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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| bigverne wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| bigverne wrote: |
| Quote: |
| question is how much of a role, and will there be an appreciable measure of personal freedom |
You mean like the 'personal freedom' to be an apostate? The personal freedom to not wear a hijab, or not be sold off as a teenager to be a middle-aged man's fourth wife?
"Moderate" or not, Islam is incompatible with personal freedom. |
If the majority of people wish to do so then it's up to them. |
Fine, but we should not be wasting our men and money to help them do so. |
By my understanding NATO is mainly providing air support not large amounts of ground troops.
As for money it's is also my understanding that overseas banks are releasing billions on frozen Libyan funds and assets which is where most of the money would be coming from.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/24/501364/main20096596.shtml |
The West would have had to do business with a Libya that had a Qaddafi or not. Qaddafi was connected with the deaths of many people in the U.K. He was not chosen by his people. No matter what one thinks about the choice of the people in terms of who they elect, that's their business, and if they want to allow polygamy, that's their choice. Many Africans practice polygamy and many of those Africans are non-Muslims. I don't see it as a big deal. I don't think people should have more than one wife, but it happens. In Jordan, I believe, you can have more than one wife, but I've never met a Jordanian who had more than one wife, but they exist. It's far more common to see that in Saudi Arabia.
The West has to do business with the oil producing state, and if it is to make progress, it is not going to resemble most OECD states tomorrow.
That's not practical. People need to be allowed to have a choice, to make their own mistakes. In Iran, they have no elections. As long as Libya has elections without serious fraud and continues to do so, then it would be good. We can't know exactly what will happen. The NTC probably mentioned polygamy in order to find different ways to unite Libyans from different groups through superficial means. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:45 am Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| bigverne wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| bigverne wrote: |
| Quote: |
| question is how much of a role, and will there be an appreciable measure of personal freedom |
You mean like the 'personal freedom' to be an apostate? The personal freedom to not wear a hijab, or not be sold off as a teenager to be a middle-aged man's fourth wife?
"Moderate" or not, Islam is incompatible with personal freedom. |
If the majority of people wish to do so then it's up to them. |
Fine, but we should not be wasting our men and money to help them do so. |
By my understanding NATO is mainly providing air support not large amounts of ground troops.
As for money it's is also my understanding that overseas banks are releasing billions on frozen Libyan funds and assets which is where most of the money would be coming from.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/24/501364/main20096596.shtml |
The West would have had to do business with a Libya that had a Qaddafi or not. Qaddafi was connected with the deaths of many people in the U.K. He was not chosen by his people. No matter what one thinks about the choice of the people in terms of who they elect, that's their business, and if they want to allow polygamy, that's their choice. Many Africans practice polygamy and many of those Africans are non-Muslims. I don't see it as a big deal. I don't think people should have more than one wife, but it happens. In Jordan, I believe, you can have more than one wife, but I've never met a Jordanian who had more than one wife, but they exist. It's far more common to see that in Saudi Arabia.
The West has to do business with the oil producing state, and if it is to make progress, it is not going to resemble most OECD states tomorrow.
That's not practical. People need to be allowed to have a choice, to make their own mistakes. In Iran, they have no elections. As long as Libya has elections without serious fraud and continues to do so, then it would be good. We can't know exactly what will happen. The NTC probably mentioned polygamy in order to find different ways to unite Libyans from different groups through superficial means. |
Iran has elections. Up until the last presidential election they actually still meant something. Obviously it's far from a perfect democracy, but it used to be an interesting hybrid of limited, but meaningful, democracy and theocracy. The fact that the last election prompted such outrage shows that Iranians take elections seriously. I think, but am not sure, that local elections still take place with some competition. I think the Iranian people would do well post revolution, having learned from their previous mistakes, and Libya would do well to avoid those same mistakes by studying what happened in Iran. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:06 am Post subject: |
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After more than two centuries of secular government in the US, we have the conservatives in a sweat over whether to trust Romney because he is a Mormon and that Perry-supporting pastor railing about how Mormons are a cult.
Given that, I think we can relax for a bit while a country that has been Moslem for something like 13 centuries works out how much or how little Islam should influence their government.
Tunisia had their election on Sunday. The Islamists won a plurality. Watch how that plays out. It may have a clue.
PS: Just because a group of people want to preserve their cultural heritage does not mean they are anti-everybody else. Just a thought. I know that is not what the hysterical right thinks, but who needs to care what the paranoids think? |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:41 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
After more than two centuries of secular government in the US, we have the conservatives in a sweat over whether to trust Romney because he is a Mormon and that Perry-supporting pastor railing about how Mormons are a cult.
Given that, I think we can relax for a bit while a country that has been Moslem for something like 13 centuries works out how much or how little Islam should influence their government.
Tunisia had their election on Sunday. The Islamists won a plurality. Watch how that plays out. It may have a clue.
PS: Just because a group of people want to preserve their cultural heritage does not mean they are anti-everybody else. Just a thought. I know that is not what the hysterical right thinks, but who needs to care what the paranoids think? |
One reason we ended up in Iraq is because conservatives who are disproportionately backed by Evangelicals were behind it. Yes, the Democrats were, too, but not as much as the GOP.
