Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kumar who wrote (49037)	10/2/2002 11:23:43 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

perhaps, because I come from a country that has had a democratic government, for about 55 years of its existence, with no obvious need for authoritarian take-overs. Perhaps it's because you take for granted what much of the world has NEVER enjoyed. The US has had to fight many times not only to preserve our own freedom, but to preserve the freedom of other nations (as well as the opportunity for them to become free). Maybe you fail to realize it, and I assume you're from India, but it was US pressure placed upon the British that convinced them that they had to give up their colonial empire and grant independence. Ghandi would not have stood a chance against a truly imperial power with no constraints on its repression. And that's why there have been no "ghandis" in Iraq or Syria... They would be "eliminated" because those governments know little restraint in their repression. let each country determine what its comfortable with. No outsider has the right to impose a different system. Even without a fair and objective electoral mechanism for discerning what the "people's choice" truly is?? I could care less if the Iraqi people elected to have Saddam Hussein as their president, so long as the election was fair, objective, and provided viable opposition candidates on a regular basis (say ever 4-6 years). And if they don't mind being brutalized, then that is their decision. And if they decide to invade other nations such as Kuwait, etc... then I don't feel so much concern about avoiding "collateral" damage when we bomb them. But the reality is that we still have yet to see democratic nations engage in full-scale war against one another. Your country and Pakistan stand as one exception, but as you noted, Pakistan is not currently a democracy. Not to say that we won't see such an event one day.. but it's certainly far less likely than one tyrant trying to usurp the power and property of a neighboring tyrant. Hawk