Posted by Sadie from ? (160.129.27.22) on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 at 6:26PM :
In Reply to: also posted by Sadie from ? (160.129.27.22) on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 at 3:24PM :
: Here's a tangent. Now, I'm not saying that unity is the ONLY way - what a trite & somewhat untrue statement - that whole societies have to be in complete agreement within themselves for there to be a positive end result such as the establishment of a democracy. No. This is obvious: what is good is to have debate & to promote the concept of intellectual HARMONY - that people can have many different ideas of how things should be run & live in peace with their neighbors & themselves - alongside unity of action, more-or-less. What I am trying to get at is that intellectual discourse is what is most often targetted by those buffoons who propose "unity" (& I'm NOT referring to the pan-Arab unity post I put up earlier today - I like the ideas in that post) as a way to make things work. Why not a little intellectual dissonance every once in a while? It's good for our collective health! : ) & why not a little anarchy thrown into the developmental processes of nation-building? No one is perfect, & demanding perfection from a society that is disorganized so much that civil institutions are not functioning properly is too much. It's like demanding a sick person to never sneeze & then taking that to mean that the sick person is getting better. So, unity, in a movement, should be thought of as a sort of general unity - no absolute requirements should be made, esp. in situations where a state is barely held together by any law. I'm advocating a more biological perspective here, I suppose: that developmental processes are not always so exact, that nothing is perfect, & that to go into a situation demanding perfection is to have too unrealistic expectations, the more a society is in shambles. However, for the U.S. or for Israel, it's different - these are wealthy nations with strong governmental inner cohesiveness, & therefore, should be held to different standards. & I'm NOT implying that the U.S. or Israel are morally better than Iraq or Palestine.
xxx I am saying this only regarding unity to build a state by its constituents, NOT by an outside power of course. If Iraq was LEFT ALONE to develop its government ON ITS OWN, then I have confidence that the form of government in Iraq will eventually be a democratic one (which may not resemble the U.S. government, but take some other democratic form). Iraq must be left alone - by "left alone" I do not mean "isolated," but I mean "not manipulated." & then its citizens will evolve their own form of government on their own. This is how the U.S. government was created, after all - over time, it evolved to take the shape that it has. & so on with every other nation. So it should be with the Palestinian government as well. The Palestinian Authority is in charge of dealing with a group of people who, technically, have NO country. Is it fair to expect the PA, or any other group, to act as if it is responsible for suicide bombings when it's not in charge of an official state? That they can attenuate the bombings should be good enough until an official Palestinian state is established. However, Israel, as an official state with a governing body that is in charge of that state SHOULD be expected to be able to control the actions of its military completely. Therefore, the illegal actions of the Israeli government & military should be held to stricter standards. When the Israeli government promises a cease fire (among other things, of course), it should comply with that promise with the knowledge that the PA can NOT completely stop suicide bombings. It should be understood that the best that the PA can do right now is to promise to keep suicide bombings to a minimum. Therefore, a suicide bombing that couldn't be stopped by the PA should not be justification for more Israeli helicopter gunship attacks (which we all know just kill more innocent Palestinian civilians) because the two actions are occurring in two completely different contexts.
xxx Anyway, the thing that bothers me is that the U.S. government goes into Iraq & occupies it, imposes a new government on the people & then *says* that it expects all Iraqis to accept the government that is put above them... a supposed democracy is established & everything goes right according to Republican schedule. Meanwhile, the situation actually seems to resemble a festering wound - Iraqis are getting more & more upset at the inconsistencies they see around them - that U.S. government makes promises that don't come true in the end because now everything is on "government time" (i.e. everything - complaints, etc. - gets lost in the blasted bureaucratic process that so defines our federal government & all its institutions). How unfair is that? That Iraqis, who are NOT citizens of the U.S., are expected to conform to the standards of the U.S. government in the first place? That the government that illegally controls them is imperfect & is perfectly content to impose cruel double standards on Iraqis?
-- Sadie
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