Two US soldiers tortured to death, where is the outrage from the left now????

Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality -- J. W. Aldridge>
- fas·cist /-shist also -sist/ noun or adjective, often capitalized
- fas·cis·tic /fa-'shis-tik also -'sis-/ adjective, often capitalized
- fas·cis·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&lE/ adverb, often capitalized

yeah the democratic government they drew up does resemble that oh so much.

http://www.webster.com/dictionary/fascism

am I? Have you read the Iraqi Constitution? I have.

http://www.religiousconsultation.org/News_Tracker/women_may_lose_basic_rights_under_new_Iraqi_constitution.htm

Follow Kendra's linky . Sometimes to reach the undesireable end, we take the desireable-seeming path and tell everyone it's peachy.

really, try this one
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/12/AR2005101201450.html

my favorite part being this
Article 20:

The citizens, men and women, have the right to participate in public affairs and to enjoy political rights including the right to vote, to elect and to nominate

And the people voted Hitler into office. We said fascism in the making, not insta-fascism-just-add-water.

right, and we are going to require reparations from Iraq when we leave, like we did Germany.

Here's my fave --way in the beginning.

"Article 2:

First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation:

A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established."



uh oh --the Ladies are gonna love that.

whats sad about that is, my favorite and your favorite cancel each other out. Islamic law gives women no rights, NONE! and then they turn around later and give them rights, AFTER they said you can't change the provisions of islam.

haha, yeah... the region will so obviously be better off having the only secular nation replaced by a fundamentalist Islamic state. Genius.

And there you go. A paradoxical constitution that will buckle on itself and lead another fascist into power, someone charismatic who can exploit the failure of the establishment.

it won't buckle if the people accept it, which I think they will.

They will at first, but you're going to have them split quickly into liberal and conservative camps.

The liberal ones will focus on the laws giving rights to women and such.

The conservative ones will focus on the Islamic tenets and condemn those other provisions.

The pendulum pushing will start and next thing you know, you've got people blowing each other up again. Because thats how problems are solved in the mideast and have been for thousands of years. Hell, even in the USA people here in TN opened fire on pro-Bush campaign offices. Two shots into an empty building, but it's a step further in disparity than we were 2 decades ago.

SHOTS fired on a PRO-BUSH office??? you -must- source that. (and otherwise, was the offender caught? middle-aged, ivy-league educated liberal gun-owner?? or some drunk kid will a bbgun and no clue as which way he's pointing??)

at this point its up to the Iraqis to make it work. they are the only ones who can make it work or fail. I will put 5 dollars on that constitution getting rewritten before its all said and done.

Digging...

http://www.wbir.com/news/archive.aspx?storyid=20241

You'll love the quote from one of the people working on the Campaign.

What's even funnier is the inept nature of our police here. Check the bottom...the "twist".

then let's wrap it up and go home.

"My name is Roscoe P. Coultrane" sheriff, Dukes Of hazard (the TV show not the even more shitty movie)

Maybe we should have just taken out Mohammed 1300 years ago, too. Then they all would have been Christians and we could have lived in peace.

The question is not what you would do at some arbitrary point in the past. The question is what was the right thing to do in 2003. You're the president, you make the call. Hopefully you just don't sit back and whine about how everyone else fucked things up before you came to power.


I don't know that it will definitely turn out better. But the odds of it working out are better with us there than letting Saddam drive the country into the ground and leaving a once promising nation as a hellhole such as those in central Africa.


This is a reasonable opinion. I have no problem with people saying we shouldn't be there because it's too expensive or because we should fix our problems at home first. Just don't pretend you care very much about the Iraqi people.


This is an absurd comparison and a blatant misdirection.


I pay taxes too, and I vote not to waste our money on the black hole of humanitarian aid. Unless you are trying to change things over there, you're just pissing our money away.


This is a huge exaggeration and just empty rhetoric. By this standard we could never do anything.

Isolationism is a fine philosophy if you actually practice it consistently (and you don't). But I personally don't think it works and I think history has clearly demonstrated this.

So basically your position is to hate whatever administration is in power and everything that they do?

