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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: tejek who wrote (216677)2/1/2005 2:36:12 AM
From: Elroy  Read Replies (2) of 1571191
 
They are free in terms of the gov't but not so free when it comes to the violence. After all, going to vote yesterday was a major act of courage for many Iraqis. I don't see that as being very free even if they are freer that the Saudis or the Kuwaitis.

Do you disagree?

Yes. I don't think it was all that amazing for most Iraqis to go vote, because most of them live in relatively stable regions. You only hear about the bombs, so you think there are bombs on every street every day. If it were REALLY dangerous in most of Iraq to vote, most of them would not have.

Your media-biased view of Iraq today sounds similar to the Japanese view of the US when I lived in Japan. There was almost zero violent crime in Japan, and they would read about all the murders and carjackings and mugging that happened in the US, and therefore conclude that they had a 75% chance of being beaten or robbed if they lived in the US for a year. As you know, that's not true, but the focus on US crime in Japanese media gave that impression.

It's the same as mindmeld's view of Muslims. I live in a Muslim country and interact with them every day, and they are totally normal people. However, mindmeld reads article about the Muslim fundamentalist loonies, and therefore thinks that all Muslims are violent killers. It's not true.

And "freedom" starts with government. The rest (including reducing violence, which seems paramount to you) will come from government policies.
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