Quote from IntelHack:
All the blathering and pot-shotting back & forth.
Ever considered why Democracy will fail in Iraq? For the same reason it is beginning to fail in America...
Freedom = Personal Responsibility.
You cannot have one without the other.
Iraqi's have always had everything (as little as that has been for them is irrelevant) handed to them by the government (the govt's brutality also being irrelevant). Their homes, public services like power & water, food rationing, etc. Now here comes America to free them of the yoke of Saddam. No matter how well intended, the reality is that these people are beginning to realize that if they want to eat, be sheltered, and have possessions they must actually earn them. There is no sugar-daddy to give it to them for towing the line. This is hard to swallow. What are they going to do now? How does one feed his family? There aren't many GE plants around Baghdad or Basra.
So as the mortifying reality hits the 'newly freed' men of the male-driven society, they are more and more inclined to support those who come in and promise to give back what they had before...even if it means another brutal regime like before. Hence, we have our beloved fallujah.
Remember, that brutal regime before was after all the Sugar Daddy at the same time.
Unless the men of Iraq embrace the responsibility of freedom rather than fear it or shirk from it, there will be no such thing as freedom or democracy. Period. No matter how much we pound them or hug them. It won't matter how much of which.
Now, in a shameful parallel, think about what has happened to America as we have gradually and steadily given more and more responsibility to the federal government to cure our ills. Is there anything that does not have a federal program in place to hand out one thing or another? It is a simple equation. Americans have wanted less personal responsibility and deferred to the federal government to take care of it. It's easier that way, right? It's lazy.
No country on the face of this planet has more freedom than America. That's why we have an immigration problem and China or the Ukraine does not.
So why do we keep trading it away?
Answer that and you will be a new member of the SoothSayer Club and acquire the wisdom to accurately predict the future of Iraq.