Let Their People Go

[greedy_lars]

LET THEIR PEOPLE GO
Thu Jan 29, 6:09 PM ET

By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL

Why Stop With Iraq


Ted Rall


NEW YORK--During his State of the Union address, George W. Bush exalted the liberation of the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq from the tyranny of brutal and corrupt regimes. Bush recognizes that a lot of work remains to be done. "As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny, despair and anger," Bush said, "it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends."


He's right. If we really want to win the war on terrorism, we've got to stop sitting around the Sunni triangle picking rose petals off our Kevlar jackets. If we're serious about liberation as a tool of terror prevention, we've got to invade every dictatorship, topple every autocracy and occupy every patch of soil where evil tyrants oppress their people, especially in the Muslim world.


Job one: Saudi Arabia. The country's evil monarchy financed 9/11, bans opposition parties and forces women to wear the abaya (identical to the Taliban's burqa) and doesn't even allow them to drive. According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi Interior Ministry's General Directorate of Investigation subjects its political prisoners to "sexual harassment by threat or the actual practice [of] inserting an iron rod in the rectum." Bush says any dictator who runs "rape rooms" deserves execution. After we invade and replace his government with a democracy, therefore, George W. Bush should personally behead King Fahd (or stone him to death--these are the ways in which the Taliban-style Saudis execute their victims). Saudi Arabia is big but sparsely populated. Surely we have a spare 100,000 troops for the liberation of 23,000,000 Saudis.


Then, as Patton would say: on to the Arabian Sea! The long-suffering citizens of Yemen crave liberation from dictator Ali Abdallah Salih, whose vile Central Security and Political Security Office stormtroopers murder civilians at random. When an opposition candidate for local office dared to speak up recently, Salih's CS-PSO goons beat him to a pulp, shaved his head and bulldozed his house. Well, those days are over! We'll drive Salih into his local spider hole in no time. Then victorious U.S. troops can score some well-earned beachfront r-and-r.


While we're out democratizing, let's not forget those nasty little Gulf states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are run by a bunch of slave-trafficking, election-banning, opponent-torturing, democracy-despising kings, emirs and sultans. We can take these despots out, easy--another 100,000 soldiers ought to do the job.


Of course, many republics of the former Soviet Union--places like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan--are Saddam-style dictatorships still run by the same Communist Party thugs who oppressed people under a different flag pre-1991. They use the former KGB to spy on dissidents, who are found dead, clearly bearing the marks of torture, or are simply "disappeared" entirely. The citizens of these regimes would welcome liberation.


In October, says HRW, Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev "carried out a well-organized campaign of [election] fraud. [There was] brutal and excessive force by police to suppress demonstrations, severely injuring at least 300 protesters, and killing at least one protester. Police arrested close to 1,000 people, including national leaders of the opposition, local opposition party members, activists from nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and election officials and observers who challenged the fraud. [There were] numerous cases of police torture--through severe beatings, electric shocks, and threats of male rape against opposition leaders, particularly by the Organized Crime Unit of the Ministry of Interior."


Across the Caspian Sea in Uzbekistan--yet another Central Asian country where oppressive leaders steal the nation's oil wealth while most people make do on $20 a month--anti-corruption activist Ruslan Sharipov currently languishes in prison under the Uzbek regime's trumped-up sodomy charges. "During the first days of his detention," says Human Rights Watch, "arresting officers threatened Sharipov with physical violence, including rape with a bottle."


Charming fellows, our allies in the war on terrorism.


In neighboring Kazakhstan, independent journalist Lira Baiseitova published a story about Swiss bank accounts allegedly used by Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev to funnel stolen oil revenues. The next day, her 25-year-old daughter Leila "disappeared." One month later, she turned up dead in police custody. Cops said she had tried to hang herself--a standard "cause" of death in Central Asian jails.


And Turkmenistan's vicious Saparmurat Niyazov--"Grand Leader of All Turkmen" to his friends--has a new bag. An edict issued November 2002 forces internal exile upon "those people who have lost the respect of the nation, and who disturb the social tranquility with their bad behavior"--i.e., those who aren't his friends.


