Category: News and Views
The Islamic Republic is worth defending. Even at its worst, it is way better than anything the US or anyone else can bring to Iran.
By Hossein Derakhshan
The Guardian" -- -
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/hossein_derakhshan/2007/02/between_khamenei_and_bush.html
It's the ultimate hypocrisy of the west to punish Iran for a law Iran has not broken.
When no one has found the tiniest evidence of
Iran producing nuclear weapons - which is the whole
purpose of the non-proliferation treaty that it has
signed - what kind of international law justifies
the UN security council's sanctions on Iran?
Since when has international law become able to measure the intentions of countries and react to them, if they say Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons? And how come the same UN security council
turns a blind eye to Israel, India, and Pakistan - who everyone knew had long the same intention? They have not even signed the non-proliferation treaty, yet their defiance has been and is still rewarded.
Make no mistake, when the powerful UK, which has lived safely among its peaceful neighbours still feels the need for its nuclear arsenal,
any sovereign state like Iran, which has constantly been under the US threat for since its popular revolution against an American-aligned, corrupted and incompetent monarchy. Especially when suddenly it
finds two of its neighbouring countries invaded.
That's why I would definitely support Iran if one day it decided to start making the weapons. But has it actually started? Everyone says that even if Iran plans to, it will take up to 10 years before it
manages to do so. So what is all this bullying really about?
The more the clash between the west and Iran escalates, the more convinced I become that the west's real problem with the Islamic Republic of Iran is not its nuclear activities, its level of
democracy, its human rights record, or its support for "terrorist" groups. Pakistan, followed closely by Saudi Arabia, easily beats Iran on all these fronts.
The real problem is that the Islamic Republic has decided to be independent in a region saturated with fossil energy resources, and at the same time run by American puppets. Iran has posed the biggest continuous challenge to the American hegemony in the whole world, and so it has to pay a price.
Increasingly, a lot of secular Iranians, like myself, are figuring that even if Iran is turned into the most democratic, secular, fair and peaceful state on earth, there is no guarantee the US won't find another excuse to try to overthrow its government.
It will start bullying Iran for its "devastating role" in climate change, or animal rights, or - who knows? - for obesity.
The interests of the Islamic Republic, with all its internal struggles, challenges and flaws, have never overlapped more closely the interests of Persia as a historic nation. And here lies the surprising
support of most Iranians, despite their serious dissatisfaction and frustration, for the Islamic Republic and its resistence towards the US,
symbolised by its nuclear programme.
I'm not saying this as a fervent religious man with sexy Ahmadinejad's posters on my wall. In fact, I am an athiest and this can easily get me into serious trouble
in any Islamic country. I did not vote for Ahmadinejad and I would do anything to democratically bring him down.
I have also risked my life and future in Iran by becoming the first Iranian after the revolution who has publicly visited Israel. Why? To counter both countries' nasty and demonising propaganda against each other and to save my grandmother, postman or university professor from being compared to Nazi soldiers who must be nuked tomorrow.
As a matter of fact, I am even a victim of the paranoid state of Iran that censors criticism and punishes dissent for fear of foreign-backed revolt. (Remember the CIA had commissioned newspaper articles and cartoons to discredit prime minister Mossadeq before bringing
his democratically elected government down by a coup in 1953.) My own blog is blocked in Iran and I was detained and forced to sign an apology
for my writing before being allowed to leave Iran in 2005.
And of course I do have the dream of an open, free, fair and secular Iran, run by competent and representative officials, and in peace with the whole world, obviously including Israel.
However, I believe the Islamic Republic is a valuable cause, worth defending and, at its worst, is way better than anything that the United States or anyone else can bring to Iran.
If the US waged a war against Iran, I would absolutely go back and defend Iran.
Fortunately, I'm not alone.
Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan
http://www.hoder.com
is an Iranian-born blogger, journalist, and internet
activist. His step-by-step guide to creating a
Persian weblog should take much of the credit for
inspiring thousands of Iranians to start their own
blogs.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
can anyone say, "world war III?"
I certainly don't claim to be anything even close to an expert where the middle east is concerned, however I've yet to be convinced that the war in Iraq was anything other than a struggle for oil, and it is true to say that what can be done in Iraq, can just as easily be done in Iran.
