i would have never guessed an islamic nation, especially one recently blessed with democracy, would be so hostile toward homosexuals

also, did you hear that the sun sets in the west?

Wow. Epic burn.

nah, that was a budget burn at best

It had that trying-too-hard-to-be-really-sarcastic vibe common to internet forum posts

you almost expected the [/sarcasm] disclaimer at the end

what if we drop a gaybomb there, will they all kill eachother? oh wait they already do that

Heh, 'blessed' with democracy.

yeah yeah backwards nation, incapable of advancing their society through their own efforts. Whats new? Who cares. Leave them to kill each other. Its what God would have wanted (Yeah, God left, sometime in the middle ages, after realising that monotheism was being raped by evil men)

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

i found it interesting that in the Iraq section they start talking on how under Saddam there was no persecution of homosexuals and how thats changed

As soon as I got here I stopped taking the article seriously. The fact that he so unbelievably spins the hand over of power to the Iraqi Army as the British military abandoning it calls the entire article into question for me. The very language used in the article shows how much of a spin piece it is. Even if factually he is correct(which I don't doubt he his on a few things), the corrosive taint of shameless political wordplay makes the entire article a piece of trash in my eyes.

the article makes it seem like none of this stuff was happening until after Iraq was invaded. sorry... im calling shenanigans.

The definition of a stable government is the ability to maintain a monopoly over the use of violence. Saddam's government was stable.

It's pretty hard to find crime statistics for Iraq between 1998-2002 (I don't think Iraq voluntarily reported statistics to the United Nations), but I'm willing to bet their homicide rate wasn't 22.8.

And the Ba'ath party was a secular dictatorship and was comparatively liberal. Brutal, certainly, but it manifested itself in a very different way to Islamist theocracies.

No see, Saddam just killed everyone, no discrimation.

But basically, you have to end up killing a lot of people either way.

It would take a special kind of idiot to be openly gay over there, though.

I read somewhere a long time ago, when the war hubub all started, that certain factions of Afghani Al Qaeda were homosexual because they believed women to be filthy.

Taliban, Onimusha. Al Qaeda wants to kill you (personally). The Taliban wants to be a bunch of religious nutters. There's a difference. Like it's hard to hate one of them given the stated objective.

Oh yeah, my mistake. I had the bush mindset going and generalized them by "A-rab", but yes, your totally right. I meant the Taliban.

i'm going to go ahead and posit that it was actually the Onimusha mindset 'going'

Exactly, Iraq was much more stable under Saddam. The political and religious freedoms weren't nearly as high (although he did start to try to use religion a little bit to get support for the first Gulf War), religion certainly wasn't the rule of the land (nor was it persecuted as far as I know). Much of his attacking of groups was along political lines (e.g. Kurds so they wouldn't separate/Southern Shiites so they wouldn't overthrow him, etc.).

This doesn't mean Saddam was a good ruler, just that the US has done a terrible job at replacing his government with one that serves the people of Iraq. (And of course the jury is still out on Iraq's future, no matter what McCain says).



How was it liberal? I believe it was actually a planned economy where most industry was nationalized. Kind of the opposite of liberalism if you ask me. (Doesn't mean it was socialist though of course).

It's less us doing a crappy job than it is them being crazy and ungovernable. The reason Saddam was able to control them is that he was able to be way more Machiavellian than we could ever be.

Yeah, if the US lost all government and infrastructure and police, it would all turn into one big happy commune and everyone would love eachother and sing songs. They certainly wouldn't resort to looting.

Wait - did someone on this thread advocate that, and I missed it, or do you not know who Machiavelli is?

Obi_Kwiet, being Machiavelli doesn't necessarily mean being a tyrant, such as Saddam.

I recommend reading more into him. Fascinating guy.

No, he just recommended being a tyrant in cases like this. He didn't advocate being a douche bag, he was about getting the job done, ethics be damned.

I've read some of his essays or what ever you call them. Letters? Treatises?

I suppose one could take this elitist approach. "They just can't have democracy". Of course there are so many reasons (of which the scope of this thread is too limited to go into) as to why that is a pretty poor way of using logic and pretty inconsistent with history/geo politics/etc.

Also there are many who think that Machiavelli was just a bunch of crap and his political philosophy was poorly thought out. (Like myself for example)