all without even understanding the issues

10/2/2006 4:37:02 PM

even if that was the case, i would be doing more than you.

10/2/2006 4:40:02 PM

so you think its better for the country that more people vote, regardless of how obliviously ignorant they are to the issues???

10/2/2006 4:40:40 PM

wait, are you saying that you think its unamerican to vote?

10/2/2006 4:42:04 PM

Quote :

"so you think its better for the country that more people vote, regardless of how obliviously ignorant they are to the issues???"

the country would be much better off if every elligible voter voted.

10/2/2006 4:47:42 PM

the country would be much better off if every informed eligible voter voted.

10/2/2006 4:53:53 PM

There are differing levels of informed.

10/2/2006 4:57:29 PM

yes.

10/2/2006 7:06:15 PM

Quote :

"so you think its better for the country that more people vote, regardless of how obliviously ignorant they are to the issues???"

If you were really concerned about this you'd at least go out and vote to counter any vote you felt was made out of ignorance.

P.S. I really don't get it. Why put in all that effort ensuring that you are informed on all the issues and then skimp on the one small action that actually matters? At the end of the day someone that has done nothing more that spend all of 5 minutes showing up to pull a party line lever has done more that your countless hours of research.

10/3/2006 7:55:16 AM

which is sad. democracy wasnt designed when there was a mass media.

10/3/2006 9:10:26 PM

Quote :

"We have historical examples such as Somalia and Afghanistan to remind us of what can happen if you abandon a nation before any semblance of stability can be reestablished."

This is a false analogy. Somalia and Afghanistan are very different from Iraq. They have hundreds of years of history of tribalism and no tradition or competence in centralized rule. They ended up the way they did because that was how the were for centuries, anyway.

Iraq is a completely different ball game. They are used to centralized government and have means of centralized administration. Furthermore, they have developed and interested neighbors who would influence them towards order.

Quote :

"If we simply leave, we arew only validating the brutal tactics that are currently being used by the opposition in Iraq: just create enough chaos and mindless slaughter and even the greatest military in the world will give up and go home."

It wouldn't be the first time it happened to us or the first time it happened in history. We are not worse off because of it. Furthermore, if we pull out, the opposition in Iraq would actually weaken since they almost exclusively draw their strength from opposing an unpopular occupier. Without a cause, they lose support and become the targets of internal reform.

[Edited on October 4, 2006 at 1:40 AM. Reason : fh]

10/4/2006 1:33:40 AM

Quote :

"if we pull out, the opposition in Iraq would actually weaken spread out to other countries around the world"

10/4/2006 11:45:47 AM

^ I'll take the bait!

10/4/2006 11:51:11 AM

Since both individuals took the time to write reasonable responses, it's only fair that I try and respond.

Quote :

"Past problems, while relevant, aren't always perfect predictors of future problems (in regards to unstable countries)."

I don't disagree with you in general, but I think that there are enough parallels with Afghanistan and Somalia that we can draw some analogies. We are not facing a centralized and organized resistance like we did in Vietnam; instead, we are facing a motley collection of various factions who are jockeying for position within the country. While our presence certainly provides them a target to score points off of, in the end, I believe that they're still going to be battling with each other for control of the country, American presence or not.

Quote :

"This is a false analogy. Somalia and Afghanistan are very different from Iraq. They have hundreds of years of history of tribalism and no tradition or competence in centralized rule. They ended up the way they did because that was how the were for centuries, anyway. Iraq is a completely different ball game. They are used to centralized government and have means of centralized administration. Furthermore, they have developed and interested neighbors who would influence them towards order."

I disagree with you on this claim. The modern Iraqi state is not even a century old; it is a combination of at least three different cultural groups that were slammed together inside an arbitrarily drawn border. Afghanistan and Somalia, while certainly not the epitomy of good governments, were both unified nation-states with some semblence stability before collapsing into complete anarchy. Or at least, as close to a unified nation-state as Iraq was.

Also, don't you think that India, Pakistan, and Iran aren't interested in a stable Afghanistan? Or Ethiopia and Eritrea interested in a stable Somalia? As if they aren't making efforts to stabilize these states? True, they haven't been very effective, but that's because each has their own vision for what that "order" should be... kinda like Iraq. I would also question how sincere Iraq's neighbors are. Iran and Syria have been traditional Iraqi rivals; what interest would they have in seeing a strong and stable Iraq on their borders?

Quote :

"All the money we are hemorraging in Iraq could be spent on better intelligence and other more proven means of stopping terrorism. So while we might embolden enemies, it might be cheaper and just as effective in the long run at catching these embolden terrorist (and surely this "emboldening" doesn't last forever)."