Of course in order for such a thing to happen in Iran we'd need a similarly trumped up reason as the western powers had for Iraq, hence all this sudden attention on Iran's nuclear program.
I didn't agree with the war in Iraq, I wouldn't agree with a war in Iran but sadly, I fear that what the common man wants all to often doesn't matter any longer. If the big boys and girls upstairs decide that we're going to war, then we're going and they'll happily make up reasons to do so if real reasons don't exist. Need I say more than, "weapons of mass destruction" on this point?
Hypocrisy is the name of the game here. Britain, America, we have nuclear weapons and so we seem to think that that's enough to allow us to tell the rest of the World what they can and can't do.
Don't miss understand me by the way. I'm not for a second suggesting that what the World needs is more nuclear weapons, far from it in fact, I'm merely asking how we can justify having them ourselves and then telling other nations that they can't have them. After all, other countries could quite fairly point out that the only nation to actually use a nuclear bomb in a war is? that's right, the United States of America, so who are they to tell others that they can't have such things for fear of what they might do with them once they had them.
I have no doubt what so ever that the global problems we face as a World will rumble on for many many more years yet. I only hope that at some point that common sense and humanity will prevail though sadly, I'm not optimistic. I lived in Northern Ireland for a few years and saw there just how quickly damage can be done, and how long it takes to undo again. You can kill with bullets and bombs in fractions of seconds, but the memories of those acts go with people for lifetimes, and quite often the hate generated by such acts can span generations.
I'm sorry, I know at this point I'm rambling and probably not even making much sense into the bargain so I'll just stop now and go and be depressed for a while. *Smiles*.
Dan.
To post 1 shut the fuck up. I don't give a damn we need to do what ever short of invasion to make it as dificult as possible for Iran to get nuclear weapons, considering there leadership has stated there goal is the total elimination of Israel, basically another final solution. Until Iran does get a nice peaceful happy go lucky government instead of the tirent they currently have keep on sanctioning. Also rather then reposting articles someone much smarter then you wrote how about you post your own opinion?
A war with Iran is necessary. Unfortunately, we've given them too long to prepare, so when there is a war, we'll face tougher opposition than we would if we had gone in as soon as their fascist president said Israel should be wiped off the map. Anyway, as things stand now we've got plenty of reasons, even if we leave their nuclear ambitions out of the equasions. They kidnapped UK soldiers and manipulated them on TV. They tortured them, but not as much as they torture dicidents in their own country. They could easily repeat the same stunt because the UK didn't have the guts to make Iran perminently incapable of such a thing. They've given terrorists in Iraq weapons which have been used to murder Iraqis and coalition soldiers.
In response to points made by Harp, the Iraq war was necessary, and wasn't just because of the weapons of mass distruction. On the subject of WMDs nobody has proved that such weapons haven't been smuggled out of the country. Anyway I digress. Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator, and all evil dictators should be overthrown, especially the one in Zimbabwe. Not only was Saddam Hussein an evil dictator, but he gave money to families of Palestinian terrorists who had killed Israelis in the name of their fascist intentions which by the way are the same fascist intentions Iran shares. That leads me back nicely to Iran. You question our right to object to them having nuclear weapons since we have them. We haven't said any nation should be wiped off the map. We aren't offering weapons to Islamic extremists from groups like Hezbollah. Iran is now getting involved in Afghanistan. It isn't in the interests of the US, the UK, Israel or any other developed democracy for weapons to be in the hands of people who wish to distroy "infidels". We must distroy any regime which increases the likelyhood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. If you're wondering why things are so bad in Iraq, there are two reasons. One is because terrorists wish to murder other Muslims in the name of Islam. The other reason is that we insist on being the good guys rather than doing what ever is necessary to totally iliminate terrorism from Iraq. If Stalin was alive today and he sent his army into Iraq, it wouldn't have the problems we're having now. Something also worth baring in mind in these discussions, is that when innocent Muslims are killed by Islamic extremists, people blame the UK or the US rather than the terrorists. Millions of people demonstrated against the war in Iraq, Millions of people didn't take to the streets to protest about 9/11 or 7/7.
if Iran threattened Israel, let Israel worry about it.
