-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Add your name to the CLEAN GOA INITIATIVE | | | | by visiting this link and following the instructions therein | | | | http://shire.symonds.net/pipermail/goanet/2005-October/033926.html | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >My point of view is that EVERYONE should get behind the >coalition that is trying to provide freedom and democracy to >those 50 million Muslims, and STOP providing moral or actual >support by spreading falsehoods about the liberation effort. >
My point of view is in sharp contrast with the above. I think what we are witnessing in Iraq is not any kind of liberation but an illegal occupation, which has triggered a violent civil war conducted by criminal elements and Saddam loyalists. I submit to you that the invocation of lofty words such as "liberation" and "freedom and democracy" to describe what is going on in Iraq today is engaging in mockery of these hallowed principles on which the great United States of America and many other great democracies were founded. The rationale of liberation advanced by the present U.S. government is a contrived, standby rationale dished out to fend off criticism for the abject failure of political leadership and policy in the war effort. It is a face saving ploy to distract the good people of a great nation from focusing on the embarrassing let-down on the slam-dunk assurances given to them before the war. It is the latest in a colorful assortment of excuses that were floated in the air one literally as high as a mushroom cloud in the frantic search for a marketable casus belli in the initial rush to war, which I submit, was motivated by a combination of political expediency, unyielding ideology and thirst for power. And finally, I think this fake rationale of liberation is being used as a weapon of mass abuse to intimidate opponents of the illegal war by branding them as traitors to the cause of liberation. If one really believes in freedom and democracy, one has to recognize that in a free and democratic world reasonable people can hold entirely different views, as far as public policy and its impact are concerned. This recognition, coupled with basic human decency behooves one to treat everybody with a modicum of respect, even if one strongly disagrees with his or her point of view. Many reasonable people would want to go even further, and entertain the possibility that someone who disagrees with them may actually be right. In the present matter, I tend to entertain such a possibility, and I hope others do as well. Cheers, Santosh P.S. Personal attacks and insults against me as a result of this exposition of my humble opinion will be regarded as vindication of my point of view. They will therefore be triumphantly ignored.
