The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost trillions of dollars. What if we had taken every penny of that expense and invested it in say, solar energy? The goal would be to make MidEast oil irrelevant, thus pulling the rug out from under the power of all MidEast dictators. — Hippyhead
Communist China is the biggest dictatorship in human history. A competition between them and democratic countries may be the defining political issue of the 21st century. Point being, Iraq might be seen as small potatoes, Afghanistan even smaller. Should we perhaps stand back from a past we can do nothing about and focus on the future big picture? — Hippyhead
Bringing freedom to millions of people is the best foreign aid you can give. — Paul Edwards
To counter, the dictators will be easier to knock off once they're bankrupt.
Russia, the Mid East, Iran, Venezuela, all heavily dependent on oil income.
So what this answer once again demonstrates is an unwillingness to try to understand someone else's position.
You need to accept your interlocutors are as rational as you are (if not more so) and engage their arguments instead of raising straw men every time you're challenged.
I've alluded as to the largest gap in your thinking in that you don't take sovereignty (or right authority) into account.
I have explained why intent is important by analogy
t's only if bad intent causes a bad action — Paul Edwards
But when the correct action is being taken, intent doesn't matter a damn. It's only if bad intent causes a bad action that we should seek to prevent the action being taken. — Paul Edwards
So you can't claim knowing what the Just War Theory entails and therefore aren't qualified to decide one way or the other whether it's a good theory or not and what parts should be changed or not. You're just demonstrating your ignorance.
There is no correct action without rightful intent. If I intend to murder you and you happen to be raping someone when I walk in on you with the intent to murder you at the time, it's still murder regardless of the happy outcome.
But yeah, never minder 2000+ years of thinking on criminal law.
When you have data such as the very obviously just liberation of Iraq conflicting with the theory, it's time to revisit the theory, rather than trying to manipulate the data to fit the theory. — Paul Edwards
The 2000 years is of totally irrelevant wars of conquest. — Paul Edwards
BTW, I am a programmer by trade, and I came up with a radical new idea (S/380) which the experts couldn't even imagine, and even went so far as to say it would never work. The good thing about computers is that they respond to logic, so MVS/380 became a reality. There are rare humans who are willing to switch worldview in response to cold hard logic, and my Russian friend was one of them. Please read his blog post and tell me where he went wrong. — Paul Edwards
This may be technically true, but I don't think it is right to make life miserable for those unlucky enough to have been born into dictatorships. If I was in that position, I wouldn't want my life to be made miserable for years, I'd want an immediate liberation. So long as the US is able to fight totally lopsided wars, with allies no less, it seems the best course of action is to do so immediately. — Paul Edwards
Stop right there.If we were all planning on liberating the rest of the world — Paul Edwards
That's not what I was saying.Expecting Iraqis to be as intelligent and sensible as Americans is the opposite of condescending. — Paul Edwards
I don't have such data because I don't agree with that conclusion. It surely highlights what's going wrong. You assume the Iraq war was a good thing because of whatever nebulous moral feelings you have about the matter — Benkei
The problem with this approach is what we see in this thread, the undermining of support for such projects. No US administration can just willy nilly do whatever it wants. It requires a good measure of public support to dethrone dictators by force.
Yes, sanctions have a negative effect on the Iranian people, that's true. But let us not forget they overthrew the Shah in 1979 with no help from anyone. So when they are ready they can do that again.
If an invasion of Iran went FUBAR that's the end of deposing dictators by force for another century.
The best weapon we may have is public education. This thread would seem to illustrate we aren't currently doing such a great job of that.
Have you ever heard of the principle of charity?
Can you at least make an effort to engage what I say instead of making stuff up? It doesn't logically follow that because rape is bad every method of combatting it is proper.
How about a society that has surveillance everywhere, not just the streets but in your home too in order to combat rape? Perfectly fine because it will stop rape.
But when a GOOD ACT is done, intent doesn't actually matter (as to whether you should try to prevent the action or not), although it would certainly be nice if there was a good intent. — Paul Edwards
1. History of Success
There are many countries which are democracies in no small part to the actions of the US but past the Korean war, really none which came about as a result of a US invasion. Calling Iraq or Afghanistan flourishing democracies is simply incorrect, I looked for a democracy index which would describe them as such but couldn't find one, they all list them as authoritarian states and whether democracy survives is really unclear.
2. Ease of US victory
How long until people put 1 and 1 together? The US has no had an easy time in occupying nations with hostile non-state actors and that's exactly what they're going to get in the African and Middle-eastern authoritarian states.
Do you think Iran, the most notorious supporter of militant non-state actors, Iran, with its mountainous geography and both infamous and sizeable anti-US sentiment is going to be a cakewalk for the US?
Despite US interventionism, the world is becoming less democratic and the US is a part of that trend. Military interventionism has such a terrible track record, I don't think you can back up your optimism.
For the Iraq war, I think most of the complexity comes from how difficult it has been. Much like Vietnam, I don't oppose aiming to stop the spread of authoritarian regimes like communism but it didn't stop it and instead, it just killed millions.
So if someone wants to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam war, can you really say "oh, you like communism then?"? As if all the US has to do to stop communism is precisely what clearly didn't stop communism in Vietnam, military interventionism?
You want to do exactly the same thing over and over again until it works?
You can't have a good act with bad intent. If a corrupt cop steals from a criminal who'd otherwise use it for a crime (without the cop knowing), the cop is still a thief.
But what if a 3rd party knows that the criminal is going to use the money for a crime? Should the 3rd party take action to prevent the corrupt cop from stealing a criminal's money? I wouldn't. — Paul Edwards
This is your fundamental problem. You perhaps cannot even see it. It's that YOU are going with YOUR plan to LIBERATE somebody, free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression. The objective, the people you liberate are like a damsel in distress, a totally helpless entity, which then YOU then give a plan forwards they have to do. This is simply not the way democracy spreads.
Perhaps it's difficult for you to understand how offensive the idea of a foreign military forces taking over your country and implementing changes to your society as you as an American never have had the threat of it (at least after the 1812 war).
Reminds me how the Soviets wanted to liberate us in 1939 using quite the same rhetoric. Lucky that both of my grandfathers came back alive from the war.
For starters, how about not thinking immediately of using military force to liberate / attack a country?
Or you think that would be somehow immoral thing to do?
If Americans have difficulties with racial relations when slavery has been abolished a long time ago and segragation laws some 60 years ago, what about countries where those relations have been worse yesterday? You simply cannot assume there aren't huge problems in these societies, which have ended up with dictatorships. It's not as if before everything was just fine until somehow an evil dictator got himself into power and once you have taken away the dictator, democracy could flourish.
This is especially true in Iraq, as we have already seen. The only place where I could see a rather peaceful transition to a democracy and a justice state would be Belarus, if the present dictator would be toppled.
Planning to use military force to oust Lukashenka in Belarus would be playing with the possibility of WW3.
Again wrong.The Shah didn't mow the protesters down with automatic weapons. — Paul Edwards
That's just selective justice then which is no justice at all.
If we start there we can have rules for poor people and rich people. Black people and white people.
The law should apply to everyone equally.
The corrupt cop should be apprehended because he's committing a crime.
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