Text 9378, 163 rader
Skriven 2006-10-13 18:39:59 av gabiks@comcast.net
Ärende: Re: My Presidential Pick for 2006
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From: gabiks@comcast.net


Vorlonagent wrote:
> My newreader had already disposed of your original post.  So I'm lazy.
> Rather than do what I need to do to resurrect it, I'm just starting a new
> thread with the same name.
>

part two....

>
> Hong Kong.
>
> Not everybody can be Hong Kong but if a country chooses to get out of the
> way of business and enforce fair laws fairly, you'd be surprised what can
> happen.  If we don't abandon Iraq to the bad guys and it manages to kick the
> corruption habit, you may see good stuff happening there besides the oil.
>
>
> The massive disconnect between poor and rich (and the justifiable
> frustration on the part of the poor) is misdirected at Israel and the US.
> Mix in a virulent, xenophobic strain of Islam and you get a fertile breeding
> ground for angry young men that want to blow up airliners or pilot them into
> large buildings.
>
>
>
> Democracy and the rule of law in the mideast would foster conditions that
> would give the poor there a shot at something better.  The political
> structure as it stands locks people into their poverty.
>

No, not everyone can be hong kong. :^(  Iraq certainly isn't.  I
think this touches upon what I dislike the most about our 'mission'
in iraq and a little bit on my feeling regarding the outcome of WWII.

More and more I think our troops are being used as 'mine sweepers'
that topple governments standing in the way of 'economic progress.'
this is a perversion of our military which is now no longer engaged in
the fighting of war (and the just cause) but in the business of war.
How long do you think it will be before talk of a Kurdish homeland
bubbles to the surface?  My guess?  Two, three months after all the
contracts have been signed, if that.   I can understand our going into
war in Afghanistan.  The war on terrorism is, in deed, a war.  The war
on saddams iraq is not.  I totally agree with you that the #1 reason we
are in iraq is to foster 'change' in the mid-east.   I think our
primary motivation is more an economic one and our desire to deliver
democracy to those who (whom?) would most benefit from it a much lesser
one.

> Who decided that this change was needed?  I suppose in a way you could say
> that it was bin Laden.  By carrying out 9/11, he made it plain that
> terrorism could no longer be considered a nuisence.  Something had to give
> or the US would be attacked again and again.  Over time, those attacks would
> escalate into chemical and biological agents.  Eventually nuclear weapons
> are not out of the realm of possibility.
>
> With this as a future, it's easy to see that change was an immidiate
> necessaity.  Step 1 was disrupting Al Queda in particular, denying it
> Afghanistan as a safe haven for planning and training.  For all the problems
> in the south of Afghanistan, it is not a safe haven.  Northern pakistan is a
> safe haven, but since we can't go in there, we can't root al Queda out.
>
> Step 2 was choosing a centrally-located Arab country to act as the vanguard
> for social change.  That's Iraq.  Iraq was the best choice for a number of
> reasons.  The US had violations of UN resolutions for a pretext.  WMD issues
> had simmered since 1998 when iraq threw out all the UN weapons inspectors
> after endlessly harassing them.  Iraq's government was secular so it would
> be harder to spin it as an attack on Islam and by letting Saddam stay in
> power in 1992 we gave him a lot of prestige, not to mention encouraging a
> revolution in Iraq then balking when the shia rose up instead of the
> military estabishment.  After that abandonment, we owed a debt to Iraq's
> shia.  And we're paying it off.
>

Bin laden, if he's alive, is nowhere near iraq.  We can argue back
and forth about ties to terrorism if you like, but we are in iraq
simply because we want to be.   A democratic 'vanguard' government
has already been inserted into the mid-east in the form of Israel.
If you argue that Israel is not an arab state, then I would ask why is
it there in the first place?  Now, before anyone runs off to find a big
stick with which to beat me, I am in no way suggesting that Israel does
not have a right to exist.   my point is that iraq is not the first
attempt to foster change in the mid-east.   unfortunately, Israel is
seen by it's neighbors not as a shining example of democracy, but as
proof of foreign imperialism; which I'm not sure is even the right
word.  It's more that Israel is being used as an example (most
recently by the prez of iran) of how the world (and any country/land of
it) can be subject to adjudication as 'the spoils of victory' by
the victorious (the west and western interests in the context of iran)
against which/who they cannot (but must) defend themselves.   anyone
who thinks that the creation of a palestinian state will cure what ails
the mid-east is mistaken.  If the rise of the everyone-elses takes on a
decidedly 'ideological' flavor, I'll worry.   At present I
believe the 'rise' to be fundamentally, at the very root, an
economic one.  I concede, willingly, that this may be simply because I
am unprepared, unwilling, afraid even, to contemplate the former.   All
I see in that direction is blood, blood, and more blood.

> > > >> > The War on Terror is not about money. It never was.
>
> > > > > is too! is too! is too! (stomping feet :^)
>
> > > Not JUST money, no.
>
> > Yippee! (doing a 'partial' victory dance :^)
>
> Destorying business-as-usual is THE object of terrorism after all.  But
> their motive for doing it isn't economic (i.e. blowing up airliners doesn't
> benefit them ina any economic way), nor are we merely defending the US GDP
> in opposing them.
>

ah, nuts!  (kicking off dancing shoes :^)

> > > Europe and the UN and an un-earned distrust of the US.
>
> > Un-earned? Oh, no. when the basic tenant of our foreign policy over
> > the years has been 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend', we've
> > earned it.
>
> How does that earn the expectation of evil on the part of the US until it
> proves itself innocent?  We weren't always right to do as we did over the
> years, true.  We backed our share of dictators during the Cold War.  We were
> the ones who shouldered the responsibility of dealing with the Soviets.  We
> did it because the Soviets were a direct threat and because it was the right
> thing to so.  Yet the US is assumed to be self-interested at every turn.
> It's a sterotype.  It's sometimes even a prejudice.  It's not true,
> therefore it's not earned.
>

The problem with the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend,' is that when
dealing with cultures/counties that have been co-existing in close
proximity for countless generations, everyone has been both a friend
and an enemy (often at the same time.)  when you favor one over the
other it's a recipe for disaster because you become part of the feud,
well intentioned or not.  And while they may eventually forgive their
neighbor (and former friend) we, the US, the UN, whoever, will always
be considered a meddling outsider.

>
> Europe ACTS self-interested at every turn and nobody bats an eye.  Who sold
> Iran the means to refine uranium?  Germany and Russia.  Who was selling
> Saddam's Iraq similar parts and taking oil-for-food kickbacks?  France and
> Germany. In my darker momnets I think that Marx WAS right, just in a limited
> context.  When you look at the blind self-agenda with which continental
> europe handles money, I think its easy to come to think "the last capitalist
> to be hung will be the rope salesman."
>

Who supported saddam and his regime until it became inconvenient to do
so?   Iran/contra also comes to mind.  I don't see this type of thing
changing anytime soon.  Business is business.  If the deal works today,
tomorrow be damned. 


lg



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