I agree with this statement at the beginning of the war, but in the current situation, I think that the danger created by the anarchy in Iraq would create even greater problems for us in the long run. Perhaps what you say may be effective simply in terms of stopping terrorists from hitting domestic US targets, but I think for general American interests and security, it creates more problems. Iraq in its current state is dangerous because it creates a large pocket of instability that is only going to spread throughout the region if we don't do what we can to eliminate it, or at very least, keep it under reasonable control. At very least, it'll simply become a battlefield for various groups to wage war on for the next decade or so. Quite simply, I don't think any of the factions within Iraq are strong enough to unify the nation if we were to leave. Worst case though, it becomes a base of operations for a lot of groups: Sunni radicals who wish to topple the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies, Kurdish nationalists to attack Turkey, Shia fanatics to feed radical elements in secular Lebanon and Syria... the list goes on and on.

Quote :

"I agree with others that it's unfortunate we got ourselves into this, and I agree that we should attempt to try to help them fix the situation if it is a realistically acheivable goal, but not with the same leadership that made the same fucked up decision to go in, and will continue to make dumb decisions until the people speak and get them out. When Ford Motor Company finally saw the light that they are nearly fucked in their current situation with shitty looking, shitty quality, gas guzzling vehicles, they didn't say, well, were in this mess now, we'll figure a way out with the same man at the helm that got them in the mess, they kicked his ass out and brought some new blood in. And this is what bothers me more than anything about the current state of politics. No one wants to sit down and here the other sides viewpoint. Entirely too much politics is going on, and not enough governing."

I agree that we need better leadership on this issue. Unfortunately, there's not too much we can do about that in the immediate future. Perhaps a Democratic Congress will put more sense into the President, but with Presidental elections in just a couple of years, I expect that the political posturing and simplistic viewpoints and solutions will only increase, not decrease. Nuance requires compromise and understanding, something which tends to be lacking when a White House vacancy is close...

I wouldn't hope for an impeachment either. Booting Bush simply puts Dick Cheney into office. Booting Cheney may put Nancy Pelosi into the White House (assuming a Democratic majority), but by the time all the impeachment hearings were complete, she'd effectively be a lame duck as everyone will be in the midst of the 2008 race.

Quote :

"It wouldn't be the first time it happened to us or the first time it happened in history. We are not worse off because of it. Furthermore, if we pull out, the opposition in Iraq would actually weaken since they almost exclusively draw their strength from opposing an unpopular occupier. Without a cause, they lose support and become the targets of internal reform."

I disagree. I think that the 1990s would have gone more smoothly had it not been for the entire Somalia debacle. It was because of Somalia that the United States and much of the rest of the international community demured when the Rwanda genocide happened just a year a year later.

Abandoning Afghanistan didn't do us much good as stated before.

Vietnam is a different scenario, since there was an organized force that easily stepped in and took over when the United States withdrew. Iraq does not have such a faction that could easily take over at this time.

I also disagree with your statement that the different opposing factions would magically disappear if we simply withdrew. What we have on the ground is a fledgling government on the very cusp, if not in the opening stages, of a civil war. A large amount of the violence has nothing to do directly with us; it's various militias and political factions jockeying for a stronger position, trying to protect their own people, and striking back in retribution for alleged offenses. Perhaps if we had withdrawn years before, your statement may have been true, but now, there's enough tension and bad blood that does not involve us to sustain the violence for years to come. Perhaps its a twisted irony, but I think we may have gone from being one of the main sources of attacks to being one of the few groups that keep things from escalating further.

Quote :

"It still begs the question, could we still leave and come out better in the end."

Again, I'm not advocating for nonsense like permanent bases or a long-term American presence in Iraq. Nor am I saying that some sort of time table is necessarily a bad thing. However, the idea of a unilateral, immediate withdrawal is dangerous at this point. Before we can leave Iraq, we need to create some semblence of order: a functioning government strong enough to at negotiate and work with the various factions throughout Iraq. We won't be able to bring complete peace to Iraq, but we need to at least bring the violence down to a managable level for the new Iraqi government before we leave. Otherwise, I think we'll simply face anarchy: the current Iraqi government is simply to weak to stand alone at this point; I fear that if we withdrawl, they would simply become a paper government like the current Somali "government" or the Afghan government that represented their nation in the United Nations before the US invasion in 2001. At the same time, none of the opposing factions are strong enough to becoming a dominant force in the nation, let alone establish a government. No one else is going to seriously step in and try to establish order: certainly not the UN or any of Iraq's neighbors. In the end, only the Iraqis can truly re-establish order, and it is our responsibility to give them the best shot at it as possible.

10/5/2006 2:25:18 PM