Greetings and Salutations...
First off..other than the question of how much
MDF it would take to build a coffin for Saddam and his
boys, what does this have to do with woodworking?
(don't answer, son, that was a RHETORICAL question).

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:33:40 +0000, Andy Dingley
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:14:49 GMT, "Bob Schmall"
wrote:

A less slanted article would have also included
statistics showing our economic improvement, the reconstruction of Iraq's
infrastructure and its brave new political system, etc.

As someone who was laid off from a large US corporate during Bush's
reign, I'm not seeing much "economic improvement". The dollar is
through the floor, the deficit is enormous and all your manufacturing
base are belong to China.

This is a point. The economy sucks here in America...
although it probable will turn around eventually. The events
of 2001 really kicked the props out from under that recovery, though.

Iraq has almost no infrastructure. Now I'm hardly surprised by this -
we've just fought a war through the place. I hope they will have one
soon, and I have faith that many well-intentioned soldiers are doing
their damnedest to assist this.

Neither does Iraq have a "brave new political system". It has protests
on the streets against a US-led war to bring "democracy", where this
appears to be US-selected non-elected placemen.

And the amazing thing is that there are no reports of
those protestors vanishing, or getting gunned down in those same
streets.

The US government _hates_ democracy. Democracy keeps giving the wrong
answer, so America has to depose the freshly-elected popular leader.

I mainly was moved to toss some gasoline on the fire because
of this statement. The fact of the matter is that Saddam was NOT
the "freshly-elected popular leader". It is meaningless to get
100% of the vote in a country where it is not only illegal NOT
to vote but physically hazardous to even CONSIDER voting for
any candidate but the incumbent.
Saddam was a dictator who was not above cheerfully
slaughtering thousands of his own people in order to maintain
his own power. He may have been "our boy", but that shows
more the questionable judgement of our government than any
sense of moral correctness in his reign or policies.
As for whether or not the government hates democracies...
how would we know? We don't have a true democracy here...it
is a representative Republic. If it WAS a true democracy, then
we would be bitching about President Gore instead of President
Bush.
However much it may suck, though, it sucks a LOT
less than many other forms of government, and, even with
the increase in totalitarianism that has afflicted us
in the past few years, it is still better than most
alternatives.

As democracy in a united Iraq would almost certainly give power to a
Shia majority, this would lead to rapprochment with Iraq and
everything that America is most scared of. America's best hope for a
permissible democracy in Iraq is to Balkanize it (in the original
sense of the term) into federal states where no one state can dominate
the others. And then try to mollify Turkey when they have a US-created
Kurdistan on the doorstep.

It would be nice to think that we can accurately
predict the future. However, there has been VERY little
luck in that in years past.
I agree, though, that an American Democracy in
Iraq is a pipe dream. For this form of government to work,
it has to have deep roots and a general agreement among
the citizenry. Neither of those exist in Iraq just now.
However, it IS possible that, like Japan, we still might
be able to leave Iraq a better place than we found it.
I REALLY hope this is the outcome...it would be a big
disappointment to most Americans if the self-serving
and greedy parts of society tried to create a puppet
state there.
I said, when the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq
started, that I thought we might well succeed where the
Russians failed because we were NOT going to try
to annex the country...

I am not a fan of
Bush nor am I defending him, but that article does not represent American
opinion, merely British.

I wouldn't say that article represents anyone's opinion. It's a
collection of isolated facts that doesn't look anything like the
"opinion" of either a "My President, right or wrong" Blairite, or a
"Make noise, not war" Spartist.

Nor is the Indie a British tabloid. No tits, no royals, no soapstars.
If anyone can see a single erroneous figure in that list, then please
correct it so that we may all learn.

Don't know. I have developed a deep suspicion of statistics
because I have seen VERY few cases where they have not been
carefully picked and groomed to support a particular agenda.
Also, while some of those items may be true...there is some
question in my mind about what the current administration
could have done to affect them. It is a difficult world,
even under the best of times, and these are not
the best of times.
Regards
Dave Mundt


--
Socialism: Eric, not Tony