Who says Americans don't understand irony?

[wshaw]

General Richard Natonski, Commander 1st Marines at yesterday's Coalition and Iraqi Forces briefing (http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20041111-1582.html):

We respect the law of war, unlike our adversary who uses mosques.*

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20041111/capt.calos10211112318.iraq_calos102.jpg

There's another shot of them in what looks like it might be the same building, pointing big guns out of the windows, but I can't find that one any longer.

Sigh.

[nimway]

Well I believe that many Americans do. Unfortunately they are not the ones in government at the moment it seems.

I suppose its impossible to understand irony if we really believe that freedom and democracy will arrive on Humvees, delivered by the youngest and probably the most marginalised in the country, who had to join the forces to get work. And now they discover that work may involved being killed in order that your country can deliver what it calls freedom and democracy.

The idea that democracy and freedom can be transplanted like this, I mean has anyone tried growing bananas on the Shetland Islands?

[bakunin_the_cat]

Give global warming a couple more decades and Shetland Bananas will probably be quite common!

Seriously though, the thing that gets me is the kind of 'freedom' and 'democracy' the Americans want to bring in. Countries that kowtow to the Americans, Europe and the IMF, can get away with massive human rights violations and often genocide with the full collusion and collaboration of Western governments, who are only to happy to line their pockets with arms and oil deals and look the other way.

Free countries with democratically elected governments who refuse to play the US/IMF game which protects the rich and penalises the poor, and attempt in some small way to improve the lot of their own people are branded dangerous terrorist sympathisers and part of an axis of evil. The luckier ones are simply denied aid and trade agreements. The unlucky ones e.g. Chile, Indonesia, Iraq, etc. have their legitimate governments overthrown by American supported coups d'e'tat after which the newly imposed leaders are helped to become dictators on the understanding that they don't rock the world, corporate boat.

[NottyImp]

Democracy is the greatest weapon those wanting to turn a good dollar profit have in their arsenal (pun intended).

[RC]

As part of the coverage on Iraq, the press gives us many large numbers. By contrast, this writer quotes a small one. (Commentary: Iraqi palmistry, By Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI Editor at Large)

Before the elections, Iraq's new head of intelligence estimated the number of "fulltime" insurgents at 40,000 and part-time fighters at 160,000. Before the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the army numbered 430,000. Last year, Central Commander Gen. John Abizaid put the number of terrorists at about 5,000. Other generals have gone as high as 20,000. The only number that matters is 300. That was the total number of IRA terrorists deployed in Northern Ireland at the height of the insurgency. But they kept half the British Army deployed against them for a quarter of a century.

And, in support of NottyImp's point (although I'd want to qualify it somewhat):

Nothing will disabuse Arab opinion of the idée fixe that President Bush ordered Operation Iraqi Freedom to secure the country's oil and Israel's interests. The original white paper written for Israeli leaders in 1996 by Richard Perle and fellow neocon Douglas Feith, who resigned last week as Undersecretary of Defense, is quoted time and again by Arab leaders and intellectuals. The plan - majestic in its simplicity - was to surround Israel with Arab democracies. The subtext: Democracies do not go to war against each other. Iraq was selected by the neocons to be the first test case. Whether Iraq will now become a democracy is still a long shot.

Link: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050201-075459-8005r.htm

[NottyImp]

"Red" (he wasn't actually very Red at all) Ken Livingstone once titled a book:

"If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It."

His point was actually tangential, and ironic, as it was about the abolition of the GLC, which was of course a piece of Thatcher's legislation, and which Ken no doubt thought "changed things" with that particularly dismal form of municipal socialism we saw in various places at that time.

I prefer the original meaning of the phrase, which is self-evident.