Not to sidetrack the thread but I want to make an observation regarding this because it raises a very interesting point, maybe deserving its own thread.
A friend of mine was saying that the people of the USA were at war with the people of Iraq and, therefore, the people of the USA were legitimate targets in the war. My argument was that the government of the USA was at war with the people of Iraq (this cannot be denied as they are killing them) which, in my view is immoral but, in any case, American civilians should be off-limits. After some back and forth discussion he proposed that, ok, the people of America should be off limits until the coming election. If they reelect Bush then it means the people of the USA, not only their government, have chosen to wage war against the Iraqi people, therefore the people are fair targets.
I cannot agree that the people would be fair targets because I am condemning the USA for killing civilians and I cannot accept it from anyone. The fact that the other side may be doing wrong is no excuse to do wrong yourself. that is my opinion. But I can see how those who see their countries and families being attacked and killed may not see it so calmly and may see all Americans as fair targets.
I was watching al-Sadr tonight and he was talking about a rising violence in Iraq which shows that the majority hates America and that they would be happy to be free of Uncle Sam.
This gave me pause for thought. If the Iraqi people truly, truly want freedom, if they truly want to put their country back together again, then they are going to have to show some heart.
As I see it, the problem is that the Iraqi’s HAVE TO LEARN TO STAND UP FOR WHAT THEY SUPPOSEDLY BELIEVE IN. If they truly want democracy, then they are going to have to fight for it! They have to be willing to put their lives on the line against the Americans. They are going to have to attack the Americans and remove them from their society. But I don’t see evidence of this, instead they mostly seem to run and hide, letting the Americans freely operate from within. There are 25 million people in Iraq but they are letting 100-200k Americans take control of their lives.
Until I see some evidence of the average Iraqi standing up to the Americans, turning them in to the authorities or outright killing them themselves, I can only believe that we and this supposed majority are destined to fail. You can’t force a democracy on a country where the people don’t want it bad enough to die for it.
I think the problem is that everyone wants “freedom.” Specifically, everyone wants the freedom to do what they want, and after that things tend to breakdown. The idea that to preserve one’s own freedom it is often necessary to allow others to do things one deems unacceptable just doesn’t stick, and that’s not just in Iraq. It is far more common for people to seek their own “freedom” by seeking to eliminate or control everyone who disagrees with them, thus ensuring their deicisions will be the ones that are allowed. Usually it’s only the level of bloodshed that then ensues which gets people to grudgingly tolerate divergent ways of life.
It reminds me of a Rock the Vote segment I saw years ago (I think it was in '92), which has always summed up the idea of freedom nicely for me. They were asking all these potential consum… teenagers if they wanted people to be free. And of course they were all adamant that they did, that only squares who didn’t listen to Pop Band #305A would hate freedom. Then they asked them what they thought the biggest problem for America was. And immediately, they all started complaining that people were allowed to do things they didn’t like. And it wasn’t just about bigotry or pollution either. They had people complaining that the biggest threat to our country was that people were allowed to listen to rap music or dye their hair, mere seconds after they’d gotten done saying people should have freedom to live how they choose.
Indeed Joe Iraqi is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can’t fight against the Americans, he’s WAY overpowered in that area. He can’t tell the insurgents to chill, they will call him and American sympathizer and chop his head off. I do believe the Iraqis want some kind of stable government, but I’m not so sure they want a democracy. I would think talking about a democracy would be viewed as siding with the Americans.
Interestingly enough, according to the Arab Human Development Report from 2003.pdf (p19), the view that democracy is the best form of government and a dislike for autocracies are more widely held in the Arab countries than in the US/Can/Aus/NZ.
The bottom line on “polls” is, be very skeptical on what they truly represent. Politicians, scientists and big business have been using statistics for years to validate their opinion on things, sometimes, not always, their statistics are derived exclusively from samples that fit their presupposed model.
Yes, but in this case the methodology seems correct and the sample size (even taking into account the link you sent about oversampling to take into account subgroups) seems ideal.
So what’s the deal here? If you can get a statistician here to shoot down their work, great, but otherwise… Your doubts are unwarranted. The statistics themselves are rarely manipulated by professionnal statisticians (who have a lot to lose if they screw up). Their interpretation is.