You say war is necesarry?
thats a load of crap and you know it. You're not the one in the battle field are you
I find it interesting that you state with total conviction that war in Iraq was absolutely necessary and then proceed to give me no good reasons what so ever as to why that was the case. It hasn't been proven that weapons of mass destruction weren't smuggled out of the country? So you're apparently content to justify a war on the strength of the fact that having not found any so called weapons of mass destruction, they may have been there and just aren't anymore? Now surely even to somebody who speaks without thinking that, on reflection, must seem just a little bit flimsy must it not?
We do at least agree on one thing, namely that evil dictators shouldn't be aloud the power that they sadly all too often have in countries but once again, don't try and justify the Iraq war to me with that. There are many examples of such unjust tyrannical dictatorships in various parts of the World, especially Africa, Zimbabwe being just one such example, but I don't see Britain and America lining up troops to sort those problems out. So once again I say, prove to me that this Iraq war wasn't about oil because you didn't even come close during that first attempt.
I have so much more I'd like to say but honestly I'm just overwhelmed by it all. To you the Israelis are right and the Palestinians are wrong and lets just conveniently forget the little things like, Israel has a well armed, well trained, well funded indeed US backed army to commit it's atrocities against the Palestinian people while the Palestinians have next to nothing. How dare they try and fight back. Lets also conveniently forget why they're fighting in the first place, namely that they were summarily shoved aside in the late 1940's to make space for the Jewish state of Israel. Let's also forget the Jewish attacks and incursions upon other Arab nations over the passed 50 years. I can't for a second imagine why the Iranian's, and indeed any other Arab nations through the middle east, would feel anything other than love and acceptance for the Israelis. While we're on the subject of things to forget, lets also forget what a total and utter mess we've made in Iraq because remembering that for too long really might make us stop and do something sensible for once with regard to the middle east and we wouldn't want that now would we?
Oh just one more thing. my favorite quote from your post above was, "If Stalin was alive today and he sent his army into Iraq, it wouldn't have the problems we're
having now." A word to the wise sir, it only makes you look silly to castigate evil mean dictators for such a large portion of a message, then start saying things like, "This wouldn't have happened under a Stalin government!" LOL. You can't in one breath tell us that it is absolutely right and just to rid the World of dictators and there evil regimes, then start lauding the leadership skills of one of the most notorious dictators of all time.
You seem to believe that wars solve problems. I offer Afghanistan and Iraq as just two examples of why they don't. You may well believe that making Iran our next target will genuinely help us on our quest for World piece, but please don't be surprised when the Muslim World at large only sees it as the west's attempt for World domination and not piece because that's surely what will happen and then sir, we'll be no further ahead than we are now. Quite possibly further back even.
Dan.
Wow Dan amazingly said. How can people that support this war, be ok with the fact that s we were lied to by our government as to why we went to war to begin with.
It went from weapons of mass distructions to a war on terrorism.
I have an iraqui person tell me that Iraq was actually better than how it is now all fucked up.
Ok I am not like totally up to date with the news. But I think the whole thing with Iraq is pointless. 3 years ago our freakin president even said something to the effect of he didn't care how many troops were killed in Iraq, he was going to keep sending them until they found or whatever this husane dude. Well, that was done. I mean hell the dude is dead now. So why are we still over there? People are dying for no reason! That over there in Iraq isn't our problem. We have crime and poverty and all sorts of stuff here in the states, why doesn't the president worry about fixing stuff here before he worries about Iraq? Also since we are pissing those people off so bad over there, no wonder they are tryign to attack the states. I mean hell we're killing their people so they probably think they can kill our people too. I mean people will probably say that we didn't do anything to them to deserve 9 11, but we don't know for sure. I mean for all we know Bush provoked them and they retaliated. I don't know. But wasn't that Osama? Not Iraq? I don't know. I just wish it would all end. I have a feeling the only way it is goign to end is with a big world war and a lot of deaths. These are just my personal opinions here. So if you don't agree with it, please don't attack me too bad. Holly
isn't it interesting that sadam was elected as president of iraq, yet the americans had to go into iraq and install their version of democracy?
Dan, i totally agree with you about the israel palistine thing, and let's not forget what disgusting things that the israelies did in lebinon, rather than peaceful nigotiations, they went in and totally bombed the hell out of the place, using weapons that even the UN considers unconventional, such as cluster
bombs.
these such weapons will sit in the deserts and small towns and, because they look so much like aid packages, will be picked up by starving people and set off.
