And now, Libya...

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StupidBunny
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Post by StupidBunny »

Well, so far, the "Islamic emirates" that the West have been worrying would spring up and the former/current dictators spread fear about haven't appeared in any of the countries. Of course, it's still early on, and we'll have to see what happens after elections take place in Egypt (assuming they do...we'll hope for the present that the army doesn't cling to power), but I'm hoping for the present that nothing of the sort happens. All of the makeshift governments in Libya's free cities are secular by most accounts, so that's already a good sign.
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Post by Scarlet »

Djaser wrote:So you live where exactly?
This is irrelevant.


Oh, well good for him for not being a US prop! That makes his slaughter of unarmed protesters, totalitarianism and corrupt nepotism okay. I just hope he can put those America-loving imperialist protesters in their place before this is all over.
I am not sure how the protests came about. But, if the US was behind them, then the regime has every right to oppose the foreign meddling in internal affairs. Too many times has the US gone about and toppled regimes and then installed puppet leaders to screw the people and help US business interests. From Iran to Guatemala, to many more.


Everyone has both good and bad sides - even murderous dictators! Neither one cancls out the other.
Perhaps. But if the alternative is a US puppet government, then by all means let the current dude stay in power.


All of the makeshift governments in Libya's free cities are secular by most accounts, so that's already a good sign.
I think it's too early to tell anything. I think they're preoccupied with other problems that they really can't focus on being secular or not.


I may be naïve, but hopefully these events will lead to a more liberal era in the Middle-East and North Africa.
But, when there is instability even radical regimes can come to power.

I mean consider this... in 1992 (I think) some radical islamic fundmentalist party was set to win the election in Algeria by a landslide. The US stepped in and helped annul the elections.
Turkey for example has been less and less secular over the decades since their secular government came to power.
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Post by DHeadshot »

Scarlet wrote:
I may be naïve, but hopefully these events will lead to a more liberal era in the Middle-East and North Africa.
But, when there is instability even radical regimes can come to power.

I mean consider this... in 1992 (I think) some radical islamic fundmentalist party was set to win the election in Algeria by a landslide. The US stepped in and helped annul the elections.
Turkey for example has been less and less secular over the decades since their secular government came to power.
I thought you were just arguing AGAINST the US stepping in..?
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Post by StupidBunny »

Scarlet wrote:
Everyone has both good and bad sides - even murderous dictators! Neither one cancls out the other.
Perhaps. But if the alternative is a US puppet government, then by all means let the current dude stay in power.
US foreign policy wrote:if the alternative is a communist/Islamic fundamentalist government, then by all means let the current dude stay in power.
My point being that the argument fails either way. A bad regime is a bad regime no matter who is or isn't propping them up. The fact that the US has tolerated and propelled to power numerous vile governments in the past for the sake of avoiding an uncertain alternative is really quite shameful, but what makes that different from applying the argument to any other alliance or bloc or whatever?
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Post by Scarlet »

DHeadshot wrote:I thought you were just arguing AGAINST the US stepping in..?
Oh, my case point with squashing Algeria's elections are an argument against the US stepping in. Supposedly democracy is something that is the goal... then how can one hope for that to happen if the US annuls Algeria's elections? So what if a radical muslim government comes to power... using our logic, it's only democratic if we get what we want... that is no better than a dictatorship then, no?


StupidBunny wrote:My point being that the argument fails either way. A bad regime is a bad regime no matter who is or isn't propping them up. The fact that the US has tolerated and propelled to power numerous vile governments in the past for the sake of avoiding an uncertain alternative is really quite shameful, but what makes that different from applying the argument to any other alliance or bloc or whatever?
1) I feel that it is good that there are governments who oppose the US, who are not their peons/puppets.

2) As I clearly said in my first post, I have mixed feelings. Now you guys decide to look into only one aspect of that and I'm left here playing devils advocate. *rolls eyes*
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Post by Djaser »

Scarlet wrote:
Djaser wrote:So you live where exactly?
This is irrelevant.
No it is a valid question. You brought your country in the discussion so man up and tell us!
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Post by Levellass »

Indeed, otherwise it looks like weaseling out.

1.) I feel that it is good that there are governments who oppose the US, who are not their peons/puppets.

