I don’t know much about US wrestling as it is now. Its my impression that it’s somewhat popular, I have no knowledge about its current style in the US, nor about French wrestling at all.

Moving on to Daniel’s essay, the fact that Galloway, and a US wrestling star in the 50’s and 60’s, have the same nickname supports no inferences about Galloway’s personality, character, politics, or his performance in the recent election. Nor does it support any inferences about the voters in the BB&G district.

You grab random people and torture and kill them for the sake of freedom, you bomb cities, you wrap villages into barbed wire, every day you shoot random cars on the road and kill random bystanders. The only difference between you and the Khmer is the firepower.———————————————————————-
Why are the ‘terrorists’ not inclined to ‘stop the killing’? Why are there, apparently, hundreds of thousands of them risking and sacrificing their lives every day to kick the Americans out of the country – if the democracy you’re bringing to them is such a great thing? Why, uh?

What are they – robots programmed to sacrifice themselves for a ‘Baathist-Islamist [sic] police state’ instead of enjoying life in a MacDonalds?

Well, then, how do you know you aren’t a robot?

Nice strawman. Look, I’m not anti-American. I’m
British, and I’ve chosen to live in America and
marry an American. I like American movies and
American food. But I object to killing tens of
thousands of people, imprisoning many others,
torturing people, destroying tens of thousands
of homes, failing to spend the appropriated
$18B of reconstruction money on actual
reconstruction. I’d be really happy if Iraqis
were now living under the same conditions I enjoy
in Brookline MA. But it just ain’t so. Iraqis
aren’t watching Hollywood movies and eating
MacDonalds: they’re being bombed and shot, and – to our eternal shame – mostly by the coalition
forces.

To be honest, when I marched to protest against
the war in 2003, I didn’t expect that the US would
screw it up as badly as it has. I thought Iraqis
would be better off – just not enough to justify
the huge evil of war and the disruption of
international law and institutions that was
involved under those circumstances. I was wrong.
Bush’s team has achieved the almost impossible
feat of making life in Iraq worse, and death
more frequent, than it was under Saddam.

Maybe it will eventually get better – though the
chances don’t look good at the moment – but we
can only talk with certainty about what’s
already happened, and that’s bloody awful.

Enough already.

Why try to change anything, when you’ll only make things worse? What’s any of it got to do with us?

You argue from anecdotes and sweeping
generalizations; I prefer data. The Saddam
regime of 1993-2003 was not especially
“murderous” in terms of numbers killed – probably only 2000-3000 per year; and no
more “tyrannical” than many regimes we continue
to support and arm (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan)

In contrast, the Lancet survey, also supported
by surveys of returning US troops, suggests that
the occupation regime has been much more
murderous – and yes, I do think that word is
appropriate to describe the deaths of women and
children in their homes from aerial bombing, or
the shooting of innocent people in cars who
happen to come too close to US convoys.

Unfortunately the probable outcome of this is
an Islamist regime which will be massively
tyrannical to the women of Iraq. Look at Iran
or Saudi Arabia. For sure Iraqis are doing their
best – with bullets and the ballot box – to choose
their own government. And it’s in human nature
to be hopeful about the future. But so what ?
This is a monumental screwup.

Galloway: “We are not going to agree on this. You are a supporter of the war. You are a supporter of the occupation and I am an opponent. Your family joined the puppet government.”

Pax: “We are helping to build the new Iraq.”

Galloway: “That’s your point of view, it’s not our point of view and you are entitled to your opinion, and I welcome you to London, and I am entitled to mine – and let’s see what the British people think.”

There you go, democracy summed up in one sentence.

I’m sorry, but what kind of people do you think Iraqis are that they don’t much care if they are ruled by a murderous, tyrannical police state or by a democratically elected government?

You’re right, mw, that’s not the Iraqis, it’s those who think that because their rulers decided to start a war in Iraq, everyone should have just greeted that proposal with universal consent.

(Otherwise it’s, the terrorists win/you want Saddam back/you don’t care about Iraqi bloggers…)

No, that’s not a fair way to describe the missions, it’s an amoral, superficial, and totally f**king demented way to describe them. The Khmer Rouge didn’t kill enemy fighers who’d taken up arms against them, they slaughtered a million and half civilians by design.

And nobody in his right mind could argue that the Khmer were fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’ (any more than Al Queda or the Taliban are fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’). These aren’t terms that mean anything and nothing. At least they aren’t to me—apparently they are to you.

Instead of emphasizing specifics of their visions and arguing their merits, shouldn’t we just stop the killing?

But the terrorists are not inclined to ‘stop the killing’ until the coalition is gone AND the democratically elected government is destroyed AND an Baathist-Islamist police state is established. But, of course, the Shia would not be inclined to accept subjugation again and won’t be willing to forgo fighting and killing to prevent it. Even if you belive ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are empty, meaningless words, and that a Islamofascist government would be as good as any other form of government (as you’re suggesting)—even then, it is ridiculously simple-minded to think that ‘just stopping the killing’ is any sort of solution.

The point was not that Iraqis wealthy and educated enough to be bloggers are representative—the point was simply to refute the idea that democracy was ‘a mirage that only I could see’ (and to pull ‘Gorgeous George’ back into the discussion, while I was at it).

No, we don’t know Iraqis want democracy because of a few bloggers, we know because of what Iraqi opinion polls tell us, and especially (and obviously) because huge numbers of them braved suicide bombers and turned out to vote.

I’m sorry, but what kind of people do you think Iraqis are that they don’t much care if they are ruled by a murderous, tyrannical police state or by a democratically elected government?

They’re both killing a large number of people for the sake of freedom and democracy, as they envision it. Don’t you think this is fair way to describe their missions? Instead of emphasizing specifics of their visions and arguing their merits, shouldn’t we just stop the killing.

I’ve stomped this “Iraqi-blogger” argument before,
but here goes again. What percentage of Iraqis
speak English and have Internet access ? So
trying to generalize from the output of English-
language Iraqi bloggers is just about worthless.
Not only is it a tiny sample, but it’s a sample
which is massively biased towards the well-educated
and relatively westernized. I doubt you’d hear
the same views among (ex-)inhabitants of Fallujah,
or residents of Sadr City. But we can’t tell,
because English-language journalists can’t visit
those areas without massive security.

Shorter warblogger argument: “I assume things are
going really well in all the areas we can’t
visit because we’d get blown up”

Everyone expects future to be better, especially when they can’t imagine any worse. Their ‘better future’ may be tantamount to ‘killing a lot of American infidels’, for all we know.

And yes, I don’t see any daylight between Pol Pot’s “with rifles in one hand and hoes in the other, our workers, peasants, and revolutionary armed forces are striving grandly to build democratic Kampuchea” and your fighting for “pluralistic, democratic government” in Iraq. Or his “what’s rotten needs to be removed” and your “military actions against violent, anti-democratic, islamist fighters”.

Nobody but me? Those Iraqis who tell pollsters they expect the future will be better can see it. Or how about this—very appropriate to the current topic:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4456839.stm

Of course, that’s just Salam Pax—what the hell does he know about Iraq and its future?

Meanwhile, real people who want nothing but normal life are being killed in droves. It’s just like what Mao, Che and Pol Pot were doing, they were building the bright future too.

Dreams of a pluralistic, democratic government are, in your mind, ‘just like’ Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’? If that’s what you believe, that does explain a lot. I guess I’ll have to give you credit for being consistent anyway.