Yay Democracy!

[MrGrave]

So, ask any Fox News Subscriber why we went into Iraq, and they have the rhetoric down perfectly, to bring democracy to those people that had none. This always pissed me off, not only because you can't export democracy with bullets, but also because Iraq seemed like a very poor choice of a country to "free."

Let's look at some other countries that deserved intervention more than Iraq:

Burma:

In 1990 Gen. Than Shwe lost the election in a landslide victory to Aung San Suu Kwi. Instead of giving up his seat, he put aung san suu kwi in prison for the last 19 years and has committed a whole string of human rights violations and violent abuses against his own people. In 2007, with his shocking method of suppressing the protests made by Buddhist monks, Burma finally got a place in the media's puppet game. Of course, instead of intervention, we just made a new Rambo movie where Rambo comes in and fixes everything. Yay Rambo.

Zimbabwe:

For the last 29 years, President Robert Mugabe has successfully taken a wealthy and powerful country and transformed it into a slum. In the 2008 election, supporters of the opposition were targeted and intimidated by the State resulting in 170 deaths and thousands of rapes and beatings. So far a blind eye has been turned on him, you'd think we would at least send the CIA in. Oh wait, we only send the CIA into countries that want to nationalize their industries. My bad.

Saudi Arabia:

When your constitution is a Dogma, you're forced to be in a certain religion with no choice over the matter, women are not allowed to drive and a royal family controls the vast majority of the wealth, you might be thinking I'm talking about America as the Religious Right wants it to be. My favorite part in the USA's recent regime change is that for the last 8 years, most complaints I made in earshot of a Republican were met with "Well if you don't like it, go to Canada." Now that they're the ones bitching, I can't exactly say "Go to Canada" because I imagine they'd find that government even less acceptable. Instead I say "Go to Saudi Arabia, you'll probably find their system more agreeable with your lifestyle."

Granted they're trying to force everyone to be Christian, not Muslim, but the general principle is the same.

Laos:

One of the last "communist" states in the world, Laos adds its own twist through massive bribe exchanges and general government corruption. President Choummaly Sayasone regulates the country himself with all your freedoms and privileges based on his current mood. 15,000-20,000 women from Laos are trafficked into prostitution every year. Thousands of Hmong Native People have been displaced in an attempt to cleanse the country of their ethnic heritage and fight off rebels. I can't complain, myself, those Laos sex slaves suck dick the best. Especially the 12 year old ones. The worst part is, there isn't even a Hollywood movie about Laos. The only thing Laos related in the media is Hank's weird Asian neighbor in King of the Hill.

Chad:

You got to love a country where the Human Rights groups don't even know who to side with. With both the Rebels and State Soldiers participating in torture, theft and rape of civilians, and hundreds of thousands of Chadians displaced from their homes, the country is a total cluster fuck. President Idriss Deby's people make off with tons of kick-backs from the country's oil revenue so despite their rich natural wealth Chad remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world.

Belarus:

What article about dictators is complete without good old Aleksandr Lukashenko? Considered Europe's last dictator, elections have been suspended since 1994. They require citizens to carry a National I.D. card at all times and arrest protesters pretty regularly.

That's enough for now, I only picked a handful of countries, but here are some I missed:

Tibet
Equatorial Guinea
Libya
Syria
Somalia
Sudan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Cuba
Eritrea
Morocco
Chechnya
South Ossetia
China

Much of Asia, Eastern Europe and especially Africa suffer through worse atrocities every day than Saddam Hussein gave his entire career. He committed his last act of genocide over ten years before we invaded to take him out, and within that time genocide has continued to sweep over the world with a vastly outnumbering record of deaths. People are being raped and tortured, the media is suspended and controlled, there's sex trade, slave trade, sweatshops, refugees and bribes everywhere. I compiled this because I'm sick of hearing about how mean Hussein was, there was absolutely no justification to go into Iraq, the Republicans have clung to that last shred of a reason and it's bullshit. Happy Independence Day.

