as free people we must end the totalitrian system

Many may oppose the war in Iraq. I admit it has gotten pretty nasty with innocent deaths on both sides. But i believe that the world should be democratic.If we have to no into Iran i think its a good thing. Totalitarian politics have to end in this world. Countries like north korea we have to use a different strategy. We should not allow this stuff go on in the world. Lives may be lost now but many will be saved in the future. Countries like ethopia have enough money to feed there people, if the goverment did not spend the all its money on the military. These countries are falling, but to many still exist. But if you are one of these so called peace lovers and are against war. I'm sorry but if people like you run the country, it will eventually cave in around you. We are to concerned about our backyard. Most of us are so lucky, we were born into this. Alot of people around the world do not have this freedom. I believe us as free people should not stand idle as other countries are run by an dictorship.

 

Your post might be relevant if it weren't so simplistic. You ignore the fact that the vast majority of horrible dictatorships and despotic regimes on the planet are, in fact, being propped up (and in many cases were brought to power) by western "democracies" - particularly the United States and England (with France and Germany just as guilty in the past). The United States, in particular, is a supporter of some of the worst regimes on the planet right now. Notably, the US is the largest source of income for China, it provides billions to Egypt and Saudi Arabia (not to mention most of the other middle eastern human rights violators), it supports the brutal Columbian regime and assists in spraying poor villagers with toxic chemicals as part of the "war on drugs," it created and supports many of the worst African regimes and actively has fought liberation movements in most of Africa, it supports oppressive governments throughout Asia, on and on and on.


You are blind, my friend, if you believe that the US "liberation" of Iraq had or has ANYTHING to do with spreading "democracy." It is also ironic that you would tout the US system of "democracy," which is actually little more than the same totalitarian system that communist Russia had. You know, the Russians were allowed to vote too. They were given two wealthy members of the ruling elite with little political differences to choose from - just like we are. The difference, I suppose, is that the Russians weren't stupid enough to bleat about the glory of their "choices."

While you are correct - we certainly should NOT support oppressive regimes - your post becomes completely absurd under scrutiny when we realize that it is WE who are the largest supporters of oppression in the first place, and it is WE who are responsible for the past success of the Saddam Hussein regime, and it is WE who are now responsible for the house of horrors Iraq is at the moment.

Of course, since the US goal is NOT democracy or a better life for the downtrodden or an end to terror and misery and poverty, this will all sit quite well with the US ruling elite, who are really in it for the MONEY.

 

I didn't see in brothersusn's post where it said he supported all the stuff you listed. Could you point that out to me? Clearly, the first step toward dismantling a totalitarian state is to stop supporting it, so step 1 of brothersun's proposed plan would logically be to stop helping places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Yeah, our votes don't count and we're livning under a censored police state. Help us. Please. If our sysem of government were anything like the USSR's, you wouldn't be posting on Hip Forums right now. And you wouln't have any idea of what "freedom," "democracy," or "rights" are, because no one would have explained such ideas to you for fear of death. And where are the labor camps full of political dissidents? The mass graves? The 100% government owned and regulated media that will not dare to write anything which does not glorify our leader (and don't come up with one or two examples, I'm talking about mass censorship)? Damndest thing, I don't think any of them exist.

Again, who said brothersun supported any of that? You did. Is it so absurd for him to be, I don't know, proposing a change to the way we currently do business? Or do you attack everyone who wants to end totalitarianism as being supportive of the U.S. governments' actions?

And who said anyone supported the U.S.'s current goals here?

 

Max, perhaps you are correct and I am completely off-base in my interpretation of the original post here. I think, however, that I am correct in assuming that the poster is basically suggesting that attacking Iraq is a good thing because it will bring that country democracy, and that attacking countries like Iran and Ethiopia would be good things as well, because it would improve the lives of people in those countries. He does NOT appear to be suggesting that we alter our present course of action in any significant way, but instead seems to be defending it as a means toward "liberation" for oppressed peoples. I argue that the opposite is the case, and that the United States through its own demonstrated behavior has proven to be a major supporter of the worst regimes on the planet and has a HABIT of assisting in crushing rebellion against oppression.


As far as how "free" we are here, I think it can be demonstrated pretty clearly that you only have freedom to speak and act against the government so long as that behavior is no real THREAT to the government or the ruling elite. When individuals actually succeed in encouraging social change, they have been and are imprisoned, threatened, or even KILLED. We've seen this throughout history with people like Martin Luther King, the members of MOVE, the creator of raisethefist.org, the Chicago Seven, Bob Marley, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal (for starters). My good friend Ian Harvey was suspended from teaching high school for being at antiwar protests in Florida (he was even on the Bill O'Reilly show).

