October 26, 2009
Iran Isn't The Problem, Stupid
by Evert Cilliers
Problems come in two types: real and BS. Your kid snorting cocaine, that's a real problem. Unless she's living in your house, having a mother-in-law is not a real problem: it's a BS problem.
BS problems can infect entire nations, because they roam wider than herpes. Take illegal immigration. Perfectly natural: we've got work for people, Mexicans come over to do it, Americans pay them for it: no problem. However, some Americans don't like those Mexicans and some politicians want the votes of those Americans, so they make illegal immigration a BS problem. You want a real problem? One out of four kids don't finish high school. Solving that would be change I can believe in.
Internationally, real and BS problems contend like Tokyo and Godzilla, too. Real: Americans die every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Ask any politician this Tuesday, and they'll give you a reason. Ask them next Tuesday, you'll get a different reason. Whatever: the American penchant for sticking our nose in other people's business is a hellhole of hubris that makes a Greek tragedy look like a sitcom. Removing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan so they don't die there like lab rats would be a change I can believe in, Mr. Babyface Barack.
Now for some BS: Iran. The problem? Iran is supposedly thinking of making supposed nuclear bombs. It's no problem that America, Russia, Britain, France, Israel, India, China and Pakistan actually HAVE the bomb, it's only a problem that Iran MAY get it. Talk about the pot calling the kettle a 100% saturated black.
What would be the problem if Iran had the bomb? Israel would squeal like an insurance company faced with a major surgery claim. Big deal. Israel actually has from 200 to 400 nuclear bombs, but we don't seem to mind, even given their record of bombing everyone around them. Iran has a record of not bombing anyone around them for thousands of years, except once when Saddam Hussein attacked them. Israel having the bomb is way scarier than Iran getting it.
But isn't Iran a dangerous theocracy that funds the terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah? Depends on your point of view. In the case of Hezbollah, Iran is funding their Shia buddies in Lebanon where the Shias have always been treated like second-class citizens, and Hezbollah is the mainstay of charities and education for the Lebanese Shias.
In the case of Hamas, it's basically a game of tit for tat. The US supplies Israel with weaponry and money to the tune of $3 billion a year, and Iran supplies Hamas with funds. Israel uses our money and weapons to bomb the Palestinians, and Hamas uses funding from Iran to fight back. What's the difference? The US and Iran are doing exactly the same thing. Given the fact that Israel kills from four to ten Palestinians for every one Israeli the Palestinians kill, the US is helping Israel do a four to ten times better military job than Iran does for Hamas -- and a moral job worse than Iran by four to ten times.
Why might Iran WANT the bomb? Well, some damn foreigner invaded Afghanistan and Iraq on either side of Iran, killing and maiming people for nine years now. You'd have to be Amish not to look into a deterrent.
Iran isn't the problem, stupid. We are. Because like illegal immigration and your mother-in-law, we make Iran our BS problem. Focusing on real problems, now that would be a change I can believe in, Babyface Barack.
Posted by Evert Cilliers at 09:00 AM | Permalink
Comments
Yes, Iran is a BS problem. The point that Mr Cilliers misses is that this BS problem is being promoted by people who know it is a BS problem. My assumption is that it is part of a great excuse for curtailing civil rights, and maintaining government secrecy. With Bush, it was easy to see that this was the case. What I don't understand is why Obama is going along with Bush's hoax.
Posted by: Josh Mitteldorf | Oct 26, 2009 10:37:23 AM
Well Israel might be a bully but they are our buddies on the playground. Poor little Iran wants to have the same toys but we prefer the status quo. If they had the same toys as us we wouldn't be able to push them off the swings whenever we wanted a go. They might start to look cool to the other kids we regularly beat up for lunch money which could result in an alternative to our status on the playground. It was bad enough when China started wearing shoes to school and who can forget when North Korea recently brought a Go-Bot to show and tell.
Posted by: Nathan | Oct 26, 2009 11:18:23 AM
"The point that Mr Cilliers misses ..."
Really? I took the immigration example as implicitly illustrating why BS issues get pushed.
Posted by: Anderson | Oct 26, 2009 11:35:59 AM
Bravo!
Posted by: Vesuvium | Oct 26, 2009 11:37:46 AM
I'm not an American, but I imagine having basically open borders would not be a BS problem for any country. I've heard Lou Dobbs, and heard people call him a racist, but I can't see that he doesn't have a legitimate concern, even if he is an ass.
