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 : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (213844)	12/23/2004 10:25:23 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572503

re: However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for. We've killed 100,000 civilians, "mostly women and children". Out of a population of ~25 million. On a percentage of population basis, if compared to the US, that would equal ~1,200,000. The rough equivalent of the entire population of San Francisco, plus another 1/2 San Francisco. Would you be an insurgent if that was happening to us? It's easy and simplistic to say the insurgents stand for nothing. Suicide bombers must have some motivation. It might be religious, it might be nationalistic, it might be pure revenge. But it's something. Some people like to look at the situation as if it has no history. You can't. We created this mess and we can't solve it. Only the Iraqi's can solve it. Self-determination. The sooner we get the hell out the sooner they can get about the business of figuring out what kind of government they want. Nation-building is pure arrogance; and this probably is the worst attempt at nation-building in history. John

To: RetiredNow who wrote (213844)	12/23/2004 2:24:16 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572503

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq. As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names. So what? If they are the devil incarnate, what does that matter? They exist! They live! They kill! And they don't want to give up! Mr. Friedman's words are like those of Blair and his consorts. They are intended to make sense of something that makes no sense. To convince us, that this is the fight for the gipper...for American democracy when its nothing of the sort. This war is horrifically screwed up. You know that but you place the blame on poor execution. What you don't get is that this war would have been screwed up had it been well executed. When you accept that POV, then you will understand how John, Al, and others feel and why we are outraged by what's happening in Iraq. Until then, the Mr. Friedmans of the world are doing us more harm than good.