oxbow3 said:
No, the people who lived under the Shah and were responsible for the resulting revolution are still in power.
Well sure, but there are also 'The People', including those who are not a ruling Mullah in his old age, who rejected their rule before and still do.
The 8 year war with Iraq completely ruined the country. There are still bomb gutted buildings that were never rebuilt even in the capitol.
No, the country was ruined by the Iran/Iraq war. The coup de grace was delivered by the combined Western and Arab world against Saddam's aggression. That we didn't depose him THEN was the fault of the liberal cant to our domestic polics.
The present President is a moderate but the ideological theocrats are in power a few more years. A year ago, they used massive police force to disrupt student protests in favor of democracy. Democracy cannot happen overnight, despite the wishes of this administration. The people must embrace the civil society and philosophy of democracy first. Otherwise, elections will accomplish little true progress. The young want democracy more than anything though. They are tired of fundamentalism.
Absolutely. But their not going to get it as long as the West follows a 'hands off' approach you propose here.
What is it with you and communism, I never talked about any of this.
Well I don't think you are necessarily a die hard communist, but you swing to the left, don't you?
There is nothing communist about morality, accountability, tolerance or peaceful resolution of conflict. Is this speech canned?
I am not particularly learned on the Cold War.
Then understand our support of the Shah of Iraq was a
sideshow to the mortal threat of the expansion of the Soviet Union. The prospect of this country falling to another form of tyranny, only this time in arms and oil negotions with the free worlds mortal enemy, the USSR, came to fruition with the rise of the Islamic Theocracy. Our intention from the beginning to support the Shah was always the lesser of two evils.
Your peception of US support of the Shah is utterly naive. Your proposing we (that being the free World, including Western Europe) could have waltzed in there and enforced Democracy, or retreated from the region and insured Democracy. That's entirely ignorant of the competing pressures from the Soviet Union
which indeed establish its role in influencing Iran after that lovely Liberal,
President Carter, completely surrendered our interests in the region.
Be careful of the right tho; this administration has acted more communist than the left ever dares.
The PATRIOT act lets federal agents go into your house without ever telling you, or anyone outside of homeland security ever knowing about it. There are scores of legal US residents who are still imprisoned since 9/11 without even being charged. I'm sure you don't care about stuff like this though.
Bingo! I knew I'd catch you repeating the protestors posters again without
really understanding how our government works.
CONGRESS PASSED THE PATRIOT ACT, WITH THE NEAR UNAMINOUS CONSENT OF BOTH THE REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS.
Honestly, I think your heart is in the right place, oxbow, but you have to stop presenting us these fallacies as your own insights. Everyone here knows enough of our constitutional process to see the error you made above was due to your passion to preach the inane rantings of the left without independent research which might refine your argument.
Is your philosophy is that we have to stay immoral because our enemies do, too?
I didn't say they were more ethical, just smart enough to see that the evidence didn't warrant going into Iraq.
Since you we're alive long enough to understand that every intelligence agency of the world was in doubt over this godlike view of yours a mere years ago, you should keep your day job and leave the fortune telling to the professional gypsies.
Im sure some of the mid-east nations could have given us a heads up on the insurgency factor too if we listened.
Islamic Mullahs to America: "We hate your way of life. We are funding schools to teach the young to destroy you."
World opinion means little. World support is all that matters, as the coalition of the willing shows. The coalition is either not strong enough or doesn't care enough to give more than 1/8 all together towards this cause.
Ahh... but you know that world support
against America in Iraq almost entirely dependent on Iran and Syria now, who both see the writing on the wall.
Are you such a defeatest to offer no alternative solution or coherent argument to illustrate that our withdrawal from Iraq would serve either their own people or our own security?
No. I'm saying that if we were looking for a national security risk, there are enough candidates that we did't have to make up stuff to invade Iraq. All the talk of him being so dangerous that it desn't matter if he had WMD's or supported terrorists or not is unfounded. Yet you still persist with no evidence to support this.
Note the PNAC argument made above, which you skipped over without regard or respect.
And how is this simplistic? Stop making excuses and answer the question.
You said:
I wonder if you would be saying such things 2 years ago. If you knew then that Iraq was no imminent threat to us, but that North Korea was fast developing nuclear weapons and Iran was the #1 supporter of terror in the world, would you still have supported invasion? I really hope not. Yet that is what our leaders did.
That presumes the Bush administration lied, people died. That is a talking point of the
far left of Democrats in America, including Cynthia Mckinney, Barbara Boxer, and Michael Moore.
I never suggested we pull out.
Then you're just here to criticize and not offer any intelligent alternative.
unoriginality does not equal being wrong. Answer the question.
Bush didn't lie, and you have no proof of it.
. It wasn't a Communist Dictatorship when we removed him, still a Democratic country.
