h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<>

Going back to my earlier point, I don't think democracy can imposed on lawlessness. All the rest is just nit-picking, IMO, although there could be other barriers as well.

"*If* the "right" have become jaded about interventionism, can anyone be surprised? It seems the "left" can mobilise hundreds of thousands to oppose interventionism (Kosovo) and yet simultaneously demand such actions elsewhere (Rwanda). You're right that hypocrisy is afoot."

Oh, I agree. Huge swathes of the left are notoriously hypocritical on this issue. And many nominal-leftists are becoming more convinced by conservative ideas like isolationism thanks to neoconservatisms support for inteventionism.

"And you miss the point of the story related above. These people hate each other so deeply that they would rather try to kill each other than help their own kids. I can think of no Western mindset that values their own children so little."

So this one story about one event covers not just all Iraqis but all in the middle east?

There's a name for this sort of thinking.

I don't suppose you've noticed, but when the insurgency blow up a car bomb there's a hell of a lot of Iraqis pictured carrying children to safety and helping each other. Funny given the alien mindset you seem to want to paint for these people.

"Name one working democracy in the Middle East other than Israel?"

Lebanon, despite the efforts of Syria and Hezbollah. Apart from that, not many middle-eastern nations have actually had much of a chance. I can't recall any attempts at democracy in Syria or Saudi Arabia.

"We arrogantly assume..."

What's arrogant about wanting to help people? I don't suppose you've noticed but dictatorship (nationalist, royalist, religious or whatever) has done nothing for the people of the middle east.

Apologies, even as I read where you'd quoted me saying "These people hate each other so deeply", I was saying out loud "*Some*". A gross generalisation and out of order.

But was it an Israeli who said "There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate ours"? More than a grain of truth in there.

The Arab mindset is fundamentally different from the Western or Eastern. There are points of similarity, but far outweighed by points of difference. To refuse to admit this or acknowledge the possibility is evidence of the same type of thinking that you almost accused me of.

And if Lebanon is your idea of a working democracy, heaven help us.

"The Arab mindset is fundamentally different from the Western or Eastern. There are points of similarity, but far outweighed by points of difference. To refuse to admit this or acknowledge the possibility is evidence of the same type of thinking that you almost accused me of."

Seeing as you seem to be one of these overnight-experts on the arab race/islam that have popped-up everywhere in the last five years perhaps you'd like to explain what makes them so fundamentally different. I do think arab culture is different from ours (it is more conservative, more religious, more macho) but this is not the same as being "fundamentally different". And in the not-so-distant past our civilisation has had similar problems, especially with regard to social-conservatism and religious-fevour.

"And if Lebanon is your idea of a working democracy, heaven help us."

I didn't say it was perfect, I said it's a working democracy which it is. As I stated, Syria and groups like Hezbollah do their best to undermine Lebanese democracy but they nevertheless have a democratic political system which they decided-on themselves despite their "fundamentally different" mindset.

Rather than flood the thread, the link below is to my PS, where I was asking a Muslim living in N Africa his opinion. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F2264199?thread=3748250&skip=52&show=2 I never claim to be anything approaching an expert. But, unlike many, I don't automatically superimpose my mindset on foreign cultures. Instead I try to find out about them. This I try to accomplish by a wide range of reading material from the laughable Karen Armstrong to the hate-filled Robert Spencer. Added to this, is 4 years experience working in the Muslim community and actually getting up off my backside and talking to people in RL. I'm on first-name terms with both my local Imam and one in Dundee, (Arif & Ishaq). I'm no expert, but I know a shed-load more than people who just make assumptions based on the selective sources in the media that fit their personal politics.

None of those things contradict anything I said: I agree that it is a different culture. What I am arguing against is the notion of "fundamental difference" in the sense of not functioning in the same way as a Westerner on any level. If you take an arab out of his environment and bring him up a Westerner he becomes like a Westerner, he doesn't revert to some ancestral type.

This is important because the "arabs can't do democracy" argument is based around racial and cultural fundamentals and denies the possibility of change (or the desire for it). As I said before, the Iraqis overwhelmingly want a democratic Iraq. They also said they want the republic to have a religious character and they think it should be lead by someone strong. Those last two are indicative of cultural differences but the first is borne out of common human desires and experience. Dictatorship has brough the arab world nothing but ruin.

It's also important because this argument has appeared time and again through history based on similar observations. Pre-1948 Japan was heavily based around self-sacrifice, militarism and leader-worship and yet it changed into not merely a democracy but a liberal democracy within a decade (this, lest we forget, was a country that had its youth performing suicide-attacks and whose soldiers were legendary for their cruelty a mere generation before). A century ago, it was still a commonly-held belief in Europe that Africans were a primitive, tribal people who were incapable of running their own countries. As recently as 1999, there were calls to "de-nazify" Serbia since the years of Milosevich government, it was claimed, had instilled such xenophobia and the defeat by NATO would create such bitter resentment that the country would be a thorn in Europe's side for the foreseeable future. Instead, the Serbs kicked Milosevich out and are well on their way to being just another European country.

