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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (94789)	4/19/2003 10:04:05 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

How about Turkey, as a model for Iraq? A religious-oriented party won the last election, and the Generals led them govern. I think that could be a reasonable model in fact - maybe not the optimal, but surely a lot better than the most likely scenarios that could come of this, notably the UN "managing" things. Turkey is not virulently anti-American, nor anti West in spite of a religious based party, but each situation is really unique. My main concern right now is that we at least get Iraq functioning again at a minimal level, even though there are a lot of people who through self interest would like to turn the situation into a disaster, or at least orient things that way. This includes idiots like Chirac unfortunately, as well as Iraqi Islamists, left over remnants of the Republican Guard, groups across the various frontiers, it's a real bordel we've got on our hands and that America's image in the world right now is probably as low as it's been in a half century hardly helps. In terms of Africa, when the world stops treating some of the thugs that run things in those countries like legitimate heads of state is when things have a chance of turning around. There is no "China" or other nuclear power behind these people protecting them, so there is no real excuse for letting the kinds of genocides that take place there repeat themselves. We can't really treat the other problems of health, sanitary conditions, famine, etc, without first addressing the dysfunctional governments, the best you can do is the analog of intravenous feeding of a sick patient, and that has gotten nowhere. This kind of outside police force intervention would not be immoral nor colonial, but I don't know how to accomplish that given the business interests in play. I mean, Angola is probably fine by Europe as long as that Girasol oil platform is profitable.... and every country with any natural resources on the continent suffers from that problem of outside exploitation.