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Originally Posted by lookout123
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?
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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.