[Station]

I disagree about Saudi Arabia. Most arab nations are now pretty progressive and moderate. Womens rights are actually starting to gain headway there.

Now, corporal punishment, on the other hand, is something that I haven't heard making any ground lately. I should look up some info on what's going on with that in Saudi Arabia.

[Volodnikov]

Do countries really deserve more intervention in Iraq? I agree with some of the nations you mentioned such as Myanmar and the African nations where there wouldn't be harsh diplomatic repercussions, but intervening in some of these other countries would have produced far greater consequences than those of the Iraqi War. Tibet, for example, would have been a catalyst for global war with the Comintern if we had intervened when Chinese forces entered that area in 1959.

Perhaps if we intervened in some other country in 2003 like Syria, you would have written this same article today, but you would have listed Iraq as a nation we should have rather intervened in. The Iraqi War is a mess, but it was the same situation in Iraq as there is in these other nations you have listed. Saddam Hussein's last genocide being years before the invasion doesn't justify his actions, nor does it present itself as a good reason for leaving him alone. Iraq wasn't exactly a pleasure paradise. If you think we should have intervened in Saudi Arabia instead, then why not Iraq?

Also, please elaborate on South Ossetia. Does that mean the US should have intervened on the behalf of Ossetian independence, or the laughable Georgian government under Saakashvili who try to play down that there are a people within his nation who want their secession? If the latter, then I think the UN intervention was already enough.

[MrGrave]

I'll do more research on South Ossetia because I understand it's very complicated diplomatically. But in reality this response is to clarify my claims. I am not saying that we should invade any of the countries mentioned, simply that Iraq made no better choice to export freedom than dozens of countries in the world that undergo very harsh treatment from their government, nor is it the only nation with a dictator. There are some countries that deserve intervention, for instance I truly believe China needs help. But the intervention we offer does nothing but rally dissidents to the nationalist call which is why intervention in the name of liberation, by a rule, is simply not practical.

I mentioned Chad for a good example of this, Peace keeping forces don't know who to get behind because both sides of the fight take advantage of the civilians. No matter what stance we take on most nations, the end result is a rallying cry toward nationalism and the united state would do nothing but create more support of the oppressive governments. That's exactly what we did in Iraq. The evidence is clear, but no matter what the Republicans in this country will refuse to admit that they were wrong, that you cannot export liberation.

As far as Saudi Arabia goes, I understand there's a very progressive thing happening in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia is not the leader of this progressive movement. A woman on trial is still worth half as much as the credibility that a man would have and the standards still dictate that daughters receive half the inheritance of sons when the parents die.

Furthermore I'd like to talk more about China because if I were president I'd send Black Ops there tonight to fuck some shit up. I wouldn't put America's name on it because like I said before, put a name on the invasion and you give the entire country an enemy. In fact, avoiding blame on the US would be a higher priority to me than actually changing the circumstances of Chinese Citizens. At the same time, I am a man that clenches his fists when hearing about injustice, and I cannot stand the info I've gathered on China. That country is so backwards, no one deserves a revolution more than those people. But it should be their revolution, and they're powerless to instigate it. We cannot lend real support, I know that, and that is the fucked up thing about the world we live in. We, the US, control the technology and the seas. We are still the greatest, most powerful country on Earth because of those two simple reasons. Still, we can do nothing for those people because we are America, people so proud of freedom when most of us don't know what Freedom really is. We cannot fight injustice in the world because for the last forty years we have represented injustice. We have not fought for freedom, we have fought for greed and power and blanketed our true motive under the label of the Fight Against Communism.

And people in our country like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh still see us as Angels, cleansing the wickedness of all we grace with our presence. And that's the real point of this article. When our rhetoric is concerned, injustice is our calling, our nemesis. When reality is concerned, we take what we please, and the world has caught notice.