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

To: Bilow who wrote (128509)	4/6/2004 2:40:33 AM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Please amplify on this." <<<For other than total war, it is US business that tames rogue nations, not our military. Sure our military tamed Germany and Japan (okay, we got some help with Germany), but they did it by killing on the order of 5% of the population. Translated into Iraq, that would be such a bloody occupation that the American public would never stand for it.>>> A valid comparison, a war with 30 or 40 mm casuaties compared with one of 500. >>Take the town of Fallujah, with 500,000 people. Bringing them to heel would require killing about 25,000 people. Today the US military put out a press release that they've managed to kill a grand total of: Marines killed at least one Iraqi ... cnn.com With the way our military operates, the probability that we will pacify Fallujah is exactly zero. No more than the Israelis, can we pacify Arabs. Just not going to happen>>> Who needs pacifiers?, we just plan to plain disarm them. <<<Your point of view is to see the US military as the only "solution" to the "problem" of "terrorism". You got our boys sent into a conflict that the US public wouldn't support because you thought that it was the "only" thing we could do. But you're ignoring the fact that we have alternative ways of winning hearts and minds.>>> Poll show Public support for war still alive here, dont count your chickens yet <<Think more carefully about how it came to be that the students in Iran are generally friendly (or were before Bush attacked their neighbor). You will eventually realize that it is stuff like popular music, American food, and our movies that converted them.>>> Yes, dont act so stupid, Hawk. <<It wasn't Reagan who disemboweled the USSR, it was Nixon. And Nixon did it with weapons like Pepsi.>>> I kind of liked Reagan, Nixon was an a$$hole, even if he did like Pepsi. <<<Re: "Which Iraqis? The Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds? All have their own agenda ..." It doesn't matter. We have no real strategic interests in Iraq other than (a) its oil, and (b) its government's inclination to promote terror, and (c) its people's inclination to join terror groups>>> All them Arabs look alike to me too. But you are absolutely blind to our principal interests in the region which extend much farther than Iraq. Sig

To: Bilow who wrote (128509)	4/6/2004 11:10:41 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

For other than total war, it is US business that tames rogue nations, not our military. Only if a credible rule of law and property rights exist in that society. Few US corporations, let alone other foreign corporations, are willing to invest heavily in developing an economy that does not protect their investments. At best, they will engage in exploitive commerce, minimizing the business risk and extracting profits with little trickling down to the overall population. Iraq is a prime example of this, where the predominant proceeds from trade with Iraq went to build his lush palaces, while the Iraqi people lived in squalor (and terror). And while I would agree that business and cultural influences are the preferable means of defeating militant movements, we're already at least 10 years behind the "8 ball".. The Islamists have already declared war upon the US. They are indoctrinating their dispossessed youth in miitant ideas, training them to sacrifice themselves for Allah. Thus, it's necessary to show the US is willing to use force to create change within at least one country, Iraq, in the region, directly taking on militant leaders, in hopes that the eventual progress in that country will pressure other Arab nations to fall in line and do the same in their own countries. We've already seen how Qaddafi has responded to the toppling of Saddam, hastened by our catching him red-handed trying to smuggle in nuclear technology last October. That's one positive outcome from our renewed display of resolve, and it's only a matter of time before other rogue nations find it irreversibly in their interest to do the same. Face it Carl, many of these regimes we've supported over the years are deathly afraid of their militant movements (and rightly so). They are held hostage by them, unable to open up their societies too much lest they unleash a backlash by these fanatics. The US needs an image change in the region. And while, for many conspiratorially minded muslims, the jury is still out about American intentions in the region, many of the moderates (and primarily western educated) are taking considerable heart that the US is finally serious about helping them to create progressive change in the region. We're sending a major signal to all muslims that, by overthrowing Saddam, we're no longer willing to tolerate these regimes who are seen as having been propped up by the US. But eventually the "proof in the pudding" for most muslims is that the Iraqis are able to create an effective government that is tolerant and progressive, without having to be propped up by the US. But we all know that this is going to take years, and tremendous economic rebuilding for that belief to replace the decades of conspiracy theories that predominate the region because of our benign neglect. So your idea of using "business interests" in the region was simply "overcome by events" on 9/11. On that day it became clear that business interests were simply not enough. Business interests would only work in societies that are permissive towards permitting the cultural values and influences that accompany such free trade concepts to take root in those countries. But the tenuous hold on power and growing illegitimacy of these regimes maintained via use of brute force and petro-dollars, is destroying the positive influence of such business interests. And greatly undermining such interests is the the Israeli-Palestinian issue, conveniently inflamed by the these regimes who hope to deflect attention from their own failing economic and social policies. Benign pursuit of commerce inspired change will not be sufficient to reverse the tide of Islamic Militancy in the face of such major demographic and economic challenges. The militants reject globalization. They see oil as a ready weapon to be used against the entire world to hold them hostage to their agenda (or at least hold off direct confrontation once they held the predominant supplies of it). And as we saw after 9/11, with cheering crowds in Arabs streets and Bin Laden T-shirts, all it will take is an even more impressive attack upon the US for the "Arab street" to be stirred up to more militant levels. Hawk