NEWS: Iraq collapsing into civil war

Originally posted by Benevolent HereticWE ran their country into the ground! WE toppled a stable government and then proceeded to wreak death and destruction across the land. We cannot just abandon them after we have come in by force and made a complete mess of their country.

Originally posted by OttsHmmmm, let's see... "First, we invade your country and ruin your infrastructures, in the course of which tens of thousands of Iraqis will die, and then we torture some of your countrymen at Abu Ghraib, and oh, by the way, you better meet our expectations of your country, because if you don't we'll just take away the formidable boon that is our presence".

I never knew the Saddam regime was so rosy and wonderful. In fact, I'm amazed to hear it was such a wonderful country before the invasion/liberation etc. Considering this I might have considered moving over there myself.

Mass grave unearthed in Iraq city
Hundreds found in Iraq mass grave
Iraqis trained to excavate graves
Iraqis pledge to uncover graves
Mass grave found in northern Iraq

etc...

Oh, sorry. There was me thinking it was a blissful utopia before the invasion/liberation etc. If it was my country I'd put my petty differences aside and put some bloody hard graft into improving it for my kids.

The Iraqi's shown on telly seem to want everything on a plate. Using the whole "You invaded us, you owe us" cocky response to the military intervention.

Personnally, if it's considered an entire waste of time by the population of Iraq, why not give Saddam his position of power back and $stupid amount of dollars to finance his benevolent regime? Call me cynical, but I doubt that idea would be encouraged by Iraqis.

/rant.

There's another consequence of this, and that will be the fueling of hatred against the West -- greater hatred than has been in the past. A few opportunists are trying to stem an upcoming civil war by accusing the US of backing acts of terrorism in Iraq. This tactic will work with some because of the history of the US coming in and supporting dictators and monarchs as long as these rulers served the need of the then-current administration.

Foreign troops aren't going to stem this, and there is no strong leader who can basically knock heads together until a peace is achieved.

This will also spill over into other Suni/Shiite conflicts in the whole Middle East.

Ignoring The Lessons Of History

Originally posted by grover
What people, especially the neo-cons and their apoligists keep forgeting is that history makes the people what they are...you can no more impose democracy on a people that have never had it, than you can make long cultivated hatreds go away overnight.

Indeed. The wastelands of the former Nazi empire in Western Europe, the smoldering ruins of the Japanese empire in Asia and the plight of an Eastern Europe forced to live without the glorious benefits of Soviet rule stand in mute testimony to the evils of U.S. interventionism.

If only we could somehow learn from history instead of repeating it.

Originally posted by Majic
Ignoring The Lessons Of History

Originally posted by grover
What people, especially the neo-cons and their apoligists keep forgeting is that history makes the people what they are...you can no more impose democracy on a people that have never had it, than you can make long cultivated hatreds go away overnight.

Indeed. The wastelands of the former Nazi empire in Western Europe, the smoldering ruins of the Japanese empire in Asia and the plight of an Eastern Europe forced to live without the glorious benefits of Soviet rule stand in mute testimony to the evils of U.S. interventionism.

If only we could somehow learn from history instead of repeating it.

I never said American intervention is evil. Go back and read what I wrote as opposed to reading into what you want.

I saw this coming, and was one of the people warning that there might be something like this in the future.

But I wish to God I had been wrong. All this bodes incredibly bad for the people of Iraq, and in fact the whole region.

Good work, George W. Bush, I hope you dream of the rivers and rivers of blood you have unleashed on your fellow humans.

Originally posted by MacDonagh
Well done Bush. Your shocking handling of Iraq is only
matched by your handling of New Orleans.

Riiiiiiiiiight. The bigotted and corrupt mayor of New Orleans
is faultless. The incompetent Gov. of Louisiana is faultless.
The idiots who stayed in the city when the could have and
should have left are faultless. The morons who built the levy
to withstand only a cat 3 hurricane were faultless (it failed
at cat 3 so it didn't even make it that far). The idiots who
built the city in a bowl BELOW SEA LEVEL in a part of the
country known for hurricanes were faultless.

The previous poster was correct. Iraq has been handed a
second chance. A 'free ticket'. What they do with it will be
to their own credit, or to their own demise. It's on them.

