I have been listening to anti-US rhetoric for a long time now, and there are two major contraditions ive seen. Of course the pro-war camp are not exactly wearing a halo, but im on their side so ill leave that to someone else
Contradiction one: (democracy)
“Why is the USA forcing democracy down the throats of the Iraqi people? democracy does not work everywhere”
“Why cant the USA allow the Iraqis to vote for their own council?”
Contradiction two: (occupation)
“Why is the US still in Iraq? Surely there are designs to colonise Iraq if they have stayed there for so long? they should stop occupying Iraq and hand it back to the people”
“Its just like the USA to leave a country in ruins and abandon them in their hour of need…” (in case of a US withdrawal that is)
You have presented a false argument. Just because two people are against the war, or against the current occupation (or maybe they’re just against the US), it does not mean that they all share the same specific reasons for holding a broad viewpoint.
Or perhaps you indeed know a person who does hold these contradictory views at the same time. Maybe he has multiple personality disorder or something?
I haven’t heard anyone say democracy doesn’t work anywhere. Or that the US is forcing democracy down the throats of the Iraqis. I’ve heard that the US is forcing a puppet government down the throat fo the Iraqis. I say strawman.
I haven’t heard anyone saying that the US should just leave Iraq, and if they don’t they are there to colonize them. The colonization argument has to do with not allowing Iraqis to vote and installing leaders the US likes. Another strawman.
This is what is called a ‘strawman’. Unless you have a cite where someone actually maintains both of these contradictory views?? If so, please provide, otherwise I fear this debate is doomed…
Shoving democracy down their throats? I have to say, democracy’s looking a lot like empire these days.
As for the occupation, doesn’t even seem like anybody in the Bush administration thought this through. What exactly has been accomplished by the occupation, other than the steady, rising death rate of U.S. soldiers? If we came in to show them what democracy and freedom mean, we’ve failed. Miserably.
Care to elaborate on this BS assertion? How does what America is doing in Iraq equate to ‘empire’? How about some parallels to actual empires like the British, Roman, French, German, etc? Do you forsee us colonizing Iraq indefinitely? Running it as a colony? What ‘empire’ like attributes does the US currently exhibit to you?
From Clucky
So, we’ve failed miserable? Haven’t accomplished a single thing? You know this so soon, do you? Care to back this up a bit? Maybe you could provide cites into the future to back up your claim that we’ve failed already (i.e. ‘Democracy’ will never take hold in Iraq), or haven’t accomplished anything? Or some kind of trends that show that we are in the process of failing or cites showing we aren’t doing anything at all?? Or, well, cites showing anything at all? How about a cite showing a ‘steadily rising death rate’? Is this an exponential rise or is it log rythmic rise? Perhaps its an in your head rise? From what I’ve seen, the death rate seems about the same, unless you are just asserting that the NUMBER of deaths is rising (I’ll conceed that). Of course, the number of deaths in the military at large (and in peace time) is steadily rising every day by that token (due to accidents, etc). The death rate in the civilian population is rising by that account too…
Basically, the play by play so far is: minega throws up (figuratively and literally) a strawman, and Clucky replies with standard knee jerk retoric.
Well, at least one, IMO: an apparent willingness to replace another government by force of arms for economic or political reasons, rather than because that government may be a direct threat.
And now, switching to the other side:
Well, the deposing of one of the world’s most odious dictatorships, for one thing. Not to say that necessarily justified the invasion, but hey, it’s a positive, isn’t it?
Well, we didn’t. We came in to topple what was described as an imminent security threat, er, to find WMD, I mean, free the Marsh Arabs.
Seriously, though, if no concrete steps are taken to establishing a popularly-elected government in Iraq within the next year, I’ll be considerably more inclined to give some weight to the quoted statement.
It is obvious that you have not the first idea on how to run a real Empire. A real empire isnt going to go the very indirect “we’ll make Iraq a self sustaining economy to help our own” crap. A real empire will take Iraqs oil and screw the iraqis. A real empire will conquer another nation for political gain because a conquered nation means more income and slaves. In the present political evolution, a conquered nation means a direct drain on military budget and foreign aid. Conquest is now a bad thing. Forcing the replacement of despotic govt isnt a new thing and it has definite advantages. Think of what couldve been accomplished if we had done that to the govt of 1938 Germany.
and you are saying this not even 6 months from the start of this undertaking…?? Take off the 2 1/2 months it actually took to prosecute this war and you have less than 4 months with which to establish a popular govt for 3 main groups of people, each of which thoroughly hate the other 2 groups. Going the way of conquest and empire building would have been much easier.
No you haven’t. What you are describing are protestations of specific actions of the Bush administration. You might properly describe it as “anti-Bush”, but you cannot call it “anti-US rhetoric”. I would say that those Americans who are opposed to the Bush administration’s foreign policy mistakes are PRO-U.S., because they want their country to be respected in the international community.
Quite a few people have suggested that democracy doesn’t work everywhere.
