The Killing of the Two Saddam Boys
I don't really know how I feel about this. I hate to see the death of anyone, for pretty much any reason. Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run because two very bad people are finally no longer around to do the things they did, but I hesitate here because like in most cases, I believe bad people like this tend to be a product of their society. Which means that what they did is not excusable, but at the same time, it just means that someone else pops in to fill in the gap set aside by their demise.
I think in order to "win" in Iraq, we really need to be paying more attention to making the Iraqis feel good about themselves and actually bringing out democracy to their regime rather than tell them how good democracy will be as we run around installing martial law. They had martial law before we got there. The only difference now is the uniforms are a bit more expensive, the toys are a lot more powerful, and they are lacking basic services such as power and food.
What bothers me the most is that Bush took an entire news conference to talk about how great this is without bothering to address what is bothering the Iraqi people most. We need to stop playing cowboy and start talking to the Iraqis. The thing is: I don't doubt our professionals in place are doing that at the highest levels, but those people at the highest levels are not the ones walking around in shadows with rocket launchers, hoping to take out an evil American. We need to devote SERIOUS resources to dealing with the individuals in Iraq who were saying "America, Freedom, Whiskey, Sexy" (or something like that) and deal with making these people not only be happy that we're there, but be happy that they're going to be in a better living condition. As long as we keep making these vague references to what's better, people are going to continue killing our soldiers over there.
We are supposed to be rebuilding, not having to be on defense 24 hours a day. As long as we treat the Iraqi government as children, which is our direction of conversation with their power base so far, we're never going to win over the Iraqi people. We may never win them over anyway if we're going to keep trying to equate Iraq with terrorism constantly. Much like we did with Germany after World War II, we need to stop treating the people as child-like entities and actually start working with them.
I mean, we're not even finished scooping up the messes in Afghanistan, and we're seeing the long haul of Iraq, while our political elite is now discussing whether we should focus on Iran or North Korea next.
It is just so frustrating.
Meanwhile, there are struggling democracies all around the world right now that need help to stay afloat (I give you a ton of eastern european examples, South Africa, and island nations all through the Asian Pacific), but we've turned our back on them because they've already become democracies and obviously we've done our part, so we like to convince ourselves. What is going to happen is we're going to see the very end of Huntington's Third Wave, and the inevitable Third Reversal with more and more democracies falling back into authoritarian governments, because we felt it was important to liberate rather than consolidate.
That's just my thought, but what do I know? I'm just a stupid American who gets all my news from TV, obviously.
Stumble It!
I don't really know how I feel about this. I hate to see the death of anyone, for pretty much any reason. Perhaps this is a good thing in the long run because two very bad people are finally no longer around to do the things they did, but I hesitate here because like in most cases, I believe bad people like this tend to be a product of their society. Which means that what they did is not excusable, but at the same time, it just means that someone else pops in to fill in the gap set aside by their demise.
I think in order to "win" in Iraq, we really need to be paying more attention to making the Iraqis feel good about themselves and actually bringing out democracy to their regime rather than tell them how good democracy will be as we run around installing martial law. They had martial law before we got there. The only difference now is the uniforms are a bit more expensive, the toys are a lot more powerful, and they are lacking basic services such as power and food.
What bothers me the most is that Bush took an entire news conference to talk about how great this is without bothering to address what is bothering the Iraqi people most. We need to stop playing cowboy and start talking to the Iraqis. The thing is: I don't doubt our professionals in place are doing that at the highest levels, but those people at the highest levels are not the ones walking around in shadows with rocket launchers, hoping to take out an evil American. We need to devote SERIOUS resources to dealing with the individuals in Iraq who were saying "America, Freedom, Whiskey, Sexy" (or something like that) and deal with making these people not only be happy that we're there, but be happy that they're going to be in a better living condition. As long as we keep making these vague references to what's better, people are going to continue killing our soldiers over there.
We are supposed to be rebuilding, not having to be on defense 24 hours a day. As long as we treat the Iraqi government as children, which is our direction of conversation with their power base so far, we're never going to win over the Iraqi people. We may never win them over anyway if we're going to keep trying to equate Iraq with terrorism constantly. Much like we did with Germany after World War II, we need to stop treating the people as child-like entities and actually start working with them.
I mean, we're not even finished scooping up the messes in Afghanistan, and we're seeing the long haul of Iraq, while our political elite is now discussing whether we should focus on Iran or North Korea next.
It is just so frustrating.
Meanwhile, there are struggling democracies all around the world right now that need help to stay afloat (I give you a ton of eastern european examples, South Africa, and island nations all through the Asian Pacific), but we've turned our back on them because they've already become democracies and obviously we've done our part, so we like to convince ourselves. What is going to happen is we're going to see the very end of Huntington's Third Wave, and the inevitable Third Reversal with more and more democracies falling back into authoritarian governments, because we felt it was important to liberate rather than consolidate.
That's just my thought, but what do I know? I'm just a stupid American who gets all my news from TV, obviously.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 8:19 AM
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