You clearly don’t understand your own link. Oversampling is necessary if you want to be able to accurately characterize a sub group of your sample. If, for example, you wanted to say with some precision about what the Iraqi insurgents thought. That was not what the poll you objected to was about, nor was it how you characterized your objection to it.
Apparently, the report’s no longer free.
It was months ago when I first found the link. I’ve downloaded it already, but it’s on a hard to get to hard drive. I’ll see what I can do.
What an absurd post. I guess none of the following groups stood up for what they believed in because they used “run and hide” tactics: Afghanistan against the Soviets, the French underground against the Axis, the natives of the Americas against the Europeans, the North Vietnamese against the French and then against the Americans, the colonists in the American Revolution against the British, the Cubans (Castro) against the Cubans (Batista), etc etc etc.
Your so-called “run and hide” is called guerilla warfare, and I don’t recall anyone in history ever being able to back up the claim that guerilla tactics signify that the guerillas aren’t standing up for “what they supposedly believe in.” When faced with a superior opponent and/or defending an occupied country, guerilla warfare often makes a lot of sense. I don’t see why they should change just because it doesn’t fit your expectations of what a war should be.
But you’re right. They should just come out into the open and fight head-to-head against a superiorly equiped and better trained force because that is much more likely to get them what they want than tactics that might actually keep them alive long enough to fight. :rolleyes:
Now if this isn’t an excellent example of failure of reading comprehension, then I don’t know what would be!
What I said, which others here didn’t seem to have a problem understanding, was that if, as the media and supposed polls indicate, the majority of Iraqi’s WANT DEMOCRACY (or something like it), then this so-called “majority” is not showing their desire very strongly. Instead, they run and/or hide, letting an apparently small number of militants control their ultimate destiny.
I suggest you reread my original OP, perhaps a few times, to make sure that you understand what is being posted.
At the risk of tiresome redundance, I re-pose a question: if it should be clear, by way of polling or what have you, that an a free, fair, and legitimate election in Iraq would elect a majority that favored an Iran-style Islamic state, would the American government, or its proxy, permit such an election to go forward?
Would you support such a decision, and why? If “democracy” does not include the ability to vote against United States interests and goals, what word most correctly describes such a governance? (Clearly, “democracy” ain’t the word, “democracy” includes the ability to make mistakes on a massive scale, as we well know. If you can’t vote wrong, you’re not voting.)
I would say yes. As long as they were still a democracy so that this hardline government would still be subject to a further election in 4 or 5 years time. I think Bremer has said something like “we didn’t get rid of one dictator just to replace him with another”. So they can elect whatever government they like as long as they remain democratic.
They could elect the taliban if they wanted, as long as they get the chance to get rid of them in a few years. The main problem with hardline islamic governments isn’t that they are hardline or that they are islamic. The main problem is that you can’t get rid of them if you decide you don’t like them after a few years. I have no problem with people living under a hardline theocracy if that’s what they want but I have never really understood why they can’t be a democratic hardline theocracy.
If Iran held a proper, free, fair, secret election tomorrow the mullahs would be history.
These hardline theologians want their country to be run in accordance with their hardline version of islam. OK, no problem but what they need to do is convince a majority of the people that this would be good and so to vote for them. Where they go wrong is when they think they should seize government and impose their views on people.
What they need to be taught is that politicians are our servants not our masters. Government is something that needs to be earned, it is not a trophy to be grabbed in battle and then defended at all costs.
If they are so confident that their ideas are so right then what’s the problem with putting it to a democractic vote? They will win easily if they are THAT right. All they need to do now is convince the rest of their countrymen that this is the way to go.
I reckon that if you locked me and Osama up in a room for a coupla weeks (no weapons), I would be able to defeat Ozzy in an argument simply by using the above argument. Ozzy would leave the room a reformed character and probably start doing charity work or something. This is because it doesn’t matter how hardline the version of islam is, no version of islam can defeat the idea of democracy in an argument. Islam doesn’t directly prohibit democracy (because democracy wasn’t around when islam was invented/revealed). Democracy is sneaky, you can’t argue against it. No one can, it doesn’t matter what religion you are or what political persuasion you are - no one can put up a valid argument against democracy.
Which is why democracy is such a powerful thing and why it will eventually engulf the world.
(There is one idea that can defeat democracy and only one and that’s anarchy but that’s another thread)