Text 27422, 51 rader
Skriven 2012-03-30 10:33:03 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
  Kommentar till text 27379 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Re: Soldiers going home ... copied from a Facebook post ...
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RB> Some parts of this world simply aren't ready for our ideas of democracy
RB> or eqality - and based on history will stay that way for the next 500
RB> years or so. It was a grand attempt to bootstrap such cultures into the
RB> 20th century, but as has been repeated so often in this and other places,
RB> you simply can't force democracy on people who don't even know what the
RB> word means.
 
I'm going to expose a theory which may sound anti-American, but it isn't.
 
Generic Europeans are way more open to the philosophy and acceptance that such
types of democracy and free thinking need to grow into a population.
 
Just remember why the US came into being as a separate country. Because of a
massive influx of refugees, people seeking a better life, religious
persecution, etc... As a consequnce the US have a constitution where those
values are written into it from day-1. The way how they are applied is a matter
of personal interpretation, but the basic tool is there.
 
If I read the journals from the early 1800's on from the emerging industrial
world here, then we also read about people in industry-towns, how they lived,
the total absence of women's rights, the corruptness of the catholic church.
 
Without claiming it's a similar situation, one cannot but notice there are some
parallels. It took people up to 200 years of social struggle to get where they
are now and even today we notice there still is not 100% equality for women.
 
The human rights situation in the Middle East is difficult to grasp for US
people because they've always had a situation where equality and human rights
(for whites) were part of the deal. In the Middle East such a concept is a
totally alien thing and a simple 10-year war doesn't just flick a switch for
these people.
 
For them to do so would be equal to putting overboard the morals and values
that have governed their society for over a thousand years.
 
As European countries have ventured overthere since the 1800's sometime, we're
more readily open to acknowledge we just cannot change that whole society in a
time frame of 10 years.
 
Which was the reason why, and I don't mean to kickstart a totally other kind of
discussion, several of us warned 10 years ago that these invasions and wars in
the Middle East were not going to have the expected outcome other than being
very expensive and cost a pile of lives.
 
As the saying goes, you can lead a whore to water, but in order to get laid
it'll cost you.
 
 \%/@rd

--- D'Bridge 3.59
 * Origin: Many Glacier / Protect - Preserve - Conserve (2:292/854)