Civil War in Iraq?

[Wampire]

Francis Fukuyama, doyen of the neoconservative movement, predicted as much a couple of days ago. His piece is a stunning kick in the backside for the neocons in the present government and is well worth a read.

Thanks for that link. I enjoyed the article. It made some very good points.

However, I do feel it was based on the premise that the motives behind US world policing are genuine. And it seems to suggest that America does indeed enjoy a moral high ground that I would strongly argue against based on their own society, nevermind their foreign policy.

It is a scrambling for resources. All of the major economic powers in the world are already fighting a cold war based on trade to try and get the last remaining resources in the world. In my opinion, this is seen as more important by the US than any WMD 'threat'. I think this is evidenced in the fact that they put forward the idea that Saddam and Iraq posed a greater threat to the US than, say, North Korea who actually have nukes along with missiles capable of reaching as far East as Chicago if they contain only a half-payload. Why did they not go into North Korea first? Did North Korea not present more of a clear and present danger?

They wanted Iraqi resources and so they went in. I don't doubt that they do want to implement democracy around the world too, but Iraq was about resources, not WMD or democracy. If those were the most important reasons, they would have gone into North Korea first. But they are happy to settle the North Korean issue by diplomacy.

The difference in Iraq is that they had already created their evil figurehead in Saddam for the people to concentrate on, due to the earlier gulf war which involved the US 'freeing the Kuwaitis from an Iraqi invasion'. But why did Saddam invade Kuwait? As an evil despot hell bent on controlling the world and it's oil? Or did the fact that Kuwait at the time was in fact stealing Iraqi oil from under their soveriegn ground. Bush I had done the groundwork in creating popular opinion against Saddam. Saddam is no angel, I know. But all we ask is that these things are done for the right reason, and that the full truth of what is going on is made obvious.

Back to the article, it rightly states something I have been saying along, that democracy has to come from within, you cannot force it on the people - you have to create a movement of the people. Indeed the article references the Orange Revolution and other such so-far successful transitions.

 

[PigCapitalist]

wow glass house... consistently
but it always strikes me that when somebody picks up on spelling mistake they have truly lost the debate...

and before you say anything, i am not in a debate with you, just think it funny

oop busted - but I really meant that as advice for the boy, not anything to do with the argument. It looks very bad when you cannot spell the basic words in your own language.

 

[St_Cyrill_of_Tyrrenhaes]

Just for the record, I'm not sure it's really correct to describe Fukayama as 'doyen of the neocon movement'.

Agreed. Doyen should, of course, have been "darling." The guys at Columbia were the real doyens of the neocon ideology back in the thirties and forties.

 

[St_Cyrill_of_Tyrrenhaes]

Thanks for that link. I enjoyed the article. It made some very good points.

However, I do feel it was based on the premise that the motives behind US world policing are genuine. And it seems to suggest that America does indeed enjoy a moral high ground that I would strongly argue against based on their own society, nevermind their foreign policy.

However, as Fukuyama points out (and as others have been warning for years) the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to bestow an indisputable sense of legitimacy on the American model of democracy. I think it undoubtedly led some conservatives in the US to assume that their "model" (including their interpretation of economics and morals) was automatically superior to the Soviets. Since Soviet Russia was regarded as the greatest evil in the world at that time, I think this automatically convinced some people at the time that American democracy was therefore the most virtuous.

It is a scrambling for resources. All of the major economic powers in the world are already fighting a cold war based on trade to try and get the last remaining resources in the world. In my opinion, this is seen as more important by the US than any WMD 'threat'. I think this is evidenced in the fact that they put forward the idea that Saddam and Iraq posed a greater threat to the US than, say, North Korea who actually have nukes along with missiles capable of reaching as far East as Chicago if they contain only a half-payload. Why did they not go into North Korea first? Did North Korea not present more of a clear and present danger?

There's no doubt that economic worries definitely contributed to the invasion. However, it now looks as though Bush and friends genuinely believed that exporting democracy to Iraq really would light a fire under other governments in the region and help to quell the spread of Islamic extremism. In retrospect this was terribly naiive; as Fukuyama points out, holding a single fair election doth not a constitutional democracy make. Democracy has to be built slowly, sometimes over decades, sometimes over centuries, in order for it to really take hold. The neocons seem to have entirely ignored this point.

Back to the article, it rightly states something I have been saying along, that democracy has to come from within, you cannot force it on the people - you have to create a movement of the people. Indeed the article references the Orange Revolution and other such so-far successful transitions.

There's a more general idea here. Not only does democracy have to come from within, any political model must come from within if it is to survive. What worries the Americans so much is that if they don't get a foot in the door for democracy in many countries in the Middle East something far more sinister may come along and take hold instead.

 

[PigCapitalist]

Democracy is totally unsuited to a culture that is basically tribal. Democracy in Africa ensures the dominance of the larest tribe in the country over all the others for perpetuity. Iraq falls into this model. No Shiite will ever vote for a Sunni Arab, or Kurd. No Kurd will vote Arab etc. If most of the Arab world had democracy today the place would be run by Hamas/Taliban tomorrow. The neo-con movement fails to recoginze this also. This is just another chapter in US foreign policy hypocrisy, in a book that dates back to Monroe and before. Mind, they learned from the Brits, so they had a good teacher. Of course there is a civil war in Iraq - and it will get worse. But it is in no way in the US interest for this to happen. Anyone who thinks that the CIA or some 'Black ops' boys led a US sanctioned attack on the mosque this week needs to look at the situation more closely. Was it the US's fault it happened ?- yes, indirectly, because it sure would not have happened while Saddam was in power. But blaming the CIA for it directly is just dumb.

 

[Ciotóg]

Democracy is totally unsuited to a culture that is basically tribal. Democracy in Africa ensures the dominance of the larest tribe in the country over all the others for perpetuity. Iraq falls into this model. No Shiite will ever vote for a Sunni Arab, or Kurd. No Kurd will vote Arab etc. If most of the Arab world had democracy today the place would be run by Hamas/Taliban tomorrow. The neo-con movement fails to recoginze this also. This is just another chapter in US foreign policy hypocrisy, in a book that dates back to Monroe and before. Mind, they learned from the Brits, so they had a good teacher. Of course there is a civil war in Iraq - and it will get worse. But it is in no way in the US interest for this to happen. Anyone who thinks that the CIA or some 'Black ops' boys led a US sanctioned attack on the mosque this week needs to look at the situation more closely. Was it the US's fault it happened ?- yes, indirectly, because it sure would not have happened while Saddam was in power. But blaming the CIA for it directly is just dumb.

Yeah, imposing democracy is hardly a good idea. But wait, what about Northern Ireland? There seems to be some sort of democracy going on there, even though it comes from a foreign country. Representatives of both communities have been elected MPs like.

And no, I don't think there's any way that the 11/9 attacks could have been orchestrated by the US administration, and I also don't think that they would have been able to invade Afghanistan had it not happened. I'm all confused now. And the Russians are spreading freedom in Chechnya. What's all that about?

 

[PigCapitalist]

It's a fuckin mess

I disagree - a huge, impenetrable, inevitable cock-up of a fucking mess would be closer to the truth.

 

[cantankerous bastard]

Ha ha. You would say that, considering one of your best friends has joined the marines.

What's the story there? Does he have american parents or what? Or is he just that yee-haw?

He wants to be a jet pilot, they have the best planes, that simple really.

But he has told me about the differences between the two and how much easier it is to get into the army. They do a lot less training and are generally the grunts.