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It was weird to be a pro-war Liberal

I thought American Exceptionalism was more territory of the right than the left.
W(ho)TF elected us to be the world's police force?
 
Neally said:
Guess what? When the people of those countries decide for themselves that they've had enough of dictatorial rule, they themselves change the powers that be. No need for outside do-gooders to try to fix it.
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The internal overthrow of a dictator for something other than another dictator doesn't actually happen very often in history. And so far, I don't think it's ever happened in a petro-economy.
 
Travis said:
I don't know. I just thought that we would could do in Iraq what we did in Japan following WW2.
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I understand what you mean. However, not long before the Iraq War itself, John W. Dower, a professor of history specializing in Japanese history wrote this essay dismissing the parallels between Japan and Iraq:

8Starting last fall, we began to hear that U.S. policymakers were looking into Japan and Germany after World War II as examples or even models of successful military occupations. In the case of Japan, the imagined analogy with Iraq is probably irresistible. Although Japan was nominally occupied by the victorious “Allied powers” from August 1945 until early 1952, the Americans ran the show and tolerated no disagreement. This was Unilateralism with a capital “U”—much as we are seeing in U.S. global policy in general today. And the occupation was a pronounced success. A repressive society became democratic, and Japan—like Germany—has posed no military threat for over half a century.

The problem is that few if any of the ingredients that made this success possible are present—or would be present—in the case of Iraq. The lessons we can draw from the occupation of Japan all become warnings where Iraq is concerned.
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http://www.bostonreview.net/BR28.1/dower.html
 
Ziggurat said:
The internal overthrow of a dictator for something other than another dictator doesn't actually happen very often in history. And so far, I don't think it's ever happened in a petro-economy.
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Then I'd say that the people of the country are happy with choosing to have a dictatorial form of government rather than a democracy, and again no justification for another country to impose their idea on what form of government those people should choose.
 
Neally said:
Then I'd say that the people of the country are happy with choosing to have a dictatorial form of government rather than a democracy, and again no justification for another country to impose their idea on what form of government those people should choose.
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You can say that all you want to, but there's no reason to believe it's true. Dictators don't need the people of their country to be happy (and generally speaking, they aren't), and they don't generally have any choice in the matter either. Particularly in petro-states, where the regime only requires a small fraction of the populace in order to sustain its economy. Those select few may indeed be happy and choose to support the regime, but you simply cannot make that claim about the populace as a whole. It's simply not true.
 
Ziggurat said:
You can say that all you want to, but there's no reason to believe it's true. Dictators don't need the people of their country to be happy (and generally speaking, they aren't), and they don't generally have any choice in the matter either. Particularly in petro-states, where the regime only requires a small fraction of the populace in order to sustain its economy. Those select few may indeed be happy and choose to support the regime, but you simply cannot make that claim about the populace as a whole. It's simply not true.
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I don't think this is limited to authoritarian governments, but seems pretty much true for all forms of government elected or imposed.
 
TShaitanaku said:
I don't think this is limited to authoritarian governments, but seems pretty much true for all forms of government elected or imposed.
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Obviously not. In the US, for example, we're perfectly able to change our form of government. Most people just don't want to (and why would they?). Furthermore, what I said about petro-states specifically really isn't applicable to other states. There aren't any other countries which can function based on the economic activities of such a small fraction of the population.
 
Bill Thompson said:
I think it is wierd to be a pro-war human being.
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Could maybe be better expressed. War is a associated with diplomacy, but is it a component or tool of diplomacy? Is it a last resort of diplomacy? Is war a complete failure of diplomacy? Is it always wrong?

I'm taking 'pro-war' here to mean that war is not thought of as a last resort or collapse of diplomacy and reason, but that war is more like a component of national relations you'd rather avoid but is not taboo.
 
Ziggurat said:
Obviously not. In the US, for example, we're perfectly able to change our form of government. Most people just don't want to (and why would they?). Furthermore, what I said about petro-states specifically really isn't applicable to other states. There aren't any other countries which can function based on the economic activities of such a small fraction of the population.
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people everywhere are pretty much able to change their government, provided enough of them feel motivated to take the actions necessary to do so, its mostly about cost/benefit ratios. As to the number of people that control the key economic factors in nations, I think this is actually always a relatively small fraction of the population whether we are talking the oil ministry of a petro-state, or the federal reserve and NYSE/NASDAQ boards in the US.
 
Ziggurat said:
Dictators don't need the people of their country to be happy (and generally speaking, they aren't), and they don't generally have any choice in the matter either.
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For dictators to remain in power through force, they can no longer remain in power when the population which includes the military, rises up to make a change. It certainly has happened in the past and again, the mere fact that a dictator is in power is no justification for other countries to invade it to bring a democratic form of government.
 
Travis said:
I don't know. I just thought that we would could do in Iraq what we did in Japan following WW2.
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Exactly so!

That was my biggest problem with the pro-war people. They never did consider the fact that cleaning up Iraq would be a very serious problem, and instead they expected that we would be given "flowers and candy" and when we rolled in.

And as a result, the pro-war people never even bothered to develop a post-war plan or bother to get other nations on-board with the war effort because they belived that the USA could handle everything on its own.

In short, the pro-war people were both foolishly optimistic and dangerously optimistic which has resulted in needles deaths of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and at least a trillion dollars wasted.
 
History's dirty little secret that the left don't want you to know: A lot of places were better off under colonialism.

Bringing back a liberal form of colonialism would be good for some failed and rogue states.
 
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