First of all, Jane don't worry about it. LJ loves to fan the flames sometimes, but he's an alright kind of guy (we all have our little idiosyncrancies). SM and UT come from the right side of the board, but even they can sometimes see reason. We all have fun pulling one another's tails. Don't take any of it too seriously, and stick around. We can always use another intelligent liberal around here.

Now back to my analogy with the Chinese. Western culture, religion, and political systems are as foreign to the Arab world as Chinese thought would be to us. Let's say in our little hypothetical future scenario that the Chinese came in with hearts of purest gold - no ulterior motive for their intervention. How many of us would really believe this? I know I would be hugely skeptical of their motives. Why? Because historically the Chinese have never been friends with the West. Because they DO have a very different system of government than ours. And that's just for starters.

The Western and Arab world have been at loggerheads every since the Crusades if not before. We have different systems of belief. Our cultures are very different, as are our systems of governance. Of course any Arab nation is going to be at best suspicious of us and skeptical of our motive.

I am skeptical of our motive. We don't intervene in the internal affairs of other third world countries where something as valuable as petroleum is not at stake. I hate to be a broken record, but once again "It's the oil, dummy!" No wonder that the people of Iraq do not greet us with open arms. And we have made their lives worse, not better. At least under Saddam they had electricity. Now they are most likely to see electricity when they're being tortured with it.

So to complete the analogy Mar, if it was your neighborhood without electricity after crushing the Bush regime, and the strange Chinese had taken the task of repairing it, but had not completed it because hardliner Bush loyalists were bombing their facilities and pipelines...

...you personally would fault the Chinese then?

Most likely as a patriotic American, me and my little band of guerillas would be out there doing our best to disrupt the Chinese forces. To make the scenario even more realistic, lets say that a group of Western terrorists for some reason of their own had set off bombs in a major Chinese city, killing thousands of Chinese just weeks or months before the Chinese decided to come to our aid out of the pure goodness of their hearts. Let's say further that prior to this Chinese intervention the Chinese leadership had made a number of statements which seemed to imply that the US was giving sanctuary to the terrorists. When the Chinese army sets foot on US soil to "free" me, my every hair is standing on end and I feel that my country is going from the frying pan to the fire.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the Chinese have banned any American who worked under the former Bush dictatorship from having anything to do with repairing the power supplies. This, in effect, gets rid of all our skilled people because they had no choice but to work under the Bush dictatorship, like it or not.

oh dammit! now we're going to have to go back and reinstitute slavery... after all if they didn't want to be slaves then surely they would have freed themselves, right?

So Mar, whenever you found them repairing the electricity, you would capture and behead the Chinese?

Have you read the long lists of what the Americans have done over there, or do you really believe it's just one big Abu Ghraib?

Once more this is a false analogy. In the US whites greatly out-numbered slaves, so while there were any number of small uprisings, the possibility of an outright rebellion was nearly impossible. We are not discussing a system of slavery here, but rather a government dictatorship. In theory, at least, it was within the realm of possibility for the Iraqui people to turn against Saddam just as the people of India led by Mahatma Ghandi rose against British imperialism. Who is to say that this might not have happened in Iraq but for Western meddling? In fact the intervention of US forces in the Middle East has added to the instability of that region, rather than detracted from it. Dictators like Saddam are able to rally people against what they percieve to be a threat by the Western world.

By the way, talk about a thread getting hi-jacked! But I guess in a way this comes back to my original question about the "good" in peoples' hearts. I think many wrongs are committed due to our inability to place ourselves in another person's shoes and understand how they might percieve what is going on around them.

It's often said that no guerilla movement has ever succeeded against a government in place without outside help. Think of that, and remember that the future is THIS:

http://www.bigbrotherawards.org/img/award.jpg (forever)

French revolution didn't involve outside help. The Russian one had minimal meddling, the Vietnamese fought off the french without little or no help. That's off the top of my head.

If someone had said in 2000 it was possible for someone to hijack two jets, fly them into both World Trade Center towers, and completely demolish both towers, how far-fetched would you have classified it.

These kinds of questions have always been asked. After WWII and during the Cold War, there were many movies about possible political unrest in the US. An analysis of many of the Nazis who committed atrocities found most of them to be clinically sane, not to mention all of those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen. The most dangerous phrase is always 'It could never happen here'. It is very similar to the one recited by 11 million people in German concentration camps.

Since September 11th, a great deal of power has been concentrated in the executive branch. We already know that Nixon attempted to abuse his authority with government agencies, in essence declaring himself to be the government and to have any criticism of him investigated as criticism of the United States itself. More power has been given/returned to the White House than Nixon ever had at his disposal.

Our founders were very wise in installing three branches in our goverment as checks and balances. Of course, since a President can sometimes select members of the Supreme Court and hand picks the Attorney General, sometimes the relationship does not always appear as adversarial as it should be.

Nixon's impeachment by a true bipartisan Congress was one of our nations best and worst days at the same time. It demonstrated that noone was above the law and that when necessary, Congress had the will to uphold some basic standard of democracy above party affiliation and politics as usual.

The fact is that most patriots start out as traitors and most 'freedom fighters' as terrorists. The label only changes if they win. Thanks to the Patriot Act, we are safer than we have ever been from terrorists. We are also safe from patriots, if we should ever need them.

Our only hope in a stable and functioning democracy is the ethical backbone of Congress when it really matters, the impartiality of the Supreme Court, the apolitical stance of our military and their commitement to 'support and defend the Constitution', and an informed, actively engaged public that is able to balance a desire for liberty with that of safety.

Movies about Bad Things That Can Happen Here

Seven Days in May (1968)

Fail Safe (1964)

Enemy of the State (1998)

The Siege (1998)

The Pelican Brief (1993)

Movies about Bad Things That (Almost) Did Happen Here

All the Presidents Men (1976)

Thirteen Days (2000)

What...no
The Manchurian Candidate ? ;)

Wag the Dog?

I thought "we" (as in US Banks and financiers including JP Morgan) paid for it for the most part.

The Russian revolution was funded by JP Morgan?!? Damn capitalist warmongers! I knew you couldn't trust 'em! :eyebrow:

Which revolution? There's all sorts of bit an pieces in there, you'll have to be specific. I should have in the first place.

Quite a bit of it ... playing both sides against the middle, IIRC, but for the most part I was referring to the October Revolution.