I don't belive it

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

A_Wanderer

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Jan 19, 2004
Messages
12,518
Location
The Wild West
My faith in the Iranian leadership has been shattered, yes shattered. These proud Mullah's of Peace may be running a secret nuclear program for millitary purposes and not telling the Europeans or UN while they were agreeing to not do this, what type of world is it where you cannot trust the Iranian leadership to keep their word. I think that this calls for a stern letter to be written or perhaps the threat of resolution calling for them to consider stopping this - threats to talk about action must be taken!

I can only hope that the end product of the Iranian nuclear ambition is not millions of vapourised civilians and the some of the world saying "if only we thought then" while the rest danced in the streets.

link
 
Last edited:
The way I see it, Iran already has our generation coming up and they have no great love for the theocracy, war is not the answer we must give support to the students and expose the crimes of the Mullahs. Change there will come from within, the conditions are different than Iraq. Not only that but in terms of strategic goals Iran is much stronger than Iraq, they could wipe out the revolutionary guard and all the millitary but the magnitude of any insurgency would be greater than that in Iraq, the only thing that would soften the blow is that without the Iranian government backing the insurgency (as they do in Iraq today) it would not be as strong.

Iraq on the other hand is a different situation in terms of ethnic groups, history, military situation and leadership. Iraq and Iran are linked in so many ways, when Iraq is free, democratic and safe the days of the Mullah's in Iran will be numbered. I give them 2 decades tops.
 
Last edited:
The internal Iranian politics are pretty much two sides of the same coin, the reformists and "conservatives" do not offer that many differences. I certainly think that a stable, secular and democratic Iraq will benifit the region broadly, you cannot bomb democracy into every last country, but if you secure one and pour efforts there and suceed - it will be a reverse domino effect and unlike the false analogy of the domino effect in Indochina falling to communism the benefits in this case will give the effort momentum. The only way to win the GWOT is to remove the support that the Islamists recieve, not by sitting on your hands and waiting to be attacked, not by backing more bastard dictators to supress dissent rather providing a genuine alternative to political Islam, I think that the 20th Century shows that liberal democratic principles build on the foundation of universal human rights and equality is that system, it works - simple as that, transformed Europe, built America, remade Japan. I think that the change of Turkey from the Caliphate to a secular democracy and the sucess to be found demonstrates that one can strike a seperation of the powers even in the ashes of theocracy. There is no reason to assume that simply because the Arab world today is filled with Cold War hangovers from both the USA and USSR, religious fanatics and poverty that it cannot get better. Human beings are more or less the same the world over and if they can be safe and prosperous then concepts of democracy and liberty appear very quickly (case in point Indonesia during the economic meltdown, the new middle class was able to initiate political change against Soeharto which brought about more political freedoms).

The concequences of inaction tragically tend to be greater than those of action (WWII for instance occured due to the tempered view of peace in our time, Rwanda was an example of inaction - it is a tragedy of history that there is no magic wand but we must live in the world as it is to make it what it can be) I am not saying that this justifies all action Cart Blanche rather that we are faced with a unique threat and we must come up with a no bullshit solution for it. I think that the solution is liberalisation of the Arab/Muslim world - not to remake them in the image of the west with Starbucks, internet porn and Coca Cola - but general political freedom, economic development and good leadership. It has been working in Asia very well to this day and does not constitute some sort of imperial conquest to subjegate and enslave populations.

I am not saying that we should conquest every dissagreable nation and rain fire down upon every last enemy state and justify it in some vague axiom of "freedom". That would lead to failure, simple as that. Do it and do it properly in very specific cases (such as Iraq, where we are allready far in), it is like a foothold.
 
Last edited:
LOL, my accent is interesting. It is not some skippy dinky-di crocodile hunter thing - seems to be more of a general accent. I practiced public speaking by reciting speeches and can do a pretty good Churchill and Kennedy.

Funny anecdote - on a 20 hour bus trip (the airliner for the school trip went bankrupt and we had to take a bus) I had been doing a play prior and by about hour 18 during a conversation my accent switched into character for a few sentences.
 
The greek was the funniest, there is nothing harder than trying to develop an accent in a foreign language.
 
I have to confess that there was a girl. Greek was great to study, it may not be the most useful language to know but it may come in handy. I want to see the world, so maybe I should learn esperanto :wink:
 
I have never been over there if thats what you mean, I have a whole set of Canadian relatives (hey, it's still part of N-America :wink: ). I do try to watch the Newshour with Jim Lehrer when I can, it has the best discussions of political issues on TV (go Brooks :wink: ).

My travel credentials are not that large (yet), I have been to UK, Greece, New Zealand, Guam. But I am preparing my linguistic skils for when the time comes.
 
