democracy has only arisen in two places in all of human history and it did so in very specific economic and political circumstances, and with very specific intellectual underpinnings. And those conditions seem not to obtain in the Middle East. That's not a value judgment; that's an honest assessment of the situation, as I see it.
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Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.
Vote Firefly! http://www.richlabonte.net/tvvote/index.html
Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police
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Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
If that's the case, the U.S. bears 100% responsibility for creating the conditions in which these people have the freedom to act.
Before: not able to kill with impugnity. After: able to kill with impugnity. So while you may be right that they are responsible for their acts of killing, we are certainly responsible for our creating conditions that made that a live option.
That was true over three years ago during the initial campaign but what about now?
Is it not reasonable to expect the Iraqi's to at least start to rectify some of the conditions which allow these people the freedom to act? It's much easier to blame the Americans instead of rolling up their sleeves and begining to enact meaningful change themselves.
Posting to stir stuff up.
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