At 09:16 AM 11/10/2003 -0800 Doug Pensinger wrote:
>Yes. More importantly, if we had done it properly, external (to Iraq)
>support for the terrorists would be minimized. As it is (and as I stated
>before) we've created access for anti Americans throughout the world to
>attack us. Do you really think that all these attacks are being
>coordinated by Baathists alone?
I am sure that Al Qaeda is now involved in these attacks as well... and I
am sure that they would have just left us alone in Iraq if only we had
found a few barrels of anthrax......
>But what the Bush administration didn't take into account was the
>difficulty of establishing democracy in a country that has no tradition of
>democracy.
I think that President Bush has the best respone to this "cultural
condescension:"
Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country or that
people or this group are ready for democracy, as if freedom were a prize
you win from meeting our own Western standards of progress.
It is worth noting that only democracy in the world where both the Head of
Government and the Head of the Opposition are women is...... Bangladesh.
I am curious as to your explanation as to why Bangladesh is more suited to
democracy than Iraq.
>In any case I disagree that everyone in that part of the world thinks the
>UN is a US puppet. For one thing it's unlikely that the UN would be
>engaging in the kind of cronyism that the Bush administration is. For
>another, their motivations would not be as suspect as regards the oil
>reserves and related infrastructure.
Actually, if you recall that the Untied Nations is responsible for the
establishment of the State of Israel, that can tell you quite a bit about
Arab impressions of the UN. Additionally, you have to remember that the
Iraqis have been treated to 13 years of anti-UN propaganda by Saddam
Hussein, first for authorizing the US to capture Iraq's 38th Province in
1991, and then for mandating that Iraq let US spies posing as UN inspectors
into the country to plot how to destroy Iraq's natural greatness and sieze
Iraq's oil.
And again, why do you imagine that the average Iraqi is as concerned about
the role of Halliburton in Iraq as you are? That's almost
mind-bogglingly bizzare. In fact, for all your preaching about how Iraqi
culture is unsuited to democracy it actually seems like you think that
Iraqi culture is almsot exactly like our own, or more particularly, exactly
like the culture of left-leaning Bush-hating, American liberals. Its
really inexplicable to me how Iraqi culture can in your mind be
simultaneously be unsuited to democracy (or more accurately, a republican
form of governance) and at the same time be almost identical to your own in
their political views....
JDG - Again, Doug's loss.......
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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