Posted by: nonamerican | Oct 26, 2009 11:54:08 AM
Amen, Everett. And as far as why Obama seems to have cleanly grabbed the baton from the Bush/Cheney admin? Meet the new boss, said P. Townsend. Same as the old boss. It was true 35 years ago and it's true today.
Posted by: CO | Oct 26, 2009 12:00:12 PM
The enemy has propaganda, we have news. It took me ages to figure out that every country uses this viewpoint. Which means to them, our propaganda is BS. And yup, looked at rationally, it is.
Posted by: Ivor Tymchak | Oct 26, 2009 12:33:25 PM
The problem from those with a reductionist U.S. perspective,could be crudely stated as,"what is our oil doing under their sand"...
Posted by: Bob | Oct 26, 2009 3:22:00 PM
I don't really see why trying to prevent any country, not already in possession of nuclear warheads, from possessing them is a BS problem. The more countries humanity (the UN) allows to possess these types of weapons, the more likely opposing country are going to be to use them to control each other. Consequentially, the more likely one of those countries will be to use one.
Personally, I'd rather a couple assholes use them as a stiff arm, than have a whole world full of assholes blow up the earth.
Posted by: Robert | Oct 26, 2009 3:27:34 PM
http://www.iwallerstein.com/iran-again-is-everyone-bluffing/
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 26, 2009 4:56:48 PM
This snarky article comes across as pretty stupid to me. Iran with a nuclear bomb is a nightmare scenario. The point is is that they might probably use it.
I don't know if you are trying to be ironic (can't tell), but yikes your attitude sucks.
Real Men promote nuclear non-proliferation, jerk.
Posted by: odysseus14 | Oct 26, 2009 4:58:41 PM
Robert:
In the case of Iran, it might actually be a good thing for them to have the bomb, for a number of reasons:
1) to stop the US from attacking them.
2) to stop Israel from attacking them.
3) to have a general deterrent against Israel's aggression in the Middle East.
4) to make Israel think about making a deal with Hamas instead of bombing them. Israel could do with a big scary neighbor to stop them from throwing their weight around.
5) to stop the US from throwing their weight around in the Middle East.
Evert
P.S. Nathan, that was a really funny comment. Thanks. Made my day.
Posted by: Evert Cilliers | Oct 26, 2009 5:04:05 PM
The point is is that they might probably use it.
The point is that so far only one nation has demonstrated that it will use "it", on civilians no less, which means that that nation is in no position to pretend it gets to determine who is and who isn't responsible enough to have "it."
Posted by: giotto | Oct 26, 2009 5:43:13 PM
"Personally, I'd rather a couple assholes use them as a stiff arm, than have a whole world full of assholes blow up the earth."
Of course, I'd assume that the fact that the couple of assholes that do have the bomb are 'on your side' is not at all relevant to your position.
Posted by: Pepito | Oct 26, 2009 6:09:50 PM
"The point is that so far only one nation has demonstrated that it will use "it", on civilians no less, which means that that nation is in no position to pretend it gets to determine who is and who isn't responsible enough to have "it."
Giotto gets it. I think most 3qd commentators don't.
Posted by: Pepito | Oct 26, 2009 6:11:13 PM
Lou Dobbs: he always sees the problem but never offers a solution.
The Bomb: Put aside Iran (their president said he would destroy Israel): there are some 5 nations that also are now seeking the nuke bomb, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Venezuela--but not to worry.
illegals: why not hire them at sub minimum wages and let legal citizens go without work? No problem
Posted by: fred lapides | Oct 26, 2009 6:49:27 PM
@evert There is also the very real prospect of a regional arms race. Although that arms race started in Dimona (something that hardly gets mentioned in the US), I cannot imagine that the final tally of nuclear states in this region would sit at two for long...
Posted by: Kris Kotarski | Oct 26, 2009 6:57:00 PM
What options do the U.S. (and by default Israel) have anyway??
They really can't afford military action (even of the drone bombing nature that they are using in Pakistan) as that would be all the provocation that Iran would need to *overtly* intervene in both Iraq and Afghanistan; Iran is already intervening in both theaters of war covertly.
Tougher sanctions are unlikely, as China and Russia would vote them down. (please see the Wallerstein article I linked to above).