2) As I clearly said in my first post, I have mixed feelings. Now you guys decide to look into only one aspect of that and I'm left here playing devils advocate. *rolls eyes*
I can understand the mentality, which is 'The US sucks, it's great that there are people who stand up to the bullies' however what it comes across as is 'Whether something is good or bad depends on whether it is being done for or against the US' or simply 'Torture is bad if the US does it or makes regimes do it, but is forgivable if being done by someone the US hates.'

The problem being that this is a worryingly common view among people (Including its opposite, such as 'Of course we don't torture, we're America! It's advanced interrogation techniques and they deserve it anyway!' )

I can cite a personal example which may mean something. When I was a bit younger than I am now and attended school I was not the top of the social ladder. There were a group of girls bigger than me, richer than me and prettier than me. (They were called everyone. Jk, jk!) They treated me horribly in the wonderful way that girls do, pointing out every flaw, being intimidating and general jerks.

One day another girl quite high up in the pecking order beat three shades of stuffing out of the lead girl over rumors she'd been spreading. She was taken to hospital for stitches in fact since the assault involved a bottle.

Many said she had it coking and it was a good thing it happened, I myself nodded my head in a 'well that's what happens when you act that way' manner.

But I did not fool myself into thinking the attacker was somehow on my side, that we shared some sort of bond or purpose, or even that the girl was nice in any way, because I knew her and knew she was a horrible person too, wouldn't hesitate to do such things to me.

In other words, it's quite possible for evil to oppose evil, in this world, your enemy's enemy is not always your friend.


So I see no need for mixed feelings here. The US has done bad things, fine, hate the US for them, but this government has done bad things too, and no telling what they'd do in the US' place. The world would be better off without them.

What replaces them will be good or bad on its own merits. If a government comes in and fixes the corruption and raises living standards and stopped the oppression, I would welcome it, US backed or not. If it were Muslim, what would I care as long as people thrived? Conversely if Osama himself waltzed in, stoned all the women and named the country Antimerica, I would condemn him for what he did. (I believe that Ghaddafi says Osama IS responsible, would this mean Ghaddafi supports America? He opposes Bin Laden so...)

Let things stand on their own, tainting everything with the US is just another way of allowing them to dominate your thinking. It says 'I let the US tell me what is wrong and what is right. (That is, if they want me to think it's right, they just have to say they oppose it.)
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Post by KeenEmpire »

Scarlet wrote:So, since Hitler is a US target, I have some sympathy for him.
wot
Scarlet wrote:I am not sure how the protests came about. But, if the US was behind them, then the regime has every right to oppose the foreign meddling in internal affairs.
I think it's a much more realistic assumption that the protests came about because Libyans saw the success of their counterparts in Egypt :dead
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Post by DHeadshot »

KeenEmpire wrote:
Scarlet wrote:So, since Hitler is a US target, I have some sympathy for him.
wot
Godwin's Law!
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Post by KeenEmpire »

DHeadshot wrote:Godwin's Law!
Isn't there some kind of law about bringing up Godwin's law? The point is, his rationale for sympathy is not fine enough.
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Post by Scarlet »

No it is a valid question. You brought your country in the discussion so man up and tell us!
You wanna talk about Serbia or what?


'Torture is bad if the US does it or makes regimes do it, but is forgivable if being done by someone the US hates.'
The US used similar logic. The US had a terrorist training school (and still does if I am not mistaken), where they teach torture and such repressive things. It's not inhumane activity if US puppet dictators do it ya know. :dead


So I see no need for mixed feelings here. The US has done bad things, fine, hate the US for them, but this government has done bad things too, and no telling what they'd do in the US' place. The world would be better off without them.
Well, they were quite good towards Serbia. So I give them kuddos for that.

Relations would be better, but our current regime sucks and has sucked for some years.


Here's an article from last year...
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-ar ... v_id=66244
...and quite frankly Serbia needs that kind of support badly. We were supposed to get a 400 million dollar contract for something or other, some military hospital or something, I forget what, and that is quite significant.



