Bloomberg:Early Results in Iraq Election Favor Populist Cleric Al-Sadr

[visionary]

17 hours ago, tshile said:

 

It has enough truth to it. Yes, the Russians and us decided to screw everything up. The fundamentalist view grew out of the communist takeover. 

 

Yeah the Russians and us lit the fuse but they don’t seem too intent on fixing it themselves. The last 16 years and what do we have to show for it? An “almost” in afghanistan, and essentially a failure in Iraq. No doubt a failure in Libya. Turkey is going backwards. Egypt is teetering. 

 

The only country we’ve done well with is Saudi Arabia and that came at the price of helping them conduct ethnic cleansing in Yemen. We’re giving support to what should be war crimes. 

 

where is less civilied? Tribal regions of Africa, and? 

 

Theres good people in the Middle East. Just not enough of them to fight for a better place. 

 

Unless someone thinks they’re down for redrawing everything, the cause is moot (it’s hella interesting, but it doesn’t really help) The point is there seems to be no solution. 

The thing is we could say similar things about countries all over the world, in Latin America, East Asia, eastern Europe, Russia, etc.  There’s instability, constant changing of governments, flirtations and in many cases defaulting towards authoritarianism or self destructive populism.

 

Democracy is much more fragile than we like to think and there are many people and groups out there trying to set it back, or subvert it, or use it for their own agenda.  And there are also people even in places like Russia or Saudi Arabia or others working tirelessly to push for human rights or freedom, risking everything to improve the lives of others.  Some will succeed, but many will not.  Some will be replaced with fresh faces and fresh ideas following a similar path, while others will be forgotten and their efforts lost to time. 

 

Sometimes we can help, but sometimes anything we do will only make things worse and our help is unwanted and even resented.  It’s often hard to know what the right thing to do is in these various situations.  It helps to listen to the people going through them or those who did before.  At the same time it’s important to keep from losing sight of the bigger picture and recognizing possible repercussions and interconnected relationships.  

 

For instance many countries are influenced by other more powerful countries and this plays into the trajectory of their situations.  In Iraq we saw Iran dive in headfirst to push things in their direction after Saddam fell.  Syria has been a tug of war between Iran, Russia, Turkey and Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Libya turned into a tug of war between Qatar and UAE and to some extent Egypt.

 

 Egypt after Mubarak resigned was caught in a tug of war between the UAE and Saudi Arabia vs Turkey and Qatar.  North Korea is somewhat influenced by China and Russia, but also their relationship with South Korea and history with the US and Japan.  We can look at Venezuela and see the influence from Cuba and other socialist countries past and present as well as influence from Columbia and current and past US actions towards it and towards the region.

 

Every country has it’s own unique and highly complicated situation and people on various sides pushing for different outcomes both on the inside and on the outside.  The outcome is affected by the history of that country, the efforts of people pushing in various directions, and sometimes surprising circumstances, like important figures dying, a sudden financial crisis, a terrorist attack, a catastrophic natural disaster, etc.  

 

There’s no real simple answer for what to do in most cases or perhaps any case at all, but we should be ready and do our best to understand the possible outcomes, because we will likely be affected whether we involve ourselves or not.  

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Hmm, we’ll see.

 

 

 

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[Koala]

On 5/14/2018 at 2:05 PM, zoony said:

 

I disagree, though not about the Kurds.   we`ve seen the arab spring and its descent straight back into tyranny... which we now can say was never even about freedom per say, it was more about fundamentalism.  Turkey with its Muslim radicalization has descended into tyranny as well.  Syria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya... where we have seen brief glimpses of democracy, the population votes for more tyranny.

 

That leaves Jordan and Israel as the beacons for freedom... a monarchy and a `democracy` the same way south africa was.

 

The narrative to blame western colonial powers is a cop at best, as it should be pointed out that the ottoman empire was a monarchy

 

Democracy will never work in the middle east, because they do not respect basic human rights, nor do they respect the rights of women, nor do they respect religous freedom.  They love dictators and tyranny, and they love living in 14th century ****holes.  Why do we know this?  They vote for it at every turn.  Let them have it

 

This doesnt even make sense

Because this post is occuring during the Trump era, Im assuming its sarcastic or satirical.  Right?  Right????  

 

Moqtada Sadr is ****ing Plato compared to Trump.   

 

Trump = no right to criticize anybody's election process, especially one that likely continues to suffer.from 10x foreign interference that whisked the Trumpangutan into office.

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[Renegade7]

Did not see a Kurd getting elected president, if say that's a good thing, all things considered.

[PeterMP]

On 5/14/2018 at 4:05 PM, zoony said:

 

I disagree, though not about the Kurds.   we`ve seen the arab spring and its descent straight back into tyranny... which we now can say was never even about freedom per say, it was more about fundamentalism.  Turkey with its Muslim radicalization has descended into tyranny as well.  Syria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya... where we have seen brief glimpses of democracy, the population votes for more tyranny.

 

That leaves Jordan and Israel as the beacons for freedom... a monarchy and a `democracy` the same way south africa was.

 

The narrative to blame western colonial powers is a cop at best, as it should be pointed out that the ottoman empire was a monarchy

 

Democracy will never work in the middle east, because they do not respect basic human rights, nor do they respect the rights of women, nor do they respect religous freedom.  They love dictators and tyranny, and they love living in 14th century ****holes.  Why do we know this?  They vote for it at every turn.  Let them have it

 

Democracy, generally, doesn't happen quickly.  Germany had a long history of dictators and only got to where they are because the US and other western countries were willing to pour huge amounts of money and men into post-WWII Germany.  Japan is really no different.

 

Even a country like France.  The current government in France is part of the 4th French Republic.  They went through a long history of over throw a monarch/dictator have a period of time trying to create a democracy, have it fall, then try again in a 5 or 10 years.

 

Our own history blinds us to the difficulty of starting a democracy (and even here, it isn't hard to argue that people didn't respect basic human rights (slavery was legal) or women's rights (women couldn't vote and for the most part couldn't do things like own property) when we started down that road.

[visionary]