At the moment, the only option seems the oddly "altruistic" one of actually offering to enrich the uranium in a "third-party" nation (such as Sweden) and then selling that to the Iranians as this would be the only guarantee that it could be only used for non-military, domestic purposes.
Surprise, surprise, the Iranians don't really like the idea.
The fact of the matter is America has far, far less sway over Middle Eastern (and international) affairs that the U.S itself and far too many other naive people think that it does.
Imperial overstretch has led to Imperial collapse.
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 26, 2009 8:49:20 PM
Has the leader of Israel ever denied Iran's right to exist?
Ever threatened to obliterate an entire nation?
Give me a break. If nuclear proliferation isn't a real problem, I don't know what is.
I agree with poster above - hard to tell if this was meant to be ironic...
Posted by: Michael J | Oct 26, 2009 9:35:31 PM
How delightful to see all you lefties defend the misanthropic brutalist theocrats that you call Iran, as if that illegitimate regime is the nation. Really the idiocy of it is mind boggling. Hmmm, let's see, the world has no reason to worry about a bunch of Jew hating fanatics getting their hands on the worlds most dangerous weapons, eh? Funny too that you should all defend Imperial Japan's right to exist in its form circa 1945 - what a bunch of nice guys they were, surely we should have negotiated a peace with them, or maybe just reasoned with them after they conquered Asia and bombed Pearl Harbor. Oh right, goes right along with your longing for the Taliban in Afghanistan and your wistful mourning for Saddam. Ah yes, the world would be so much better if the U.S. would just stick its head in the sand and leave these likes alone. Oh well, at least I guess you guys are consistent. Is there no sense in this forum at all? No nation has spilled as much blood or spent as much treasure fighting to liberate people from oppression. No other nation has been so magnanimous in victory. What have your idols on the left done except purge, silence, and destroy? At best they cower, whine, carp or snark (which you all seem to have down to an art form) as the U.S. takes on the dirty, difficult, and thankless work of making the world a better place. It ain't always been pretty, and of course there have been wrongs and misdeeds, but anyone that is not deluded, blinded by fury, or just plain stupid can understand that you all are on the side of a bunch of dirty, rotten, evil m.f.ers, and against the only reasonably moral nation of any consequence the world has ever seen.
Posted by: DR | Oct 26, 2009 11:26:46 PM
DR, thank you for re-orienting me to reality. Every once in a while I delusionally think that we have a chance as a species to evolve past the short-sighted idiocy that will almost certainly destroy us, but then someone like you comes along and comfortably assures me that we are most certainly doomed to an ugly, pitiable end, fractionalized, factionalized, marginalized, and finally destroyed. Appreciate the reality check.
Posted by: russell | Oct 27, 2009 3:32:39 AM
DR,
Are you one those narcissistic and axiologically "high camp" Rightist neo-cons who answer every criticism of the American military intervention with the useful "self-help" advice.
"Ohhh, don't be so "self-loathing"".
Jurgen Habermas is an example of an Enlightenment thinker who also held high hopes for America. Habermas hoped that the Enlightenment ideals that were embodied, at least conceptually if not in reality, in liberal-pluralism would spread globally as a result of American super-powerism.
It is precisely for these reasons that he opposed and remains a trenchant critic of the Iraq war.
For one thing, the whole Christ-damned thing was *illegal*. Enlightenment universalism depends upon juridico-legal regulation and implementation.
Minor irritants like International Law, of course meant very little to the self-righteous neo-cons who were equally unconcerned about bloodshed nor with the outright theft of another nation's natural resourses: ie oil.
Please see Habermas' "The Divided West"
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 27, 2009 3:52:43 AM
that's right! the way approach international politics is to assume that everything is symmetric, and that everybody should be treated in the same way. If France has the bomb, how can we object to Iran getting it?!
Posted by: Luis Enrique | Oct 27, 2009 5:17:10 AM
3Quarks was on my iGoogle homepage. Not anymore (to be read in your best Inspector Clouseau impersonation). I dig your science stuff, your political analysis--well, not so much. I won't waste time explaining how your points veer far from the geo-political reality, because either this was an attempt at irony, or you're just badly misinformed.