MARG - civil war isn't inevitable. There isn't one now and
only time will tell if one ever happens. Every time the left sees
smoke over there they scream 'civil war ... Bush was wrong' ...
because they WANT Bush to be wrong.





[edit on 2/24/2006 by FlyersFan]

Reading What Is Written

Originally posted by grover
I never said American intervention is evil. Go back and read what I wrote as opposed to reading into what you want.

Looks like you missed my point.

May I suggest following your own advice?

Originally posted by Majic
Looks like you missed my point.

Why don't you make your point, Majic, because I don't get it drenched in all the sarcasm. Sorry, I'm not that bright.

Making The World Safe For... Anyone? Anyone?

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
Why don't you make your point, Majic, because I don't get it drenched in all the sarcasm. Sorry, I'm not that bright.

The point is that history actually demonstrates the polar opposite, as the examples were provided to illustrate.

A simpler and perhaps less rhetorically-charged way of putting it is that democracy, where it exists, originally had to come from somewhere.

I'm encouraging those who think democracy is impossible in Iraq to take an honest look at the history of other “impossible” democracies.

The argument grover makes ignores the fact that a significant percentage -- if not the majority -- of the democracies in existence today were “imposed” on the people who benefit from them in precisely the same way it is being “imposed” on the people of Iraq. And typically, with orders of magnitude more bloodshed and grief involved.

Examine the background and origins of any modern democracy, and the challenge is finding examples where this principle does not apply.

Concluding that democracy is always a self-imposed, grass-roots affair actually requires ignoring a tremendous amount of history.

Foundation And Empire

Even here in the United States, where representative democracy is enshrined as a sacred gift from God (perhaps God imposed democracy on us), history shows that our own revolution more closely followed the pattern of a proxy war between European imperial powers.

Could American revolutionaries truly have defeated England on their own? Did a majority of colonists actually support the revolution? The honest answers to these questions say a great deal about how democracy actually comes about.

Obviously, opinions vary regarding whether imposing democracy is a good thing or not. Many people consider the examples I cited to be evidence of the evils of U.S. imperialism.

The fact that U.S. imperialism has never been the only brand on the market, but has throughout its existence always been in competition with other forms of imperialism (the Soviet Union imposed a lot of democracy in its day, as well) somehow gets conveniently ignored in these sorts of discussions as a matter of course, which renders them tedious.

But my point remains that history itself does not support grover's assertion, although I suppose some can continue to hold out hope that it eventually will.






P.S. Historically speaking, has civil war always led to the death of democracy? Did it lead to such an end in the United States? Again, it seems many of the arguments I'm seeing in this thread require a great deal of forgetfulness.

Majic,

The issuance of democracy was not the imperative of the American Government intiality, but the defence of thier own. American democracy is a political conception of varient philosophies reasoning thier principles against others; in this system philosophy is prior to democracy, and this philosophy is influenced by social, cultural and economic variables. It was the self-preservation of this political conception which serves as an illusion of choice and participation of American citizenry that was under attack according to it's elected leaders and not the implementation of democracy in Iraq.

The argument grover makes ignores the fact that a significant percentage -- if not the majority -- of the democracies in existence today were “imposed” on the people who benefit from them in precisely the same way it is being “imposed” on the people of Iraq. And typically, with orders of magnitude more bloodshed and grief involved.

And you ignore Grovers issuance of cultural, political, religious, and social issues that have left that region of the world in constant rift. In fact you nay respond to that but instead commit to a poor justification of this war by showing that past historicity proves democracy is an externaly imposed political conception that always has, in the least, marginal violence and bloodshed to it's ultimate end.

Democracy entails diplomatic discourse between varient parties in hopes of concluding a collective approach to a infinitude of issues. What we see in American democracy was discourse between two similiar parties holding the illusion of dissimilarities debating irelevent facts to justify a war upon a country to defend this democracy which somehow was in physical danger, as were the liberties and freedoms of it's participants. The American people were somehow led to believe that they could very well lose these by a rouge group of arbritrary terrorists which an ambigious goal.

I'm encouraging those who think democracy is impossible in Iraq to take an honest look at the history of other “impossible” democracies.

