Saudi Arabia Will Protect Sunnis if the U.S. Leaves

They're not smart enough to plan that.

I think higher and more volatile oil prices would convince Americans to wean themselves off gas instead of relying upon it.

 

No, they make up the majority of the population.

Peace and stability don't have anything to do with pluralism. If you're suggesting that peace and stability would be nice, then yes of course. If you're suggesting peace (meaning one assumes the absence of war) and stability at any price, then no of course not.

It appears you would prefer stability and tyranny. 'Give me liberty or give me death'....ring a bell?

 

One of the biggest problems with this whole Iraq thing is that Americans have been presuming to know what the Iraqis want. If the Iraqis really wanted the secular western democracy we thought they wanted don't you think things would've gone differently?

 

Good point.

Maybe they should be trying to sell Democracy to the people of Iraq with that PR firm we are paying 6.2 million for instead of just trying make people think we are their friends.

 

How would we know what a majority of Iraqis want without a free press and free elections? I don't guess anybody wants civil war and would prefer a theocratic rule if it kept people from getting slaughtered, but once you have an autocratic regime in place it's pretty hard to effect reforms.

How would the French Revolution play on today's media? We'd all like to think the world is more civilized by now but it's not. Radical politics still result in bloodbaths. It is the very rare society that has an indigenous democratic movement. They are usually either supported by a outside world power or arise as a humanitariam response to tyranny by the educated classes. They all require some cult of personality and the problem is the temptation of the idealized leaders to superceed the inegrity of the people with their own agenda's.

 

So, to sum up...

Truman, Ike, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, HW, and Clinton generally sought to reduce ME tensions and make incremental progress in the region while keeping people from killing each other and ensuring a stable supply of energy.

W, well, not so much.

 

are you saying democracy and pluralism is basically synonymous? how do you define pluralism?

where did I say tyranny? are you assumig all non-democracies tyrannies? so we should attack SA then..

you think iraqis expecially women right now have more liberty than before?

 

Regardless of how much of a debacle this war has been, you must admit that since the late 1970's, overall, the situation in the Middle East was getting worse, not better. W is rightly criticized for the mess we're in. But don't pretend that Carter, Reagan, HW, and Clinton made any progress while they were in office.

 

if anything, at least they actually did their best to broker peace

 

But they didn't make it worse... The brokering of the Egypt-Israeli deal by Carter was a pretty important deal. The Oslo Accords were certainly a step in the right direction and that got derailed because of Rabin's assassination and Netanyahu's decision to basically ignore the whole thing.

Post-Oslo was the best chance for peace and it got ruined by short-sighted Israeli and Palestinian governments and I'm sure both sides would jump at the opportunity to redo it all. The US was at least pushing things in the right direction before in terms of negotiations.

We aren't doing anything helpful there anymore.

 

That's the point.

 

Hayesian Debate Tip #2472: When debating Hayes, it is best not to use the term "synonym", nor is it wise to argue/inquire based on definitions.

 

No, I am not saying that. I am saying that a dictatorship, Iraq pre-intervention, was not pluralistic. That was your assertion - that it was pluralistic. That is incorrect.

The actual quote is: "In democratic politics, pluralism is a guiding principle which permits the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles."

The next sentence points out the absurdity of claiming Iraq pre-intervention was pluralistic: "Unlike totalitarianism or particularism, pluralism acknowledges the diversity of interests and considers it imperative that members of society accommodate their differences by engaging in good-faith negotiation."

You make a crazy leap that if something is peaceful then it is pluralistic and if it is not then it isn't. That is just plain wrong. Pluralism merely means differing views are allowed into the discussion. Having instability doesn't impact that one way or the other.

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source plu·ral·ism (plr-lzm) Pronunciation Key
n.
The condition of being multiple or plural.

A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society.
The belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.



I, VLaurelio, assure you we were a most pluralistic society before the intervention.

You said Iraq pre-intervention, which was a tyranny. If you want to declare that Saddam's dictatorship was not so, please feel free.

I think Iraqis have more liberty from the government now than they did before, yes. The government is definitely more pluralistic now than it was before. I think that is undeniable. Before you had the rule of one - Saddam. Now you have the rule of many - Sunni, Kurd, and Shiite.

Still hurts, huh? Best not to declare something synonymous when it isn't, as rhad can confirm.

 

by the defintion you posted of pluralism mentions peace

do you still stand by this?

and here's a question you never really answered directly

this is a general question so don't turn it into a spacific one.. i never mentioned any specific ruler or country..

 

For the purposes of this discussion Iraq was culturally quite pluralistic when Saddam was in charge, but I think there are several issues getting mixed up here. There is now a fear by some, Saudi Arabia in this case, that Iraq will come to be dominated by Shiite interests. That fear didn’t exist while Saddam was in charge, nor was there a fear that Iraq would come to be dominated by Sunni interests or Kurdish interests. This is a new problem caused by the instability that this war has created. I think before the war all felt that Saddam was a very bad guy, but I don’t think very many Iraqis at all wanted the US to invade like it did, because they knew it would only make things worse. I know an Iraqi family, a Christian family from Bagdad, and they did not like Saddam at all but they said that if you stayed out of his way you could live your life and come and go, and even come and go from the country, in relative peace and security. Now the family they have that is still there has lost all those freedoms. They are living in a prison caused by the chaos of war, and this has been going on for years now and there is no end in sight. So this war took away their freedoms and security, and it has trashed their city too, and not surprisingly they are not happy about that.

 

thank you

 

The definition I posted doesn't say anything about peace:

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source plu·ral·ism (plr-lzm) Pronunciation Key
n.
The condition of being multiple or plural.

A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society.
The belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.

The definition you posted (and I reposted) does but that's from some wikinonymous person and there is no inherent reason why a government can't be pluralistic and the country have instability at the same time.

Too generic to answer. I would rather be in an unstable democracy than under a stable totalitarian regime, a stable monarchy, or a stable authoritarian regime. If you want another option considered then name it and I'll be happy to tell you.

Sure, if you consider two of the three main cultural groups being oppressed by methods ranging from imprisonment to open warfare to be 'quite pluralistic.'

 

if you think

"A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society."

has nothing to do with stability or peace then I'm just wasting my time

 

If you think that a dictatorship is pluralistic then you are, indeed, wasting your time. Grizzled is right that there are two different conversations going on. Governmentally Iraq is undeniably more pluralistic now. Culturally it is possibly debatable, although as I already pointed out two of the main three groups were hardly shown tolerance under Saddam's rule.

 

In the interest of accuracy Saddam's Baath party was dominated by Sunnis and Sunni parts of the country benefitted much more under Saddam's rule than Shiite or Kurdish parts so the country was dominated by Sunni interests.