Saddam to Swing

[Undertoad]

Better to simply walk away and have no policy; only slightly better, to arm both sides and let them fight each other until they have no fight left. All our money should now go to Canada, to help them retrieve oil from the tar sands.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

All our money should now go to Canada, to help them retrieve oil from the tar sands.

We might want to be careful about sending all our money in that direction. In 2006, the National Energy Board, Canada's regulatory agency, did start to look more closely at U.S. markets. However, prior to mid-2006 the focus was on shipping crude to Asia, with a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast due for completion in 2009. Prices in the U.S. have risen; if they rise in Asia again, the crude will go there. Canada will be determined not to commit itself to primarily U.S. sales.

[DanaC]

That's an interesting point Bruce......but y'know there are also musicians and doctors in the Middle East. Playwrites, poets, artists and authors too.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I mean after the Moors were driven out of Spain. :p

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I mean after the Moors were driven out of Spain. :p

MOOPS! They're the MOOPS!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The enemies we've made, were, I think, enemies already without any input from us. Are not the troublemakers a crew of bigots? -- for it is the religious bigotry of our opponents I find their most striking feature.

Never forget, too, how often it is in policy that one is presented only with a choice of blunders -- in which case probably the best choice becomes to choose that blunder from which one's policy may best recover. This isn't a science; never has been.

One should not, I think, be afraid of "making enemies" -- some greedy, sociopathic Lider Maximo will always be found kicking up a fuss precisely because he's a greedy sociopath.

The remedy for these people is usually either two bullets transecting the cranium or blowing them from the muzzle of a field gun. Their sort doesn't quit without getting Ceausescu-ed.

[Kitsune]

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[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The enemies we've made, were, I think, enemies already without any input from us.

Of course they didn't become enemies with input from us -- most of the money and weapons went through Pakistani ISI agents, first. I'd say the influence on the Iraqi public and political groups we're having right now is pretty damn direct, though.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Never forget, too, how often it is in policy that one is presented only with a choice of blunders -- in which case probably the best choice becomes to choose that blunder from which one's policy may best recover. This isn't a science; never has been.

Oh, oh, please tell me how we can best recover from this. I'd still love to hear more about friend making through these actions, but now I'm really interested to hear how not getting into this in the first place would have been a "blunder" more difficult to recover from than the shit we've firmly embedded ourselves in, now. What thought process, in your mind, makes this and this invasion and the decades of fallout/political instability to come worth it? Do you even see the same colors everyone else does?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The remedy for these people is usually either two bullets transecting the cranium or blowing them from the muzzle of a field gun.

Well, you certainly leave little doubt that your version of "international policy" boils down to little more than memories of your previous military training. Besides countries that present an imaginary threat, would you care to mention what other worldly problems would be best solved with ammunition? Who else that hasn't attacked us needs to have our boots on their soil?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

"Imaginary threat" is an interestingly head-in-the-sand way to describe an Iraq that first attacked Iran, and then some years later attacked Kuwait. Real peaceable, real quiet, and a really good global village citizen, wasn't ol' Saddam? Just what would have sufficiently demonstrated his bad character if it were up to you? It's this sort of absurdity that makes the antiwar crowd such a lot of dopes. You can't figure out when force is actually called for -- demanding, or purporting to demand, an impossible, indeed nonhuman, standard of, uh, proof. It doesn't look like getting raped bent over your own rider mowers would suffice. Talks? Not that much negotion goes on during rapes, IMHO.

My position has a more elegant simplicity to it.

What you fail to recognize, and what by contrast I appreciate fully, is that we took Iraq out happily before Saddam could build himself into either the Emperor of Oil, or some new edition of Nebuchadnezzar -- the none-too-smart still try and follow the imperial paradigm, as they don't understand nor respect the virtues of free trade and a world economy so based. Saddam, whose career most resembled that of a Mafioso who made Godfather, crossed with a Soviet-style purge or two, should be entered among those none-too-brights.

