autopilot;358186 Wrote: > Well first off its great to have a conversation with real people, rather > than the nonsense the press on both sides of the pond pumps out. 10 > pages in and people, although obviously disagreeing have having > differing points of view, have put their points across in a non > personal and intelligent way.
agreed. :) autopilot;358186 Wrote: > However, i feel been called "racist" is very unfair. except i never called YOU racist. i don't believe you are racist. i called your POV on the subject, and your argument racist, and it is. when you say essentially that: "the arabs aren't capable of democracy." thats a racist POV imo. it sounds very similar to what the white south africans said about why they had to have apartheid. i'm sorry if this offends you, but its your words, not mine. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > MrSinatra - i do agree with a lot of what you are saying, but you are > clearly very patriotic and see things though rose tinted glasses. You > have the same one sided naive views that have caused this to become > such a disaster and you have obviously completely fallen for the > propaganda our governments have bombarded us with. thats your opinion, not mine. i think you have fallen for what the left says. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > First off, you say i am racist for saying "Arabs are incapable of > democracy", which i did not even say. I said that it's not compatible > and the changes required won't be delivered via a badly conceived > military campaign. i stand by what i said. i quoted you and people can decide if what i said fits or not. i think you are backtracking, and frankly, saying "its not compatible" now isn't really changing what you said or meant. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > No matter what the Iraqi citizens say when they are wheeled in front of > the camera's from the US public, most don't care about democracy, > especially if it means some much pain and death. They dont even know > what it is, they just want clean water, heath care, food on their > tables and their children to stop dying from stray missiles and from > the terrorism (which barely existed under Saddam) the political vacuum > the invasion caused. All of these things they had before the invasion. > And thats not even accounting for the religious element - the type of > Islamic tradition is unfortunately very un-democratic - you would have > get some of the most deeply religious people to radically change their > religious views too. "they don't even know what it is." am i only in seeing the racist overtones here? sorry, but what you just wrote is INCREDIBLY patronizing and misguided. al-sistiani, (-sp?) the leading cleric there, supports the move to democracy. all of islam is not opposed to it you know. there are islamic democracies, they do exist. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > And all thats before the PR disaster after PR disaster. For example, the > troops raced to protect the Oil wells and put much effort into this. > However, they made no attempt to protect the hospitals being attacked > and robbed. Not just hospitals, but the Baghdad museum was looted and > virtually destroyed - with many of the worlds most precious and ancient > artefacts were lost forever. this makes me laugh. so we, as an invading military force, needed to be concerned with playing security guard to hospitals and mueseums and zoos? first of all, the mueseum story is mostly untrue. yes it was looted, but something like 95% of the stuff was recovered. a lot of it was people trying to protect it who always planned to return it. secondly, thats not OUR problem. we had objectives that had to be met. we could not put everything under one priority. and maybe we could have done more, if the world would have helped. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > Yet the occupying forces did nothing. How does this looks to the average > Iraqi? It was clear as day that the Oil was the number 1 priority. You > say acknowledging this fact, and countless others, is "obnoxious and > vapid". Thats just they way it is, our governments have proved this > time after time. Reason 1,001 why they want us out yesterday and dont > care about democracy much. now you are conflating issues. it is obnoxious and vapid to say that bush et al did this for personal gain. it is not at all erroneous however, to say oil was a huge reason we were there, and a huge objective for protection. the reason being that in 91 saddam LIT HIS OWN WELLS on fire, and this time we didn't want that to happen so that we could get revenue flowing to the iraqis as quickly as possible. we wanted to be sure there was revenue coming in to give them an incentive to rally around a new democratic gov't. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > Then Bush goes as says he invaded Iraq because he was told to by God. > Apart from the fact this is clearly a desperate attempt to gain support > from the regions far right in the US and UK, it effectively told > everyone he had religious motivations. That was a bad thing to say even > by Bush's standards - > http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa gimmie a break. and btw, the guardian is as far left a socialist paper as there is. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > You say the world is ungrateful for the US's actions. This is simply not > true and used as an excuse. Yes, rightly or wrongly, the US has been > viewed as arrogant and self serving by some people, but the vast > majority of the world has always been very good friends with the US. > It's not until the Iraq war (not the previous one where Iraq invaded > another country) where even people with great and historic supportive > of the US have said this is all wrong this time. Whether this is > illegal or not, i strongly believe we have fallen very far from the > moral high ground. i might be more warm to that pov, if those people who have benefitted from our largesse ever did anything for us. and that includes some latitude. what i mean is, if i owed so much to someone, i would give them a LOT of leeway as to how they conducted themselves. i wouldn't start bitching and moaning the moment they did something i disagree with, and especially something that is being bitched and moaned about on silly technical points, or vapid leftwing personal points. i would recognize that even if i disagreed with them, i owed them a lot, and their ultimate goal, of removing a brutal dictator and instituting democracy, is a noble one. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > I completely agree about the UN, complete waste of time. i also agree > that if any nation does not want to listen and comply they should > probably leave. i wish we would. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > i also agree with the War in Afghanistan, as there is clear links to > terrorism and 9/11. then where is nato? where is the combat forces of ANY other nation? we don't need cooks. we need combat forces. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > Will it be a failure in the end? Well what exactly where the goals then? > Who can say, the objectives have changed so much. Anything is possible > when you keep moving the goal posts. but will Iraq become a lasting and > stable democracy? not in our wildest dreams. what an optimist! i think its pretty clear at this point, that america, regardless of who is president, is not going to let it fail. i think most people today, do see the tremendous progress, and are cautiously optimistic, at the very least. autopilot;358186 Wrote: > I felt i had to respond to those very personal and extensively offensive > accusations. Lets keep this civil and grown up please. again, i do NOT think you are racist. however, i have reread your comments several times, and i have no other words to describe what you said. -- MrSinatra www.LION-Radio.org Using: Squeezebox2 (primary) / SBR (secondary) / SBC - w/SC 7.3b - Win XP Pro SP3 - 3.2ghz / 2gig ram - D-Link DIR-655 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=54678 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
