2006-10-11
George Will vs. George W
George Will always opposed Bush's Iraq invasion, and his arguments have always made sense to me. War is the ultimate Big Government operation, and even the successful such enterprises are full of the very wrong-headed inefficiencies that make people like me despise govt as a mechanism for "improving the lives of its citizens." But here we are, some of us repos, trying to use Big Gov not merely to destroy a hostile foriegn state and its machinery, but also to build a new society. Granted, it worked before (Germany, Japan, Mississippi), and is working in Iraq's Kurdistan.
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8 comments:
Your Civil War analogies are never appropriate when referencing Iraq. When Federal troops left Mississippi in the late 1870's, the people of that state waged a war on the newly freed Blacks who lived there. It wasn't until over 100 years later that some modicum of freedom was seen in this territory, and to this day it is one of the poorest states in the union. Is this your wish for Iraq?
Germany and Japan were both world powers before their defeat in WWII. They already knew how to turn their countries around. Also they were not saddled with neocolonialist policies that made them beholden to US business interests. The Germans and Japanese were both permitted to build indigenous economies.
Because of Bremer's Iraqi provisional authority and the rules for the nation that grew out of that, Iraq is forced into the position of being a vassal state for US corporate interests and the US military (Paul, your Iraqi contractor buddies confirmed this).
As for Iraqi Kurdistan, that region was operating almost autonomously for 12 years after the first Gulf War ended. Violence there is minimal as is the US troop presence.
The US isn't nation building there. If the Kurds had their way, they would separate from the rest of Iraq. If anything the US is nation dividing by protecting Kurdish sovereignty.
Though Britain's creation of the nation of Iraq was artificial in the first place. Based on ethnicity and organic human relations, Kurdistan would be its own country.
The reason it isn't? Turkey doesn't want its own Kurdish population to be emboldened.
So the US is surpressing Kurdish desires for independence to appease the Turks who have been staging cross border raids into Kurdistan to quell Kurdish nation building.
Your analogies simply don't work here.
Nadir: Before US fedl troops left Mississippi, blacks enjoyed remarkable economic, social, and political success. So did honkeys. The racist honkies had been beaten by Total War, and the black beneficiaries behaved sensibly. They focused not on exacting revenge or seizing tyranical, gang-land power. Instead, they focused on availing themselves of freedom... a freedom, by the way, they themselves had fought for as participants in the Union army. We may liken black freedpeoples to Iraqi's Kurds.
Racist whites prefered white supremacy and quick personal power gains to widespread economic success. We may liken these devils to the various tyranical factions of Iraqi Shai and Sunni. Clearly the civilized people of Mississippi (mostly blacks, or "darkies" as you have previously described them) needed federal troop protection for a longer period of time. Instead, bastard honkey politicians worked a deal (as you know) to prematurely extract these troops, and uncivilzed, backwards, retarded, homicidal and sexual maniacs inacted a wave of terror that ruined the southern economy for everybody, and stuffed black folks back into neo-slavery.
No, this is not what I want for Iraq. However, in the Shai and Sunni areas, there appears to be not enough civilized people to check the barbarians.
=====Nadir===========
Britain's creation of the nation of Iraq was artificial in the first place
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As was the creation of every national boundry in the history of humanity, including boundries that encompass people behaving productively and sensibly. You find me any nation on this earth wherein the people enjoy general prosperity and safety, and you will find a history of external bloody conquest and subjugation, as well as national demarkation that divided cultures peoples, united historically warring peoples, and that we can charactorize as arbitrary and objectionable. This is no excuse for retarded behavior.
"The British arbitrarily divided Arabia". Yeah, well, if you consider that to be abhorrant behavior on the part of the Brits, and you consider it an excuse for (and the ultimate source of) abhorrant behavior on the part of those poor, helpless Iraqis, then you must also blame and attribute that abhorrent British behavior on the French, how so bloodily conquered the Brits and united them against their will into a single nation of previously waring tribes.
If the Brits can get it together, so can the Iraqis.
"Racist whites prefered white supremacy and quick personal power gains to widespread economic success."
And they still do.
"If the Brits can get it together, so can the Iraqis."
The Scots, Welsh and Irish still hate the Brits. If they could they would all be seperate nations, just like the Basques want to seperate from Spain, the Mohawks consider themselves seperate from Canada and the US, Kasmir wants to be independent of both Pakistan and India. Tribal tensions exists in most parts of Africa, many parts of South America, many parts of Europe and Asia.
Quebecers wanted to seperate. Hungarians still look down on the gypsies. The whites in Detroit's suburbs want to seperate from the Blacks in the city or to drive the blacks out and take the city over.
Tribalism and nationalism have always created dissention and war. This is true. The biggest problems always come when one people uses force to subjugate another.
Nadir: Here's what 99.9% of the honkies in the subburbs of Detrot want of and for black people: for them to be just as productive, constructive, successful, and affluent as everybody else. There is nothing that would please subburban detroit-area honkies more about their metroplex than for blacks in the area to elevate their levels of success in all areas of life, including education, employment, wealth, home ownership, and crime-free conduct.
Whites aren't fleeing blacks in 2006, they are fleeing bad behavior. So are blacks. Blacks are fleeing the bad-behaving blacks.
Six, you are a detroit-area subburban honkey. So are most of your friends and coworkers. What do you have to say about my assessment of the racial views of white subburban detroiters?
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