How can you say that what israel have done n many middle eastern countries is just fine, but cry foule on iran or iraq. Israel have been committing attrocities for years, but we sit by and do nothing! absolutely nothing, but because the middle east has something we can exploit, we for some reason feel the need to bring democracy to these poor misguided people.
America should start worrying about the rest of the world for once. if it really wanted to do something good, it'd be doing something to help fix the Mexican economy, which in turn would help them with their immigrant problem.
America could be providing aid to more third world countries and helping to overthrow evil everywhere, in places like zimbabwe, but why not? Because they have nothing they can use, and because those dictators are friendly to them.
North Korea have practicly been jumping up and down saying "Pick me, Pick me, we have WMD's" but the american's are doing absolutely nothing, why, iether because North Korea have nothing useful, or because the US knows that North Korea would actually use them.
Under no circumstances should another country enforce their views upon a country that is weaker than them. Colonialism went out of fashan along with imperialism, and you americans should remember that, as you were once a colony of the british, being exploited, it's what your ansestors faught for...and died for in the war for independence. How is this situation any different?
I suggest you take a good look at yourselves and try to make your own country more democratic and equal, before you start forcing democracy on others.
The thing that you will never understand about the different factions of islam, is that they will never get along, and all you have done is created a massive civil war which you are now caught in the middle of. you'd think you'd learn.
Well, I won't write much on this topic, because Dan pretty much summed up what I wanted to say in response to the other posts. Personally, I've reached the point where I'm ashamed to be an American. The time is coming when we in America are going to have to face up to our nation's crimes.
As for Saddam being elected, lol, what a joke!
If you didn't vote for him, he had your head chopped off. Talk about a free election! Take your choice, lose your head (literally) or vote for me. not a hard choice to make.
I think the war in Iraq is a tremendous mess, but am not sure what the solution is.
Anyway, just my two cents worth.
I guess what they say is true, man will destroy each other until nothing else can exist. Bush doesn't give a damn about the United States or anything else all he lives for is power and nothing more. He loves to resolve problems with blood, just look at what's going on oversea in Irag, many die each and everyday. I'll be glad when is presidency is done and over with.
Well said Dan.
I'd also like to question the meaning of the phrase fascist above, how exactly is the Palestinian purpose fascist, how is the Iranian president's purpose considered fascist. I don't agree with him or his policies and ther is much amiss with Iran from what I can see, I don't think any state should be entirely founded on religion (and yes, that includes the U.S. incidentally). This being said, in terms of simple numbers I can't easily see who the good guys are, up to 600000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, a good deal of them by U.S. forces and the situation is worse than ever, Iraq has become the hot bed of terrorist training camps and attacks, Iraq used to bevery little threat to world stability even if Hussain surely was a threat to his own people. Oddly the U.S. practically supports the ruler of Pakistan, who came through power through a military coo, somehow something Bush conveniently overlooks. The U.S. itself supported dictator all through central and South America in the 1980s especially.
This being said, of course just pulling out of Iraq now might make the situation even worse, there's no easy fix, having invaded it is the responsibility of the U.S. and allies to try and clean up the mess somehow. Iran's attitude isn't helpful, everyone in the middle east is too ready to jump at each other's throats, including Israel and there's end inside, sure, we can just nuke the area, Stalin probably would've done that and all those mini wars would be over, on account of everyone being dead, now there's an idea.
What ashames me much more about U.S. politics is their ignorant and arrogant stance on problems such as global warming, the World Bank where they nominate a guy who master minded the failed Iraq war only to have him give huge pay rises out of the world bank's funds to his girl friend and then they even stand by him, their nominee for combatting STDs and who refused to hand out condoms but spent money on preaching abstenance was caught with a prostitute, the scandals are too many, the corruption the republicans promised to combat seems to have gotten much worse. And, yet, the U.S. is a great country, with some of the smartest people in the world, the enterpreunorial spirit like no other country, with great universities and research programs, a country where different races and religions can live side by side in pretty decent safety, I think it is a country to be proud of, that pride, however, does not need to imply the U.S. is above the rest of the world and U.S. ideas and ideals and norms should become that of every nation on earth, especially if such means are spread by force, that's where I disagree strongly with U.S. policy.
