Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Good point but

yes those elections are very good news. Think of this though:
Daniel — (archived)

Would you say in advance: "I will initiate or support a war which will cost some 30,000 deaths, in order to establish democratic government in (whatever country)" ?

I don't know you that well but I doubt it.

Let's face it, no government is going to pour trillions of dollars into a war, and knowingly cause these casualties, just for the sake of idealism. It must be for geopolitical reaons, I mean this is just pre-intro Reality 101.

Even granting that coalition forces have focussed on minimizing civilian deaths, and granting the efforts they make to help the society recover.

The bottom line is the West needed to crack down on Pan-Arabism and its aspiring hero Hussein. That's actually a very good idea IMO. But, they couldn't say outright that it's a war against pan-Arabism, because of the PC-banned racial overtones, and the PC outrage which would result. So they lied instead, over and over again, while trusting that the real message of containing the arabs would still get through to the heartland. Little Johnny Howard did the same thing down over here. Early in his tenure he was famous for ditching campaign promises on the proviso that they were "non-core promises". He got away with that and so far he's untarnished by this as well. Most people know they've been lied to but don't care or are too apathetic to bother.

Good riddance to these vicious regimes (hope Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia will follow) and also, it's good to contain the influence of the Arab world. But great powers are ruthless chess-players so don't be fooled into thinking this was done for idealistic reasons.

As individuals, to live with one's conscience for 30,000 deaths, there has to be a benchmark: the threat of clear and present danger. Elections or no elections.

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