Exactly how will having a democracy end terrorism?

[Poiuyt]

I'm having trouble seeing the relationship. I must be dense.

[Eric J in MN]

1. The theory is that people in a democracy can express themselves

peacefully and so don't turn to bombing their own country.

[AirmensMom]

2. Ohhhhhh.

Somehow it doesn't work for me ... but thanks for explaining. :shrug:

[Jacobin]

3. What about if a foreign power invades your country

on a pretext, kills a couple of hundred thousand of your citizens, tortures thousands more, steals their resources and then sets up a puppet regime they hope will be friendly to the invading country and then has fake voting where the candidates can't disclose their identities and then 'helps' you draw up a constitution, all while they are occupying you with 140,000 troops many of whom shoot at anything that moves and trades gruesome pictures of your slain countrymen for porn online?

Would that be cool, too? I mean, hey its 'democracy' right?

:sarcasm:

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. Tim McVeigh expressed himself so well.

As have so many others over the past hundred years.

[Marr]

25. But we don't have a real democracy! Ah-ha! Gotcha!

We're living in a sort of fascist corporatocracy! If we had a functioning democracy, Tim McVeigh never would've blown that building up!

Now let's all wave our flags and praise democracy! Someday maybe we can ever try it here!

[LynnTheDem]

19. Timothy McVeigh.

IRA.

Hmmm.

Doesn't seem to work, that bush theory.

[Mass]

4. It is not about ending terrorism (this is the Bush fallacy)

It is about making terrorism impopular because people would be able to express themself freely and therefore would not need extraordinary methods to express their discontentement.

Terrorism would then become another form of crime and could be fought with "normal" judiciary means.

This is what has been done in most countries before 9/11 and Bush WOT.

Obviously, this would require that democracy is chosen by the people of this country and not brought by a war. Democracy cannot be imposed. It is a contradiction.

[RaleighNCDUer]

20. Non-democratic Iraq had virtually no problem with terror

before we decided to liberate it.

Democratic, post-soviet Russia has been fighting and losing their war on Chechnyan terror for ten years.

Democracy is not a factor.

[Mass]

23. post Soviet Russia is not a democracy, but an invader

that denies the right of the Chechnyan people and refuse any discussion. Chechnya is less independant under Yeltsin and Putin than it was under the Soviet regime.

The current Iraqi regime is not a democracy either, except in the eyes of the Bush regime.

The problem is that you are acception the Bush fallacy that democracy will end terrorism as a premise. I dont. Democracy will NOT end terrorism. There is no reason to try to deny the Bush doctrine. All you have to do is to look at the history of Europe and the United States in the last 50 years. There has been terrorism everywhere (homegrown and imported).

The sooner we will accept that, the sooner we will understand that the WoT is not the solution against terrorism and we will stop this BS.

[edhopper]

5. Because

they hate us for our freedom. When they got the freedom too, they won't hate us, cause then they gonna hate themselves.
Oh yes, also 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11!!!!
:sarcasm:

[bluedawg12]

6. Didn't you read Natan Sharansky, boy prince did

he discoverd books on his last summer break!

Sharansky said no democracy ever goes to war- because the people won't allow it.

Except for Hitler's Germany...ooops...that's a fly in the neocommie ointment.

[Conservativesux]

7. Too bad BushAmerika is no longer a democracy......

[Eric J in MN]

8. Germany was a dictatorship when they invaded Poland (nt)

nt

[A Simple Game]

10. Sooo,

We're not at war?

Make that, not at war twice?

[pattim]

12. Hitler's Germany was not a democracy at the time of war.

That's just ridiculous. And Sharansky is a bit off. Ever since the Athenian botched invasion of Syracuse, democracies have been voting themselves into wars and dictatorships left and right.

[bluedawg12]

13. Shcharansky: democracies don't start wars because

people wars are too costly in lives and money so people would vote against it.

So shrub (allegedly) read the book Shcharansky came to the WH and spoke to him and gave hm the cliff notes and now he shrub regurgitates this..but..we went to war twice I do not recall a national vote in a democratic fashion for war.

I do not even recall a representative ( meaning our congress) actually voting directly for war with Iwreck- they did make a stupid vote giving the neocommie masters the option to go to war if certain criteria were not met, and as a last resort--and guess what?!