Some societies simply do not yet have a culture in which an environment of true democracy can exist. Suppose, for example, that the South had won the Civil War. You wouldn’t really call the Confederacy democratic, but it became so thanks to the power of the Federal government. Some states, given more personal freedom, turn into a loose array of warring states- Somalia, for example, is not exactly a ripe plum waiting to be picked by the hand of republican government. (that’s rather poetic, isn’t it? Or is it just trite?)
First of all, there are no true democracies on the planet. I think we are conflating the concept of democracy with the concept of self-rule. The former is a specific form of government in which every citizen gets a vote on everything. The latter is the idea that a sovereign group of people should be allowed to choose how they wish to be governed. An argument that I have heard advanced with regard to Iraq is that they may not want to have the same kind of government as the U.S. - for example, since many Iraqis are deeply religious, they might choose to have a theocracy.
Yes, you’re correct that many people say that democracy doesn’t work everywhere. However, I meant that the whole “democracy doesn’t work everywhere” argument hasn’t been used by the left-wing branch of the anti-war folks to my knowledge. Sorry for the confusion.
Don’t I know it. Hell, most mornings I can’t even find matching socks.
Seriously, though, I agree with your arguments that the US doesn’t fit the classical notion of an exploitative empire, but c’mon, to say that there is nothing whatsoever in the invasion and occupation of Iraq that smacks of empire is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Also, as I thought I made clear in my post, I disagree with the unnecessarily absolutist argument that there were no beneficial effects whatsoever from the occupation. Ill wind, and all that.
Well, obviously, it’s my interpretation. But, here goes.
First of all, we took over their country, and still occupy it, without fair representation from Iraqis. I thought this was common knowledge, but here’s a cite that shows, in plain sight, that we’re already making that nation’s decisions for it, rather than trying to get a representative view from Iraqi people:
I have some questions about this. Did Iraq ask for a radical free market overhaul? Do the people agree with the civil defense strategy? Don’t you have an election first and then have the people there decide these things?
When you take over a nation by force, when you make decisions for it, when you exhibit control over that nation, to me that’s empire. What does it mean to you? Of course, it’s not gonna look like the Romans, but it fits in with the global U.S. military goal, which is to ensure that every government plays ball with us on our terms, which is to say that they need to open their markets to the U.S. In the case of Iraq, we’re just doing it all out in the open, rather than more secretly as in much of the Third World.
Simply, the plan for Iraqi freedom sucked, if you’re a fan of self-determination, generaly public safety, and utilities. Heck, even the Bushies are saying they didn’t prepare well for the occupation. (Well, of course, they don’t call it occupation.) The first bolded part below illustrates the point that the U.S. is just now showing a little interest in providing Iraqis with a “limited” say in their government. The second bolded part is more evidence that the window of opportunity for success is slamming shut.
Compare the reality to the stated goal beforehand:
Seems to me like we’ve failed. Maybe they can rally and turn it around, but I’m not predicting that.
Well, you got me here. Death toll should have been my wording. Mea culpa. We can be proud that the death rate hasn’t increased yet, I s’pose. Maybe that could be the battle cry: “American death rate: Still not rising!”
Well, EL-Kabong, what Clucky said (and has yet to come back to defend) was “Shoving democracy down their throats? I have to say, democracy’s looking a lot like empire these days.” This implies, to me, that ‘democracy’, meaning the US I assume, looks a lot like empire these days (from his perspective)…not, ‘democracy’ or the US has some superficial resemblences to how empires of the past functioned. A world of difference IMO. I’ve never heard of an empire of the past acting in any way like the US did during the recent stupidity in Iraq. Certainly not like whats been happening post war. If you have some specific parallels or cites (or better yet, if Clucky does), please post them…I’d be very interested in seen the comparison, and we could debate it. To me, this was just a drive by dig by Clucky, and he hasn’t responded with any cites to back up his position.
As to the other part, his assertion was that we’ve failed miserably and haven’t accomplished a single thing as far as bringing Democracy to Iraq…not that we haven’t done a single thing that was good (at least I assume that was his assertion). Basically, as far as I can tell, the jury is still out, and it was assinine of him to make this assertion only a few months into the reconstruction. I think it could go either way at this point, but from what my cousin over there says, there is some hope.
I would agree with what you said, that removal of Saddam, while not vital, is still on balance a ‘good’ think, just in the fact that he was pretty monsterous to his own people, and they are better off without him. I’d also say that, from what I’ve read, that living conditions in Iraq continue to improve, and in some cases are better now that before the war. Thats a good thing. On balance, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that the war itself was stupid and unnecessary for us to do (I didn’t always think this way, and the change in large part is due to participation on this board), but that now that its done, we have to live with the reality…we ARE there. We need to make the best of it.
Its the knee jerkers like Clucky that make the anti-war crowd look bad. Just like the knee jerkers like some other posters who make the pro-war crowd look bad.
Anyway, you took my opinion, twisted it to fit your notion that I fit a certain type of antiwar person who makes everyone else look bad. That’s your opinion, but I don’t get it. How is it that my opinion has to do with anyone else’s opinion. There’s a lot of different opinions under the umbrella of “anti-war.” Lots of people have lots of different reasons to oppose the war on Iraq. Same as with the proponents. My argument is that it’s empire. Please show me the evidence that the occupation has been a noble cause.
