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

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (181336)	2/7/2006 3:11:15 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hawk, I keep asking you to give us a pragmatic, realistic assessment of the likelihood of success for the currently defined Iraqi "mission," That's like asking me at half-time who's going to win the superbowl. As far as I'm concerned the likelihood of successfully unleashing democratic values corresponds directly to our willingness to oppose totalitarian alternative. Again.. you're whole premise is that somehow we're "inflicting" democracy upon Iraqis, a premise I utterly reject as non-sensical. Democracy is Greek for "people rule" en.wikipedia.org. Thus, one has to ask exactly how it is that we can "force" people to rule themselves? If anything, we're enabling people to rule and hold government accountable to the people's will. Claiming that we're somehow forcing democracy upon people is like claiming that we forced freedom on the slaves after the Civil War. The reality is that in attempting to create a democratic system in Iraq, we're offering the Iraqis the chance to have a say in how they are ruled. If they opt not to exercise that opportunity, then at least we can say we've clarified the issue of their political aspirations and we can leave them to the fate they choose for themselves. But somehow, even despite the terrorism and intimidation taking place in Iraq, I think the majority of Iraqis DESIRE to have a democratic government. But they have yet to learn tolerance and compromise. Because they didn't have to practice it previously. They were either the oppressors, practicing intolerance and oppression of others, or they were the oppressed and didn't have any choice but violent revolt. Tolerance and Compromise are values they will have to learn for themselves. What we offer is our assistance in insuring that previous oppressors are not able to, once again, dominate other factions within the country. Hawk