shadowrelm wrote:
Um... I think the inability of the Iraqi people to overthrow Hussein had *nothing* to do with a lack of desire and everything to do with the fact that any despot held in power by the vast amounts of money gained via oil sales, can withstand any attempt from within to topple his government.
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ahhh, so thats where we are failing. we dont have enough MONEY to stop the terrorist attacks in Iraq. silly us. quick, go tell the white house.
your logic, as usual, totally ignores the reality of what is going on. dont feel bad, it is a symptom of being a republican. kind of like the "trikle down" effect.
there is no way Hussin could have withstood the level of resistance we are faceing. that is a fact, no matter how you spinn it. controll of the oil? money? ROFL.
Wow. I knew you were dense, but this takes the cake. I said that a ruler with that much money and no regard for the well being of his citizens is effectively immune to internal takeover (at least from "the people").
A despotic leader without any significant foreign funds supporting him can be toppled by local action against him. Because those locals can actually significantly disrupt what funds and power he has coming to him. But do you think a movement to disrupt oil sales in a middle eastern nation would be allowed by those buying the oil? He's *guranteed* foreign support for his regime. Revolutionaries can't possibly win because they can't ever make the state of revolt to expensive for him to maintain.
And it's not a lack of funding that makes things difficult for the US forces in Iraq. It's the moral issues. Saddam could trivialy have put down a resistance of the level we're facing in Iraq. He simply would have wiped out whole towns that were in collusion with the insurgents (or even just ones filled with people he didn't like just to make an example).
It's the combination of enough ensured funds to maintain a signifiicant military structure *and* a willingness to be brutal that allowed him (and to some degree many leaders in that region) to maintain power despite an incredibly high rate of unhappy citizens. In any other part of the world those leaders would have been overthrown by now. But those two factors together make it pretty much impossible.
That's why they hate us. "The people" see us as the ones who support and maintain the regimes who oppress them. They (somewhat rightly) realize that the only way to change that is to direct their attacks at us rather then their own leaders. Because as long as we continue to subsidize the despotism in the region via oil sales, they'll always live under oppressive rule. That's the whole point of international terrorism.
