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On Mar 22, 2011, at 10:44, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> It would be good that a nation fights out its internal affairs without
> intervention from the U.S. and/or NATO. Every time there is an intervention,
> there are leftists who wobble on this, they see complexities, they see "bad
> guys" on the other side, they want to be good guys.
Are there ever cases when there really are bad guys on one side and not so bad guys on the other? Also, regardless of whatever my final assessment of what to do would be, I still think it is hugely important to try to understand the complexities of a situation. I don't think that understanding the complexities of a situation ever leads to a determinate answer on what to do, it is your ideological frame that then takes the facts as best understood and weighs them to come to a conclusion. One COULD even say, despite all the complexities and the likelihood that a popular uprising will be violently put down, I believe that US/NATO intervention is a likely worse scenario... The decision is always open...not determined by the mere recognizing of complexities.
> Then the U.S. intervenes
> and there follow years or decades of horror. How many Iraqis have died since
> the U.S. intervened. How many have been driven into exile? How many continue
> to live in misery? The U.S. got rid of that "bad guy" who ruled Iraq. Big
> deal.
>
In both the cases of Afghanistan and iraq, there was no popular uprising. That may or may not be a sufficiently important difference, but a significant one nonetheless...
Bryan