Keep in mind: the whole of the human world's political troubles spring from the un-democracies. Democracies not only are more easily richer, they behave better too. The less a country is a democracy, the worse it behaves, as a rule -- and for a clear example, we may look to Saddam's Iraq and the last, er, election. A dog-and-pony show that everyone went along with that they might survive, par for the course for an un-democracy. I don't think you have personal experience of such a social order, or I'd hardly have to work this hard to persuade you.

The answer to your rhetorical question is EVERYBODY who isn't a democracy needs our boots or someone's all over them -- make them tired of being anything but a democratic republic, or a republican democracy.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The answer to your rhetorical question is EVERYBODY who isn't a democracy needs our boots or someone's all over them -- make them tired of being anything but a democratic republic, or a republican democracy.

Your idea that we can change attitudes and fix everything with bombs and boots in other countries hasn't held water for decades and I'm at a complete loss in understanding how anyone in this day could think sticking our hand into the hornet's nest that is the middle east could result in anything other than a disaster.

Your own government doesn't even agree with you, anymore.

This isn't the cold war or a campaign in Europe. We're not fighting communism with an arms race and we're not liberating the oppressed from Nazi invasion. We're not even fighting a physical army.

Don't understand how this works? Here's a simple simulation.

[DanaC]

Urbane, just out of interest, how long did you spend living amongst, *adopts a scary-movie-voice-over voice* The Undemocrats?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Urbane, just out of interest, how long did you spend living amongst, *adopts a scary-movie-voice-over voice* The Undemocrats?

Nine years, engaged in directly fighting Communist regimes -- particularly directly fighting the big one. Military service, and military living, is emphatically not a democracy, and there are lessons to be found there even for someone who doesn't care to look.

While I consider there is a place for totalitarian organizations as subsectors of a society -- its military services -- the totalitarian model is no way to run an entire society, a nation. Nations behave well, both inside and out, only if they are democracies, which term I am using rather loosely to include republics, and constitutional monarchies. The ones that aren't like that start wars promiscuously, oppress anyone they take a whim to, and make just about all the trouble in the world not caused by large hurricanes and quakes. Is this not so? Cast your mind back over the last couple of centuries and consider it.

And I sampled just enough of Kenya under Arap Moi to get a clear idea of just what kind of game he was running -- and I could see personally just what that did to people who had to live and work within range of him. What it did wasn't good, and it wasn't the kind of good government we can expect even from the most primitive sort of democracy. So it's not all just the Commies, conspicuous in evil as they were -- totalitarianism of any stripe is the problem. Democracy is the solution. The people who don't want the solution implemented are fascists, fuckups, and all-around nasty pieces of work, often sociopaths, definitely sinners. The people who don't object to implementing the solution, but don't want it done just today are weaklings, cowards, and fools who never clearly understood their own interests.

Those who spout about military force not succeeding in making democracy have been at pains not to understand the actual method: the military force is there to remove the coercive effects of the anti-democracy forces, which may be taken seriously if they are armed and organized. The antis will have the strategy of trying to terrorize the rest of the population into submitting to these as the government once again. Naturally, our countervailing strategy is to exhaust and wipe out the antis -- get them too dead to oppress, or too spiritually exhausted to stay that particular course. While this battling is going on, others-than-military are to establish the democratic institutions that will result in better, even downright good, governance. Some steps have been taken in this direction in Iraq, and the antidemocracy antihumans are still stubbornly duking it out, but this action also gives the pro-humans the opportunity to catch and destroy them.

There will always be those who complain this isn't getting done in Iraq -- but critics always count less than the man in the arena, and this should be ever kept in mind. The "insurgency" stays busy, but it still isn't getting traction outside its initial areas. In the end, it's doomed. It will take actively prosecuting it to end it, and there may yet be a more acute phase of civil war in Iraq -- but the end will be an Iraq that is a democracy, precisely because they remember that was what they didn't have under Saddam & Company.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Those who spout about military force not succeeding in making democracy have been at pains not to understand the actual method

[busterb]

New video? Reported by CNN Somewhere?

[JayMcGee]

I bet saddam's last thought on the gallows was 'dammned yanks..... that's the last time I trust them.....'