Admittedly, Central Asia spans four time zones. We'll need about a million troops to occupy the whole steppe, but what the heck--some analysts think the region will supply 80 percent of the world's oil in 25 years. It'll be worth it! Oh, and there's the liberation thing too.


Syria, Iran and Lebanon: add them to the list. All three nations jail and torture political opponents, censor journalists and threaten human rights organizers. Lebanon, like most of the other nations targeted here for regime change, censors the Internet--and uses it to ferret out homosexuals for future arrest. Allow 75,000 troops for Syria and Lebanon, plus another half million for Iran, and let freedom ring.


While we're taking out oppressive Mediterranean regimes, both Israel and Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority have got to go. Israeli strongman Ariel Sharon, complicit in war crimes during the 1980s, is building a Berlin Wall-style "security fence" dividing Arab villages, employs child soldiers in his army and wants a law that would ban Palestinians married to Israelis from living in Israel. Meanwhile, Arafat treats public funds like his personal bank account, jails and tortures political opponents and stands by as his officials assassinate one another. To hell with the "road map"--both sides need an old-fashioned preemptive ass-whupping, American-style! (Allow another 300,000 occupation soldiers.)


A couple of million troops here, a few trillion dollars there, pretty soon we'll have this whole Middle East thing all worked out.


Then: Across to Africa.





After that: South America Libré!

And don't forget: Eastern Europe--free at last!

source

---------------------------------------------

no chit

[scooobiedooobie]

oh geez...not one of ted ralls looney rants again

[JackSpratts]

yeah. "liberating" mideast dictatorships sure sounds looney.

- js.

[scooobiedooobie]

looney = giving any serious merit to ted ralls constant bush-hating sarcastic rhetoric.


Ted Rall endorses Dean....

"The nastiest, most anti-American (and least talented) writer and cartoonist in the business has come out in favor of Howard Dean—and the Deaniacs actually seem to think this is a good thing"

Un-Frikin' believable. Howard Dean doesn't just stick his foot in his mouth he rips off his own leg and flogs himself with it.

http://www.eyeontheleft.com/eyeblog/...es/000285.html

At least this means we can use Rall’s infamous, appallingly mean-spirited “Terror Widows” comic strip against Howard Dean! Score!

The Howard Dean blog is backpedaling furiously tonight, trying to erase their initial giddy enthusiasm for Ted Rall’s endorsement; they’ve changed the title and edited their post to make it much less laudatory of Rall, and also shut down comments. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this entire thread suddenly disappear—so I’ve saved a local copy of it, just in case.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9045

[greedy_lars]

did you even read it scoob?

[theknife]

Originally posted by scooobiedooobie
looney = giving any serious merit to ted ralls constant bush-hating sarcastic rhetoric.


Ted Rall endorses Dean....



http://www.eyeontheleft.com/eyeblog/...es/000285.html



http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9045

geez Scoob - blogs for sources? if you're that desperate for juicy quotes, why not just go down to your local corner tavern and round up some quotes off the barflies?

regardless of what you think of the writer, the point is valid. for whatever reason, there is no true representative democracy anywhere in the Middle East (and before anyone trots out Egypt, Turkey, Qatar et al as exceptions to this, go do some homework). the PNAC/Paul Wolfowitz fantasy that we can force democracy on the Middle East is taking the US down a road with no end. while democratizing the Middle East is a laudable goal, it is also impossible...a straw brick in the foundation of our Middle East policy. the tragedy is that it's gonna cost thousands of American lives and billions of taxpayer dollars before anybody stops this runaway train.

[span]

oh jeez Greedy, Ted Rall?

"We've been treated to some astonishingly vile images over the last two weeks: Office workers hurling themselves into a 100-floor-high abyss. A gaping, smoldering hole in the financial center of our greatest city. George W. Bush passing himself off as a patriot, even as he disassembles the Constitution with the voracious glee of piranha skeletonizing a cow. ... It may have seemed meaningless at the time, but now we know why 7,000 people sacrificed their lives: So that we'd all forget how Bush stole a presidential election." -- Cartoonist Ted Rall, Philadelphia City Paper, September 27

look at this great guys handy work:

[greedy_lars]

you guys are so good at saying what an ass he is, but did you read the article i posted? find any truth in it at all?