I think it's a much more realistic assumption that the protests came about because Libyans saw the success of their counterparts in Egypt
I don't want to believe that it's so easy for regimes to crumble. :P





edit:
Found a good article... it talks about how the former yugoslavia had very good relations with gadafi.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easterna ... onnections
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Post by StupidBunny »

Scarlet wrote:The US used similar logic. The US had a terrorist training school (and still does if I am not mistaken), where they teach torture and such repressive things. It's not inhumane activity if US puppet dictators do it ya know. :dead
Nobody is arguing that it is. I and Levellass and others have argued that's it's bad no matter who's doing it. We're not standing up for the US's past and present toleration of violent dictatorial regimes in favor of ones the US can't control or predict, and have emphasized that it's shameful that that happens. Inhumanity is inhumanity, and nobody can argue in its favor based on any kind of question of who is allied with who.

And you accused us of only reading one side of the argument...
I don't want to believe that it's so easy for regimes to crumble. :P
So who's meddling was it that brought down the pro-US dictators around Libya?
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Post by Scarlet »

So who's meddling was it that brought down the pro-US dictators around Libya?
How should I know?

As I said, I don't want to believe that theory. It makes the world seem very unstable.



This region is not my main area of interest. So I'd rather wait for some stuff to happen before I make any conclusion.
One thing's certain though, and that is that these people live in the most miserable conditions - they're like serfs that barely make ends meet. Wages are miserable. They suck. And they have for a while, in both pro and anti us countries there. So the people are probably just waiting for an excuse to rise up. Only one problem... the whole rising up might put the country into an even worse position than it was previously in. :P
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Post by Levellass »

Isn't there some kind of law about bringing up Godwin's law? The point is, his rationale for sympathy is not fine enough.
Godwin's law states that the firs tperson to mention Hitler and/or nazis in a thread automatically loses the argument. Scarlet has thus lost and we are not obliged to listen to any more of his logic.

As I said, I don't want to believe that theory. It makes the world seem very unstable.
Whether or not you want to believe something doesn't make it any more or less true.


What interests me is this enforces to me the idea that you believe the entire world revolves around the US, it's the kind of logic I would expect from the Bush administration, namely 'Nothing is going to happen unless America does it, we won WWII, we elect all governments and we control all politics across all nations.' it's saying basically that aside from the US itself, *every* country is but a pawn or a puppet with no possibility of deciding their own fates.

I've seen this in conspiracy theories (The government\illuminati\doctors\misc control thousands of people and magically make them not leak anything ever and stop x from happening around the world' ) or religious nuts (It's the antichrist! He's leading the entire world into satan worship!' )

I think regimes like these are inherently unstable, because they repress the bulk of people. You can only stay in charge as long as the people with guns support you. (See how often the US fought people with guns with more people with guns?) In Myanmar the army rules. There are protests there all the time (Remember when the people and those monks protested? I believe they were shot down.) We don't really pay attention to them because, quite frankly since the top have guns and the bottom don't, nothing is going to change there.

In Egypt the success of the revolution hinges on what the army will do. Had they opposed and shot the protesters, I doubt the government would have changed, but they stepped aside and so what was the government to do? What threat could they use to repress the people? In Berlin when the wall came down the troops there gave in and let people through without shooting, Germany reunited quick sharp. The people who have the guns make the rules.

Iraq and Afghanistan look to go back to what they were sooner or later, the people with guns want them to. (So who will have more guns, pro-US or anti-US?) Iran won't change because the guns support the government there. (Remember *their* protests a year or so ago?)

You seem to forget that these weren't installed by the US last week, these regimes have been going 20, 30, 50 years. People have grown up under terror where the police can beat you for making jokes about politcians, where they don't have enough to eat or can't get that job because the connected kid got it first. As soon as the threat of being shot is gone (Or sometimes, when people are going to die anyway, when they're pushed too far...) then they'll rebel. It may start small, but when others see that they too could do this, they will, they'll do what they've dreamed of doing all these years.

It's not like equal, happy democracies suddenly collapse in a week here, these are regimes that have systematically hurt and oppressed their people. Like lighting a fire under a can of petrol, the end is sudden, unexpected, maybe even unpredictable, but only a fool would say it was ever stable. (Try it, it will scare the poop out of you every time, a soda can with a tablespoon of petrol in it will need you to hide behind a wall and can last ten minutes before going boom.)

What will happen next? Will democracy boom? An Islamic federation? More dictators? The people with guns will choose. In Egypt I have high hopes they will let a democracy rise.
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Post by TerminILL »

Actually, all Godwin's Law states is that as the number of posts in an online discussion increases, so does the chance of a comparison to Hitler. Everything else is house rules. :P
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