Re: [OT] Iraq

docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
In article <s8GdnRfyUvDoOWnbnZ2dnUVZ_g-dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
LX-i <lxi0007@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
docdwarf@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
This is, I believe, called 'moving the target'. If the goal was to 'bring democracy to Iraq' and 'democracy was brought to Iraq' then the job was done. If the job was 'bring democracy to Iraq and insure that it remains for (period of time)' then it was not stated as such; re-stating goals after they've been accomplished is not, in my experience, usually something done by folks known as 'honorable'.
And exactly what good is democracy that fails ten seconds after we walk out the door?

That might depends on who was trying to use it for what end.

I really don't see that pulling out before it is firmly established is moving the target.

That's irresponsible - best voiced by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. He called it the Pottery Barn principle - "you break it, you buy it."

So... the United States brings it, the Iraqis break it and it then falls upon the United States to bring in more. Seems more like 'they break it, *we* buy it.'

We didn't break the democracy, we broke their existing government. We need to leave them with a functional, potent government.

Democracy isn't something we can drop from an airlift - it has to be demonstrated, trained, and nurtured.

It was. 'This is how you form a government, this is how elections are held and this is how elected representatives respond to the people. Got that? Good, I have a transport out to catch.'

OK - catch a flight over there and give that a shot. Let me know how you get on...

Oh no... are those Pesky Jews back to controlling The Media again? I thought that in these days of modern time, with stuff like the Internet and a free market in ideas, that people could hear whatever they looked for.
Heh - if the Jews were running it, I think we'd be just fine. It's the terrorist-sympathizers that I have the problem with. :)

Terrorist-sypmathisers or Latter-Day Zoroastrians... the job of the media is to sell eyeballs and column-inches; rules of the Free Market may be applied in analysing the reasons for a particular view being presented.

Are you telling me that the free market somehow changed between World War II / Korea and Vietnam? I don't think it was the market, I believe it was the providers.

Ummmmm... didn't you just, a few paragraphs, ask if democracy can remain over time? That seems to be demanding a timetable; does that make you a Democrat or a liberal Republican?
You're "seeming" this wrongly. Establishing a democracy that will last is a far cry from saying "You will do (x) and (y) and (z) by a certain date, or we will issue very, very stern warnings to you."

No, it is much simpler than that. 'That will last' begs the question 'last for how long?'; right now there is an Iraqi parliament so avanced that it takes vacations that are just as long as those of the President of the United States of America. This seems like a symptom of 'advancement', no?

Vacations are actually beneficial to productivity, and they also allow the representatives time to reconnect with their constituents. This is one of those "can't make a baby in 3 months by using 3 women" things - to get it done *right* takes time. You work on it a while, step back and look at it, think some more, then dig back in.

I saw a chart that the Iraqi parliament has accomplished 8 of 17 "benchmarks" suggested to them, while the Democrat Congress chiding them for missing benchmarks has accomplished 1 of the 7 things on which its candidates ran leading up to November 2006. Who's missing the target here?

I've seen charts that show the project I'm working on is on time, on spec and under budget.

Ah - but this chart was illustrating actual fact! :)

These seem to have been given to them, as noted above... and some say that it is the military's job 'to kill people and break things', not to 'help' and 'give guidance', as you say they are doing.
Training and reproducing is a natural part of maintaining a standing military - involving those of other nations in this training is commonplace.

Not according to those whose assertion that the military's job is 'to kill people and break things'. You want training, hire DeVry Institutes.

So how do the people in the military know how to kill people and break things? Are they just naturally gifted in this area, and we've been oh-so-fortunate as a nation that they enlist? If you're training a *military*, it makes sense to use *military* trainers.

In my current job, I've met officers from several different countries who came to our Safety Center for training. We're not building their nations, but we share lessons learned and best practices.

Not too many of such folks are involved in shooting wars with the US, it is hoped.

Heh - well, they're involved, but they're shooting the same direction we are. :)


The State Department folks are the ones giving the guidance.

Fine... then send over the Staties and guy my brothers in khaki... errrr, olive drab... errrr, digitised whatever

Sorry for the mid-sentence snip - don't get me started on this stuff they're calling uniform fabric...

*out of the way of bullets*.

I'd love to. But, I'd rather the bullets be fired at those who know how to evade and retaliate than for them to be directed at the Iraqi legislature. If unguarded, it would probably take very little time to assassinate every governmental leader over there now. We're back to buying what we broke...

Government has no money of its own.

This seems to be contradicted by the busily-humming presses of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the Mint. Governments say 'this is what will be accepted as money', make it and insure the circulation of it... or at least they've seemed to do so over the past few years.

If government has no money then how, pray tell, does a currency devaluation work?

The government prints the money - but if printing the money were the solution to funding the government, why have taxation at all? "Spend all you want, we'll print more!" would make a great political slogan...

To have money, it has to take that money from its citizens; this taking of money, taxation, being done at the point of a gun. (You don't pay, you go to jail.)

Oooooo... guys with guns, the Libertarians (sometimes referred to as 'Jefferson's Mistakes') can be far away. Guys with guns take stuff that says 'this is a product of the Mint/BPE... but that's not government property, right?

Quibble over how I describe it, but it's true. If every single American stopped paying taxes tomorrow, the government coffers would dry up in a hurry. (Granted, it would be difficult to pull that off, since they collect money in so many different ways...)

When the government takes *my* money to give it to someone else (not the aforementioned "common" things), *that's* socialism.

Not according to the definitions cited previously about 'collective ownership of the means of production' and 'goernment administration of the distribution of goods'. Governments which have functioned on any decent-sized scale have always, to the best of my knownedge, have had the power to take a buck from over here and put it over there; if doing so is 'socialism' then all governments, by that criterion, are socialist... and that appears to be an absurdity.

Call it absurd if you want. It's not USSR-level socialism, but it is a form. "Government administration of the distribution of goods." When they take *my* money, and distribute it to *other* people, how exactly would you categorize that?

Should I go across the street, take one of our neighbor's 5 cars, and give it to the folks two streets over who only have 2? Of course not - that's not my place. I don't know what my neighbors need with 5 cars, but I'll bet they could tell me. Is it fair that they have 5 cars while my other neighbors have 2? We just don't know. Maybe one house has 4 legal drivers, while the other only has 2. Maybe the folks with 2 are saving up for a third. It's doesn't really matter, though, because the point of this is that it is *not my place* to take from one and give to the other, just because I perceive an imbalance.

Ditto with the government and people's hard-earned wages. Mr. Business Owner gets 35% of his income confiscated - that's 35% of his earnings that he cannot reinvest in his business, to expand it and provide more jobs. Meanwhile, the money seized from Mr. Business Owner goes to fund unemployment checks. If the free market were allowed to work, the unemployment check would be unnecessary, because business would be expanding at such a rate that the unemployed could get work. The biggest problem with this, for a lot of people, is that no one *controls* it.

What was that definition again? Something about controlling the distribution of goods?

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