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by greedy_lars
did you even read it scoob?

you guys are so good at saying what an ass he is, but did you read the article i posted? find any truth in it at all?

ted rall is good at proving what an ass he is. if you can stomach ted rall, fine, no-ones trying to change your mind. and yes greedy, i read the article you posted. i've read most of his articles/cartoons...that's how my opinion of him was formed.

no, ted ralls point is not valid. it never is. when he’s not out-right lying, his articles are filled with sarcasm, inconsistencies, condescension, stupidity, and refusal to believe facts. he rants and raves at an administration that he would rather berate than understand.

the PNAC/Paul Wolfowitz fantasy that we can force democracy on the Middle East is taking the US down a road with no end. while democratizing the Middle East is a laudable goal, it is also impossible...

we are not forcing democracy in the middle east. we are helping to instill it. democracy can't be imposed by force, but force can liberate people from tyrants who rule by force and threaten others. how about post-ww II germany and japan? we did not force democracy, we helped to instill it. was that “impossible” or a “fantasy”, as you put it. both countries were previously run by dictators. neither had a compelling history of democratic government.

the results were very good for the german and japanese people and for the world. the use of american military power was a necessary prerequisite. the people of iraq are like people everywhere. they love and deserve freedom and would prefer to rule themselves if given half a chance. american power can and will play an essential role in giving them that chance.

as president bush said, “the islamic terrorists view the rise of democracy in iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions”. it will get worse if the coalition just pulls out, and that would be a moral and practical victory for islamic terrorists. if we left today, right now, without setting up some system of stability, we would have a repeat of history and a new saddam would emerge.

[theknife]

Originally posted by scooobiedooobie
we are not forcing democracy in the middle east. we are helping to instill it. democracy can't be imposed by force, but force can liberate people from tyrants who rule by force and threaten others. how about post-ww II germany and japan? we did not force democracy, we helped to instill it. was that “impossible” or a “fantasy”, as you put it. both countries were previously run by dictators. neither had a compelling history of democratic government.

the results were very good for the german and japanese people and for the world. the use of american military power was a necessary prerequisite. the people of iraq are like people everywhere. they love and deserve freedom and would prefer to rule themselves if given half a chance. american power can and will play an essential role in giving them that chance.

as president bush said, “the islamic terrorists view the rise of democracy in iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions”. it will get worse if the coalition just pulls out, and that would be a moral and practical victory for islamic terrorists. if we left today, right now, without setting up some system of stability, we would have a repeat of history and a new saddam would emerge.

nice try, Scoob, but it's a false analagy - comparing Japanese and/or German cultures (never mind the historical context, which are also not comparable) to an Arab culture is apples and oranges. the Arab cultures are tribal in nature, rife with severe ethnic and religious stratifications. Islam, which, by definition, represses women and chokes free speech, is simply not compatible with democracy. (22 nations in the Arab league and not one is a democracy - is that a clue?).

what you and the administration don't seem to grasp is that, for whatever reasons, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the Arab nations are decades behind the rest of the world in human development. democracy works nowhere in the Middle East and there is absolutely no comparable historical precedent to suggest it will succeed in Iraq. (see the 2003 Arab Human Development Report )

so, ask yourself, how many Americans should get killed trying? how many billions of dollars of tax payers money is worth the effort? the administration was either shockingly ignorant or downright duplicitous of the long term cost of war in Iraq, but in the end, it doesn't matter which. as a nation, we've been sucked into a fool's errand by our leaders and we'll be paying for it long after they're gone.

[span]

if Arab nations are somehow incompatable with democratic process then why are so many part of the UN?

is this another failing of the UN or a failing in your opinion of Arab culture?

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by theknife
the Arab cultures are tribal in nature, rife with severe ethnic and religious stratifications. Islam, which, by definition, represses women and chokes free speech, is simply not compatible with democracy.

what you and the administration don't seem to grasp is that, for whatever reasons, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the Arab nations are decades behind the rest of the world in human development. democracy works nowhere in the Middle East and there is absolutely no comparable historical precedent to suggest it will succeed in Iraq.

tens of thousand of iraqis filled the streets of baghdad to demand free and direct elections this year for a representative national assembly. those demonstrations were driven by the energy of a people eager for freedom to take root.

when asked to choose the form of government iraq needed now, 90% of those interviewed, in their own homes, said an iraqi democracy. they overwhelmingly rejected the idea that democracy was only for westerners and would not work in Iraq.

since you seem to know better, maybe you could go over there and inform them different.