My point about Stalin simply related to ilitary tactics, and not his politics. I was saying, that militarily, Stalin's army wouldn't have the problems the US and UK army are having. It's okay to point out that 600000 or more people have been killed in Iraq. I don't know the figures, but whatever they are, what percentage of those people were killed by Islamic extremists who find killing innocent people acceptable? Still you people would rather criticise the US and UK. I only criticise them for trying to be the good guys. It is correct that the US has and still does support dictators. That is something I oppose. I gave you a perfectly good reason for the Iraq war, ad that was the removal of a dictator. I wish over dictators were removed in the same way, but the people of developed democracies are selfish enough to enjoy their own freedom while other people can't have the same freedom. The mess in Iraq is due to Islamic extremists. If nobody decided to fight the coalition after its conventional victory, Iraq would be a better place right now, we may even have been able to leave. The terrorists who fight us now say they want us out of Iraq, but we could have already left if instead of fighting us, they helped us rebuild the country. It isn't in their interests for Iraq to be stable. If it was stable, and its people were enjoying the freedoms that anti-war people in developed democracies take for granted, it wouldn't be so easy for terrorists to prepare another 9/11. Now onto Israel. The country is superior in technology, but Iran is bigger, and with support throughout the middle east would be no match for Israel, which by the way is perfectly entitled to exist, because while Palestinians moan about land been taken by the Israelis in 1947 and been removed for their homes, they forget why Jews were absent from that area for centuries.
In response to the statement that "palestinians have next to nothing", they're rich enough to afford rockets to attack Israel aren't they? They're rich enough to kill each other with guns aren't they? They're rich enough to create anti-israel propaganda in domestic media aren't they? Is that what you mean by "next to nothing"? As for attacks on other Arab neighbours, do you mean to suggest that on the days when Israel began fighting those states they were calmly going about their business, that they had been nice to Israel for days, and had done or said nothing provocative? That isn't the case. The six day war for example, was started by Arabs. Israel was simply defending itself, but at least when Israel defends itself, it doesn't go around recruiting twelve-year-olds to behead people on videos which get posted to al Jazeera. It doesn't send suicide bombers to blow up people who are just eating a meal, or just getting on with their lives. In fact, I'll give you one example of Israel showing restraint. Despite the constant rocket attacks on Israel, and the wiping Israel off the map mentality, when Palestinians stood on the roof of a house and surrounded it so that Israel would have to kill all of them to kill the person in the house, Israel chose not to bomb them. When did a Palestinian or Iraqi suicide bomber show that level of restraint?
Well, see, this is the point though. The jury is out on whether Iraqis ever perceived this invation as justified attempt in freeing them or simply an invation of a foreign power that wanted a slice of the countries wealth, unfortunately it appears the majority of the Iraqi nation as well as large parts of the rest of the world perceive it as the latter. And whereas certainly a big percentage of the civilians died as a result of extremist attacks the fact remains that in the modern world you cannot invade a country without carefully considering such consequences, it should've been obvious from the start this situation would come up, given the ethnic and religious make up of the nation. Even Afghanistan, a country whose invation seemed justified by all, has gone amiss in many ways and Bin Laden is still at large. I think the point that the U.S. and may be other nations, find so hard to admit is that conventional weapons and technilogical superiority does little against well organized terrorist tactics and todays' war has to include justifications and public opinion because clearly if the vaast majority of Iraqis felt like helping the allied forces those extremists would've been brought to justice sooner, as it is they seem to be gaining ever more popular support and that is something we need to be worried about, the divide between Islam and the west deepens and that divide needs to be dealt with. I don't see how using arms and bombs will do anything to improve the world at this stage, it's about reconsiliation and perceived justice.
Well, this is the thing Senior, we could argue backward and forward on an almost indefinite bases I have little doubt on the rights and wrongs of this situation. However, what it really boils down to is this. You seem to think that the way forward is yet more military action in the middle east, I and several others on this board, don't agree with that policy.