I'm not sure that Grover implied that it was impossible, instead the means were irrational and wholly undemocratic. We live in a century where warfare should not be the means to bring upon democracies nor solve issues that can be through ongoing discourse between two agitated parties; we have a forum of dialouge for such issues: the United Nations, a collective of the world community, a collective which was disregarded for U.S self-interest.

This historicity of externaly implemented democracies should serve to further actualize the need for better means of implementation. Your own deduction fails to realize that many democracies have occured through passive means, and not soley aggresive violent ones.

I don't consider this civil war to actualy be the intent of the Iraqi people, but that of the American think tanks responsible for the creation of this war, and of those, the signatories of the PNAC who dreamed up a war in Iraq years before it's actualization. The steady rift between the variences in Iraq insures that American forces are constantly in need to further insure metastabilities. The Middle East is a strategic gold mine and the logistic precursor for further wars in that region of the world.

Luxifero

[edit on 24-2-2006 by Luxifero]

Ya know it really annoys me when I try to connect the historical dots and put current events into a context that should be easily understood and people read all sorts of things into it. Just before Tenniman square Deng was asked about democracy in China and, self serving or not, he spoke a truth that because China has never had a tradition of democracy, to suddenly allow (or impose) it without preparation, would tear China apart, and would in the long run be an irresponsible act. Like I said whether it was self serving or not it was a truth. I am all for democracy, but to say that is is usually imposed is laughable...it has to be cultivated even in the case of occupied Japan and Germany the groundwork was carefully laid for it to take shape, something that has not happened in Iraq because this war's architects believed their own propaganda. As for most democracies having been imposed, the facts simply don't hold up...western Europe had a long tradition of elections and some democratic forms ranging from the polis of ancient Greece to the senate of Rome, to the elections of tribal lords (the longest standing parliment is in Iceland, over 1,000 years now) to the election of the holy roman emperors to that of the pope. Granted the franchise was extremely limited to electors or cardinals, but the tradition was there. From the times of Sumeria to the late Ottomans, the rulers were divinely ordained in a way that never took root in the west and to impose democracy in the face of such a tradition without long and careful cultivation is only an invititation for disaster. All the colonies that were freed in the 50's and 60's that were fitted with some form of democratic institution by their former rulers went and in some caases still are going through a living hell trying to adjust. Even in countries that have a long standing tradition its fragile...all it takes to bring it down is one party or group that is committed to the idea of one party rule and will stop at nothing to get it. The fanatics that have taken over the republican party are such a group but people are terrified of actually facing the fact. Yes Iraq can have a democracy, a real functioning democracy but it won't happen in three years, try thirty or more.

We have come full circle in regards to unrest since the fall of Saddam in 2003, and many are calling "Black Wednesday" the start of civil war. Was it planned all along or is it complete failure?

ANALYSIS-Is Iraq headed for civil war, or worse -Reuters AlertNet, UK



Only on Fox: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"

Maybe we should send the FOX employees to Iraq to feel the goodness.

[edit on 24-2-2006 by Regenmacher]

FlyersFan

The reason many in the US was not aware of the growing resentment amount the two major tribal groups is because so far everything is blame on Insurgency and foreign terrorist.

The civil war is inevitable and is on going.

That somebody or some group has step in to hurry up the events is for sure.

And the people in Iraq will never forgiven each other for targeting their holy sites.

Our government knew about this and they were just hopeful that things would turn for the better.

Sunnis and Shiite has always been enemies.

Is a historical fact.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
The previous poster was correct. Iraq has been handed a
second chance. A 'free ticket'. What they do with it will be
to their own credit, or to their own demise. It's on them.

Expecting "democracy" to miraculously happen because you've toppled a dictator is unrealistic at best. The U.S. apparently went in thinking that the Iraqis would welcome American soldiers with flower garlands, and not paying much attention initially to understanding what makes Iraqis tick, or taking into account decades and even centuries of history. But mindsets evolve over centuries, not months. And saying that Iraqis have squandered their "free ticket" generously handed them by the US of A just because Iraq hasn't fit into the neat little timetable the Bush administration had for rebuilding the country and handing it over to democracy just in time for the 2008 presidential...

In Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito ruled with an iron hand for decades, keeping the lid on social tensions between the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnians. When he died in 1990, all that tension exploded and took 10 years to empty out into a horrible civil war. But the Croats are now free, and so are the Serbs.

