6 ms·

Have the country run by a secular government, not a theocratic one.

• platz 7y ago
  regime change doesn't work
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    That's an overly broad statement, I think we have plenty of examples from history where it did work. I'd say it worked fine in WWII Germany.
    • eropple 7y ago
      Total defeat tends to do that, yeah. A better description might be that resisted regime change usually doesn’t work. Which is certainly not unfair with regards to Afghanistan.
    • platz 7y ago
      The next time we're in a world war I'll grant your point Can we talk about things that happened in the last 70 years please
      • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        If we had rebuilt Iraq like we did Germany and Japan, it probably would have worked. We could have created a secular, democratic state. We would have had to keep several hundred thousand troops there for a decade or more to make it happen, though, and there wasn't the political will to do so.
        • apta 7y ago
          It's quite egregious how the US thinks it has the right to force a regime change in any state it chooses, and that "secular" and "democratic" is always the answer. This is an extremely Western biased, and sorry to say, extremely ignorant way of thinking.
          • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
            First of all, I didn't say that the US had the right to force a regime change on anyone it chose. You're reading that into my comment. I only said that, if we wanted to actually change a place like Iraq, we couldn't do it "on the cheap" like we tried to do. Back in World War II, we didn't initiate the "forcing". Once we won, what did you want us to do? Leave Germany and Japan to nurse their grievances, rebuild their militaries, and come back 20 years later for another round? (Note the pattern of Germany between World Wars I and II.) Having won, we (quite rightly in my view) decided that they were going to be transformed. Don't want your society transformed by outsiders by force? Don't start wars with them that you're going to lose in the end. If you want to say that Iraq is a less justified case, I might agree. If you want to say that going to war to remove him was the wrong thing to do, that's a reasonable position. But having removed him, what should we do next? Just help the people set up any semblance of a government, and walk away? It may be that secular can't work in some place like Iraq. That's possible. It may be that democratic can't work, either, not without preparing people for a generation. But what would you shoot for instead? Who should be the non-democratic leader, and why should it be them? And why do you think that way would work better?
            • apta 7y ago
              > Don't want your society transformed by outsiders by force? Don't start wars with them that you're going to lose in the end. Iraq was invaded by the US and its allies, especially in 2003, under the guise of baseless WMD. Yet, the political leaders in the US and its allies never faced any ramifications for their actions, that directly resulted in the deaths and mutilations of hundreds of thousands of people over time. But hey, they're just "brown people", so who cares, right? > not without preparing people for a generation "Preparing" meaning brainwashing, correct? Again, what gives the US the right to "prepare" people of other states and countries, especially since we see the failures of US-style "democracy" and "secularism". Face the facts, people in the Middle East are generally conservative and religious, and they don't see Western style democracy or secularism as a solution, particularly when many aspects of those directly contradict their religion and culture. Furthermore, we saw what happens when the local population elects someone not in line with US's interests (see Morsi, etc.). The US is now forced to declare peace with the Taliban, after all it's put Afghanistan and its people through. Countless lives and trillions of dollars later, and it's back to where things started (almost).
        • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
          Is building a massive military control zone down the middle of a country "success"? So Korea, at the moment, is success and the Berlin Wall divided Germany was success?
          • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
            Japan was definitely success. We changed the culture enough that they never reappeared as a military threat, to ourselves or anyone else. Germany was a success as well. We changed a culture that had war as an ingrained part into one that has been peaceful for generations. And the Berlin Wall was not the fault of America or the west. As for Korea... we continue to be there, not because we're trying to change their culture, but because we are trying to deter invasion from North Korea.
    • pjc50 7y ago
      Germany and Japan were mono-ethnic industrial states that largely didn't have anyone sabotaging the reconstruction, and Germany had the disadvantage of being split in half; everyone wanted to surrender to the US, because the alternative was the Soviet Union.