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

To: michael97123 who wrote (183820)	3/20/2006 10:57:24 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Do you plan on imposing your will on others? Tbats not exactly what the democracy you are touting is all about is it? Mike, I just don't understand where this belief that democracy can be "imposed" comes from. And especially when no one seems to care that our opponents, whether Marxist/Leninist, Islamo-Fascist, Nazism, or what have you, HAVE ALL IMPOSED THEIR WILL ON OTHERS.. Mike, I'm not about imposing some government that becomes an American proxy. That's not what it's about. It's about unlocking HUMAN FREEDOM, and Individual Destiny. And while I recognize that there's no chance of obtaining the support of the American people to liberate every society oppressed under a totalitarian regime, there are certain countries where either we have the legal authority under the UN, or vested national security and economic reasons to do so. I think I understand what you're trying to say, but I just utterly reject that concept that democracy is imposed. Totalitarianism is imposed. Dictatorship is imposed. Monarchies are imposed.. But democracy is the process of permitting people to elect their leaders and representatives to to hold them accountable for how they rule the country. In democracies, politicians and leaders are hired (and fired) by the people. It used to be that Lincoln's words at Gettysburg had a resonance that none could confuse, namely "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." But it seems that over the past 120 years, those words have become meaningless. Or at least we've become ashamed to utter them, let alone help others to realize them. Personally, I'm not ashamed of believing we should help people to become democratic, by force when it in our national interests, as in the case of Iraq. I happen to believe we're in a perpetual state of war with totalitarianism, and especially this militant and extremely dangerous religious off-shoot, Islamo-Fascism. People dangerously unestimate it's appeal in a world full of secular authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that it's hoping to supplant. And should the Islamo-Fascists manage to gain control over the global supply of oil, it's going to hurt other nations more than us (because we have the technology to find alternatives). But that oil weapon will become critical in the Islamo-Fascist's ability to control the loyalties of our allies and other developing countries. Hawk

To: michael97123 who wrote (183820)	3/21/2006 12:16:59 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Michael, re your post to Hawk where you wrote: "'Limitations on our power, or on our will?' Sometimes both and sometimes the people are wrong. Do you plan on imposing your will on others? Thats not exactly what the democracy you are touting is all about is it? ...... You are not God, nor was LBJ, Nixon or Bush. Hawk, you can not singlehandedly make the world safe for democracy. You need to look at the world more like the asians and view progress over time, but not over your lifetime. The two of us will both die one day and there still will be much work to do..." You've said it well. Unfortunately I suspect the new mantra for Hawk is "God given right to democracy;" the phrase that the Bush speech writers penned to insert religion into the latest justification for the Iraqi war. It's universal wisdom that it's fruitless to argue logic to the faithful. Take Hawk for example. He's the guy who bought, and still buys, EVERY justification for the war. ... No WMD's? No drones, no nuclear program, no bio program, no people who could testify that they were working on them...Hawk's not at all convinced. And even if they didn't have WMDs, the simple fact that they, like VIRTUALLY every other nation would have liked to have WMDs to discourage our deadly "help" was, in his view, ample justification for the war. ... No links to terrorists other than in the Palestinian conflict? What about that camp in the Kurdish controlled territory? That was, technically speaking, inside Iraqi borders and those guys were aligned with the Al Queda thinkers. And there were probably a handful of terrorists that might have been present in the Saddam controlled area of Iraq? And he did aggressively support attacks against Israel. Forget the fact that Saddam and the radical Islamists were deadly enemies, it's enough for Hawk that it wasn't impossible that they might have gotten past their ideological differences and their long history of deadly enmity and done something...anything. ... No proof that Saddam was a threat to his neighbors and the US? Yeah, his was a broken, confused and barely functioning nation because of sanctions but what if ....? That's enough for Hawk. And if you think that Iraq can't be "helped" into democracy because there are not enough Iraqis willing to die for it, then you must be FOR one of the ugly ISMS. And Hawk knows that life in an ISM is not worth living. Better to have your home robbed, your daughter raped, your father murdered..better to suffer anything than to live under a regime where you don't get to vote, even if the vote means your deadly enemies will OWN YOUR LIFE. And if you try to argue history with Hawk then you'll get the "it would have been better if we'd won" and the "we could have won if we'd been stronger of will," and, of course, the ever present question, "you'd rather have them live under an ISM?" He forgets that there are two sides to every battle and the battle of ideas doesn't die until the last man willing to die for those ideas is killed or changes his ideas. Yes, in Hawk's view killing to free Iraqis for democracy is a GOOD (Godly?) thing, especially if the Iraqis aren't willing to kill and die for democracy themselves. It's the least we can do for our helpless, downtrodden brethren, notwithstanding the fact that about 50% of them approve of the killing of our troops to drive us out. A fool wrapped in high sounding ideals is, after all is said and done, still a fool. And a foolish, deadly policy dressed up to look noble is, in the final analysis, the worst kind of foolishness. The real world doesn't long tolerate the existence of nations led by fools, even great nations. ED