Re: [OT] Iraq

In article <zNGdnb-Q8paiZGjbnZ2dnUVZ_uKpnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
LX-i <lxi0007@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.

A: 'We need to establish a democratic government before we leave.'

B: 'All right, it is established, let's go home.'

A: 'No, we cannot... we need to establish a democratic form of government
and insure that it endures according to the intention of our establishing
for (period of time).'

That is not 'moving the goalposts' Our definitions are rather different,
it seems.


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.

We've established that already, there have been elections... remember the
happy purple thumbs? It is theirs to do with as they want.


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...

It is not my role as a citizen to do that... it is my role as a citizen
to, if I see that as a desired course of action, to attempt to elect
officials who will do such a thing.


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.

I'm trying to tell you that 'the job of the media is to sell eyeballs anc
column-inches', my apologies if I failed.


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.

So you agree that the Iraqi government exists, is democratically elected
and is productive. Seems to satisfy the Mission Statement rather well.


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! :)

The chart I referred to was claiming to do just that, too... and perhaps
it did, until a Corner-Office Idiot said 'Oh, and while you're at it, can
you give us the inverse-barometric pressure sort, too?'


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.

If military matters are all that are being taught then bring the folks who
need training over to the USA... there are a bunch of closed and/or
underutilised bases that can be used for this purpose.

[snip]

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...

Were that scenario to be played out... once again, *we* would not be the
ones breaking the democratically-elected government of the Iraqis,
*someone else* would be breaking that we installed by complying with our
mission objectives.


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...

These questions are answered in most basic textbooks of Economics... do
you really need them repeated here?


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.

I have not quibbled, I believe I have shown the argument to be wrong.

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...)

If every single American decided to break a given law there would be a bit
of disruption; this is Now News, either. Remember 'what if they gave a
war and nobody came'?


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.

It does not fit any of the criteria given in the definition... but the
definition applies? None of the criteria of 'leg' apply to 'tail' but
calling it such makes it one, it seems.


"Government administration of the distribution of goods." When
they take *my* money, and distribute it to *other* people, how exactly
would you categorize that?

Not this again. 'Money', by definition, is 'something generally accepted
as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment'; that
kind of stuff, in the USA, is, usually, manufactured, controlled and
distributed by the government.


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?

No more than you should be allowed to declare war, establish treaties,
raise and maintain an army and other such Stately Matters. Some things a
country does, some things an individual does... been that way for a while,
too.

DD

.

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