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

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (94713)	4/18/2003 9:55:09 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Denis, I have a lot of respect for you and consider you an honest and decent person. So I hope I don't come across as hostile to you. > How about thinking a bit of that country just across the border, we have all amply seen just how universal the mullahs representation of what "everyone" in Iran wants is. The mullahs in Iran are the most hated regime Iran has ever seen. But I think you are blind to the positive things they have accomplished. Compare them with any of their neighbors. In Saudi, women are virtual prisoners. In Iran they are half of the university graduates and run for political offices. In Kuwait the whole parliament is a joke, and women are not even let in on the joke. You look at Iran from an American perspective and find it wanting. But to many people in the Persian Gulf who look across the border to Iran, the view is quite good. > The Taliban in Afghanistan are an excellent example of what paradise awaits any country that turns itself over to religious nutcases with delusions of grandeur. Oh please! Don't tell me you have bought into this scare tactic so often shoved into our throats. On what grounds do you base this view? I challenge you to prove or even reasonably argue this case. The Taliban were the product of a rural culture in one of the poorest countries in the world. Nor was their region of Afghanistan rich in arts and humanities. What they did was mostly a product of their background, culture, and limited understanding. Why should that experience be repeated in other countries? > Iran is again a good example of how long it will take in fairly good circumstances. Take out the 8 years of war and it took less than half a generation of non-interference for it to show positive results in Iran. This is about the same amount of time it took for Iraqi Kurds. So there is no "how many generations" here. > And they'll hold back progress the whole way. I think Iran has shown plenty of progress without enlightenment "missionaries". And they will do even better if allowed to progress. > we have to be very careful about distinguishing between the latest opportunistic power grab, and what's needed to let the country get back on its feet economically and socially. I agree 100%. Doing the right thing means setting the right foundation and seeing it through. It is a hard and time consuming task which requires force only as the last resort and every effort to avoid it coming down to use of force. How do you think this should be done? > The behavior of these museum looters is only one glaring example of the kind of grabbing that will go on unless some order is maintained. So so. I have heard reports that there were professional international thieves involved who enticed the looting so that they could get away with what they wanted amidst the crowd. You may be interested to know that some of these same looters later returned their artifacts. Certainly the population there is not as aware of importance of some issues that we are aware of here. And the nature of a tribal society lends itself to chaos. But I don't think it is as bad as the looting images tell. You cannot use the worst images you have seen and extrapolate them over the entire society and then use that extrapolation to set policy. > In wartime, mafia organizations thrive like at no other time. It seems to me you are saying that looters are not representative of the society at large. > The US owes it to the Iraqi population to do the best we can to make up for the disorder we (and Europe, Russia, the list is long) have allowed to take hold. Yes I agree. But you cannot transplant culture at large and dictate the solutions, even if your solutions are pretty good ones. People always accept the solutions they have come up with better than those they are told. So we need a way of guiding a home grown solution that incorporates much of the local culture. ST

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (94713)	4/19/2003 4:06:29 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<You are implying that this group represents all of Iraq ?> I have no idea what fraction of the population wants an Islamic Republic of Iraq. They do seem to be able to organize the largest demonstrations, but that's a crude measure; a small but very vocal minority can do that. I'll admit to being conflicted about Africa. The material conditions of life (lifespan, infant mortality, nutrition), for most Africans, is worse now than it was before independence, 40+ years ago. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has seen improvement in those conditions. Some more than others, some very little, but nothing as bad all the long, long list of "failed nations" in Africa. De-colonization has been a failure, yet colonization is immoral. I'm not sure what the solution is. How about Turkey, as a model for Iraq? A religious-oriented party won the last election, and the Generals led them govern.