The criteria were met- hence we have PLamegate and Niger yellow cake and smoking nuke tales--and we went to war.

OK is Shcharansky right, is it true- democracies do not start wars?

[pattim]

15. No, Shcharansky is incorrect.

Democracies do start wars. Not often, but do.

And the congress vote was the "IRAQ WAR RESOLUTION." They voted yes. Obviously that was a vote for war. Saying "Well, I didn't think we *would* go to war" when the first line of the resolution is "To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq" is misleading.

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. They only started calling it the iraq war resolution after it was passed.

While being debated(?) and voted on it was a resolution to authorize force, which could mean anything from cruise missiles to full scale invasion, if Iraq did not meet the criteria set out by the UN.

The compliant media started calling it the Iraq War Resolution much later, to explain why we were invading.

[pattim]

31. Here, perhaps you should read the resolution.

http://www.yourcongress.com/ViewArticle.asp?article_id=2686.
Note the words "Iraq War Resolution" which headline that.

Or, if you don't like that, a CNN article from the *day* it was passed. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us/

Seriously, people here *sigh*

[RaleighNCDUer]

36. From the resolution:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002'.

And from the CNN article:

Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Missouri, said giving Bush the authority to attack Iraq could avert war by demonstrating the United States is willing to confront Saddam over his obligations to the United Nations.


Just cause the web site calls it the Iraq War Resolution does not mean it was called that while being debated -- within the resolution itself it clearly identifies itself as an "authorization for use of force". As interpreted by many who voted for it, including Gephardt quoted above, it was to add pressure and threat to enforce the will of the UN. CNN has been carrying water for the administration for years, so I'm not surprised that they called it that - I don't remember that being the common languange until some weeks after it passed. CNN probably coined it themselves, as it is pithier, and makes a better sound bite.

And really, the question is not if I read it - it is if Congress read it -- I've never seen such a collection of lies outside a * State of the Union address.

[sam sarrha]

9. will not be a /is not a Democracy ..it is an islamic "Republic"..run by

religious leaders influence

[bluedawg12]

14. Was that worth having our beautiful kids killed and maimed

to prop up a sharia based government?

Did the neocommies mis calculate this too?

[sam sarrha]

27. they just wanted a quicker bankruptcy of the the country

[pattim]

11. The idea is it gives the poor and miserable a voice.

And, feeling they can express themselves and have a voice or friend among those in power, they will be less likely to fight the government, but rather fight from within the structure of the government.

For example, which seems more tolerable on principle?

1. A foreign government imposes a 20% income tax to pay for its war against your people. If you don't like it, you can be shot.

2. A dictatorship imposes a 20% income tax, which the dictator will use as he sees fit--perhaps a palace, perhaps a school, whatever. If you don't like it, you can be shot.

3. A democracy installs a 20% income tax, after the people vote to tax themselves and vote on how to spend it. If you don't like it, you can vote for candidates who pledge to lower taxes or spend the money in better ways.

3, of course, as the people have picked it as in everyone's best interest, and as you have an option that doesn't involve being shot at.

[bluedawg12]

17. True, Democratic principles need no defending

How can one argue that people should have a voice in representative government?

But true to the current Orwellian double speak the idea of democracy coming from with out, by invasion, from a nation that calls it's self a democracy but never truly had a debate with in and including the citizens is what rankles us.

While Mr. Shcharansky is a man who has suffered greatly and is to be admired on many levels, his ideas have become a convenient justification for our invasion of one of many dictatorships in the world based on an a priori philosophy demanding the invasion of Iwreck and the over throw of Saddam.

Was there ever a real debate about this outside of the fevered neocommie hothouses of radicalright wing thought tanks?

We were told we were fighting global terrorism from Islamic fundamentalist radicals who perpetrated 9-11 horrors and many young men and women signed up and gave their all for this idea- but was it true- or pre-ordained before 9-11 ever happened? See neoconnie letter to Bill Clinton in 1998.