In retrospect all those things such as supporting dictatorships, using the CIA to fund coups, assassinating intransigent foreign leaders, etc. are all acceptable methods? Would you like to defend those actions against someone making all the same complaints you've made about our invasion strategy?

Or is this just another specious reply to avoid the fact that you have nothing but complaints?

Could your positions be any more contradictory?

If the people of Iraq want an Islamic fundamentalist state, why should we try to discourage them? Do you think we're superior to them and that our (mostly) secular government is the only right way, Chip?

So what if they want to subjugate women and outlaw homosexuality? That's their equally valid choice to make, isn't it, Corvus, Kendra, et al?

My positions aren't at all contradictory, Groucho. I believe that our government is completely screwed up by religious influence, just as Iraq's will be. I also believe that things will be worse for many Iraqi's, particularly women. Did you know that over half of Iraqi doctors and surgeons were women? Did you know that Iraq had the most parity between men and women of any country in the region? Sometimes majority rule isn't the best thing. Why do you think we have a bill of rights in this country? In my opinion our government doesn't really give two shits about the quality of life of the Iraqi people. All they want is a more cooperative regime and permanent military presence conveniently situated next door to Iran. It truly amazes me that otherwise intelligent people so readily lap up the warm fuzzy feel good justifications they're being spoonfed.

No, there are certainly times when it its the right thing to do. Iraq was not one of them.

They seem to be, mostly because you just offer criticism and don't have anything constructive to say, IMO.


Ours is not completely screwed up, at least not yet.

My prediction is that Iraq's government will also not be totally run by fundamentalists, although it will be strongly influenced by Islam and there will be no pretense of it being a totally secular state. It will also not be a completely democratic government in the near future; there will be all kinds of vote-buying, corruption, fraud, etc.

These are things they have to work through to become a truly free, democratic society. If we don't believe that they deserve that, then by all means we could support our choice of brutal dictator to preserve stability.


Yes, things will be a lot worse for the Sunnis who have abused the Shiites and Kurds for so long. But if you look at Iraq in ten years, I think the average Iraqi will be better off than they would have if we had continued to support Saddam, or if we had attempted to incite civil war as Kendra suggests.


Do you think Islamic fundamentalism was waning under the wise guidance of Saddam? Just the opposite, he managed to suppress it through the most brutal of methods, so whatever gains women had made in Iraq were tenuous at best. After the civil war that was likely to happen, the women would have lived under Taliban like conditions, not the reasonable freedoms (although not equality) that they will have in the new Iraq.

And can you tell me how many women doctors there were in 2003, vs. say 1985? And do you also want to discuss that a key reason there were relatively many educated women in Iraq is because the young men were drafted into Saddams gigantic economy stifling army and dying in his senseless wars.


I agree, but at least I'm consistent about it. For example, it is contradictory to go on and on about how many Iraqis hate us and want us out of their country and then say we're not going to respect their opinions when it comes to human rights or democracy.


This is the fallacy that you and so many others continue to trip over.

You assume that my sole rationale for going into Iraq was to look for WMDs, because the government said so. You assume I believe the administration is not telling lies and that their reasons are exactly what they say.

But try to understand this. I don't care why they chose to invade Iraq. The only thing that matters is that I think it is the correct decision. Dubya may have invaded for the sole reason of getting revenge for his pappy or to buy his way into heaven. I don't care. All that matters is that he makes the correct choice.

It can't, actually, be used to justify organized crime (which is entirely profit-based), school or office rampages (almost entirely related to mental illness) or pedophiles (a demonstrably medical mental illness which is not, at least ever as far as I can tell, politically motivated). It's a weak argument to start throwing around every evil known to man and saying that disagreeing with the war in Iraq supports them. My argument is simply this: we know what causes people to join the insurgency. If we were not there, they would have no reason to join an insurgency, because _we would not be there to fight_. Part of the reason they are able to do us so much damage is proximity. If we leave Iraq, we make it much more difficult for the vast majority of those people to do us any damage. It's a lot harder to plan and pull-off a strike on US soil than it is to bomb a convoy in Iraq. (And if you need numbers, a ratio of successful terrorist strikes on the US vs. convoy bombings, I'll find some, but I should think it is fairly obvious even to someone inclined to disagree.)