As I said, I'm not arguing some daft "world citizen" tripe about everyone being "just the same". It's plain that the democracy the Iraqis want won't (at least not for the foreseeable future) turn Iraq into a sort of Germany in the middle east. What I am arguing is that Iraqis a) want democracy b) know the perils of the alternative only too well. The Iraqis aren't coy about giving us their opinion. If they wanted a return to dictatorship, even of the majority, they'd say so.

Also, regarding the article you quote it reads a hell of a lot like one of those "round robin" emails Americans are always sending to each other condemning something or other (arabs, the French, Bush or Hilary Clinton usually). I'm not saying it's fake, I'm just saying scepticism is a good idea as is assuming that it might have been edited for effect. It's also worth noting that the writer, assuming he's for real, tends to make observations and then draw his own conclusions (ie linking aggressive bluffing with terrorism (although his understanding of what terrorism is seems a bit off)). It's easy to make lazy generalisations about a society you're not part of but work with. All the Islamist stuff about the West being decadent and morally-decayed is based around that. It's all taken from real events but filtered through an Islamic-religious mindset.

Japan, Germany and Iraq all share a common feature.

They all had the living daylights knocked out of them and their populations slaughtered wholesale. Then, the very nice people who did it said "We'll stop killing you when you adopt our political system. And even when you've done that, we'll keep tens of thousands of troops in your cities as a visible reminder of what happens when you answer back."

Never mind eh, let's all worship at the altar of "democracy".

You think Iraqi civilian and military deaths were even remotely the same as the German and Japanese in WWII?

You may know arab culture, but you need to re-study your history.

No, I don't think the levels are the same. But then Germany & Japan took 4 or 5 years of sustained slaughter to conquer. Iraq took a couple of weeks.

And it doesn't even matter who is doing the killing, the traumatising effect is the same - all the while the nirvana of democracy is held out like the djinn who will cure all ills.

So the phrase "slaughter wholesale" encompasses both the deliberate civilian targetted bombing of germany, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the non-deliberate, "accidental" deaths in Iraq?

That's some "precision" word-bombing you've got.

The figure is widely touted at over 600,000.

Is that wholesale or retail in your book?

who touts that figure? The number "touted" by the Lancet is 120,000 +/- 80,000 or so. That's quite different?

Am I allowed to even ask for a source on that number?

Well, it's a figure that has become common currency and is frequently quoted here on H2G2, but here you go: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

"A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died (sic) if the invasion had not occurred."

I'm not sure, but it seems as if this is continuation of the work published in the Lancet that I was citing.

I'm not saying a 100,000 or 655,000 aren't terrible, high numbers - I'm saying that they are shockingly different from each other, and shockingly different from the *millions* of Japanese and *millions* of Germans that died as a result of *deliberate* targetting - a practice that has generally *not* occured in the Iraq war.

Dead is dead, doesn't really matter if it was accidental or not. If you lob 1000lb bombs into a city, you're going to kill innocent people.

We were sold "shock & awe" as hundreds of bombs rained down on Baghdad. It was in effect a policy of brutalising the Iraqi civilians. The targets were empty military buildings, empty government buildings, restaurants and infrastructure like power stations & water treatment centres.

The Allies destroyed the few parts of Iraq that still functioned and then magnanimously linked re-building to the proviso of a democratic government that they approved of being set up.

What is the worth of a political system that has to use the anaesthetic of stealth bombers in the delivery room?

"Dead is dead, doesn't really matter if it was accidental or not."

Really? Have you heard of the difference between manslaughter and murder?

Do I have to step this out for you Arnie?

So-called "smart" weapons have a 30-40% failure rate. Which is why at least two weapons are always used. If you use 100 "smart" weapons in a raid, at least 30 are going to miss. If your raid is on a built-up area, that is making the decision beforehand to randomly lob thirty 1000lb bombs into civilian areas.

When you factor in that most of these targets are of questionable military value anyway, it starts to look like calculated murder.

But that's pretty irrelevant anyway, to a father who comes home to find his family painted over what used to be the walls of his home. I doubt if he makes the distinction between murder & manslaughter as he reaches for his AK47 and goes out looking for a coalition soldier.

Even if he acts with restraint, along with hundreds of thousands of other bereaved relatives, tell him that if he accepts democracy the people who are shooting the locals will go away and what do you think he's going to say?

You claimed accident or not, it didn't matter. Now you're changing your argument to say that it's not an accident. Fine, if you're claiming it's not accidental that's a different argument - and one not worth having.

It seems I do have to spell it out for you.

Dead is dead and the victim isn't quibbling about whether it was accidental or not. Neither are his relatives, or the neighbours or the population as a whole.

It may salve your conscience to think of civilian deaths as accidents or, to use the buzz-words "collateral damage", but the brutal fact is the coalition launched a massive attack knowing in advance that the tactics they used would kill tens of thousands of innocent people.

Is democracy worth killing tens then hundreds of thousands for? I would say that that's a price worth paying *defending* democracy, but to impose it on people?