Posted by: dannyboy | Oct 27, 2009 6:56:06 AM
dannyboy - please, inform us of the geo-political reality. 3Quarks is on my igoogle homepage precisely because it helps me come into contact with various 'quality' views. I'm not employed anywhere near politics and the political analysis read ok to me - I'd REALLY like to know where it was so badly misinformed. thanks
Posted by: James | Oct 27, 2009 1:18:03 PM
Dear Lefties
A greeting
If you don't like the scene of carnage in Iraq & Afghanistan, If you are apprehended by boxes wrapped in flags, please protest at the white house till mister babyface (i like that name) Obama pull them out
but for one condition.....
when Afghanistan sink again in anarchy, the country that is struggling to recover from 30 years of proxy-civil war
when sectarial violence rip Iraq apart again only when the country barely showing some internal momentum toward stability
when all the sacrifices of people of Afghanistan, Iraq & US troops are petrayed & Taliban off-shoots arise victorious every where
when fundamentalists thoughout Islamic communities acquire a cold booty by premature withdrawal & abandoning missions
when al-quaeda struck again next your doors
when all your political idealism materialize, don't wheen for dismaying consequences........
"Disappointed Arabic Reader of 3quarks-a-day"
Posted by: AardvarkEF111B | Oct 27, 2009 5:16:24 PM
My apologies to Evert Cilliers, but I'm afraid that I also agree that this article was less than entirely well-expressed. And a little lacking in geo-political analysis.
The following is a petition which appeared on the PDA website. (Btw if you agree with the petition you can go to the website and sign it)
(http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/30533.html)
which I think puts things rather better.
We, the undersigned peace and justice leaders, believe that the American military interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are deepening quagmires that threaten a Long War without end.
At the current rate of American deaths in Afghanistan, over 1,000 additional American soldiers will be killed in the next two years of “hard fighting” predicted by the Pentagon as the next phase of a ten year occupation. Another $130 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq now is being rushed through a sleeping Congress. An escalation of even more troops is pending.
Now is the time for an exit strategy to end these wars. The government of warlords, drug lords, and landlords we prop up in Kabul is losing more legitimacy by the day. A majority of Americans – including 70 percent from the majority party – now consider Afghanistan a mistake. Leading national security experts even deny that it’s a necessary war.
If we do not decide to disengage at once, our dreams of domestic reform will be squandered by years of war budgets. Our dreams of clean energy will be buried in wars over oil and pipelines. The global good will extended to our new President will be jeopardized.
We understand how difficult it is to reverse a mistaken course. But that is the leadership we need, not one that continually escalates in order not to lose. We have been there.
- Our government should adopt an exit strategy from Afghanistan based on all-party talks, regional diplomacy, unconditional humanitarian aid, and timelines for the near-term withdrawal of American and NATO combat troops.
- The aerial bombardments of Afghan and Pakistan villages, like burning down haystacks to find terrorist needles, should end.
- Military spending should be reversed in Afghanistan to focus on food, medicine, shelter, the socio-economic needs of the poor, and the dignity of women and children.
- President Obama should keep his pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq by 2011, and prevent American interference in the forthcoming Iraqi elections.
- The President should oppose any Israeli attack on Iran, which will only inflame the regional and global conflict.
Much as we were inspired by Barack Obama’s election, we will not be taken for granted by the President and the Congressional majority. The historic victories in 2006 and 2008 were fueled by popular enthusiasm and unprecedented voter turnouts that cannot be reignited by e-mail solicitations. A growing disenchantment with a costly quagmire will threaten all the hopes of 2008. Everything is related now: we cannot afford national health care, housing, and clean energy while spending billions on quagmires across several continents.
We are prepared to create a storm of protest in Congressional districts and close Senate races. We will form alliances with all those whose hope for health, energy and economic reform are diminished by these wars. We will defend dissent in the armed forces and protect our children from the snares of military recruiters. We will reach out to strengthen a global peace movement, especially in NATO countries.
History shows that terrorist threats can come from German cities, African villages, and even homegrown American cells, not simply the caves of Pakistan.
Our security needs cannot be served by provoking the growing hatred of America caused by repeated invasions of foreign lands. We are human beings who refuse to be defined in the world as mindless military drones and Predators.
