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

To: KyrosL who wrote (101170)	6/11/2003 4:56:22 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

In fact the locals there want us to stay there as long as possible -- good for the economy. What we are dealing with is Baathists, plus possibly a few Terrorists. I liked Chalabi's proposed solution on "Charlie Rose" last night. Get a local Police up and running, and thin out the troops in the cities as it is done. The police report to Centcom, but they are not Americans.

To: KyrosL who wrote (101170)	6/11/2003 10:09:49 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi KyrosL; Re: "It's not happening in Bosnia and it's not happening in Kosovo. In fact the locals there want us to stay there as long as possible -- good for the economy." The local boys aren't shooting at us in Bosnia or Kosovo because our boys aren't shooting at them, LOL. Or did you fail to read my whole sentence? Here, I'll repeat it for you, with emphasis: No, it's a fact of human nature that when foreign boys with guns* come into a country and begin shooting things up, the local boys get their guns and shoot back.* #reply-19023762 That explains why we're not shot at in the Moslem regions in the ex Yugoslavia. That is, we're there to protect them from the Serbs. And in the Serbian regions, well, the sad fact is that the total world population of Serbs is barely enough to make one "shitty little country". And it is traditional for large ethnic groups (like the 400 million English / American / Australians of the world, or even smaller groups like the Russians or Germans) to tell very small ethnic groups (i.e. below 25 million) how to live their lives. That is, it is hopeless to fight someone who vastly outnumbers you, so the smaller ethnic groups bow down and just put up with governments that are prejudiced against them. A good example of this are the Indian tribes in the US, which have to live with Anglo laws rather than their own. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong. I'm just saying observationally, this is the way the world works, and has worked for thousands of years. By contrast, there are something like around 100 million Arabic speakers, so they're too big to be bossed around by a few hundred thousand troops. Or a country the size of Israel (at around 7 million), even if the bosses have lots of shiny weapons. The slaves can look into the future, imagine themselves with lots of shiny weapons, and since they outnumber the bosses, they make continuous slave revolts until they are rid of the bosses. These conflicts between bosses and slaves can get really ugly. For example, England versus the Catholics in N. Ireland. And it is in the US's best interests to stay far away from them, and to not pick sides. To pick sides based on morality is hopeless as both sides inevitably will do whatever it takes to obtain victory. With a hyperpower like the US, their pissing match becomes an exercise in influencing the US to pick sides, which makes it very difficult for us to stay out. If you ask pretty much any American of Arab ancestry, the Israelis are the evil side in Palestine. If you ask pretty much any American of Israeli ancestry, the Palestinians are the evil side in Israel. This shows how difficult it is to pick the moral side. By contrast, with Saddam Hussein, there were very few Americans of any ancestry who thought that he was a great guy. Saddam Hussein was universally thought of as evil. For this reason, our picking sides against Saddam Hussein was a more moral one than our picking sides in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. The Iraq war of "liberation" would have gone swimmingly if we weren't the big time ally of Israel. Of course if we weren't the big time ally of Israel, we'd have let the UN do its job. Our failure to stay out of the Arab / Israeli conflict resulted in our getting our nose bloodied by the Arabs to the tune of 3000 dead. In addition, as more terrorists blow up our stuff, we can expect to end up getting body cavity searches before we're allowed on city buses, just like in that paragon of freedom, Israel. -- Carl