As They Stand Up

[BasketCase]

Democracy=Two wolfs and a sheep deciding on dinner.

Democracy = EVERYBODY deciding on dinner. If the wolves can't vote, it's not a democracy. Oh, and by the way, the actual numbers in the wild are perhaps a dozen wolves to more than a hundred sheep.

A democracy in which Shi'ite religious law trumps human rights?

YES.
Same thing again. Religious Shi'ites have the same rights you do.

In which a week does not go by without another carbombing?

A dozen or so people get killed over there in bombings each week. In that same week, over here, EIGHT HUNDRED people were killed in car accidents. The few Iraqis that are getting killed in bombings cannot be called a loss by any sane standard.

What happens if the democracy we set up collapese within two years?

What happens if the UNITED STATES democracy collapses in two years? And I should point out that several CFC'ers have claimed that it will DEFINITELY collapse intentionally.

Does that mean we should just go ahead and give up? Install a dictatorship now and get it over with??

HELL NO.

What happens if Iraq breaks into civil war?

What happens if the United States breaks down into civil war? OOPS! Wait a second! The United States has had one already!!! If Iraq has a civil war, same as the U.S. civil war: deal with it. A speed bump on the FREEway.

Sheesh. Casting a dictatorship as a good thing. That's pretty screwed up.

 

[BasketCase]

Quick side note to those who are paranoid about religious people gaining power in Iraq:

I've had to deal with that problem my whole life.

A lot of you probably already know I'm an atheist. Well, I've had to put up with zealous religious folks ever since college (an environment which seems to radicalize just about everybody). There were always religious folks staging ambushes in the campus plaza and trying to convert people. Today, they're at my front door instead of in the plaza, and I encounter them less often, but they're still there.

I really didn't enjoy that, but having them arrested (or shot) was not the solution. The price of democracy is putting up with such people. I like democracy, and that just means I'm going to have to deal with the occasional Seventh Day Adventist who knocks on my front door now and then.

In a forum where so many are completely aggro about freedom (especially Bush Jr.'s alleged attempts to marginalize or remove them), I find it disturbing that some of those same people are flipping U-turns and proposing a dictatorship as the solution to Iraq's problems.

 

[downtown]

You cant possibily compare carbombings to car wrecks here basket! First of all, plain ol' muggings and murders that happen in Iraq dont get reported here, so we cant compare those. Cars do NOT explode over here. People do not walk outside their house in fear of a car accident. People in Iraq ARE afraid they're going to get blown up when they leave their house. HUGE differences

 

[King Flevance]

Well said Matt.

I have a few issues concerning some of the other topics as well but it isn't worth the effort.

 

[Mr. Do]

BasketCase, I don't think anyone's saying dictatorship is a good thing, but I think the point is that even the best "win" we can hope for it really the lesser of two evils, and not something that we should be especially proud of. Only a dozen people killed in car bombs, wow let's all give Bush a slap on the back...

 

[BasketCase]

You cant possibily compare carbombings to car wrecks here basket!

If it's a problem to you, switch out "car wrecks" and replace it with "murders".

We have twenty-five thousand murders a year over here, and to most Americans, it's worthwhile to accept those twenty-five thousand murders in order to have "innocent until proven guilty" in our legal system.

When 9/11 and the Patriot Act were Front Page News, most CFC'ers opposed the Patriot Act; they said in their posts that they would rather suffer more terrorist attacks than suffer the loss of freedoms that the Patriot Act (allegedly) represented.

Or, consider Ireland. They do have car bombings all the time. No dictatorship on the way over there.

The precedent is very clear: Freedom First. Life second. Those words were not written by me, they were written by you, the citizens of CFC. Most people in the nations of the Free World insist on freedom even when it compromises our security. Car accidents are the same; thousands of them happen every year, but you, the reader, decided to take the risk of killing somebody this morning, and hopped into your car to go to work. You're willing to take chances with your life (and other peoples' lives) for freedom and convenience. Hell, I do the same. I did once come very close to running somebody over in my car. I got over it, and I still drive. With a clear conscience.

You can't simply overturn the precedent when it suddenly becomes inconvenient to you. It's not worthwhile to bless the Iraqi people with a dictatorship just because of occasional bombings that kill a couple dozen people a week. I find it distressing that the same people who cried in terror of the Patriot Act, and said they would prefer a few more terrorist bombings to loss of their precious freedoms, suddenly flip a 180 and say they prefer a dictatorship to a few car bombings.

Edit: Actually, it's okay to flip a 180 per se--it's okay to have a change of opinion. What I find distressing is when people say both of the italicized items above--at the same time.