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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131127)	5/3/2004 10:13:15 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

...We're going to be in Iraq, and the Mid-East in a big way for the next 10-20 years Looking at the pre-Fallujah polls of Iraqis. It would be my expectation that the Iraqi elections scheduled for Jan 2005 would have a lot of candidates whose platform would be "get the US out of Iraq" and those candidates will win by a very large margin. I would not expect that the activity in Fallujah, Najif or the recent accusations on US "activities" in the prisons are going to be swaying a lot of Iraqis into supporting a continued presence. Perhaps you disagree. But for argument sake, suppose that Iraqis vote in Jan 2005 for the platforms/candidates to get the US out of Iraq. Are you predicting that the US will ignore it and remain in Iraq? jttmab

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131127)	5/3/2004 10:52:14 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, I think that many of your posts contain assumptions that, if correct, would justify the point you're making when you discuss what we "must do." For instance you say: "If Kerry wins, I'm going to support his every effort to create a viable strategy for rebuilding a stable and democratic Iraq." and, "We're going to be in Iraq, and the Mid-East in a big way for the next 10-20 years, attempting to create a viable alternative to both the corrupt and inept regimes that currently exist, but also the Islamic militancy that is attempting to impose itself upon muslim culture." and, "What I want to hear about are your solutions to rebuilding a highly dysfunctional society." The two primary assumptions that underlie many of your passionate posts are first, that we have the RIGHT to "rebuild..create..," etc. an Iraqi society that is not a threat to our interests and, second, that we have the ABILITY to do so. I think you're wrong in both assumptions. What gives us the right to undertake social engineering in a nation with a different culture, a different primary religion and a different history from ours when that country HAS NOT ASKED us to choose THEIR path? Even if we had the right, what POWER can we exercise that allows us to enforce our views of how another nation's people should live, govern themselves and deal with us? The question "can we" should always precede the conclusion that we "have to." That's not to say we don't have some say in what the Iraqis do. If their actions affect our own sovereignty or pose an "imminent threat" to our citizens, we may act in our own defense; a course of action we are well able to take should the need arise. There's a lot of room between the "someday, maybe, could" kinds of threats and an "imminent" threat, however. Absent some imminent threat we should let them work through their darkness while we exercise diplomacy. We should support those factions, if there are any, that lead in a direction that we view as in our interests and the interests of civilization while we carefully watch to counter any imminent threat that might develop. Cause, hey, the other way don't work at all.