Perspective on Iran

Who says building Iraq into a "proper nation" was high on our list after we eliminated them as a threat to their Middle Eastern neighbors and to a lesser extent Europe? They are no longer a threat to anyone, nor will they have the capability to be a threat to anyone, except themselves, for a very long time. The basic intent of the mission was accomplished. Iraq/Saddam will not be bothering anyone for quite some time.

are you kidding? they weren't a threat until we armed them through the teeth to fight russians for us the first time.

the afghans wouldn't be breeding terror or the taliban has we not abandoned them many years ago after they got rid of their russian problem.

every time we meddle it seems to come back on us because of how quickly we lose interest in doing whats right for anyone besides ourselves (and then, we only care in the short term, as has been made pretty obvious).

if we pull out, you get a power vacuum, an anti-american government (probably dictatorial in nature) and the opposite of good will, since we'll have no relations and a population there remembering how they were abandoned).

i mean, they tell stories of the crusades like they happened yesterday. they can hold a grudge, and only time and willingness to look beyond the immediate is going to ever fix that. otherwise we'll be going broke sending in the troops every 10 years to fix the "immediate" threat over and over again while hoping they never figure out how to get nukes or some such to fight back with.

Make no mistake. Despite what the administartion wanted everyone to believe the goal of the Iraq war was to remove Sadaam not because he was any type of real threat but more because we could then build a democracy from which peace could bloom. We have just done an exceptionally bad job at it. Creating stability in Iraq was supposed to allow it to spread through the middle east.

This is true. Wolfowitz first articulated these ideas as early as 1979. The objectives were virtuous, but there understanding of the Arab mindset was horribly naive. But then who in the west could have anticipated such horrible violence. Their capacity for self destruction passes all understanding. I suppose the behavior of the Palestinians should have been a cautionary tale. All Arafat had to do was adopt a few of the tactics employed by Ghandi and King and he would have been the founding father of a sovereign nation. Instead he chose violence and what will be a 100 year fight. Destroying the Jews is that important to them. They don't think like we do at all. They think like our medievel ancestors. For the Arabs its basically still the 14th century.

This is true. Wolfowitz first articulated these ideas as early as 1979. The objectives were virtuous, but there understanding of the Arab mindset was horribly naive. But then who in the west could have anticipated such horrible violence. Their capacity for self destruction passes all understanding. I suppose the behavior of the Palestinians should have been a cautionary tale. All Arafat had to do was adopt a few of the tactics employed by Ghandi and King and he would have been the founding father of a sovereign nation. Instead he chose violence and what will be a 100 year fight. Destroying the Jews is that important to them. They don't think like we do at all. They think like our medievel ancestors. For the Arabs its basically still the 14th century.

well, not really. they've adopted hilter's tactics for teaching hatred (with basically the same anti-semitic posters as 1930s germany) and then they've mixed it with religious conviction. taking the arab world as backwards is a mistake - they've still got guns and satellite TV, but the mindset and values are very different and they have a lot of racial tensions and history that we simply don't have. (obviously i'm not discounting the one serious divide we've had here, but its not like german-americans vs irish-americans vs etc... those types of spats here were early on and very short lived).

Not all Middle Easterners are Jew-hating, gun-toting, barbaric, mass-murdering, suicide belt-wearing, American flag burning wackjobs. Lumping all Arabs and Muslims into one group with one set of motivations and objectives is pretty silly.

Moreover, despite our propensity to think of the West as the source of all good, let's remember that many of the world's worst disasters came from the West (e.g., the Nazis, Stalinism, the Yugoslav genocides, European colonialism and the U.S. campaign to wipe out Native Americans and take their land). Those of you who know me will realize that I'm not a self-loathing, America-bashing nutjob, but I think there needs to be fewer stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims and less "the West is better than the East" type thinking.

are you kidding? they weren't a threat until we armed them through the teeth to fight russians for us the first time.

the afghans wouldn't be breeding terror or the taliban has we not abandoned them many years ago after they got rid of their russian problem.

every time we meddle it seems to come back on us because of how quickly we lose interest in doing whats right for anyone besides ourselves (and then, we only care in the short term, as has been made pretty obvious).

if we pull out, you get a power vacuum, an anti-american government (probably dictatorial in nature) and the opposite of good will, since we'll have no relations and a population there remembering how they were abandoned).

i mean, they tell stories of the crusades like they happened yesterday. they can hold a grudge, and only time and willingness to look beyond the immediate is going to ever fix that. otherwise we'll be going broke sending in the troops every 10 years to fix the "immediate" threat over and over again while hoping they never figure out how to get nukes or some such to fight back with.
But what would have happened if the Russian arny had won those battles and had control over the worlds oil? Now we are dealing with third world countries and not a mega power which the Russians would have become. So I'm not sure what we did hurt us rather than helped in the bigger picture.

But what would have happened if the Russian arny had won those battles and had control over the worlds oil? Now we are dealing with third world countries and not a mega power which the Russians would have become. So I'm not sure what we did hurt us rather than helped in the bigger picture.

afghanistan didn't have oil and iraq's oil alone would not have saved their economy from collapse or destroyed ours.