Americans who support dictators and ethnocracies

Discussion in 'Politics' started by S.A.M., Feb 6, 2011.

  1. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    This is about Americans who support the rule of dictators, whether it is Musharraf in Pakistan, Mubarak in Egypt, Pinochet in Chile or Saleh in Yemen. As well as Americans who support ethnocratic groups who want states based on their tribe or religion, like the Israelis, the Assyrians, the Baluchis, the Kurds...do these Americans wish to live in ethnocratic states or under dictatorships?

    Do they feel the USA is a failure for not subscribing to dictators and ethnocracy?

    Or do they merely wish for other people to live under ethnocracies and dictatorships because it is profitable to them?

    Or do these Americans just hate the freedoms of other people?

    What are the reasons for Americans supporting such un-American ideologies?

    Also, how would these same people respond to the US become an ethnocratic dictatorship based on some race or religion?
     
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  3. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Fascinating leaps of reason there, SAM.

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    A tad misleading perhaps, but fascinating nonetheless.

    If you want to change your physiological status from one sex to another and I support you in that, does that necessarily mean that I wish to change genders myself?

    Have you ever heard the old saw "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"

    Do you really think that it is somehow wrong to favour the person who may help you even if you may not like them very much?

    The bias in your 'questions' is sorta obvious, subtlety is an art that must be practiced. Make a note, would you?

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  5. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    The greatest thing George Washington did was give up his power. This set a precident that says the US Government is bigger than a single man; it's an institution.

    No one wants to live under a dictatorship- it's just the way things happen when the rule of law is not applied properly. No man is so smart or special that he should be declared "leader for life"- the seeds of this go back to Julius Caesar, which were the roots of the fall of Rome.

    But power corrupts and man is easily corruptable, which leads us back to George Washington.
     
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  7. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    ...and his hemp farm!

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  8. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Would you like to elaborate on that?

    I will give you an example. There are people in India, who join the Hindutva party, because they support things like a Hindu state. These people can be seen beating women who go to pubs, threatening/killing girls who marry non-Hindus and discriminating against non-Hindus when it comes to opportunities. Now if such people were to support a Jewish state or a Kurdish state or an Iroquois state, it would be completely consistent with their beliefs

    But suppose, there were Indians who believe in secularism and syncretism, who opposed the caste system, who opposed discrimination against people for colour, race and religion and then supported an Iroquois nation based on race and colour, one might wonder at their motivations.

    Good example. But we are talking politics, not ethics. So politically speaking if you were a supporter of LGBT rights in your country, but opposed LGBT rights in all other countries, what would your motivations be?
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Sometimes a benevolent dictator is better than a corrupt,war mongering lying democratically elected president but that's not the general rule.
     
  10. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I can smell the nuance in this thread from the next thread over.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Subtlety is apparently something that was not practiced where Sam grew up because she never learned it. She has only two goals on SciForums:
    • Bash Israel.
    • Bash America.
    She probably thought she was being subtle by waiting until she was in the second line of her post before slipping in "the Israelis" and then oh-so-cleverly grouping them with the Assyrians, Baluchis and Kurds. Most Americans have no idea who or what an Assyrian or a Baluchi even is.

    As for the Kurds, Saddam was our enemy and he was mean to the Kurds so they must be our friends. But the Turks are our friends and they are mean to the Kurds too, so they must be our enemies.
     
  12. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    power corrupts and man is easily corruptable..(this statement applies to the plural of man also)
    get a bigger belt doesn't work..more laws won't work..the more we try to force ppl to conform to a single state of behavior, the bigger the explosion will be when they have had enough spankings

    Squirrel for Leader for Life!
    I will be by the pool sucking on some seed juice,
    oh didn't i say i was ready to retire, i'll let whoever you pick to run your country..
     
  13. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Au contrare, madamoselle, you were indeed speaking of ethics, thus my direct response.

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    Yeah Frag, I kinda noticed that......
     
  14. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Anyways, it's true the U.S has prop'd up some Dictatorships (and tried so many times, impossible to know all the CIA has tried to do).

    Basically, it's OK with dictators and terrorists that are "Allies"(never mind that most eventually become enemies - expensive enemies).

    It's a Bad habit, and most of the blame is the CIA - that organization needs to be eliminated.
     
  15. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed, generally.
     
  16. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    The US over the course of the cold war adopted a policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." without realizing how erroneous this is.

    The US doesn't really support these dictatorships, if they did then they would have no problem declaring their relationship opennly instead of behind closed door. They feel that they must choose between the lesser of two evils.

    I can confidently say as an American that I do not really support any of the above.

    But recently within the past half decade or so the US has started to become more hesitant about supporting such endeavours.
     
  17. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, they used to support these things just because they feared communism more than individual brutes. They gotta get away from that.
     
  18. jmpet Valued Senior Member

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    I love the CIA! I love the fact that we don't know 90% of what they do, but they get the job done. I love the wall of stars with some of the names classified- even after their deaths... we need the CIA to mop up our messes and clean house when it's needed!

    As much as I want us to reduce our military, I actually want the CIA's budget to go up. Case in point- if Bush had a brain in his head he would have let the CIA handle Saddam and bin Laden- which they would have made short work of.
     
  19. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah good for you maybe(not really), bad for the rest of the world.
     
  20. Mr MacGillivray Banned Banned

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    Like a American girl said on a Kassam G interview: they (egypt) should keep their hands of our oil.
     
  21. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Thats a claim which is really hard to support. Regardless of what international laws they break in a clandestine fashion, the overt support for dictators and ethnocracies is hardly debatable.

    The very fact that the US is able to pass what it calls a "Patriot Act" where it is legal for the US government to kidnap people from sovereign nations hold them indefinitely and torture them sometimes to death, completely ignoring due process; the very fact that Americans legally torture people and see no reason to hold the torturers accountable; the very fact that these dictators openly receive arms, money and training is adequate proof that support for dictators and ethnocracies is not something that Americans consider opposed to their values, principles or politics.

    And yet, how many of the same Americans who support dictatorships and ethnocracies would want to be treated the way that people are treated in the same dictatorships and ethnocracies which they openly support?

    You have people here who get excessively worked up about hypothetical stonings but are completely accepting of the actual torture and killing of men women and children by torture, chemical and biological weapons. They are even willing to justify nuclear bombing! But are "worried" about opinion polls where people express extremist views. How does that work? How is it "questionably justified" to bomb two cities with nuclear bombs causing hundreds of thousands of deaths but consider violent and extremist the notion that some country may want to build a bomb?
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Oh we have! We don't worry about communism any more at all. (Well except for Cuba, but that's just one tiny country.) Now we fear something completely different: terrorism. See? We're much better now!
    That's really splitting hairs. If you support the lesser of the two evils in the hope that it will help you conquer the greater of the two evils, you are still supporting evil.
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    This would have been the best option from the beginning, frankly.
     

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