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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: runes who wrote (67718)	2/10/2003 3:50:44 PM
From: chomolungma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

runes, Nice post. In other words - lets stick to the specific costs and consequences of the current situation and judge it on it's own merits. How do you judge the upcoming action against Iraq?

To: runes who wrote (67718)	2/10/2003 4:37:09 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

First I am not a fan of US bashing. In fact when I argue the points with some of the middle eastern friends and tell them they use US too much of an excuse for their own messes, I am accused of being brain washed by American propaganda! Not making either side happy is a bit frustrating, but it does make me think that I am closer to truth than not. Please do not obscure my points by over generalizations of your own. I already did say that I supported our involvement in Afghanistan. I just did not support the methods and the shortsightedness of it. Without trying to expand this into discussing every global event during the last 5 decades as you tried to do by bringing Marcus and Shah into it, let me answer you in clear and general ways. When we get involved in the internal politics of another country, naturally we try to put in place someone who we deem as most favorable to us rather than whoever has the best interests of that nation at heart. In rare cases they coincide, but as a rule we do not spend the money and lives to put in charge someone who is not the "best" man in the country. There are two problems with this approach. First of all, the way this "best man for the job" is selected is based on lobbies from big business. This promotes a system in which whoever is selling out the best will be the one whom we support. Tell me how are the Iraqi people represented in Washington? They are not. The cannot vote. They cannot offer political contributions. And for all given purposes, so long as they can be controlled, they do not matter. On the other hand, you can bet there are plenty of rich boys throwing their hat in the debate as to how Iraq should be rebuilt. And whose interests do you think they will have at heart? Once we put a regime in power, then we have a vested interest in showing to the world that we did not make a mistake and that we will turn a blind eye to their actions. And here comes the second problem. Whatever mistakes these client regimes make, even if it is innocent mistakes, it is seen by their people as something that America did to them and US becomes the bad guy around the world. The cold war is over. America won. Sadly the bad habits that it brought are still very much alive. America has two choices: either carry on extension of cold war policies and become the global police/babysitter (from US point of view and the global bully/Great Satan from the rest of the world POV). Or we can try to bring about real stability to the world as I described before. So you tell me, which is better, being control freak who does not trust whatever it cannot control, or bringing about an environment that can naturally foster good behavior? Our own everyday lives are a good model as to what should or should not be acceptable behavior on the global stage. Why is it so hard to demand the government should behave no less morally than people do? BTW, morality is not just something that you learn in kinder garden and forget about later on. Nor is it something that effects only your after life. Morality has been developed over thousands of years as the best method that the human race can survive. My games theory prof. often did a good job of analyzing a moral issue through the concrete eyes of this science. Sun Tzu PS Yes, when you do help out people of shady character or questionable ideology and show that all you want is your own interests, then you should expect the eventual outcome to turn around and bite you. One way or another it is inevitable. PPS What do you know about the roots of the hatred between Hutu and Tutsi? At least in that case it wasn't America that made the mess.

To: runes who wrote (67718)	2/10/2003 4:52:25 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 70976

This is hardly comprehensive, but I am sure you can do more of your own DD. I am only bringing it up so that you do not think I am after US bashing and that US had no involvement with the Taliban. You will not like the politics of the source, but there are other more neutral sources that confirm this. I chose this because it was rather concise. ST Beginning under President Jimmy Carter, the United States backed the mujahadeen guerillas fighting the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, which included training the cohorts of Osama bin Laden. When Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, the U.S. walked away. In his September 21 Washington Post op-ed, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid writes: "Washington allowed two allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to run with their own proxies -- first Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who destroyed most of Kabul with rocket attacks in 1993, and then the Taliban. Iran, Russia, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan backed other factions, thus ensuring that the civil war, fueled so heavily by outsiders, would continue." From 1992 to 1995, fighting among the different factions, including Hekmatyar and many of the warlords that make up the Northern Alliance, killed over 50,000 civilians. The Taliban emerged in 1994 from the rural southern hinterlands of Afghanistan, under the guidance of the reclusive village cleric Mullah Mohammed Omar. It rose to power by promising peace and order for a country ravaged by corruption and civil war and the prospect of re-establishing traditional majority-Pashtun dominance. From 1994 to 1996, the Clinton administration sided with the Taliban. This included direct financial aid and support for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia's military.

To: runes who wrote (67718)	2/10/2003 6:29:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Runes, I missed answering one of the important points you raised and it is a good one. You said: ...But how do you assess the consequences of the associated inaction? You are a hundred percent right that there are costs associated with inaction as well. I am not promoting "inaction" so much as non-interference. There is a difference though it is hard to describe. The best I can come up with is that in everyday life I do not tell you how to live your life and you do not tell me what to do either. In very rare circumstances, we may find an issue which we cannot just ignore such as finding out that the corner store is front for selling drugs to minors. In those cases, we do not support a rival drug dealer to take out the guy. Rather we cooperate with the police or the neighborhood watch to get rid of him. There are times when intereference is legitimate. None proliferation of WMD is one of them. Anti-terrorist coalition building is another. Ethnic cleansing is also a valid reason for direct involvement. But that is about it. Defending corrupt regimes against their dissidents is not a valid reason, even if those dissidents are not good people in our opinion. Neither is trying to establish "democracy". BTW, aside from the fact that only the Pashtuns were supported during the Soviet invasion which left their local opposition in a very weak spot. And aside from the fact that we never pointed out to them that proper goal is liberation of Afghan people (rather than kill as many Russians as you can and Allah will reward your Jihad). The reason why Afghanistan fell into civil war was that the Afghans were never part of the peace negotiations. It was just USA, Pakistan, USSR, and their puppet Afghan regime who signed a treaty and decided what should or should not happen in Afghanistan. This is not the kind of non-interference that I am calling for. Once we do get involved, we have an obligation to see a moral conclusion to event. Sun Tzu PS Assume we have just invaded Iraq and removed Saddam. What will be most likely course of event over the next few years?