TOM HAYDEN
ARIEL DORFMAN, Author, Duke University
RABBI STEVEN B. JACOBS, Progressive Faith Foundation
REV. GEORGE REGAS, pastor emeritus, All-Saints Episcopal Church
REV. ED BACON, Pastor, All-Saints Episcopal Church
REV. PETER LAARMAN, Progressive Christians United
DR. NAZIR KHAJA, President, Islamic Information Service
REV. JOHN B. COBB, Claremont Theology School
REV. GEORGE HUNSINGER, Princeton Theology Seminary
REV. JAMES CONN, Director, New Ministries, United Methodist Church
RABBI HAIM DOV BELIAK, Hamifgash
REV. JANET EOLLERY MCKEITHEN, Westside Interfaith Coalition
STEPHEN ROHDE, president, Inter-faith Communities for Peace and Justice, Los Angeles
SENATOR JOHN BURTON, chairman, California Democratic Party
KAREN BERNAL, chair, Progressive Caucus, California Democratic Party
DANIEL ELLSBERG
SUSIE SHANNON, Executive Board Member, California Democratic Party
RAY MCGOVERN, CIA [ret.]
PAUL HAGGIS, film director
SONALI KOHATKAR, Co-director, Afghan Women's Mission
MICHAEL RATNER, President, Center for Constitutional Rights
JODIE EVANS, co-founder, CODE PINK
CODE PINK
LESLIE CAGAN, co-founder, United for Peace and Justice
RUSTI EISENBERG, United for Peace and Justice
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE [UFPJ]
KEVIN MARTIN, PEACE ACTION, Washington
MICHAEL MCPHEARSON, Veterans for Peace
ROBERT NAIMAN, policy director, JUST FOREIGN POLICY
STAUGHTON LYND, historian
VAN GOSSE, co-founder, Historians Against the War
MARC BECKER, co-chair, Historians Against the War
MICHAEL ALBERT, Znet
BILL FLETCHER, Jr., executive director, Black Commentator, co-founder Progressives for Obama
CARL DAVIDSON, webmaster, PROGRESSIVES FOR OBAMA
RICHARD FALK, professor, Princeton University, United Nations rapporteur
LEONARD WEINGLASS, human rights attorney
MATTHEW EVANGELISTA, chair, Department of Government, Cornell University
STANLEY ARONOWITZ, graduate center, City University of New York
JOE FEAGAN, professor, Texas A&M University
ROBERT GREENWALD, Brave New Films
GAEL MURPHY, Code Pink, Washington
TIM CARPENTER, Progressive Democrats of America [PDA]
NORMAN BIRNBAUM
DAVID FENTON
LEONARD WEINGLASS, human rights attorney
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 27, 2009 7:44:29 PM
Evert, aside from the superficial attractiveness of your glib, flippant, curse-word-loaded, rap-inspired prose style, your basic mistake is to assume the possibility of a World of Switzerlands, in which every country is nice, neutral and peaceable and doesn't interfere with any other country. In such a world everyone would be happy and there would indeed be no reason for a country to grossly intefere with another country or invade it. And there would be no call for a super-power World Policeman, the role the US has long tried to play. It is easy to criticize the policies of the US, your own country, from that utopian ivory tower position, but since your World of Switzerlands doesn't quite yet exist, you really have to ask yourself whether the US should have just shrugged its shoulders after 9/11 and not sought to attack the major El Qaida - Taliban base in Afghanistan?
Posted by: aguy109 | Oct 28, 2009 3:07:24 AM
aguy109,
How long does it take Bushite neo-con militarists like you to realize a lesson that should have been drummed into you from kindergarten onwards.
Let me put it simply:
WAR DOES NOT WORK. War does no bloody good. It only makes things much, much worse. The only peace that Bush ever brought to the world was in the desolate Thirty Years War landscapes that he created.
If the U.S. had not invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and instead sought creative solutions to those problems; if that genius of International diplomacy Bush the Mealy Mouthed had not put Iran in his Manichean and Tolkienesque "axis of evil", then Iran would feel *less* existential threat and would feel less pressure to pursue nuclear weaponry.
In other words, Bush II's wars have simply ignited further conflict (both potential and real) and have resolved absolutely NONE.
This "police-men" talk that you gun-toting, self-righteous
neo-cons always love to stroke yourselves with might make you feel macho, but it's real human beings - unlike the robot drones that you are - who have to suffer and die.
What I suggest, if you really want to play a little game of cops and crims, is that you stay at home, get yourself a nice little X-Box and thereby isolate and minimize the harm that you do to yourself and others.
Meanwhile real statesmen and women can then do the actual and difficult work of creatively solving geo-political problems.