It's all well and good to bang the moralistic drum and say, "We did it for the right reasons!" but the reality is that the western allies have actually turned Iraq into a huge mess with their meddling. From a global stability position Iraq is now a far more dangerous country to the coalition countries than it ever was under Saddam Hussein's regime. You can hypothesize and speculate all you like about what outcomes future military action will cause, but that Iraq right now is one big mess is in no doubt. That's cold hard reality and that's something that America and Britain should seriously take into account before embarking on yet further action.
It isn't good enough to say that it isn't our fault that Iraq is now a huge mess because of warring Muslim factions. All of that in fighting has happened as a direct result of our actions. We managed to turn a reasonably stable, reasonably functioning Iraq into a total hell whole for the people living there and if that's the west's idea of progress, then I for one can certainly understand why the Muslim World would be happy for us to stop so called helping.
It's incredibly arrogant of us to assume that just because a capitalist democracy works for us, that it should be forced upon everybody anyway. I mean you keep referring to us as the, quote good guy's unquote, as though this in some way gives us the right to start forcing our ways and views upon everybody else, whether they wish for it or not. I mean I'm sure that Mormon's have exactly the same beliefs every time they come knocking on your front door and preaching the word of God to you, but the fact that they believe themselves to be absolutely in the right for doing this doesn't actually make them right, or make you feel any less irritation for the invasive intrusion.
I just feel that a lot more needs to be done in the west to understand the middle east, it's people, it's history, it's problems, and most important of all, a lot less outright meddling.
Dan.
Unfortunately, no amount of understanding towards the Middle East is going to stop Islamic extremists ccarrying out terrorist attacks against "infidels" if that is what they want to do. We have not created a mess in Iraq, the Islamic extremists have. Public opinion against the current situation in Iraq may not be so strong there if there was peace there now. If the country was stable, and the people were able to elect politicians due to their stances on different issues rather than their religion, I'm confident that they'd be thankful that we had gone in there. Now though, we take the blame when some Islamic extremist decides a few people need to be blown to bits because they are of the wrong denomination and this is totally unfair and wrong.
It's okay to call for understanding of the Middle East, but do you mean understanding, or do you mean sympathy, because the majority of people I hear calling for greater understanding want us to understand the suffering of Palestinians, not the suffering of Israelis. They want us to understand the suffering of Iraqi civilians, but they aren't too bothered about us understanding the poor people in many Arab countries who have spoken out against their governments and then either been jailed or killed. This is happening today, and is that what you mean by understanding?
Now I fully understand that Palestinians have a worse life than I do, but if their loss of land to Israel justifies suicide bombings and rocket attacks which have caused Israeli casualties, then the Native Americans must equally be justified if they choose to kill European Americans and African Americans. People of the Baltic former Soviet states must be justified if they want to go around killing Russians who live in those countries. White Australians would be appropriate targets for the Aboriginal people.
I agree with WB, that you cannot beat an organisation like al-Qaeda with conventional tactics. These organisations don't use conventional tactics. That is not to say we should do some suicide bombings of our own involving poisonous gas. We don't need to go so low. However, if we were to ban people from owning their own weapons and inflict capital punishment on those who didn't comply, the security situation in Iraq may improve. The biggest mistake we made in our tactics was trying to achieve a quick victory. We should have secured the borders before securing any other part of Iraq. No matter how long we took, there was no chance Saddam Hussein's army would beat us. We decided to do things quickly, that's why the task of stabilising Iraq is taking longer.
Finally, I think it's important that we stick to what George W. Bush said soon after 9/11. He said we must hunt down terrorists where ever they are, and we should go after anybody who habours terrorists. That includes governments, because there are governments which are harbouring terrorists. All regimes which do that must be removed and destroyed.
you'll never understand will you?
that sometimes, peopl don't have the same views to us.
what's right for one could be wrong for the other.
and it's not for us to say "our system is bette!"
"every nation criticizes other nations, and all are right."--Arthur Schopenhauer
Well, this brings us really to the question of what constitutes a terrorist.