[theknife]

Originally posted by span
if Arab nations are somehow incompatable with democratic process then why are so many part of the UN?

is this another failing of the UN or a failing in your opinion of Arab culture?

i said Islam was incompatible with the democratic process - pay attention, Spannie

they belong to the UN coz the UN is the only game in town when it comes to a world stage... and i'd gladly bet money that the vast majority of Arabs attached to UN delegations were educated somewhere outside of the Arab world such as the UK or US.

don't shoot the messenger, girls...the Arab track record in democracy speaks for itself.

[span]

Originally posted by theknife
i said Islam was incompatible with the democratic process - pay attention, Spannie

they belong to the UN coz the UN is the only game in town when it comes to a world stage... and i'd gladly bet money that the vast majority of Arabs attached to UN delegations were educated somewhere outside of the Arab world such as the UK or US.

don't shoot the messenger, girls...the Arab track record in democracy speaks for itself.

Arab nation, Islamic nation, theres no difference

[scooobiedooobie]

i said Islam was incompatible with the democratic process - pay attention, Spannie

don't shoot the messenger, girls...the Arab track record in democracy speaks for itself.

what you said was "democracy works nowhere in the Middle East"....and i guess if you say islam is incompatible with the democratic process, why debate the subject? you must know best.

"pay attention"? "girls"?

lol, truthfully your disparaging remarks are almost as annoying as your childish desire to always be right.

[greedy_lars]

Originally posted by scooobiedooobie

no, ted ralls point is not valid. it never is. when he’s not out-right lying, his articles are filled with sarcasm, inconsistencies, condescension, stupidity, and refusal to believe facts. he rants and raves at an administration that he would rather berate than understand.

Originally stated by Ted Rall
Job one: Saudi Arabia. The country's evil monarchy financed 9/11, bans opposition parties and forces women to wear the abaya (identical to the Taliban's burqa) and doesn't even allow them to drive. According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi Interior Ministry's General Directorate of Investigation subjects its political prisoners to "sexual harassment by threat or the actual practice [of] inserting an iron rod in the rectum." Bush says any dictator who runs "rape rooms" deserves execution. After we invade and replace his government with a democracy, therefore, George W. Bush should personally behead King Fahd (or stone him to death--these are the ways in which the Taliban-style Saudis execute their victims). Saudi Arabia is big but sparsely populated. Surely we have a spare 100,000 troops for the liberation of 23,000,000 Saudis.


Then, as Patton would say: on to the Arabian Sea! The long-suffering citizens of Yemen crave liberation from dictator Ali Abdallah Salih, whose vile Central Security and Political Security Office stormtroopers murder civilians at random. When an opposition candidate for local office dared to speak up recently, Salih's CS-PSO goons beat him to a pulp, shaved his head and bulldozed his house.

While we're out democratizing, let's not forget those nasty little Gulf states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are run by a bunch of slave-trafficking, election-banning, opponent-torturing, democracy-despising kings, emirs and sultans.

Of course, many republics of the former Soviet Union--places like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan--are Saddam-style dictatorships still run by the same Communist Party thugs who oppressed people under a different flag pre-1991. They use the former KGB to spy on dissidents, who are found dead, clearly bearing the marks of torture, or are simply "disappeared" entirely. The citizens of these regimes would welcome liberation.


In October, says HRW, Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev "carried out a well-organized campaign of [election] fraud. [There was] brutal and excessive force by police to suppress demonstrations, severely injuring at least 300 protesters, and killing at least one protester. Police arrested close to 1,000 people, including national leaders of the opposition, local opposition party members, activists from nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and election officials and observers who challenged the fraud. [There were] numerous cases of police torture--through severe beatings, electric shocks, and threats of male rape against opposition leaders, particularly by the Organized Crime Unit of the Ministry of Interior."