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 28, 2009 7:07:53 AM
aguy 109,
I shall attempt to answer all your questions and concerns next month in a piece called "There are seven big bad countries in the world -- is America the worst of them?"
Hold your breath; I suspect you will then REALLY have a few comments, and am looking forward to them.
Until then, thank you for "the superficial attractiveness of your glib, flippant, curse-word-loaded, rap-inspired prose style." I've been working very hard to achieve it. I don't know about "rap-inspired" though; I detest rap, it sounds to me like a poor man's Ogden Nash. I'm trying more for Hunter Thompson gonzo-inspired, with a touch of Wallace Stevens thrown in for the ivory tower people.
Evert
Posted by: Evert Cilliers | Oct 28, 2009 11:43:34 AM
Milton,
Try not to foam at the mouth, it'll look bad in your wedding photos.
I was not talking about Iraq but about the fighting in Afghanistan, which is still supported by troops from a range of countries including Britain, Holland, Germany, Poland and Romania. The Taliban/Al Qaida regime there was truly horrendous and if you truly think that the West could have just stood by after they perpetrated 9/11, then I think you're a little out of touch with reality.
Are you right to imply that the US displays strong predatory characteristics? I think you are right: the USA and its allies wants energy, resources, political influence and cultural dominance, but the same could be said of the Soviet Union and ,today, of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement. If one has to choose sides, then the choice is not between the good and the bad, but between the not good and the much worse.
WAR DOES NOT WORK, you say, and interventionism can't solve geopolitical problems. Well, the reconstruction of Germany and the consolidation of post WW2 Europe under NATO worked. Japan was reconstructed as a succesful democracy. South Korea was saved from a terrible, genocidal regime and has become a leading modern nation. The Balkan wars were ended by bombing the Serbs. Like the man said, war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means. But you are right about it being nasty.
btw I'm no good at video games.
Posted by: aguy109 | Oct 28, 2009 3:19:09 PM
Finally Carlos, I would ask that you please learn to treat people who hold political views which are other than your own with at least a modicum of respect.
Hmm. Good point actually, maybe I should… oh wait:
…you gun-toting, self-righteous
neo-cons always love to stroke yourselves with might make you feel macho,
Scratch a Marxist…
but it's real human beings - unlike the robot drones that you are - who have to suffer and die.
Check. But you'd be fine with it if they claimed it was in the service of a dialectical process of human historical evolution and transformation, right?
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 28, 2009 5:03:31 PM
Carlos,
Before you turn me into a strawman of your own imagination, please do some research on the Australian Labor Party and then get make to me.
Otherwise you are simply wasting valuable cyberspace - which other people are forced to read - on your petty resentments and on your devotion to petty squabbling.
(I noticed from the other thread that you are a peculiarly sensitive Catholic)
No doubt we cross swords again - me the leftist, you the Tory - but let's make sure it's over issues of substance.
Ihr Kamerad, Ihr Feind,
JM XIV
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 28, 2009 6:10:38 PM
aguy 109,
My apologies for "foaming at the mouth". But yes these issues do make me rather angry.
Tragically, it is impossible to neatly separate the theaters of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and then in turn Iran. The U.SA under Bush II has ignited the entire region.
In more substantive reply to your post please see my post of October 27, where I posted a Letter and petition from the PDA which details in "broad brush-strokes" what I (and others) think would be a far more constructive and peaceful exit-strategy from a series of wars which were ill-conceived and ill-conducted.
Posted by: John Milton XIV | Oct 28, 2009 6:24:58 PM
aguy109:
Germany was a modern, vibrant nation state with a very strong economy with a people that was already familiar with democratic processes before WW2. So was Japan.
South Korea was saved from one dictator, except then the USA supported their own (slightly less brutal) versions. The USA had nothing to do with the democratization of that nation. They kept the communists out, which was a good thing to do, but don't extend that into a 'we created democracy and prosperity' story.
Oh yes, war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means. But that doesn't mean it's always the right choice at the right time and it certainly doesn't mean that it can achieve all political goals. Especially in the long run.
Posted by: Jazz | Oct 29, 2009 1:11:47 AM
Can this "Let It Happen On Purpose" believer suggest to this crowd that anyone using 9.11 as an excuse for maintaining the climate-cooking pursuit of getting "our oil out from under their sand" is living in a bit of a fictionologist's nightmare?
Posted by: Dave | Oct 31, 2009 2:04:32 AM
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