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 : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chas. who wrote (15206)	4/16/2004 11:18:23 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 81568

Chuck, you say "most pragmatists are pro-active and right wing." Have you looked at the "right wing" folks running the country? Have you listened to their "remake the world" statements? Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, these are radicals and that all radicals are idealists, whether their ideals are conservative or liberal? By the way, these people are liberals, NOT conservatives. The only thing conservative about them is their dress and their relative disinterest in the lot of the average American. The Iraqis who are dying are not dying in support of the ideals we are purportedly fighting for in Iraq. There are Iraqis dying all right, but they're dying for a paycheck. Where are the Iraqi's marching in the streets to protest the insurgency? Where are the Iraqis using their AK-47s to actually contest the insurgents? Where are the Iraqis that are dragging the foreign terrorists through the streets of Baghdad? Where are their Paul Revere's? Look hard and you'll see that these people have a different value system and different priorities. It's a simplistically stupid approach to impute your own values to those of another culture and then to make life and death decisions based on that flawed analysis. No matter how many times Bush says it, it won't be true that every person in the world has a God-given desire to live in a democracy. In many old-testament types of cultures, the people have a "God given" desire to live a life dominated by the rigid tenets of strict religious doctrines and controlled by clerics. You say that "letting them find their own path" doesn't work and you cite 9/11 and other terrorist attacks as proof. But what does an attack on a nation and a doomed-to-failure attempt to remake Iraqi into a Western style democracy have to do with successfully fighting terrorism? Tooth Fairy thinking is fine for children's books but in the complexities and harsh realities of the real world that kind of thinking doesn't make good policy. In other words, you have to be pragmatic, not foolishly idealistic. The only thing "sophisticated" about the Bush foreign policy is the deliberate refusal to explain any realistic mechanism through which the "dream" can become a reality. Interestingly, you buttress your point that the Bush military force policy should be effective by pointing out that the "NVA, VC and other political extensions of Ho Chi Minh gained their objectives thru force and terror." You should recognize, however, that it's not a two way street; force and terror are effective tools AGAINST an occupying force but when used BY an occupying force they create more resistance and more force and terror. The exception, of course, is when the use of force and terror by the occupying force is so extreme that the population is decimated and the will to fight is destroyed in all but a few. We should always remember that terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong. It is an effective weapon and the only way to limit it's effectiveness is to destroy its support among the populations upon which it relies for concealment, funding, and recruitment. Ho Chi Minh said something like, "the population is the ocean through which terrorist fish must swim;" no ocean, no fish. What we're doing with our policies, and what the Israelis have done with the Palestinians, is to create a huge ocean of support for terrorists and terrorism. Killing terrorists is fine but if we keep our feet on the necks of Islamic peoples I don't think we'll like the results. As far as the Iraq/Vietnam comparison, I think that if you looked at Vietnam in the early stages and Iraq in the early stages, you'd think Iraq was more of a Vietnam than Vietnam was. In addition, the religions and culture of Vietnam were not nearly as barbaric and warlike as the religions and culture of Iraq. Be very careful to draw the right lessons from history.