Across the Caspian Sea in Uzbekistan--yet another Central Asian country where oppressive leaders steal the nation's oil wealth while most people make do on $20 a month--anti-corruption activist Ruslan Sharipov currently languishes in prison under the Uzbek regime's trumped-up sodomy charges. "During the first days of his detention," says Human Rights Watch, "arresting officers threatened Sharipov with physical violence, including rape with a bottle."


In neighboring Kazakhstan, independent journalist Lira Baiseitova published a story about Swiss bank accounts allegedly used by Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev to funnel stolen oil revenues. The next day, her 25-year-old daughter Leila "disappeared." One month later, she turned up dead in police custody. Cops said she had tried to hang herself--a standard "cause" of death in Central Asian jails.


And Turkmenistan's vicious Saparmurat Niyazov--"Grand Leader of All Turkmen" to his friends--has a new bag. An edict issued November 2002 forces internal exile upon "those people who have lost the respect of the nation, and who disturb the social tranquility with their bad behavior"--i.e., those who aren't his friends.

Syria, Iran and Lebanon: add them to the list. All three nations jail and torture political opponents, censor journalists and threaten human rights organizers. Lebanon, like most of the other nations targeted here for regime change, censors the Internet--and uses it to ferret out homosexuals for future arrest. Allow 75,000 troops for Syria and Lebanon, plus another half million for Iran, and let freedom ring.


While we're taking out oppressive Mediterranean regimes, both Israel and Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority have got to go. Israeli strongman Ariel Sharon, complicit in war crimes during the 1980s, is building a Berlin Wall-style "security fence" dividing Arab villages, employs child soldiers in his army and wants a law that would ban Palestinians married to Israelis from living in Israel. Meanwhile, Arafat treats public funds like his personal bank account, jails and tortures political opponents and stands by as his officials assassinate one another.

in the above txt i cropped out anything i could find that in any way mentions anything about Bush, our gov. or anything related. he is stictly speaking of the govs. in other countrys. and what he says is valid, valid, valid. please, in the part i quoted above, tell me what part you find invalid. im most interested to hear it.

[theknife]

Originally posted by scooobiedooobie
lol, truthfully your disparaging remarks are almost as annoying as your childish desire to always be right.

actually, my disparaging remarks were supposed to be more annoying than my childish desire to always be right

i'll have to work on that.

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by greedy_lars
in the above txt i cropped out anything i could find that in any way mentions anything about Bush, our gov. or anything related. he is stictly speaking of the govs. in other countrys. and what he says is valid, valid, valid. please, in the part i quoted above, tell me what part you find invalid. im most interested to hear it.

lol, valid valid valid? oh come on greedy...have you actually read it? you've got to know better than that. you're pretty smart...(even for a liberal) the entire article is sardonic and mocking, only meant to condemn bush for wanting to bring democracy to the middle east. it's nothing but another left-wing piece of bush-bashing propaganda from a professed bush hater.

[scooobiedooobie]

Originally posted by theknife
actually, my disparaging remarks were supposed to be more annoying than my childish desire to always be right

i'll have to work on that.

lol

[span]

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index...riaprotest.inc

DAMASCUS, Syria - More than half a million Syrians demanded political and economic reform in a petition to be handed to President Bashar Assad, a human rights group said Saturday.

Some 600,000 citizens, including intellectuals, lawyers and human rights activists, have already signed the document, the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria said.

The group said it hoped for a million signatures by March. Syria has a population of around 18 million.

A copy of the petition, faxed to news organizations in Damascus, said the country has been "languishing under the duress of the emergency law since 1963, whose impacts have been extended to include all fields of public life."

Aktham Naisse, chairman of the group, told reporters the petition would be presented to Syrian authorities on March 8, 41 years after the law was introduced under the ruling Baath Party.

It calls for the abrogation of the martial law, the release of political detainees and return of all exiles. It also asks for details about the fate of missing people.

Since he took office in July 2000, Syrian President Bashar Assad has introduced political and economic reforms that are improving the lives of most Syrians, but he rejects Western-style democracy.

He has released hundreds of political prisoners, but also clamped down on pro-democracy activist