Why not ask yourself this: if it was your home, at which point would you put down your weapons and say, "Oh well, I give up, go ahead and take over. Kill my kids, let my grandma die of a diabetic coma because her insulin spoiled in my useless fridge, whatever. I'm done."? When would -you- give up, if you thought everything that mattered to you was on the line?

If you're a ballsy guy, I would say never. Or it would take an awful lot to get to that point. My father was a Green Beret, and I know for a fact that he'd die before giving up. And he'd take a lot of 'bad guys' with him before doing so.

For the people of Iraq to do nothing, in their eyes, leads to just as much death as doing something. And if they keep fighting, they have a hope that we'll get tired of it and leave. After which they have a hope that they can get their lives back, rebuild their country, go back to being _Iraqi_ instead of some American colony getting butt raped for oil by Halliburton's cronies.



This isn't an or question. This is an 'and' question. America pulls out and all terrorist activity in Iraq stops. Because we are no longer there to blow up. Period. They are much less interested in blowing up other Iraqis than they are in blowing _us_ up. Not to mention the moment that we are gone, the sympathy that the insurgency engenders with the general populace will start to erode. While we are there, they are the heroic resistance. When we are gone, they're assholes who keep blowing up the bridges. It's a difference of perspective that makes all of the difference.

Is it better for the Iraqi people if the Americans leave? Absolutely. Because our presence there is _NOT_ increasing security. It's escalating the situation day by day. We can't keep them safe, we can't keep our own soldiers safe, and even our diplomats and our journalists have to live behind huge concrete walls for fear of their lives. Leaving at least gives the situation a chance to cool down. It's in their own self interest to build up their country. It's not in their self interest to help America take over, whether it be directly or by a proxy sympathetic state of handpicked Iraqi politicians.

Before we came, they had Saddam. They had secret police who might make them disappear. They also had electricity, secular elections that let women not only vote but hold meaningful office, schools, reliable clean water, fuel for their vehicles, and moderately comfortable homes. They had a thriving artistic culture in one of the worlds oldest cities, and yes, there was some oppression, but it was moderated by graft and by a regime that _was_ slowly changing to accommodate them.

After we came, they had Paul Bremer, and later an Iraqi parliament that managed to meet for all of 15 minutes its first day. They had elections where they couldn't even publish a list of candidates for fear that those candidates would be assasinated before the polls opened. They have women who wear abbas and the veil for fear that sharia law will return, and it -is- making a big come back, because one of the few forces in Iraq that can offer even a shadow of organization and protection are the religious ones. They've got electricity for maybe one hour out of six, if they're lucky. They've got water that goes on and off intermittantly and may or may not be clean. There is very little fuel and what there is, is rationed and/or too expensive to purchase from the black market. Their artists are fled or in hiding, because open sympathy for the west or a lifestyle that diverges from hardline Islam is a target on your back to get you killed or kidnapped by insurgency for collaborating with the invaders.

These are facts. Documented facts. Life in Iraq prior to the war was not hell. It was life. Harder than some, but not as hard as others. Life in Iraq right now _is_ hell. Documented. Bullets fly, people die, roads are destroyed, walls torn down, people vanish into prisons or into insurgency camps or are taken away in the night by both factions. Reporters are kidnapped. Soldiers are tortured.

We made this Iraq. You can argue "would have beens" that it would have been worse if we didn't go, that it would be worse if we left. But this is the Iraq that we made and for most Iraqis, they can't imagine much worse if we were gone. They can imagine better. That's a good motivation to keep fighting, no matter how many of them die. Fight until we leave.

Staying only means more of us die, more of them die, and nothing gets better. Period. They won't give up, they won't surrender, so for us to sit on our couches and tell them they're idiots for not giving up doesn' t matter. They won't. Ever. Period.

It's up to us to be reasonable and pull out. Or it'll never end.

Sara.....yes