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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (117502)	10/24/2003 5:17:51 AM
From: frankw1900	Respond to of 281500

It was a 30-year campaign, and there were lots of martyrs. So, if I understand correctly, you think another few decades of the Hussein family would have been OK until the Iraqis finally reached enlightenment and got their act together and finally made the place ungovernable for the creeps. Saddam already had by the time of his displacement killed about a million Iraqis and exiled another @3 million and internally exiled another huge number. The US displaced him at the cost of how many lives and exiles? In terms of limiting lives lost it would seem the US action has been far more effective than letting Iraq continue under his murderous and degrading rule. The India parallel you use is not good. The question with regard to India in the period after 1900 was not 'if', but 'when', it would gain independence. During the 20th century the British certainly were not doing to the Indians what Hussein was doing to the Iraqis - the Brits didn't always behave well but they were moving in the direction of greater internal freedom. It's certainly the case Gandhi held the British feet to the fire, and a good thing too because British colonial policy and administration was degraded by the loss of such a huge portion their best people in WW1, but by the time the Indians started dying on behalf of the British in yet another World War, independence was inevitable. The Poles had mass anti-government demonstrations, in 1956, 1970, and 1980, before finally succeeding in 1989-90 The reason the Poles. and the other Warsaw pact countries were successful in 1989-90 is that the Soviets had collapsed and were not available to support the domestic tyrants as they did in the past - the same reason all the previous satellite uprisings had failed - the Poles did not make Poland ungovernable by Soviet clients but, rather, the Soviets themselves collapsed fron their own dysfunction. It may not work on those 3 men. It doesn't need to. I never said that. I said it it can't work against them. To succeed, it only needs to work on the millions of Russians, Iraqis, and Koreans who follow their orders and maintain their rule. Kim cannot hold a gun to the head of every person in N. Korea. Not by himself. Do you think a Stalin, Saddam or Kim is not aware of possibilities of Gandhian type subversion? They work explicitly and successfully to forestall the possibility of such a thing ever establishing itself. Stalin and Kim's father died in bed after decades of misrule and Saddam was grooming his boys to succeed him. No Gandhian type opposition ever got beyond conception under these people. The nearest thing to it is a flood of escapees and refugees - which the secret police pursue.