In addition, you have had people when Lincoln was president questioning whether he was a Catholic or not, and, later, we had people upset that Al Smith was Catholic. It was considered a watershed moment when Kennedy won the presidency, though he was Catholic, and he lost many votes because some voted against him because they thought he was Catholic. Many of the founding fathers were secular Freemasons. They were influenced by enlightenment, and we have some in the US Army violating the spirit of the constitution by proselytizing their sectarian form of Christianity. The US is one of the most confessional leaning Western state. Let's not forget that even 20 years ago, there were religious-influenced laws on the books of many states.
I am not trying to get into a religion debate. The Arab states have to navigate their way and find a balance, and they are not going to resemble London, Ottawa, or New York. At least, not for a while. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:38 am Post subject: |
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| I am not trying to get into a religion debate. The Arab states have to navigate their way and find a balance, and they are not going to resemble London, Ottawa, or New York. At least, not for a while. |
I get what you are saying and I agree. I think the Middle Eastern countries will work out their futures step-by-step, with an Islamic coloring just as we Westerners worked out ours with a Christian coloring. People don't entirely reject their cultural background. I don't think that is something to fear. (There are some on this forum who would disagree, I think.)
Revolutions and working out the consequences of colonial occupations will take decades. The trick is to work patiently with them, nudging them in our direction when possible, not over-reacting when things temporarily don't work out the way we want them to in the short term.
People who have grown up on TV sometimes seem to think that everything has to work out, with all the plot threads resolved before the commercial. There is an impatience. That's one problem.
Then there are the bigots. I don't know what is to be done about the bigots.
Then there are the superstitious who are certain the world is going to end in 26 minutes and we have to arrange everything to fit their scenario before the 26 minutes are up. Personally, I favor revoking their franchise on grounds of them being mental defectives. |
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Butterfly
Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 10:41 am Post subject: |
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| As a little side-anecdote, I remember a young driver we had in Tripoli who added me on facebook; he never really expressed his politics. I took a look at his page in mid-february and he had i guess about 100 friends, and a good half of them had green flags and Ghaddaffi images as their profile pics (unlike all other Libyan facebook friends). I took a look just now and he has the same amount of friends, but (and i cant say if its the same people) a good half of his friends have, you've guessed it, the new Libya flag, not a green one in sight. I wonder if their wearing of the green flag was real belief, or just survival? |
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Ineverlie&I'malwaysri
Joined: 09 Aug 2011
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Ineverlie&I'malwaysri wrote: |
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Precisely the same criminal act as the Nazis? So we committed industrialized genocide in Libya?
This proposition cannot be taken seriously. |
Is it really acceptable and that much better to incinerate masses of people by bombing than by throwing them in ovens? |
Is it really acceptable and that much better that you beat your wife, bacasper? |
Don't blame that on bac. I was merely responding to someone else's Nazi comparison.
| ZIFA wrote: |
But will it?
The first thing the NTC has done in their inaugural "freedom speech" is to declare sharia law.
How much dosh has the west wasted to get this islamic fundamentalist outfit into power? |
But we knew pretty near the beginning that we were supporting Al-Qaeda. Did you expect any different? |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| People don't entirely reject their cultural background. I don't think that is something to fear. |
What if their 'cultural background' involves making 'apostasy' a crime, perhaps punishable by death? Would that be something to fear, or at least something to be worried about? |
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wintermute
Joined: 01 Oct 2007
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Butterfly wrote: |
| As a little side-anecdote, I remember a young driver we had in Tripoli who added me on facebook; he never really expressed his politics. I took a look at his page in mid-february and he had i guess about 100 friends, and a good half of them had green flags and Ghaddaffi images as their profile pics (unlike all other Libyan facebook friends). I took a look just now and he has the same amount of friends, but (and i cant say if its the same people) a good half of his friends have, you've guessed it, the new Libya flag, not a green one in sight. I wonder if their wearing of the green flag was real belief, or just survival? |
Did you go on to wonder that about the new flags too? |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Ineverlie&I'malwaysri wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Ineverlie&I'malwaysri wrote: |
| Quote: |
Precisely the same criminal act as the Nazis? So we committed industrialized genocide in Libya?
This proposition cannot be taken seriously. |
Is it really acceptable and that much better to incinerate masses of people by bombing than by throwing them in ovens? |
Is it really acceptable and that much better that you beat your wife, bacasper? |
Don't blame that on bac. I was merely responding to someone else's Nazi comparison.
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Who apparently seems to have stopped by purely to engage in a little drive-by trolling and then disappeared again.
But to answer the question. There is a difference between killing in war and murdering POWS/civilians. Yes civilians can be killed in war as well. This is a tragedy. But it is FAR different than a systematic rounding up of certain ethnic groups with the end goal of total extermination of said groups.
