Iraq reminds me of South Africa under the Apartheid system

[doubles]

This war smells of colonialism and racist oppression, white people oppressing brown skin people. Any revolt against the occupation is met with tremendous force as the military promises an "overwhelming" response for Fallujah. Yet, the right wing media is calling for us to level Fallujah, no one cares how many lives will be lost. Why does the media and the Western world continue to accept the colonialistic practices of Europeans?

[kalian]

1. That and Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.....

Exact same mentality.
"Level Fallujah" would be like leveling Jenin....won't make any
difference at all except increase the oppressed's resolve to
win.

[ixion]

2. Occupation has never worked, for the most part

there are some instances you can point to, but when all instances of occupation are considered, they are exceptions to the rule. In most cases, the native populus reaches a boiling point and a guerilla war is born.

For some reason, though, humans who find themselves at the helm of an empire suddenly feel as though they can do it, and it will somehow be different.

They feel that they can rule the world, and somehow the world will love them for it.

And that's almost never the case. And even in cases where occupation has temporarily worked, in the end it did not bode well and relations were strained, at best.

History does NOT repeat itself. Humans repeatedly do stupid things throughout history, and for all out proclamations about progress, it's things like that that remind me that most people are still one step out of the cave.


:-(