Iraq needed Saddam?

That's a crock---putting me in Trump's category! First of all, I don't make enough to save any money apart from maybe $100.00 a month. Second, apart from now being blind in one eye, I have sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes, and am 60 years old and getting worse. Perhaps I am better off financially than your poster child in Africa, but I doubt if I am any stronger. What gets me about you and jars attitudes is the fact that you think the whole world needs help except us old-timers here in America. You are counting on Canada's social largesse to help you, and jar has been a conservative who socked away enough money to get him by in his golden years. That's about all I can surmise. Apparently, you think I am busy scratching my back with ivory jacked off of poached elephants!

After a restless night's sleep where my mind was churning incessantly, I was given a new perspective on a lot of the issues which I have made personal throughout the past week. This in no way means that I agree with you, but let's just say that your counter-perspective has gotten to my thinking. It started last night at around midnite as I was leaving work. We had dealt with a couple of unrepentant shoplifters, and as I got in my car, I found myself ranting aloud about them.The conversation then morphed into an actual argument that I found myself having with God. (Note that I was, in fact, talking to myself. The criticism was not directed at me, however. It was directed at the One in charge of all seen and unseen.)I found myself ranting at God the whole drive home. I actually believed I was talking to Him, though another part of me knew that I chose to make the scenario up. Whether He actually heard me or not is entirely up to Him. Basically, these shoplifters steal a lot ($2,000.00 daily) from our store, and I see it in terms of stealing from me. And if not just me, then society (honest society) in general. And it makes me rant!! Its really not fair at all, and I imagine the justification that these audacious people have for stealing. To earn a living? To buy drugs? Or to feed their poor impoverished family? (I highly doubt it in most cases) My point? Its not fair and if God Himself approves of this, I indict Him too!! I thought of the owner of the vineyard hiring workers and paying the slackers the same as He paid the hard workers.And then it hit me. I was setting God up as a strawman atonement for what bothers me and then knocking Him down! I was doing exactly what jar says we all do. It got me to thinking, that's for sure.But getting back to what Iraq needs....what is it the rest of the developing world needs? And is it normal for the United States to view them as dangerous competitors?Do they steal from the US? Is competition a form of stealing?Edited by Thugpreacha, : eliminated my video.

Not quite. I guess I'm still thinking about myself. So let me ask you this question.
When the shoplifters steal $2,000.00 a day from my employer, I see them as essentially stealing from me. Is that part of the pattern? After all, they are not competitors in the traditional sense and yet they are.And if Iraq sells its oil to China instead of the US, is it because of our price offer or is it because of our politics?

So what did MacArthur do successfully that we failed to do with Iraq?

There is a deeper element in play here that I think was missing from Japan after WWII. And I could be incorrect in my assessment..but
Japan copied our model. Iran, Iraq, and many of the Islamic nations want nothing to do with copying. They don't want to be Avis. They want their own culture and their own Starbucks, (named Crescent Moonbucks) and they would prefer not to sell oil to the Great Satan. Sometimes I think that the West has created its own global restraining order. In the past, nations had little choice but to listen to us and do it our way. Were there no Marshall Plan, there was not a Deng Xiaoping Plan waiting on the sidelines. Now there is. I think that the United States may even go so far as to fuel wars and dissent chiefly to attempt to sell our protection along with the business deals---and that our time is coming to an end. This worries me.

I poked around and found what seems to be a credible news story on the matter:
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia: Division and disintegration.

quote:

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Both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created in 1918, after World War I collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The objective was similar in both cases: to unite different-but-similar peoples in common, independent states.

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OK, I'm still trying to get at the root of what went wrong. After all, in the SouthWest, America is a successful melting pot. In California, there are many ethnic groups that seem to get along under one government. Also NYC. Does the division have anything to do with a dominant majority who wants to hog all the money and resources?Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

Progress is being made, but the core of these issues fuels what I see as a global war of ideology and ideologies. Who qualifies as a minority? Some would argue that we all are a minority of one. Which lives matter? Only black? Only Kurd? Only Poor? What if a wealthy man becomes disabled? Should he be prevented from claiming social security? How about a poor family of illegal migrants? Do they not have a right to medical care? There are lots of questions and lots of points of view.Let's take one that I once experienced. Bankruptcy. You brought up the idea that if I had a right to do it, so should everyone...which was a valid point. And in actuality, they do...with the provision that one must be a citizen and an active taxpayer with all of their paperwork ordered and timely. The courts don't simply let anybody do it, however. Nor should a hospital simply open its doors and allow blank checks for anyone who comes there for help. There are standards. There must be. Rules of law cannot simply be drawn up by the old white guys, or the Czechs, or the Sunnis or Iran or the United States.One of the criticisms of Obama was that he was weak---too eager to find consensus with the global community at national expense. Which then brings up the question of what rights a nation should have among other nations. Does Might make Right or should it be Right making (consensual) Might?

