Only neoconservatives (or whatever term you may prefer for those people) support the war in Iraq.
That is the sort I consider myself to be - to the extent that I am conservative.
Except that now they have departed from the "slow and deliberate" standard for change. Planning to remake the Middle East through shock and awe tactics is scarcely a slow and deliberate change.
I have no argument with any of that, except to disagree about its being a consequence of the Clinton years.
Would you like to make this a matter of research for the two of us, subject to time limitations ? Because I am willing to bet that if oil was not the issue, then some other resource - or possibly geopolitical strategy based on location - was.
Can you show me that the Japanese were dragged kicking and screaming to it ? Because that was the attitude you stipulated in your earlier post.
Indeed, and as I remarked last night, that is the sole reason why we accepted the foreign help ...as you see from the quotes I furnished, such entanglements are entirely contrary to the philosphy of those who founded this nation. And in the subsequent one hundred or so years, one sees the United States keeping clear of any foreign entanglements whatsoever.
What kinds of enterprise are we discussing here ? Perhaps people willing to carry human waste to the river for money, now that their infrastructure is almost entirely dismantled ?
Please tell me that you don't consider Iraq to be better off today than before we "intervened".
The people. Please see the account of that exact incident, in a book by Sam Harris titled The End of Faith.
The people of the Middle East are even more loathe to adopt certain modern ideas of freedom than their reactionary rulers are.
Where about the world should I be looking for that ? Please show me an example of any people who now enjoys authentic freedom and obtained it primarily through the agency of another country.
They are seriously quite worse off than they were. Saddam at the very least kept life functioning somewhat predictably for them and sectarian violence was not running amock on every street corner.
We have not helped the Iraqis...
just as we did not help the people of Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, or any of the other people on whose behalf we told ourselves we were intervening.
Please understand that since WWII, the US has played the part of a bully.
Maybe you think I enjoy saying that -
I don't.
I love my country.
But since WWII, the strategy of our government has been to go in to many countries in which a person has been elected by the people, and tell that person how it has to be ...this happens predominantly in the so-called "developing nations" which have desirable natural resources
If he cooperates, he becomes very wealthy and has lots of bodyguards (which he will require).
If he does not go along, he becomes a target.
I believe that sometimes people's focus is narrowed, in these discussions, to whether or not a country has nationalized its resources (?)
If so, they may view such nationalization as being inherently wrong or evil.
But it is not always wrong. Sometimes it is the optimal thing for a particular country at a given time.
