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Originally Posted by TM875
I agree with you totally, and I understand that, since birth, many of the citizens of the middle east have been taught nothing but hatred for the United States.
What I'm proposing is a change in the actions that we take that make them hate us and who we are. That is, stop meddling in their business, stop forcing our ideals on them, and allow those nations to be sovereign to themselves. By going to war in Iraq, we are directly imposing said ideals of justice and liberty for all onto a people who do not want/agree with these ideals. Thus, we are hated for our "oppression".
As an economist, I realize that, in most cases, free markets and democracy are the best course of action for an underdeveloped nation. However, this is not always the case. Some dictatorships are not necessarily bad and can work to the nation's advantage (China, for example, is now growing because their leaders have finally understood how to use this to their advantage).
What bothers me more than anything is the ridiculous missionary-esque belief that many in Washington have that we need to spread "freedom" and "democracy" to all parts of the world. By doing this, we are, in a way, really just oppressing those same people (though in a different manner). They don't want our intervention. If a country wants to retain its dictatorial ruler - and not stand up and fight their own democratic revolution, started by themselves (the Colonial Americans did not recieve help until the war was fairly established and their side had a possibility for success, remember?) - then we should allow them to remain slaves and worry about strengthening and resolving problems at home.
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I don't see how you can oppress someone by giving them freedom. Especially where there are large numbers of dissidents who lack the power to overthrow the regime in charge. For instance, there were slaves in the south that did not want freedom, and went back to their masters even after the war. They didn't understand the basic concept. Now were these people being oppressed?
Also, you give China as an example of a dictatorship working toward the advantage of the country. That is true, China's power is growing, but the effects aren't really felt by the general populace. All they are doing is making peasants who previously were ag-oriented into manufacturing slaves.
And also, there is no correlation between the American revolution and any possible revolution that may have developed in Iraq. America was separated from it's "overlord" by an ocean, and was also a vast area that was largely unexplored. Iraq's dictator was in-house, so his control would be more absolute. A more apt comparison would be Scotland's repeated attempts at freedom from England.