Perhaps you believe that being handed two rich guys with the same agenda to vote for is "democracy," but I don't. Perhaps you think that having elections sabotaged and stolen is "democracy," but I don't. Perhaps you think that having labor unions silenced and systematically attacked is "democracy," but I don't.

Do many Americans have it better than the Russians did under communism? Sure (It's also pretty relevant to mention here that the majority of Russians now say that they had it BETTER under communism than they do now). But the United States also has a higher prison population than Russia did under communism - or ANY other nation has EVER had in all of human history. America's "freedoms" are secured by looting third world countries and oppressing impoverished peoples around the world. I did NOT read anything from the original poster objecting to this system - it sounded, instead, like he was cheering it. If I'm wrong, I hope he'll clarify.

 

I hope brothersun comes back to clarify. Until then, neither of us should pretend to know what he meant by the post.

As far as the rest goes, yeah, the U.S. supported a lot fo bad regimes, but "the worst on the planet" and "assisting in crushing rebellion against oppression"? I wouldn't go that far. And besides, what does that have to do with the current and future administration(s)? And before you go off calling me a Bush loving warmonger, I'm not referring to Bush, I mean everything after the Cold War (which is what all of the supporting bad regimes was about). Since we did all that bad shit, isn't it only fair that we undo it all? Shouldn't we take down Saddam and others like him who got into power with out help? Or should we say "fuck all the innocents, the dictators have served their purpose and now we don't really care"? I don't see how the failures of past administrations should reflect upon the actions (and failures) of the current ones. Let's talk about now. And right now, I do think that the free, democratic world has a responsibility to overthrow the Saddam's and Kim Jong Il's. Otherwise, we're being hypocritical by celebrating freedom, democracy, justice and all that great stuff while others don't even know what such words mean.

Yes, those incidents are wrong, fucked up and all that, but they're not happening to 99% of those who speak out against the gov't. I'm not saying that the 1% of the time that it does happen it is right (it's never right to just silence those who speak out), but at the same time, we are not living under a Stalinist Russia-type country just because a few protesters get arrested and have their stuff confiscated.

That depends on what you mean by "handed." The candidates are picked through the same process we have been using for years now, whoever gets the most votes during the primaries, and endoresements from the delegates wins. And for the democrats, Kerry got the most votes and endorsements. It very well could have been Howard Dean or John Edwards who ended up being democratic candidate for president, so it isn't as if we were "handed" Kerry by anyone. We voted for him, and our delegates endorsed him.

Are you fucking me? Where the hell did you get that figure from, I'd like to see a link. Oh wait, maybe it could be true. After all, the Soviets didn't send you to prison when they got pissed, they sent you off to an insane asylum to get shock therapy and food depravation every day for the rest of your life, or shot you in the back of the fucking head and dumped you into a grave with thousands of other dead people. Then there were Siberian labor camps, which don't really count as "prison." And of course, there were the 20 million innocent civilians killed for speaking out against the government under Stalin alone. Can you even start to guess how many that total numebr must be over the 70 year lifespan of the USSR? Say what you will about the U.S. policies, but seriously comparing America to Soviet Russia is stupid.

No, our freedoms were secured long ago secured by the soldiers who died defending America so you could have the right to insult their sacrifices. Our economy, consumer goods and low prices, however, ARE secured by looting third world countries and opressing impoverished peoples around the world.

 

Brother


"I believe that the world should be democratic"

That is an interesting concept, I mean the idea could have merit, a directly elected democratic world government.

Even if we just allowed those that have the vote now it could work. However I don’t think that the US would like it. I mean US government proposals would not get much of a hearing let alone a vote. I mean I wonder how some 600 million Indians, over 300 million Europeans, 200 million Indonesians and just how many Canadians, etc, would vote? Think about it of the 192 states in the world 120 of them have some form of democracy, it is said that some 58% of the worlds population can vote. So say there are 6 billion people that means that way over 3 billion could vote and how many Americans are there 250 – 280 million, what’s that, less than 10%?

Also US government polices especially the right wing ones are just not that popular anywhere outside of the US, so I don’t know who would be leading the World government but I get the feeling that there wouldn’t have that many Americans in it.

I suppose we could start by making the present multinational institutions more democratic by revamping the United Nations. Scrap the present security council, and have a directly elected body instead.

We could have a democracy test so countries with democracy get a bigger say. Put it on a sliding scale with those governments elected by Proportional Representation at the top then the First Past the Posters and so on down those that have limited democracies like Iran and at the bottom dictatorships that would have no say.

