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: JohnM who wrote (83439)	3/18/2003 3:42:49 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

He is willing to say "If that is imperialism, what is so bad about that?" I am not so easy. No one has ever understood self- government to involve colonial dependency. I did not call Marxists evil. Quite a few were not, in fact (I am a neocon, remember), especially revisionists. But blinkered by a moribund analysis of historical processes, yes. Yes, a society has to accept democratic forms, and some are more fitted to do so than others, which is one reason to deal with authoritarian regimes some times, rather than being purists. But "are they ready" can just as easily be an excuse for making no move in the direction of democracy. Unless you suppose that most people in the world are naturally fit for being tyrannized, democratization is mainly a matter of education. Unless you think that being tyrannized is better than having some modicum of personal freedom and being able to hold government accountable, one should earnestly desire the evolution of all societies in that direction. I am sure there have been abuses. I also have no doubt that most of our activity during the Cold War was, at worst, an exercise in "lesser evilism", somewhat like our alliance with Stalin during World War II.

To: JohnM who wrote (83439)	3/18/2003 3:44:56 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

If anybody feels like some background reading, I can sort of recommend the Atlantic survey / collection at theatlantic.com A couple mordant clips from one of the articles cited there, The Persian Gulf: Still Mired , by Alan Tonelson, from June '93 , theatlantic.com In other words, the Gulf countries are either terminally insecure or irremediably bellicose. Yet the Bush and Clinton Administrations, along with their leading critics, would all stake America's energy and economic future on various grandiose schemes either to manipulate and stabilize the Gulf's savagely byzantine politics or to turn its various antagonists into real countries. As a result, we have been choosing among an array of Gulf strategies whose successes would be almost as bad as their failures. . . . Overt American moves to oust Saddam Hussein would encounter not only severe international opposition—for exceeding the UN resolutions that authorized the Gulf War—but also severe regional opposition. For this Americans can be grateful, unless they relish the prospect of militarily occupying a country whose next peaceful transfer of power will be its first.