Iraq.

Close to my heart, a beautiful country. Why oh why did Bush Junior get elected? Why on earth do we keep lifting rocks and stirring up ant nests?

There seems to be a bungee cord attached to our armed forces, dragging them back in again and again.

This at a time the Tories are decimating our conventional armed capability.

All this talk of social networking revolutions, democracy, blah, blah, blah.

Rubbish.

Gaddafi, Hussein, Assad. All easily manipulated by the superpowers. We should have protected them.

Better the devil you know. Slowly slowly catch the monkey.

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Junior was too dumb to realize that you can't just remove a dictator and install a democracy in his place.

I second the notion of Gadaffi and Assad. Ever since Gaddafi was overthrown and killed, things only got worse in Libya. It's going to happen in Syria too if they manage to overthrow Assad there.
The same thing keeps happening everywhere where dictators have been removed from power. The long military presence in Iraq has kept it relatively calm for so long, but now it's starting to hit the fan.

That entire region is simply way too volatile and divided for democracy to work.

Bulls is right - there's a huge crescent of land from the borders of Israel to the north.east border of India where only 2 political states are liable to exist - a despot suppressing a population with death and violence, or a swathe of the population using death and violence for its own political ends. It don't matter who is wielding it, death and violence is still the favoured tool to make political ends.

True democracy, for whatever reason, doesn't work there. While Bush was a twit and Blair a downright liar, their actions have had little impact in the long run- instead of dictators using violence, a larger segment of the population is now free to do it instead.

For social, economic, political and religious reasons to numerous to list the West can never change this, so why do we keep trying? Seal them within their own borders, and let them get on with it.

Manipulating despots.doesn't work - the west manipulated Saddam into a.war.with Iraq that killed millions, and because he shot any generals with brains because of the perceived threat to his own position he was militarily disadvantaged. The downside of our meddling was a vast horde of weapons to use to suppress his own population, and then to use against Kuwait. Our special forces training the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan raised a generation of Well equipped and battle hardened guereilla warfare experts, in effect a nation under arms, and we then had to face them and the next generation they raised and trained, losing thousands of military personnel an maiming hundreds.

Sooner or later, trying to play the puppet master with either a despot, a despotic regime, or even a population under revolution WILL come back to haunt you. That's economically, militarily, socially, and above all politically a stupid game to play. Fornicate with dogs, you will inevitably catch fleas one day.

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Raging_Bulls":f4ggjylm said:

That entire region is simply way too volatile and divided for democracy to work.

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I think this sums up the region quite well -

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Why are some of the most interesting places in the world in war zones, a very sad state we live in.

Sunni and Shia - still arguing all these years..

Pro bono.

Didn't his passing make the Darwin Awards?

Chopper1192":30ubjoep said:

Didn't his passing make the Darwin Awards?

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I rather hope not, since if so, somebody isn't getting the punchline.

On the other hand, I shouldn't really be surprised.

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It is really easy to hit a tree; happens frequently so I don't see it as a question of stupidity.

Seems the world is going to turn its back and whistle now that Iraq has descended into the inevitable chaos. Shocking hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy.