Reciprocity wrote: Are you trying to argue with me, asshole? because I think you need to take another course in reading English. please, at your leasure, read what I fucking wrote.
Specifically, I used the statement to back up the point that those that are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. You made an erroneous statement about our own history to back up another erroneous statement about current events, being:
"We (Americans) took our independence because we, for the most part, wanted to.
We, for the most part, had no desire to break with Great Britain...in the beginning. The revolutionaries and "founding fathers" were in a minority right up until the point where a winner could be called and/or the acts of the British occupiers became increasingly brutal. Fleeing loyalists also brought the number of patriots up over time to the point at the end of the war a slim majority could be called "Patriots". The other 67% or so (going with John Adams' 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 estimation) fell in to two camps, basically "fence sitters" (40%+) and "loyalists (to the British crown)" (20%, but losing over time as they fled). I agree whole-heartedly with what happened, as the best of the founding fathers could be described as "liberals", "progressives", and most importantly "non-interventionists". We could have been like Switzerland only 100x more, a financial and economic powerhouse WITHOUT enemies, but we strayed from these views at our own peril and chose to beat down the seductive path of empire building.
The parallel that could be drawn from this period of history and the current Iraq situation is how the actions of the British army, when occupying the land in support of their loyalists, eventually brought about the demise of public support. Their inability to stop the "revolutionary terrorists" in a few token incidences and their blanket retaliations for such acts (hangings and property siezure), as well as the basic issue of "quartering of troops" in the homes of those they would be "protecting" did a great deal to turn both the foreign military support and popular local support in favor of the separatists.
Who ever said the majority of Iraqis wanted to be liberated from Hussein, and given Independence?
A majority of Iraqis were indeed quite happy that Saddam was gone, as pretty much every major political and ethnic force in that country was opposed to him...he just happened to be the most brutal (and US-backed) for quite a long time and could keep a lid on things. Unfortunately, now that he's gone, they can't seem to get their act together and the puppets we put in place to control the situation are ex-oil shills or pro-Bush sycophants and chosen by our policies on these criteria. Pretty much everyone with some integrity in our intelligence apparatus (myself included) pointed out these facts repeatedly before the invasion, but they (the political administration) did indeed cherry-pick what sounded good to them and ignore the fine print some of us painstakingly wrote right below the bullet statements. Rumsfeld even put together his own intelligence office just to override and provide a "fair and balanced" opinion of any fact we at DIS handed to him.
So, if you want to call me an asshole for knowing what I know first-hand, go for it. I just wanted to lay to rest some misconceptions that you are not alone in sharing with our fellow Americans. While I do agree with your conclusion about "Not expecting people to be happy with what they didn't ask for", if taken wholly by itself out of context, I disagree with the context from which you drew it and to which you put it. Next time I'll refrain from "serious debate" and go straight to name-calling instead.
Last edited by GorillaTicTacs (2006-12-07 04:28:15)
