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

To: Neocon who wrote (153294)	12/3/2004 5:43:10 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You said: The primary problem has been the disruption of cultural norms, displacement of native elites, and general sense of grievance at social subordination. And I had said: Virtually all such projects and experiments do not live on, and frequently when the occupying power leaves, people start dying anew. Death in, death out, its a nasty business. I don't fully disagree with your comment back to me; but if my prior note left you with the impression that I thought pillage was the primary problem, then I must correct that. The "primary problem" is always one of the occupier's making, and from there many secondary problems are born and at great cost going in, during, and leaving the new colony. Going in is frequently brutal. Hundreds of thousands dead in (Philippines); mere tens of thousands dead in Iraq - is that an an improvement? Perhaps not, that occupation is not yet over. And all doesn't get better, when such experiments unravel, as the end of colonialism is frequently tinged with even more death. Death in, death out. The Sikhs and Muslims who slaughtered each other in northern India as the Brits withdrew certainly proved that, as did the coming undone of colonies in Congo, Algeria, Vietnam, Angola and others. Will Iraq be the next example? For such an advanced democracy we certainly have an appalling lack of common sense.