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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (716950)	12/6/2005 12:42:21 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

"...let the contending groups draw lines and settle differences." What do you mean 'let'? What makes you think we can stop it? "The trouble is, they all want oil, and they'll fight each other until one or the other group gets it all. When that happens, and a Saddam type gets the power again, then all bets are off." I don't think you understand my argument very well. The Sunnis (in S.A., in the Gulf Kingdoms, etc.) have plenty of oil. The Shi'a in Iran, and the south half of Iraq are sitting on plenty of oil too. Even the Kurds have significant oil reserves in the areas where their population dominates. Yes, the three desert Sunni-dominated provinces of Iraq (in the West of Iraq) don't sit on oil... but no one is --- in the end --- going to spend much time crying for them... they can always affiliate with Saudi Arabia and or Jordan, as I mentioned, if they don't like the deal they will get from the Shiite-dominated government in 'Iraq'. (They don't like it now, and they likely arn't going to like it in the future, but the land they live on can always have new borders delineated....) "I know how Iraq came into existence." Good. Then you know that there is no particular reason or need or logic requiring it to stay together.... "However, it would work if western ideals and principles were able to get a foothold in that medieval region." One 'Western idea' is the right of free people to self-determination. If the people of Iraq want to go their separate ways, then we should not try to stand in the way. That would be un-Democratic. That would be foolish and meddling. "They have to come into the current century and forget old offenses." :) You know anyone ELSE in the world who can so easily forget 'old offenses'? Can you? (Hell, the American south still grumbles about the North --- and OUR civil war was a century and a half ago! How easy was it for England and Ireland to learn to get along? Hint --- it became possible ONLY when Ireland regained it's freedom... and the process is still ongoing.) "Why can't they see how Germany and Japan prospered after we whipped them soundly? The same can happen in Iraq." Not much in common there: Japan was one homogeneous people, largely with ONE religion. Germany also a homogeneous people mostly... and even there it took the effects of TWO world wars to get them so 'amenable' to change, as you put it. Both Germany and Japan also had their own experiences as functioning Democracies as well to draw upon. Different situation: different PEOPLES, different histories and historic ethnic grudges, different religion, artificial borders forced upon them by a meddling foreign Colonial power, etc.