Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
Ted said:Wow, I am trying to fit all your reactions into a fitting answer. I agree with 5.56X45mm when he says it takes a long time to rebuild a nation. I agree with Missileer that democracy isn't the right word. But things get kind of dodgy afterwards.
There used to be a group of scientists called the "Vienna school" and they had a tendency to question the specific to the whole. Their relativism ended up in saying that the mass destruction of the Jews was a way of looking at the past and therefor not necessarily true. So it is a feeling I get when a specific group acts in the universal values of mankind. I just think that from a secondary level, there are no universal values. Food, shelter, safety are primair...all the others secundair and thus open for negotiation and interpretation.
Same thing with Iraq. Noone violated those specifics when we let Iraq be the first Arab country where people can freely write on, read and publish one hundred newspapers or vote for the party they want.
I don't know the feelings of the Iraqees. I haven't been there and don't know much about them. But it is the "we let" where I think: how do you know that is what they want. They certainly don't want to be gassed by Saddam's thugs or murdered by his butchers. But how do you know they want a multi party democracy? A system that is based on Khamesaat or Sultan's rule for the last 1000 years isn't ready for such a kind of democracy.
This sounds so racist! Why shouldn't they want to be free? Come on man let's be real. I know that's what they want because I saw them with my own eyes on those lines the day Iraq voted for their Parliament! That was when the liberals should have learned something about the courage and the pride of a people. A democratic, free, multiparty system is exactly what every good man in the world asks for, with no differences whatsoever. Otherwise I would not explain how come Afghanistan and Iraq are taking this huge part in their political process. They are voting for those parties, voting for Parliament, participating. Looks like they believe they're ready. Maybe you should inform them they are not!
Was Japan a democracy previous to 1945? Hell no, it took the US ten yrs of occupation, military occupation, MacArthur wrote them their Constitution, they had never heard about democracy of freedom of speech and vote before, it was taught to the, and look at where they are now. Mmm weren't they ready either?
Ted said:Another thing about bringing peace is the haphazard way of deciding which country gets the attention. I haven't seen it in Ruanda (where buddies of mine were butchered), Liberia or many other African or Asian countries. Why not all or noone? This is what I mean with selective.
You haven't seen it in Rwanda because Bush was not at the White House, I tell you. And unfortunately so. Shouldn't we all have intervened? Shouldn't we Europeans had lift our fat asses and rushed there to help? Oh no, I guess they weren't ready for foreign intervention, right? Or were they? You know, people like you would say it's a risk when you intervene elsewhere, you risk to alter their equilibrium... :twisted:
Why Iraq, Afghanistan and not Rwanda? Well we gotta start from one, I think. The point is the US exported the pre-conditions for democracy to a lot of countries, Italy, Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq... But wars break out when more than just one reason comes up. Geostrategic reasons, military reasons, political reasons, security reasons, and so on. Moral reasons can take a role. I wouldn't hijack this into a "Was the war on Iraq right or wrong?" type of thing, because it's been done before, but democratization was just one of the three main reasons Bush used to attack Iraq.
What you call my democracy is not a false democracy and is virtually the same democracy that they have in Switzerland, or in Australia, or in Ireland, or in the US.
Ted said:Is it a coincidence that you mention all AngloSaxon countries or Northwestern countries? This is exactly what I mean with social and cultural differences. People all around the globe had a way of making sure they had to eat, sleep and be safe. If you go beyond that you get things like: nationalism and the right to choose ones own government was explained in Vietnam to be communism. We all know what happened next. And if everything was okay, memorials in Arlington or the wall in DC wouldn't be so ambiguously interpreted by the people who fought there. And the people who live in Saigon aren't off so badly.... at least, not the last time I was there..
Oh, no, you are wrong, Ted. It was a mere coincidence in fact, I could have come up with a lot of non-Anglo-Saxon examples: Italy, Spain, Poland, Japan again, India, Israel, Turkey, Thailand.
And -hey- Saigon might have given you that impression, the last time you were there, ok. But you know my best friend and his family and all his community are American-Vietnamese. You have no idea what they say about the civil war that took place overthere. The communists butchered all their alleged opponents for decades after they took over. People starving and getting tortured in VN jails and torture chambers don't agree with you. Like I said, the Iraqis and the Afghanis are choosing their own government, are you kidding me? They are NOW. That's what the neocons wanted! They could not before, that's the difference.
Ted said:Just to make sure: I do not condone what Saddam did and I won't lose any sleep over it. All I wanted to point out is the selective attitude to call Iraq "evil" as Reagan called the former USSR and remove the one in charge for another one. Who garantees the people overthere that life will get actually better? And if you can't garantee that, should you undertake action.... and if so; why just there and not all around the globe?
1. Well every man on earth would agree Saddam's and the Taliban's, with all due differences, were the worst systems possible and nothing could have been worse than that. So there was no need at all to make sure it would be better off. Of course it is being better off now!
2. We should! The free democracies! The fat lazy and coward free democracies of Europe, along with the rest of the world's democracies.
3. Yes, right, you said that: around the globe.