If all rules and laws and regulations went magically away tomorrow, including any means of enforcing any of them, we'd have utter chaos (aka Iraq) for awhile and then we'd have a violent, repressive dictatorship.
Hmmm....
Hey, Dubyette has achieved total divisiveness in at least two countries and maybe the world. The US is totally divided and now so is Iraq.
So let's talk about Iraq then, and the social chaos that was responsible for the advent of the Ba'th party... Wasn't it primarily DUE to their violence that the prior to Saddam:
usinfo.state.gov
So we have the initial British-installed Hashemite monarchy overthrown by a military coup.. which is then overthrown by the Ba'th party, which is then overthrown by another military coup, which is subsequently overthrown by the Ba'thists again..
So it's pretty clear that military dictatorship, or totalitarian rule, is no guarantor of social order. The divisions that exist in Iraq now, EXISTED THEN AS WELL.
Now there are different paths that can be traveled on the way to social order.. One is the path that Iraq has suffered for the past 40+ years, and the other is a situation in which the various powerful factions either voluntarily, or with some "prodding" decide that they have more interest in burying the hatchet in the ground, than in each other's backs, and work out a power sharing arrangment via an electoral process that restrains the absolute power of any government over the minorities..
We have to ask ourselves what is the sounder basis upon which to form a government.. Military dictatorship, or trying to create an environment in which the OLD POLITICAL STRUCTURE is torn down and a NEW ONE ERECTED that places the power into the hands of elected representatives accountable to the average person, not just a particular political or tribal faction.
Either way is fraught with more potential violence because the previous regime has some POWERFUL vested interests in preserving the previous status quo. And other factions have an equally strong interest in replacing that previous regime with one that puts them in charge.
So this supposed "order" you claim existed in Iraq prior to Saddam's overthrow is fictitous.. It never existed except through shear brute force and oppression. And it's overthrow and replacement with a democratic system is just as fraught with danger, but it's basis is FAR MORE SOUND so long as the government is elected by the people.
There's a damn good reason that we should ensure that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" should not be permitted to perish from the earth.
Now obviously you prefer government by dictatorship and oppression, violent as it is.
But I prefer, by far, any government that derives its power from the people who govern it. And I think the US has a responsibility to be the guarantor of any society that makes an honest attempt at developing such a governmental system.
I know you disagree.. But that gives me great comfort.
Hawk |
