Cub Driver wrote:

:So why are we asked to pay up? We don't even like the tune.

: I know this isn't what you meant, Emmanual, but it is of course truer
: than you intended. The goal in Iraq is a free and democratic nation
: that does not attack its neighbors. That seems to frighten France and
: much of the United Nations a lot more than Saddam Hussein ever did.

IIRC Stalin stated after WWII that he wanted a "strong and
democratic" Poland. Words are cheap. The babble of the Bush
administration of how they are fighting for a "free and
democratic" Iraq means little more than that they are
claiming to be the good guys. Otherwise, it is content-free.
These may be good intentions; but the road to hell is paved
with good intentions.

I absolutely agree that we should invest in building a better
future for Iraq. Step 1 in this ought to be forcing the US
administrators, who have neither a clear picture of the kind
of society that they want to build nor realistic ideas of
how to achieve this, to relinquish control. One gets the alarming
feeling that what they Bushiites want to build is an ultra-
capitalist, neo-conservative society with a pro-American
government, which may or may not have democratic pretensions.
What they are likely to get for these efforts is another Iran.

Give the country back to the Iraqis. Give them finanicial
help, by all means; offer them the forces to police their
country and help them to restore order. But if you want to
build a better Iraq at all, then let the Iraqis lead. It
will be messy, it will be dirty, it will be bloody; but at
least it has some chance of succeeding.

: There are two tunes being played he a military occupation and the
: construction of a free society. It was only the latter that we asked
: you to hum along with.

Be realistic: If you use foreign power for military control and
for society-building, both the military force you bring and the
society you build will be closely associated, and strongly
disliked by the people who inherit it.

: (Always emphasizing that "Europe" means the sclerotic powers in the
: center, with their auxiliaries.)

The "sclerotic" powers are rightly fed up with the attempts
of this US government to "divide and rule".

Emmanuel Gustin