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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (161729)	2/20/2003 3:12:53 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577025

History is full of success stories that have been started not by the wishes of a nation's own citizens. Germany is a lot better off without Hitler, despite not successfully overthrowing him themselves. Korea (well, at least South Korea) is a lot better off without Japanese occupation, even though Koreans failed to overthrow the Japanese themselves. It took U.S. intervention before that happened. Heck, even Japan is doing a lot better now than they ever could have by being imperialist. Unfortunately, it took two nukes before Japanese citizens realized this. And now Afghanistan, I'll argue, is a lot better off without the Taliban. But that didn't happen without America bombing the crap out of the Taliban troops. Pockets of resistance still remain, but I'd say Afghanis now have a measure of hope not seen before. Much of what you say is true but there are some mitigating circumstances. With Germany and Japan, the allies did what I was suggesting we do with Iraq which is to make a long term commitment to upgrade those countries. Plus its important to point out that Germany had some experience with democracy under the Weimar Republic. Japan and N. Korea did not, and took a while before true democracy was in place in either country..later in NK then Japan. I think, in Korea, it took nearly 40 years. With Afghanistan, we are very close to having a disaster on our hands. IMO the odds of it making it are very slim........it has so little going for it. It is the trend in post-modern society to blame America for many things, including parochialism, arrogance, unilateralism, greed, etc. These "Blame America First" people seek intellectual honesty, but in reality they destroy the foundations that made America successful in the first place. It's a self-destructive philosophy that will ultimately bring about the downfall of our success. Of course, the US is subject to a lot of criticism....its one of the largest nations in the world. But I disagree about self criticism......I think it can be good so long as it doesn't become hyper criticism. And you can tell when criticism is real or when its manufactured. What worries me is when you expect to hear criticism and you don't. France has been yapping its mouth off since this whole affair started but we've heard little from Germany. They keep passing it off formally as a disagreement among friends but I think informally, they are very pissed and long term damage to the relationship may be possible. I guess we'll have to wait and see. ted