JDG wrote:
Sent: Sunday, 10 April 2005 7:20 AM
To: Killer Bs Discussion
Subject: Democracy in Iraq Re: The Other Christianity (was Re: Babble
theory, and comments)
At 04:17 PM 4/7/2005 -0700, Nick wrote:
On Thu, 7 Apr 2005 15:01:52 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda wrote
It means that there wasn't a third option between
going to war to remove Hussein and leaving him in
power. It didn't exist. No one proposed one that was
even vaguely plausible. You could choose one or the
other.
Really? No other options? Then what of all those that opposed the
war,
including almost every major religious organization across the globe?
Was
the
Pope trying to stop democracy in Iraq? The World Council of
Churches,
the
Conference of European Churches, the National Council of Churches of
Christ in
the USA, the Middle East Council of Churches, the churches of Norway,
Finland
and Denmark, Greece, the United Methodist Church, my own Lutheran
church
and
on and on and on -- were they all trying to stop democracy in Iraq
when
they
opposed this war and proposed other options.
I think that the answer to that is unequivocally yes, in effect. The
policies advocated by the above would have resulted in Iraq's most
recent
democratic elections not happening.
That is not to say that they all had the conscious intent of opposing
democracy in Iraq, but that is the logical consequence of their
positions,
and so is one that should properly be defended by the holders of those
positions.
JDG
Umm, I confess, this one I just had to comment on.
Firstly, you/I/anyone, has no idea what may have transpired in Iraq if
another course had been taken. They may well have had their own
democratic elections, of their own making. And perhaps without all the
deaths as well.
It is plain silly to claim that the ONLY way to democracy in Iraq was
the American invasion. And anyway, a single election, a democracy does
not make.
I hope it works out well, but you know as well as I do, that history is
not an exact science, with some formula that says invasion = democracy,
or no_invasion = no_democracy. What happened, happened, but many other
things could have too. Some bad, some good.
But that is by-the-by, we can agree to differ over that. What I had to
comment on was the ludicrous thought that the Pope, The World Council of
Churches etc etc need to stand up and defend their anti-democratic
positions. They spoke out against war, not democracy. There is no
logical consequence of their positions. That's a ridiculous leap of
well, of unfaith. So we can assume from this that Bush the Elder was an
enemy of Democracy as well can we? Or that GWB is a secret lover of
totalitarian communism because he has not invaded North Korea? I bet
such plans have been presented to him, dreamt up deep in the Pentagon.
And presumably they have not happened because he opposed them. Ohh my
god, GWB is a Communist !!
They are about as sensible a statement as yours was. This is the
'subsume your will entirely to ours, or be deemed a traitor' sort of
thinking that really scares me about the US at the moment. What is the
point of even having a democracy if the only acceptable way to act in it
is fully agree, fully support, and fully parrot the line of the
Government, no matter how much it may go against your deepest feelings?.
Were you a traitor when Clinton was President? By your line of argument
here, I think you probably were.
I'm sorry, but that sort of thinking, that the church needs to be held
accountable for its anti-democratic heresy, because it opposes war,
makes me look over my shoulder for Senator McCarthy. Are you, Or have
you ever been, a member of the Roman Catholic Church?
Andrew (Who isn't, and wasn't and probably never will be)
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