Reply #124: Whaaa? [View All]

[liberalpragmatist]

Iraq would either still be under Saddam's dictatorship or involved in a civil war. That's the nature of their culture, their history, their own social system of government.

Look, I favor a withdrawal, because there isn't much more we can do, we WILL only make it worse. And yes, I don't think we should have gone to war in the first place.

But I find this statement wholly inappropriate. It assumes that some people "just aren't made for democracy." It simply accepts that some countries and cultures are bound to constantly be at war and suffer. It's a willfully ignorant statement and one that could have been made against any culture in the world throughout history.

I think any culture has the ability to live in a democracy and nor we should we just accept that some other country will live in war and go along blissfully disinterested in what goes on in the rest of the world.

Taking this logic to its natural extreme, we would have simply dismissed Japan after World War II - after all, war and military dictatorship first under the Shogun, then under the imperial system, was all they had ever known.

So while I can agree with the specifics of needing to withdraw from Iraq, I cannot accept your casual dismissal of their ability to live in peace and have a future with democracy and human rights. I think they certainly can, and while I doubt you're a racist, that thought is a subtly racist point of view. Had we not gotten involved, at some point I believe Iraq would have become a democracy on its own. And that's the best way, when it's driven by its own people, not imposed from the outside through military force.