On Sat, 9 Apr 2005 00:10:57 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda wrote > Yes. Almost no one I am aware of in a professional > capacity thought that the Iraqis had been disarmed. > There was not _one_ intelligence service in the world > that thought the Iraqis had been successfully disarmed > by the inspections. German intelligence thought they > were farther along in weapons development than we did, > and the Germans _opposed_ the war.
I was talking about him immediately stepping down or cooperating with the inspections. I find it hard to have a conversation when the subject changes so abruptly. > Yes, extremely different in a way that matters. The > British had an option in India. They could _give up > and go home_. They were, in the end, okay with that. > Exactly how was Saddam Hussein supposed to do that? I'm feeling rather frustrated to even hear that question. He could also have given up, of course. What's different, that his home is in the same country? So what? A tyrant is a tyrant whether it is a nation or an individual, whether it was born locally or invaded from abroad. > No, I'm saying it's an example of an oppressive > leadership that was willing to give up power. De > Klerk was. If P.W. Botha had stayed in power, Mandela > would have stayed in jail. The white South African > government had the military capacity to remain in > power. What it lacked was the ruthlessness to do so. > Saddam Hussein does not lack for ruthlessness. Yes, the leadership changed. Without war. That's the point! > Yes, because I know something about the revolutions in > India and South Africa. If you think Gandhi's tactics > would have worked against, say, the Japanese, Germans, > French, or Belgians, you're just deluding yourself. > There's no way in hell. Gandhi could have laid down > in front of all the railroad tracks he wanted, and the > Germans would have just kept them right on running. If he were just one man, surely. If the German people were behind him, as so many in India were? The difference is not in the nastiness of the despots, it is in the people who stood against them. There has never been a tyrant who could stand up to the united will of a people, if only because endless murder eventually destroys the empire itself. > No, I'm saying that I'm looking at history, while > you're just making statements unsupported by fact. It is a fact that in India and South Africa, peaceful revolutions happened. > > Are you saying that you hear me using make-believe > > arguments? > > Yes, absolutely. How very disrepectful. > Cambodia - you mean where Pol Pot killed a third of > the population? The Congo, where one of the worst > civil wars in history has been fought over the last > few decades? Cyprus, which is still bitterly divided? > Yugoslavia, where massive ethnic cleansing resulted > in hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced, tens > of thousands killed, and _two_ wars fought by the > United States? Somalia, which was rescued from > starvation by American power only to descend into > anarchy when we left? These are your examples of > _good_ policies? For God's sake, what's a failed > policy? In fact, in your list, the only two cases of > "regime change" in which outside forces played a major > role are Serbia (two wars by the United States) and > Cambodia (an invasion by Vietnam). So _your own > examples_ suggest that war is the only way to do it. Because we see in Iraq that many fewer people are being killed and peace is coming about so much faster? Hah. Besides, I'm not arguing that we did things better in the past. I believe that in a world of nuclear weapons and advanced non-nuclear killing technology, terrorists and guerillas, the ways we've been handling these situations are horribly inadequate. There are no easy answers, but I don't even hear anyone in political power talking about making the effort to find new ways to seek peace and justice. Instead, Pax Americana seems to be based on frightening, intimidating and ultimately bombing and shooting our way to peace. As long as anybody in the world is insecure, so are we, which is why a peace based on fear is always an illusion. > Hope is not a method, as I beieve I've said before. What is your point? Are you under the impression that I am suggesting that if we all sit around *hoping* really, really hard, doing nothing, conflicts will vanish? > Peaceful regime change is a rare bird And what are we doing to make it *less* rare? It seems clear to me that addressing poverty and injustice will have just that effect. Yet even here in our country, one in six children lives in poverty, which is as big a threat to peace as one might find. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
