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: Neocon who wrote (117046)	10/17/2003 3:03:33 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; Re: "I did not say there was humiliation in losing. I said that there was humiliation for the regime in the unwillingness to fight." My whole point about your humiliation comments is that they were completely from the viewpoint of an American. That's fine and dandy, but the simple fact is that you failed to look at what the same situation appeared to be from the other side. Bush's administration had a similar failure of empathy that got us into this war. Before you make assumptions about what the another group is going to do in response to your own actions, you must make a real effort to see it from their point of view. All the administration did, as far as judging the inclinations of the Iraqi people, was to make guesses that were basically what the Administration wanted to hear. It wasn't some sort of miscalculation about how many guns the Iraqis had that got us sucked into an unwinnable war. It was the misestimation of Iraqi emotions. You make the point that their regime was "humiliated", but then you fail to understand that humiliated people tend to take revenge. Furthermore, you make the quite fatal mistake of believing that the Iraqi regime is somehow distinct from the Iraqi people. This is just more wishful thinking. The simple fact is that millions of people in Iraq supported Saddam Hussein. And those millions who didn't, well they all had guns, but no one hated Saddam enough to kill him. This is in distinct comparison to the US, where several of our presidents have been assassinated by US citizens for political purposes. Re: "No one is starving in Iraq, so I doubt that people are risking so much to enter these forces just because of unemployment." This is silly. Did you ever hear the phrase "man does not live by bread alone"? Do you think that keeping the Iraqis from "starving" is going to make them love us? Of course the people of Iraq have aspirations to own nice things like cars and television sets. Where are they going to get that if they don't have a job? Stealing? Again, you are completely bereft of empathy. I'd love to hear your bitching and moaning if you had no job, lost your house, lost all your possessions, but were still able to avoid starvation, LOL. Re: "Do you think that if the attitude towards the GIs were generally hostile, the children would feel so free to hang out? even for gum?" The people of Iraq may not be starving, but a lot of them are damned hungry, so the stuff that the GIs throw them is important. But what I've been reading is that the population is nice in the daytime, and shoots during the dark. The simple fact is that you can go into most poor countries on this planet and find yourself besieged by beggars. Are you so emotionally illiterate that you think that beggars love the people that they beg from? I'm going to guess that you've never been forced to beg. In fact, I'd be willing to speculate that you, like most conservatives, don't give money to beggars because you don't want to encourage them, but here you are bragging about the fact that our troops are met by beggars in Iraq. Hey, if the economy in Iraq were decent the kids wouldn't be begging in the streets. They've never done that in any city I've ever lived in. If there were a city in the US where children crowded around strangers begging for candy you'd probably be as pissed off at about it as the rest of us would be. But since you do not see the Iraqi people as human beings, with equal rights to any other human beings, their being reduced to the point where their children beg for food doesn't bother you at all. You think it's great. Hey, they did the same thing in Vietnam. Re: "You miss the point. You asserted that the populace was scared and hostile. Even in cases where there is hostility, it has been more normal to demonstrate than shoot, and no one seems afraid that we will kill them for agitating. This undermines your point about the poll." I'm not sure where you're going with this. The poll was a random selection of people. The demonstrations are not random, they consist of people who are not afraid. Thus the demonstrators do not prove that the people, as a whole, are not afraid, but instead simply show that there are people in Iraq who are not afraid. For that matter, like I told you guys before the war, most insurrections do not really begin until around six months into the occupation. We are just now entering that time period. Give it another 6 months. Already your comments of a few weeks ago about how peaceful the Shiites were have turned to ashes in your mouth as 4 US soldiers died today under the hands of the Shiites. Re: "It is at a higher level than I would have wished, but it is not a big surprise to me, or, I would say, to the Administration." I guess this depends on what you mean by "big surprise", LOL. Certainly Karl Rove got a big surprise. Re: "Only someone with completely unrealistic criteria for progress would call this a failure at this point." There is plenty of evidence that the Administration's expectations were unrealistic. The simple fact is that six months ago you thought we'd be awash in piles of happy Iraqis, hundreds of tons of WMDs, erstwhile allies begging to get a chunk of that sweet Iraqi oil in return for rebuilding contracts, and a peaceful Israel as the Arabs were finally "humiliated" into giving up their aspirations for freedom (from foreign invaders). -- Carl