Reply #14: Well here goes.

[Skidmore]

First, do we have a responsibility to correct our mistakes of the past? Both Iraq and Iran are on this list...and those solutions almost require military intervention.

Reply: We are not correcting our mistakes of the past but are making new ones based on the same type of policy and ideology.

Second, the concern of spreading corporate interests (which I think DO have too much of an undue influence on American government, but maybe not quite as much as most here) is legitimate, but how are we supposed to rebuild certain infrastructures without there aid? Case in point - how was Iraq to be rebuilt - oil fields and power and such - without the aid of American big business, possibly the only entities in the world with the resources and capital to do so on such short notice? Should we let a nation burn in those cases?

Reply: WE have destroyed the infrastructure of those nations for the express purpose of handing lucrative contracts for corporate America and utilize the IMF and World Bank as fiscal billyclubs to keep them in line as we rob them of their resources and wealth. The peoples of these nations don't stand a chance when our nation decides it has interests in them. And what is wrong with letting peoples in other nations choose what their culture and government will look like. What would have happened in Iraq if we had 1) protected their infrastructure following the invasion so it didn't have to be rebuilt from the ground up and 2) we gave contracts to Iraqis to allow them to rebuild their own nation? My guess is there would be less support for an insurgency if those people were gainfully employed and had adequate services and commodities available to them to support their families. It would have also contributed to the development of new centers of power in the marketplace beyond old cronies of Saddam had the opportunities to develop new infrastructure been thought through carefully. That's known as an "exit strategy" and is non-existent; hence the current chaos and the almost certainty of a civil war.

Third, how fast are democracies supposed to develop? Are we to go in, oust someone, and then leave it up to possible civil war and anarchy to sort things out, or set up SOMETHING that could lead to a more honest democracy down the road - especially in an area that has not learned the "little things" on how a democracy should be run?

Reply: WE don't have an honest democracy at this point and are the last peoples on earth to be dictating how democracy should look to anyone in the world. As our own civil liberties and free speech are being chipped away daily, we can no longer be used as the gold standard for democracy. Besides, how can we claim that we even have established democracies historically when we have traditionally left dictatorships which made aggregious human rights violations in our wake. Look what we did to Iran in the 1950s--ousted its one democratically elected leader and left the Shah in his place. We have done this in South and Central America as well--time and time again. Democracies don't develop at the barrel of a gun. They develop because a people has the will to embrace the principles underlying a democratic society. You don't teach democracy by ordering someone to believe it or else. That is not choice.

Fourth, when has Saddam ever benefited American corporate interests since the 1980s?

Reply: That is what this war was about. The American corporations were not getting a big enough piece of the pie that is Iraq. Heck, they wanted the whole pie. Recall Cheney's meetings around the development of the energy plan and the resulting map of Iraqi oil fields all nicely carved up into fiefdoms for American energy companies. Need we say more? That oil is under Iraqi land and BELONGS to the Iraqi people. We have not right to enter their land and steal their wealth which is what we are doing. If a thief enters my home, I will defend my home and my family. How is what the Iraqi people doing to protect their homeland so wrong? It is very human and understandable. We have done just as much damage as Saddam, and possibly more, given that this administration is hell bent on keeping the region destabilized for generations to come.