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Originally Posted by Wren57
See, that is an intelligent post. Wasn't so hard, was it. 
I actually agree with every word of what you said. And yes, Christians bitch about things, but bitching hurts nobody. Rioting and attacking people over a cartoon does. Our difference in opinion isn't the situation now, but how to deal with it. I think the best way to deal with the problem has a couple parts;
1. Most importantly, protect Americans. Hunt down and eliminate people that pose LEGITIMATE threats to the US and US interests.
2. Educate the masses about the meaning of free speech. This will be done easiest by introducing democracy. The idea that everyone gets an equal opinion is very enticing and WILL lead to greater acceptance. There is a reason more countries are democracies now than ever.
3. LEAVE. After the seed of democracy has taken root and we ensure the innocents have a sufficient level of safety to have a fair shot at life, we need to get the f*ck out so our lasting impression is not that of imperialistic occupiers.
If you disagree with any of those 3 steps, please explain why you think it is wrong and what you would do different. |
Well I don't think most people disagree on what should be done, but rather how it's being done. I guess I'll break down my issue with each of those, again, point by point.
1. While we should be chasing down legitimate threats (and I'm sure we are on a smaller scale), we've almost began some weird McCarthyist crusade to weed out "terrorists" everywhere. That would be great...if everyone we accused was actually a terrorist. The fact that these people can be accused in a closed court (if they're lucky enough to even get a trial) is even more worrysome to me. It's gotten to the point that people are so scared they're willing to sacrifice many of their freedoms for a small amount of what they think is security. I firmly believe what Ben Franklin said was right "those who would trade long term freedoms for temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security". We fought a helluva lot of wars and took down some of the biggest enemies in the world without losing any of our freedoms the way we have now (unless you had the misfortune of being Japanese in the early '40s).
2. Everyone in the world deserves some sort of free speech. Once people stop listening to new and radical ideas we'll be thrust backward in time who knows how far. But people want what they want. I'm just not sure that our invading a country is the best way to let them know they can speak freely. After that they'll become dependent upon us for that freedom, and tat doesn't work out well in the long term. I just think that if enough people had been really pissed, Iraq would've overthrown itself years ago. That's Poli Sci 101. If your government doesn't work for the majority of the people, change it. That's how this country started...and we took on the biggest army in the world at the time. It's happened elsewhere, too. In the mid-1700s Burma (today's Myanmar) invaded Siam (today's Thailand). A small village called Bang Rajan fought off
10,000 well equipped Burmese invaders without armor, horses, or even decent weaponry (not 10,000 all at once of course...they came in waves). If a small bunch of farmers can fight off 10,000 invading troops, I have no doubt the Iraqi people could've changed their government themselves.
3. I definitely agree we need to get out Iraq and the midle east in general, but we've pounded the drum for so long and dug our claws in so deep I don't really see a way of doing that without just cutting them loose. Of course, if that happens we'll be right back where we are now in another 10 years. The government isn't helping us out, either. The democrats are a party of no ideas, the republicans are a party of bad ideas, and no one will even try to elect a third party candidate. Like Lewis Black said, "it's like a republican senator stands up and says 'I've got a bad idea!' then a democratic senator stands up and shouts 'and I can make it shittier!". If nobody ever works together, nothing's ever going to get done. People need to get it out of their heads that only the ideas of their party are right. Both sides I'm sure have come up with some decent ideas, but they shout each other down before those ideas go anywhere. I don't know...I don't see any clean way out of the hole we've dug for ourselves without coming off as worse then people already think we are.