And anyone who can not see the difference can be never taken seriously (on this thread or any other.) |
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ersatzredux
Joined: 15 Dec 2007
Location: Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Ersatz's game is old and simple: deny the crimes of the natives and crucify the imperialists, no matter what the facts, no matter if the "natives" and "imperialists" are on the same side. |
Back in the old days, when I had my cushy professor job in Korea and tonnes of free time, I would gladly take you apart piece by piece. Unfortunately time is precious to me these days and I can't spend it on long pointless debates with people who refuse to learn anything from experience.
All I have to say to you and the likeminded is watch and see what happens. NATO won't leave, though they likely will take on new guises (trainers, thousands and thousands of "diplomats" like in Iraq, private mercenaries, etc.). They will end up killing and torturing far far more people than Gaddafi ever did, by degrees of magnitude, and they will utterly ruin the country. The supposed Gaddafi mass graves have turned out to be false or hugely exaggerated (prove me wrong on this) , but they keep finding more people executed by the NTC ( or the Qatari, British, French, American and whatever special forces that have been there from the beginning). This will continue. We wrote the book on deathsquads after all.
Libya will end up squandering the huge foreign reserves Gaddafi built up for when the oil would run out, with more than a little help from their new friends. They will instead be in thrall to the IMF and owned lock stock and barrel by western companies and corrupt warlords and expat carpet baggers. Our "natives" will steal everything they possibly can and salt it away out of the country- where they will end up fleeing eventually. Very little will be rebuilt and what is will be shoddy- hard to build well when most of the construction funds are stolen. Free housing - gone. Free education- gone. Free high quality healthcare- gone. Pride and self respect- gone. So although a few will benefit immensely, the great majority of Libyans will end up the poorer. Lots of jobs for prostitutes though around the new western bases that will be built, although they'll probably import those and most of the contract workers from the Phillipines or wherever.In the end of course Libyans will have their own self determination back, but at great cost.
| Quote: |
| You two are intellectually bankrupt. |
And it seems you've never had any intellectual capital to begin with, if your wholesale swallowing of the "official line" on this is any indication. You're not worth my time, buddy. Time itself will prove who is right about this. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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| ersatzredux wrote: |
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| Ersatz's game is old and simple: deny the crimes of the natives and crucify the imperialists, no matter what the facts, no matter if the "natives" and "imperialists" are on the same side. |
Back in the old days, when I had my cushy professor job in Korea and tonnes of free time, I would gladly take you apart piece by piece. Unfortunately time is precious to me these days and I can't spend it on long pointless debates with people who refuse to learn anything from experience.
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You were never able to do that then, no surprise that you are unable to do so now.
As you say yourself time will tell...so unless you have a crystal ball you have no more idea of what will happen than we do.
It is certainly very clear what you hope will happen, despite the vast human cost and that alone is worthy of our dismissal. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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| ersatzredux wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Ersatz's game is old and simple: deny the crimes of the natives and crucify the imperialists, no matter what the facts, no matter if the "natives" and "imperialists" are on the same side. |
Back in the old days, when I had my cushy professor job in Korea and tonnes of free time, I would gladly take you apart piece by piece. Unfortunately time is precious to me these days and I can't spend it on long pointless debates with people who refuse to learn anything from experience.
All I have to say to you and the likeminded is watch and see what happens. |
That's precisely the problem. You're still stuck on the Iraq War. Libya is pretty different. |
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Butterfly
Joined: 02 Mar 2003
Location: Kuwait
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| Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:16 am Post subject: |
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| wintermute wrote: |
| Butterfly wrote: |
| As a little side-anecdote, I remember a young driver we had in Tripoli who added me on facebook; he never really expressed his politics. I took a look at his page in mid-february and he had i guess about 100 friends, and a good half of them had green flags and Ghaddaffi images as their profile pics (unlike all other Libyan facebook friends). I took a look just now and he has the same amount of friends, but (and i cant say if its the same people) a good half of his friends have, you've guessed it, the new Libya flag, not a green one in sight. I wonder if their wearing of the green flag was real belief, or just survival? |
Did you go on to wonder that about the new flags too? |
In this case, sure. In others, who had been posting the flag from the beginning of the revolution, risking their lives, obviously not. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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| stilicho25 wrote: |
Watched the video. Pretty ugly stuff. I have no problem with an execution, but a usually you have a trial first.
Still not much faith in the rebels. This looks more like the tape of Samuel Doe than the Nuremberg trials.
Don't get me wrong, I really do hope the new government is formed peacefully and the run libya well, I just have grave misgivings about what I have seen so far. |
I have frequent contact with Libyans and among my Libyan friends no one likes the way Qadaffi was killed. However, they are (whether from Benghazi or Tripoli) rejoicing in his defeat.
From what I have read so far, the officers in charge were trying to get through to upper command in Misrata and Tripoli to ask what to do with him (they had not been prepared for such a catch), and his execution was the result of the spontaneous actions of those supposed to be under their command (but not acting on orders).
I hope 'we' (as in the West) hang back and don't interfere. It will no doubt work out much better if we let the people of Libya get on with it. |
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