Isit someone who commits suicide to beat the odds, that would create a big number of American terrorist, the heroes of the battle of Midway, pilots who flew suicide missions to deceive the Japanese. Is it someone who does not agree with American values, someone who defies America, someone who kills civilians, American and European forces have kills lots of civilians, dare I say not deliberately but no matter. Israelis have killed Palestinian civilians in thir thousands, in fact far more than the other way around. Are the Palestinians terrorists because they don't have a country like the U.S. supplying them with tanks and rockets and aeroplanes from which bombs can be dropped. Does a superiority in weapons rid one of the terrorist label. Not to say the Palestinians are right or that there are no muslim extremists in Iraq, although what constitutes an extreminst I am not sure of either. If Jews and Muslims can't live in piece, neither can Lutherines and Catholics (see northern Ireland) we can't really expect the factions of the Muslim world to set an example. There is much wrong in the region and I think America's actions so far have exaserbated the situation and they have shown too much arrogance in doing what they did. If they had waited another 6 months to a year, secured the borders and given the rest of the world more time to try other means they would have had much more widespread backing for their actions as well as better preparing the people inside the country, that is to say if the majority of the population really wanted the invasion in the first place, which is fact I am still not convinced of.
I guess what it boils down to is that America needs to stop acting with such self righteousness and arrogance, listen a little bit to the rest of the world, stop a second and contemplate the actions, accept their views are not the only valid views in the universe and pick their battles. Easy to say, hard to fololow but while the white house backs people like the World Bank president who is curropt and arrogant I can't, myself, feel an ounce of sympathy for the American cause even if I like the people and owe a lot to the country and their educational system. I think they are going to need a big shake up at the top government level.
once, a long time ago i posted a joke about the United nations and i think that it shows a lot.
a united nations survey was conducted in order to address the problems of food shortages in the 3rd world.
the question was this.
in your opinion, please outline the solutions you believe your country could implement in order to solve the problems of food shortages in the rest of the world.
Please give an honest answer.
the survey was a complete failure for a number of reasons.
the people of Africa didn't know what food meant
The people of eastern europe didn't know what honest meant
the people of china didn't know what opinion meant
the people of western europe didn't know what shortage meant
the people of the middle east didn't know what solution meant
the people of south america didn't know what please meant
and the people of the United States of America didn't know what the rest of the world meant.
Democracy by force is no better than dictatership.
we forget that there are wide gaps in our culture and our system may not work for others. I don't think the american system of politics would work for the united kingdom, or australia...and ours didn't work in the US, so how can we think that ours will work in a country of different race and kreed?
I agree with izzie, first this war was about weapons of mass destruction, then terrorism but we all no it's about oil, blood for oil, and more meat for the grinder I say lol. Our economy has died because of this war, and as for Iran, I have no idea what there doing exactly. all i know is that the leader of Iran straight up said isriel should be wiped off the face of the earth. Man I don't know what this world is coming too. I wanna read up on this though, haven't been paying as much attention to world events like I used too..
To those who lampoon the war in Iraq as being in the name of oil, to those who say our economy has tanked during this war...Answer this question. If importation of oil to the United States was cut off from the middle east by allying leaders in Iran, Iraq, etc, what would happen to our economy then? Consider too that, whether you like it or not, Wall street is the center of the world's economics, what would happen to the rest of the world's economy?
And what is happening to the US's economy now? Lovely, hay?
I agree much with the views on the topic. Now, to say that the democracy in the UNited States didn't work is partially right. If you take the recent trends that pose weaknesses to the system into account (such as those of split-ticket voting, independent parties, ETC) which create more independent groups, then you can say its falling appart. Most people don't even vote nowadays! Why? because "my vote will not count." That also explains why there is a growing number of unhappy societies around the country. HOw do you want things to change if you are not daring to vote? Another crytical factor is the lack of time and people's knowledge on how government works and some investigation on the candidates for the country. Many people just want to elect the president, and then the state governers and such other people are never heard of. I really would suggest a day off work for voting, because I have realized that most people rush during these times, and often rush makes others do poor decisions. I have also heard things happening everywhere: From my homeland, Colombia, there has been a huge deal for the freedom of the people captured by "terrorists" or criminal organizations there, and Venezuela was said to help. Ecuador did the same. I guess the United Sates ealier had proposed a plan, but, it was all for the economy and not for the terrorist focus. I don't know what the world is coming to either. If I recall corretly from reclusive thinker, "ashamed of being an American?" that sounsd the opposite of what i heard the first time (4 years) before when I came to the United States. Just my opinions on this. I'll write more if any other arise, and I really wish that we, as the people could do something about all this mess.