General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsQuestion: How can we establish a government in Iraq that is democratic
but gives the Sunni minority enough political rights and power to make all but a few extremist Sunnis support the government?
Answer: We can't. It will happen there or it won't, and there is little we can do about it. I think Obama knows that and so I hope he resists the pressure to wage war in Iraq.
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)And since we overthrew the dictator who was running the place, I guess we'll have to let it fall into regions via bloody local wars, executions, and humanitarian crisis
LisaL
(44,980 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)No, quite frankly there's a LOT of things we could have done - and a lot of things we could have not done - to escape the current situation.
- We could have NOT supported Saddam all through the 80's.
- We could have NOT imposed crushing, borderline genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people that utterly failed to impact the government elite.
- We could have either NOT encouraged a Shiite uprising in 1991, OR we could have followed our promise to back it.
- For that matter, maybe we shouldn't have given Saddam a green light on Kuwait.
- Maybe we shouldn't have invaded in 2003.
- Maybe when we did, our priority should have been transfer of power in a peaceful manner rather than standing by, letting desperate peopel loot everything, ignore the rise of militancy, all while posting hundreds of guards around the Oil Ministry offices.
- Not arming and training the militants now attacking in Iraq would have been a good idea.
Yes, let's ignore the last thirty years of history and just pretend it's some unique and inherent Iraqi flaw.
LisaL
(44,980 posts)I have no idea why you would just assume something like that.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)And you say,
I'm sure there are untold depths to your statement that an unlearned reader like myself could never "get," abstruse thinking and references to great wisdom hidden in coded word order or something. Even so, it just looks to me like you're saying Iraqis - or perhaps Arabs in general? - can't get by without a dictator.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)oil; 3. See: Yugoslavia, the Former.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)is democratic.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)adequate rights and political power.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)solutions are unlikely
DeadLetterOffice
(1,352 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,326 posts)was around 950 AD.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)they had a serge of enlightenment and science and math developed/studied big time
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)I'm sure that didn't help.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)Georgie cabal really fecked it up by going into Iraq and destroying the Sunni secularists and now you are witnessing the Sunni fundies at work and oh how they play..indeed, heads will role and they are proving that, literally.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Are the ones screaming for more blood...wish i was religious so I believed in heaven and hell and I knew what awaited those tools.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)bigwillq
(72,790 posts)Which is why the USA needs to just stay out of Iraq.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)It's nice to have a thread once in a while where everyone seems to agree.
LisaL
(44,980 posts)That worked really well.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Common mistake.
arthritisR_US
(7,300 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Europe JUST decided to take a few years' breather from its four-thousand year history of tribal and sectarian warfare and genocide - to say nothing of what those people have been doing around the rest of the world!
By comparison to Europe, Mesopotamia and the territory around it has been pretty damned stable and peaceful for the last 1300 years.
TheKentuckian
(25,035 posts)bananas
(27,509 posts)if Iraq had a democratic election, Saddam Hussein would win.
hunter
(38,340 posts)At best we could establish a forum where new national boundaries are established.
But that's not going to happen so long as we think the oil belongs to our imaginary "free" market.
LisaL
(44,980 posts)Trekologer
(1,001 posts)We royally screwed the place up. We bear some responsibility for trying to fix it.
LisaL
(44,980 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)Kurska
(5,739 posts)Those are our options.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)But as far as I can see they don't have any.
Alex P Notkeaton
(309 posts)RandySF
(59,614 posts)It's a set of regions cobbled together by the British.
TransitJohn
(6,932 posts)Madness and hubris.