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

To: Joe NYC who wrote (163835)	3/11/2003 9:32:15 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573954

>>Many of the people (I'd go out on a limb and say the majority) of Iraq do support Saddam and oppose the U.S. >How do you figure these things out? It's a very typical phenomenon in the Arab world. For instance, Yasir Arafat also has lots of support, and he's as bad or worse than Saddam. Of course, once these people leave Iraq and know what freedom is about and know that the things they've heard about the U.S. aren't true, many change their minds. We're also seeing a lot of the same in South Korea (not Arab), even though South Korea has a free press- there's so much rampant anti-Americanism there because, among other reasons, they've been taught that prior to the Korean War, the two Koreas were one mighty prosperous nation, and the evil U.S. split them up. >>When you hear the same thing over and over and over for your whole life with no rebuttal, you believe it. >It wasn't the case in Eastern Europe. It was the case early on in the Cold War, but then in the '80s the people in the USSR began to find out what they were missing under Communism- a little information goes a long way. If we really could put together an effective communications effort (I hate to use the word "propaganda," it's got such a negative connotation) with the people on the ground in Iraq, that might help. Of course, now that capitalism hasn't done much good for anyone but the Muscovites, there's a bit of a backlash (it's been recounted in a couple of articles in the NYT recently) and people are beginning to long for Stalin (what imbeciles!). The issue in this case is not whether we're wrong or right, because we are right, but it's whether we can (ah, dammit, what's the opposite of "brainwash?") the people who mistakenly believe that we're wrong. -Z