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

To: skinowski who wrote (152730)	11/30/2004 8:27:44 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi skinowski; Good comment. Re: "I don't think that's the way power works, Carl. America was established by enlightened people who decided to experiment running the government by limiting their own power, rather then by trying to make it greater ad infinitum. It worked. The nation is very successful. But Iraqis did not "try" Saddam. They were rather "tried" BY Saddam." The US was "tried" by British royalty before we decided to experiment with a republic. Hey, if we'd left the Iraqis to their own devices, maybe they'd have eventually had their own revolution and republic. The fact that a republic invaded them and killed so many people has undoubtedly influenced them away from desiring for their country to be similar. A secular state is the alternative that is likely to be attractive, at least in the short term. In addition, your comparison between the American states in 1776 and the Iraqi states of 2004 fails in that the American people had largely emigrated to the US in pursuit of religious freedom. Before our ancestors came here, they'd already tried a state linked to a religion, they didn't like it, and substantial numbers of them were very much against repeating the same thing in the US, even if the state religion might be their own. Re: " Power creates its own momentum." This is true, but only for the short term. Over the long term, states based on power (without the will of the people) get replaced with democratic states. The USSR is a great example of this. Re: "Working for the dictator allowed you to support your family ..." All these things are true about the USSR before it fell, and hell, they were true about the US before the revolution. What's wrong with your thesis? Re: "The part of the world which is now Iraq has been populated for millennia. They knew good times, and bad times, but accountable government was never one of the things they had a chance to "try"." I'm not really sure what you mean by "accountable". If by "accountable government", you mean the lies and errors that Bush pulled in order to get us embroiled in a losing land war in Asia, then I doubt that the Iraqis want to experiment with it. Hell, half of the problem with Saddam, for the Iraqi people, is that he led them into losing wars. That's not something that increases the attraction of the kind of state that Bush was elected to lead. Re: "There are always sharp differences during a war - otherwise, there would be no war - and uncertainty in outcome is usually, more or less, part of the picture. In a place like Iraq, inevitably, people's perception about which side will win will generate a certain momentum. The side which will be seen as the losing one will be taken less seriously, and its support will dwindle." Unfortunately, you're right about this. But it's not in our favor. It's now how many months after the beginning of the war, and the month just ending is the worst yet. We're not making progress in pacifying Iraq. Instead, the insurgents keep getting better. Re: "Can such primitive ancient methods be effective against a modern Western power, and in our sophisticated times? Well, this remains to be seen." I don't think the video taped executions (by throat cutting) will force the US out of Iraq. I never said it would. What will force us out is the simple fact that we're losing too many soldiers over there. Re: "But the notion that Iraq doesn't have the human material to support a relatively liberal political system... is pure speculation." The simple fact is that Iraq is now, and has been for many years, awash in weapons. If the citizens of Iraq were even 1/10th as determined to possess a democracy as our founding fathers were, they'd already have it. Instead, as with South Vietnam, we're doing the fighting. After the elections, I'll be in favor of giving weapons to the new government of Iraq. If the people of Iraq support that government, they can use those weapons to defend their regime. I doubt that they will. -- Carl