The evidence shows that one group has always held the majority of power and control--the top 10% wealth wise. As much as I consider this a bit unfair, I would be hesitant to level the playing field too much. I can say I'm all for taxing the rich to pay the bill, but they have lobbyists and lawyers and the means to live elsewhere, so that battle is futile. And I'm also against ringos vision which he claims is Jesus's message that we all should give all we have to raise the level for the global poor.You will likely (and correctly) point out that I am looking out only for myself.Is this not human nature? Do Kurd's lookout for Sunnis, Shites, or Kurds?
Do Indians lookout for white people? Did Russel Means ever indicate so?
Do populists feel targeted by a growing global rabble seeking to reverse 1000 years of "white privilege"? And yet the wealthiest people still call most of the shots. Am I better off letting them do it or am I better off letting the Kum Ba Yah Democratic voice attempt to make things more equitable and kind? Sometimes i feel the fear that the Populists feel---that I would get left out of a global consensus.

Not really. Some argue that Saddam brought stability through overbearing dominance. Try and make a fair coalition out of it all and look at what happens? And this gets back to your question of how Iraq is similar to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. I'm simply waxing philosophical and pondering human nature in general---which may be a bit off-topic but which has valid application to the topic.

On a simple level, I think that the US wants Iraq to become democratic(as in friendly trading partner) and yet not aligned with Iran. God forbid the Iraqis choose to sever ties with the US.We yearn for simpler times, such as what happened with Japan. They became a friendly competitor and yet a viable and profitable trading partner. Islam complicates things. We prefer Democracy first, Islam second.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

Good article. I'm always learning stuff here that jar thinks I *should* have learned 40 years ago. And its still that way. Capitalism is fine as long as the people being exploited are the "others". The dnger of capitalism is when the exploited ones become your own people. I am oversimplifying, but in essence, the Populists feared that Obama and Globalism were attempting to broker peace at the expense of exposing the uneducated middle and lower middle class of the US to the competition which would put them at a disadvantage. They thought (and think) that Trump is helping them by considering their interests before those of the rest of the world. Obama likely thought that global consensus was cheaper than war, which is correct, but that it hollows out the US middle. War preserves US economic health in the short term and also pads the pockets of the wealthy. This cycle has to finish before once again the voice of the people will demand justice and mercy. And the Populists will want to be in on that game as much as the ethnic minorities in Iraq...only at the level they have become used to. Like I said--its a growing war of ideologies and competing interests.And jar: How rude. I am not in a debate class getting graded for my arguments. I am simply calling things the way I see them. There are many more people even less educated than I, and they *do* have a voice in today's politics, uninformed though they may be.

Yes I am. We have examined 4 transitions and four different results.
Yugoslavia.
Czechoslovakia
Japan
IraqWhat further information and/or schoolwork do you want from me?

Yeah I read that. I seem to remember it as a footnote in history but it was not really relevant until brought up in the context of our discussions today.So the US blew it. Have we learned anything since then or is our aggressive support of dictators (except Saddam, evidently) part of our foreign policy manual?

My subtitle says it all. So we "created" Saddam, correct? Why did we later dispose of him? Did we not foresee a trillion-dollar boondoggle? Did Britain and Margaret Thatcher change our mind on Kuwait?

Let's start with Saddam. This is where I get a bit confused since you said that *we* created Saddam. So I did a quickie self-studied History Lesson. Let's see if I can identify any of the main points or issues: So my first question is why did it take so long for the US to brand Saddam as a terrorist? It seems to me that these issues are more complex than a surface assessment will indicate. So I need to ask myself another question.

Why was Saddam initially useful to us in the first place? Im thinking that his authoritarian regime tampered ethnic division and the prospect of dealing with 2 or 3 separate countries, ethnic populations, and national interests.

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Elsevier Ltd. writes:

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According to the United States of America, there was a strong linkage between Saddam Hussein and international terrorism and the first priority of the United States government is to protect its citizens and its political and economic interests; its national security is always paramount

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Also, the United States significantly supports democratic governments around the world and the Baathist regime was seen as totalitarian and undemocratic. Consequently, regime change in Iraq became the U.S. priority and the only way to achieve that was through the use of force.

History shows us that we used our excessive force and won the wars decisively. A question that pops up in my mind is also this:

Were we really liberating the people of Iraq or were they merely secondary? Was our real focus on liberating the resources of Iraq useful to us and eliminating the hotheaded dictator we helped create and attempting to put friendly people in power? It seems to be a reoccurring theme with us.

The research paper focuses on the U.S. decision to invade Iraq from three different analytical perspectives:
realism, liberalism, and Marxist perspective in order to figure out the causes of the invasion decision.
These three international theories are integrated with four different levels of analysis such as individual level, state level, systematic level, and socio-economic level.

OK, this is quickly getting complicated. Perhaps I can break it down to its essence.

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We (The US Position) could care less about the health and well being of foreign people, except as to their stability as a country and their usefulness to us.

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These chickens are coming home to roost. No longer do we have a world of weak countries and docile populations. We are now competing with these people and these countries.

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
~"We, humans, are engaged in an ongoing war of ideologies. I see it in this microcosm of EvC Forum just as I see it in the governments and attitudes of people throughout the world. Take your pick: Oppression or Seduction .
"~Thugpreacha

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You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo

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As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.
? R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
"You may not like it, but the dog bites both ankles."~Tangle