Last edited:
A Wanderer -- i agree with your idealized scenario if Iraq were to prove to be successful, but have any of the current adminstration's actions since the end of ground combat and that silly "mission accomplished" bru-ha-ha given you *any* confidence in their ability to successfully steer Iraq from dictatorship to democracy? it seems to me that this is a sensationally difficult thing to pull off, and the way things have been bungled (to put it mildly) over the past 18 months have made a successful outcome pretty much impossible.

which is what those of us who protested the invasion of Iraq were thinking in the beginning (or at least some of us ... i'm not a "no blood for oil" kind of protester). not that the creation of a stable democracy in the Middle East was a bad thing, or a bad goal; rather it is a good thing, a good goal, and the people in charge in Washington were *exactly* the wrong people to do such a thing.

on a side note, i have a date with an Aussie-in-America tomorrow. i, too, love all non-American accents. except Canadian (no offense, just reminds me of Fargo). but Brits, Aussies, Scots, Irish ... love 'em all. :drool:
 
I disagree, we here cannot make a difference so it is a moot point. I see things differently than you, mistakes have been made but there have been a lot of sucesses - compared to other efforts of nation building I would say it is moving forward, and in the context of its magnitude it is going better than I would have expected. Iraq is not going to hell, it can suceed and it needs all the help we can give to make it so. The blowback from failure here is too dark to comprehend.

We will see how it goes, and I think that it will be right in the world.

In a purely non-offensive way can I just say that I was reminded of a Protest Warrior sign when I saw that bit in your post about it being a noble goal but the wrong people; it went something like NO WAR! unless a democrat is president.
 
Last edited:
A_Wanderer said:
The blowback from failure here is too dark to comprehend.


agreed on that. i hope it succeeds, but i do see the situation on the ground differently. and i hope you're right and i'm wrong. i'd gladly eat crow and lose the "i told you so" rights if it means that Iraq is successfully. but i don't think so. i think we're going to see something akin to a cut-and-run if/when elections are held in january. in Washington, the word on the street (and skepticism is needed, but i'm just relaying what people are talking about in the bars around here) is that the administration has essentially written off all their original intentions, and are looking for an out and a way to save face, and are perfectly fine in letting Iraq fight it's own civil war in the not-so-distant future.

but i would say that the unilateral invasion -- even before the first bomb fell -- already represented a massive failure in the eyes of the Arab Street. it was done wrongly from the beginning, and we're going to have to contend with a newly created generation of terrorists for the next 50 years.
 
A_Wanderer said:
it went something like NO WAR! unless a democrat is president.


well, fair or not, the Republicans do give off the impression that they love it when we use our bombs and tanks and airplanes to blow shit up. there's an unapologetic nationalism alive and well in wings of the Republican party, and they are adamant about their belief in the near-infallability of America's "mission" in the world, and that military force is a necessary component of this national evangelicalism.

and that terrifies me to no end.
 
I think America did the right thing by going in "unilaterally." Saddam and Chirac and Annan had their hands in the oil-for-food pot while no one was watching. In the end, our unilateral actions have not only called their bluff, but gotten some serious discussions going on how to reform the UN and make it relevant.
 
is the relevancy of the UN worth 100,000 iraqi lives and well over 10,000 american casualties (not just deaths)? have *any* of the stated goals/reasons for the invasion been met? is the US and the rest of the western world really safer now than in 2002? can we honestly look at this as any kind of success, or are we calling anything that isn't a disaster a success?
 
It is interesting that you will only count the lives lost in the invasion of Iraq.

The loss of lives is deplorable, but why only count those?

Where was the UN in Rwanda, when 800,000 died? Should we count those?

Sudan, since 1981...about 2 million and rising. Is the UN involved? Where is the UN's relevancy there?

Sierra Leone, East Timor, etc etc etc.

Why is everyone bent on singling out the Iraq conflict, as dodgy as it may be? Do Africans and southeast Asians not matter?

The U.N. needs a serious revamp.
 
i agree the UN has issues, and the Rawandan massacre does stand as a horrendous failure. i'm pointing to iraq dead and wounded because your earlier post applauded the unilateral invasion of Iraq (sorry, a few thousand brits and aussies does not a coalition make in the modern world) as a means of getting the UN together. do you really think that's what's going to happen? or is the rest of the world, including the UN, simply going to be more hostile to any and all US intentions in the future?

also, where was the US in all those countries you mentioned? clearly we think Iraqi Democracy is more important than, say, Liberia, where we have legitimate historical ties. or Rawanda. or Sudan. or Sierra Leon. or East Timor.

sorry, pointing out the UN's flaws does not absolve the US of a single thing.
 
Back
Top Bottom