Then have a voting system based around number of people being represented. (There would have to be rules against governments trying to threaten or bribe countries for votes so rich countries could try to fiddle votes.)

This organisation could then vote on the leadership and policies of such things as the World Bank, IMF and WTO.



**


So I think you could be on to something here.

 

I believe the world should be however it ends up, and that one nation does not have the right to decide how everyone else lives. We have no right to start making decisions for other groups of people, and we have no right to tell other people how to live. We brought democracy to ourselves, let the others do the same. Let them have their own revolutions.

Just because we are democratic, and a superpower, doesn't mean we have to destroy every other culture on earth, no matter how taboo, or terrible that we think it is.

 

Cultural relativism + military might have brought more destruction and oppression to the world than ever they have demonstrable and stable liberal democracies.

 

Lets not forget Bush's good buddy Karimov, who only boils opponents in oil and sends children to forced labor camps.

 

To my original post. I am not a supporter of the Iraq war. But what is done is done. But it is ridiculous to say to get out of Iraq now. Now that saddam is gone the coalition has a responsibility to secure the country. To cut and run would only throw the country is worse kaos then it is now. We don't need another Iran in the world. And yes whatever the americans true motives for going to war can be speculated and debated to we are blue in the face. But the fact is the people there can enjoy freedom, read a newspaper from different sources, listen to music, buy a satilite dish. Have freedom of religion and vote. I'm not saying that we should go to war with every tolalitarian regime. I just wish the the U.N. was more revelant. If all these countries got together to negotiated or tried to force change in the world through diplomacy. And yes war might be the only alternative. Should we just sit on our hands and let genocide happens in some parts of the world like Sudan, and say let them fight there own battles or let them liberate themselves like we did a couple hundred years ago. The world is a different place now. We have the ability to know whats going on in the world and do something about it. I know this message is pretty simplistic but so is the song from John Lennon- Imagine. But what a message.

 

Well said. It's not as easy or as foolproof as you might think to shove democracy down another nation's throat. Sometimes you just need to wait for them to do it themselves, if you want it to work out.

Because I'm lazy, I yanked the below passage from an earlier post of my own in an old thread, just didn't feel like typing a similarly long thing again. This is my skeptical opinion of the glamorized, exceptionalist crusade of spreading democracy everywhere that we Americans are sometimes prone to beating our chest about.

Democracy, a government "of the people," comes from the people itself - it's not really a democracy when it's simply forced upon a populace. It may seem odd - to be forced to be democratic, but all the same we do not have the right to do that. For one, not every culture adapts well to democracy, leading to sham governments that are mockeries of democratic government, these are the ones that makes our democracy look wonderful. Russia is becoming one, as the Russians are so accustomed to a centralized government. Africa in particular is chock full of petty dictatorships that often masquerade as democracies. Africans largely never grasped the democratic concept very well, and so they were and are easily exploited by dictators. Democratic government is supposed to come with the support of the people, not by being forcibly instated. Otherwise it's lacking in legitimacy. To just assume that your own system of government should be pushed on everyone else, and saying it's justification to attack and invade other countries is nothing but imperialism.

 

Even under Saddam, Iraq was a purely secular state and did not impose restrictions on religious freedom. Remember, Tariq Aziz was a "Christian" and was one of Saddam's right hand men.

 

Now that we have knocked out a totalitarian regime, who will keep all the feuding warlords from tearing the country apart....another totalitarian-like regime will need to form just to be stronger than the fighting factions.

 

yeah, no matter what happens now another Saddam like person is going to rise up and defeat this democratic government. And on and on we go....

 

Damn right it could.

Well, 6 billion people voting directly on the issues could never work, so a direct democracy like you're talking about isn't feasible. We'd have to use a global Congress/Parliament type system. Of course, we'd also have to tear down existing borders in order to get rid of "rotten borough" problems that would pop up if we used the existing ones. It would take planning, but it could work.

Actually, that's a great idea. But unfortunately, most people would not want to part with the incompetent, bumbling mess we commonly refer to as the UN anytime soon. What you described is exponentially better than the current system though.[/QUOTE]

 

Why do you say that?

 

haha, damn. by the title of his post, i thought he was talking about the 'totalitrian' system here in america. of course, no one would dare to ever call our goverment by that title. only shows how close we are to it.

 

do you really think that the Iraq democratic government will be able to defend itself from more powerful warlords, who have the support of the people, unlike the coalition forces? This is a lost cause for Amerika....

 

LOL, he wasn't a Christain. A true Christain would never allow himself(herself) to be in or around someone like that.