Removing those evil dictators never seems to work out very well.

[pwb]

Iraq, Libya, Syria, all have split into cold blooded killing factions. As soon as the dictator is removed or weakened the country turns into a cluster fuck. Maybe it is time for us to all mind our own business.

I guess I am just tired of the hate and killing. Even our police are now cold blooded haters.

Humankind is at its lowest level in my lifetime. Sad to say.

[Laelth]

1. I hear you.

But part of me believes that this is the best we have ever been. Humans have been overthrowing dictators and installing puppets for a long time. What's different, now, is the internet. We're simply more aware of what's happening in the world. That actually gives "the people" the impetus to affect politics in a way we have never been able to before.



-Laelth

[Matrosov]

2. Of course, they're only "evil" when..

..they aren't serving US interests.

Saddam was considered a great ally when he attacked Iran, which was considered a great ally when it was led by Pahlavi rather than Khomeini.

Perhaps Al Assad would've been considered an ally as well, if he weren't so friendly with Iran and Russia.

[arcane1]

3. "Business" is how they kept power in the first place

and business will determine who replaces them

[Warpy]

4. Violent revolutions rarely work as advertised.

It was a clusterfuck after the American Revolution under the Articles of Confederation which gave each military faction its own bailiwick. Early states were on the brink of war with each other when the Constitutional Convention was called and we got very, very lucky with that one, if only because Madison had seen what the main problems of the time were and knew how the Iroqois had managed to deal with many of them.

And take heart, humanity has been far lower than this. We haven't brought back the rack and the thumbscrew as far as I know, so the civilized veneer hasn't cracked that far.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. I disagree only about "humankind".

The vast majority of humans go through their lives without participating in wars, atrocities, torture, or the like. One of the great myths is that "humans are programmed for war."

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? Joan Baez

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. Anne Frank

[pampango]

6. No to 'regime change' and No to 'regime protection'. Dictatorships are not best and

we should support the efforts of people to achieve more in the way of individual rights and a say in who governs them and how.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. Milosevic leaps to mind as an obvious counterexample.

"Seldom" I will grant you, but not "never".

[TexasProgresive]

8. Who held Yugoslavia together and keep the Milosevics in control"

Tito. When Tito died all hell broke loose.

[mythology]

9. It worked out pretty well in Japan and Germany

South Korea is a lot better off than if they were governed by the North Korean government. Italy is better off with Mussolini.

And supporting leaders that don't support democracy hasn't exactly worked well for us. Pinochet turned out to be an asshat as did Alfredo Stroessner. Our good friends in Saudi Arabia are also more than a bit draconian on concepts like women's rights.

I think we should do more, not necessarily militarily, to encourage democracy rather than supporting dictators. Isolationism is a poor philosophy because if we don't have an influence, somebody else will. Putin is clearly looking to expand his power and on a good day Putin is a piece of trash.

But also Syria was a civil war before we entered the picture.

[Wounded Bear]

10. Different situations...

Those countries are much more unified in their demographics than many of the colonial nations we've been practicing our "regime change" skills in. Yugoslavia was patched together after WWI from the ethnic groups that we now see as the nations that replaced it. Iraq was patched together from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and the resulting French and British colonies between the wars.

As was stated above, most of the crap we've gone through since WWII has been a modern version of colonialism, where our corporate interests trump all forms of human rights/individual freedoms.