Here is an interesting debate about Sharansky from right wingers and former left winger David Horowitz' own publication. It's always illuminating watching neocommie intellectual elite debating among themselves- what they say will be freeper talking points in about say...six months..or less..these days. From their mouths to repug ears.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16898
Symposium: The Case for Democracy
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 4, 2005

[Neil Lisst]

16. A democracy will not end terrorism.

The cornerstone of the rightwing argument is that they are trying to plant democracy in the mideast, and thereby alter the direction of those countries.

This is yet another example of how the right lives in a circular loop of delusion. Their irrational thoughts are given credibility because they create and live inside a world in which neither logic nor reason matter.

It's a grand justification for an invasion of a country in the middle of all those oil reserves. The big four in the area are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait. Which country borders the other three? Iraq.

In every Islamic country except Iran, the governments are run by people who are more likely to be friendly to US interests than the majority of the citizens. We benefit from those countries NOT being fully democratic. Egypt. Hello? Pakistan? Forget it. Turkey? Not even.

We greatly benefit from non-democratic governments in the mideast. If Iraq truly has democracy, it will align itself with Iran, not the US.

[Disturbed]

21. A BIG LIE.

If one is going to lie, make it BIG. Repeat that lie a thousand times or more and soon most will believe it.

[Mass]

24. So terrorism is Islamic terrorism in your mind

There was terrorism in this country before 9/11.

The KKK is a terrorist organisation, for example. McVeigh was a terrorist. ...

[Marr]

26. Strange, isn't it? They sell it with a sort of reverse domino theory.

You'd think they would've learned *something* from Vietnam. Well, it's all bullshit anyway, of course. That "beacon of freedom" bullshit is just an excuse for empire. But you'd think they would've come up with something new in the last 30 years.

[bluedawg12]

28. That's the problem when you start with the answer

and then retro-fit the question.

The neohawks have been attached to power since the cold war days. Some shifting from Ike to the dems and civil rights.
Then, the war in Nam conflicted them and they left Johnson and attached their suckers back to Trixon and Raygun and GHW-shrub.

Once the cold war ended they began to see the US as a strong surrogate and tool for their aims. Power. Power even more than money.

So when their nemesis the Soviet Union fell they began to think again, as is the wont of former socialist who have world wide domination plans, of the US as a "monopolar" power (bi-polar having ended with the Soviets) and with out the checks and balances of a cold war nuke threat they planned big using power and wealth of the US. And they set their sights on the middle east and Iraq is centrally located with huge oil reserves- geopolitically important- and Iraq was on their menu.

Only, Poppy failed them and failed to take Baghdad, so they invented the sonofBar, propped him up and told him to make up for daddy's weakness and go in there and clean out Iwreck it will be a cake walk.

If we all recall- and this is what will piss off the American people as they too recall- we went in for imminent danger and WMD's and not to nation build or to develop democracy. But that was the real reason- getting a friendly ME ally, one that has oil, a place to have permanent military bases, and one that they envisioned as being able to exert military might on the region.

The problem is they miscalculated the suspicion of the Iraqi's to wards the US, the amount of larceny and bribes that it would take to gain a foot hold ( 10 billion is missing), and because they didn't plan to have enough troops on the ground foreigners came in to agitate and to wage a guerrilla war. hence the mess.

I think Americans are catching on, the neocommies are not, however, but that is another thread worth.

[Neil Lisst]

30. Marr: " They sell it with a sort of reverse domino theory."

Good call.

If you lift one domino from the fallen stack, it doesn't change the others. They still look a mini Stone Henge.

Of course, the US isn't even lifting that one domino.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

29. If by 'Democratic' you mean the 50s-80s Eastern European definition. (nt)

[karlrschneider]

32. Well, see, the terists hate people who have freedom, so......

oh, wait...
:eyes:

[in_cog_ni_to]

33. It worked well here, didn't it?

:eyes:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

34. I know.

Our "democracy" certainly hasn't ended terrorism.

Oh, I miss the days of the "First Ammendment..."

[skypilot]

35. I've never understood this either.

Sounds like "magical thinking" to me. Somehow democracy with just flower all over the Middle East and Asia once it's been planted in Iraq. Sounds nice but...

I wish someone would ask Bush what would happen when this demand for democracy in the Middle East reaches Saudi Arabia. Who exactly would he side with in that scenario? The Saudi people or his Saudi buddies?