When you give people freedom - or when you say that you are giving them freedom - you have to expect that they will do what they want with that freedom. Including spend the next decade or two dealing with social tensions that couldn't be expressed under a dictatorship.

The fact that some posters here say that Iraq "squandered its second chance" tells me that expectations were not for Iraqis to be free... they were for Iraqis to adopt American-style democracy, or else.

Originally posted by Otts
Expecting "democracy" to miraculously happen because you've toppled a dictator is unrealistic at best.

Not quite it has happened before with much more fanatical people and large countries. Japan for example. The Japanese in WW2 make the most extreme muslims look tame by comparison. They had suicide bombers before the Muslims even knew the meaning of the word.

Democracy happen to work out pretty well there and not so bad in Germany Either after thier dictator was toppled.

I imagine that the difference in Iraq to other nations is the fact that the tribal groups are so predominant.

I also wonder if Iraq would not be better divided into three autonomous states within the Iraqi country.

Perhaps if the tribal groups have borders and also oil for their autonomous economy to thrive it will be better to handle.

It was though about it once before.

Originally posted by FactoryLad

Personnally, if it's considered an entire waste of time by the population of Iraq, why not give Saddam his position of power back and $stupid amount of dollars to finance his benevolent regime? Call me cynical, but I doubt that idea would be encouraged by Iraqis.

/rant.

Well, that is what we did under Reagan. While it wasn't the most laudable of policies, it was certainly more realistic than the bleeding-heart "Sweets and flowers shall greet the American bringers of Democracy" idealism we are fed today.

What ever happened to good old realism in foreign policy? Give me conservatism over neoconservatism anyday.



[edit on 24-2-2006 by koji_K]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX

Originally posted by Otts
Expecting "democracy" to miraculously happen because you've toppled a dictator is unrealistic at best.

Not quite it has happened before with much more fanatical people and large countries. Japan for example. The Japanese in WW2 make the most extreme muslims look tame by comparison. They had suicide bombers before the Muslims even knew the meaning of the word.

Democracy happen to work out pretty well there and not so bad in Germany Either after thier dictator was toppled.

germany did practice a form of democracy between the two world wars after all hitler was democratically elected

in japan the best thing the americans did was to let the emperor hirohito or whatever his name was , to stay which probably made the installation of democractic practices easier as his people revered him

Originally posted by Vitchilo

Instead of doing this, the american's army destroyed almost 85% of the universities of the country and killed almost 300 post-graduated people such as historians, scientists, psychologists so the elite of their society. After those murders, all the others educated people run away from the country.

So after the war, nobody will be able to say to the Iraqi people who they were and the american propaganda will do what they want with the Iraqi's mind...

When I say american, I say the army and the government, not the average people like most of you who understand that destroying another culture is bad. Because all cultures are equals.

Could you provide "reliable" links to this?...

Or are you just making these up as you go along?...

And to whoever said president Bush was to blame for Katrina....

First of all, this thread is not a bout president Bush....

Second of all i doubt any other president would "have stopped a natural disaster"....

Third of all it was the responsibility of the State of Luisiana, the governor of Luisiana, and the Mayor of New Orleans, to apply the evacuation plans that they have had in their books and were, supposedly ready for, a long time before president Bush was in office...

Please people....deny ignorance instead of dwelling on it....

Could we get back to the topic or are we going to get more people trying to change the topic of the thread?...




[edit on 25-2-2006 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Regenmacher
[and many are calling "Black Wednesday" the start of civil war.

*sigh*

So there is a day or two with an uptick in violence.
The press jumps on it to get headlines so that
people will get uptight and watch their shows.
That's NOT a civil war.

TODAY's TV HEADLINES -

Fox - 'Curfew brings significant drop in violence'
CNN - 'despite curfew, violence escalates'
MSNBC - ran a Jackio O biography
regular NBC - 'Curfew brings significant drop in violence'

Leave it to CNN to continue to feed the radical lefties (who are
the only viewers they have left) exactly what they want to hear.

Here's some news for all of you who hope that there
is Civil War so you can, yet again, blame Bush ... two days
of uptick in violence is not a civil war. Having the press
'chat up' something for ratings doesn't make a civil war.




[edit on 2/25/2006 by FlyersFan]