What's the difference between 60% of Iraqi Shi'is 'working' together in a 'democracy' with 20% Iraqi Sunnis; and, 36% of American Democrats working together in a republic with 28% American Republicans? 

A suicide bomber is one difference.  Heavy religious faith (defined as fanatic or extreme) could be applied to either country.  Violence is really the difference.  If we could just stabilize Iraq then we could start selling Iraqi stuff.  It might even become a tourist hot spot.  Can you imagine taking a picture in the 'Cradle of Civilization.'  That's powerful marketing fodder right there.

If we could stabilize Iraq, the Chinese and Japanese could exploit the market to their advantage with their over-priced products (as opposed to over-priced products which are no longer being made in America.  It's sour grapes, but still the nature of things.  The Koreans will probably sell more in a stabilized Iraqi market than the U.S.) 

One thing making stability so tough to establish in Iraq are those insurgents.  Those pesky insurgents spring up and start killing people for their religious beliefs.  You end up with chaos which really is a problem, but in a sense it is a democratic sort of chaos.  The insurgents are Iraqis.

Chaos is no good though.  Stability is probably better to have than democracy.  Life sucks enough without having to worry if you're going to make it home alive today.  If only we could get rid of the insurgents in Iraq then it seems 'we' might be able to make some headway in Iraq and democracy will flourish. 

Insurgents in Iraqis are predominately Iraqi making a stable democracy in Iraq  seem unlikely.  W told us democracy would flourish.  In his vocabulary, anything less than democracy flourishing in Iraq means we're  cuttin'-n-runnin'. 

Right?

According to many contemporary Republicans, talking about Bush's presidential statements and policies amounts to a continual campaign against Bush.  It's amazing how little Republicans want to talk about the last eight years.  Bush's stated policy regarding the Middle East was to spread democracy, but what does that mean?  Is that what we're still doing in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Is democracy the right of a people to choose anything they want, even if they want to live in a country where blowing up churches and mosques is a legal past time?  Is democracy more like having the freedom to not blow things up, but rather buy one of fifteen different kinds of potato chips?

In America, we certainly don't have the ability to make blowing up churches a legal past time, unless of course the president just decides to say it's okay one day.  If the president says it, then it is okay but that has nothing to do with the people.  Therefore, we still talk about torture's effectiveness rather than the target of prosecutions for illegally committing immoral acts in the name of a nation.



If torture is really debatable, does that mean someone might one day justify in court why they kidnapped someone, locked them in their basement and utilized stress techniques on them for days at a time?  Will we reach a day where a judge in the United States of America might entertain that debate for longer than five minutes?  Is that the country we want to live in?

One name should stand above the rest as a target of prosecution.  The president of the United States where the buck stops (or was that just Truman policy?)  Taking place before your eyes today is the exposing of cracks in the American facade.  I take no glee in that statement.

Are we a democracy in America?  Is democracy in direct opposition to communism?  Does America have any kind of moral authority anymore?  What's the difference between American foreign policy and the foreign policy of Nazi Germany?

These are not easy questions to answer and ultimately it's all a matter of how you look at any situation and how you rationalize that situation.  For many people in the United States, the All Mighty Dollar is all that matters and if you ain't got a dollar, you ain't got nothing.  You're just out of luck.  These people will sell you in everyway how this is the nature of reality.  Simply the ability of any individual to generate net worth or income determines their place in America.  Survival of the fittest baby. 

We sell one another for the possibility of generating ever greater incomes.  We exercisely daily as if one day we might be able to buy all of the bananas in the world.  We could buy them all and let them rot.  If we had extra money, we might pay some poor people to watch them rot.  We can do that because it's survival of the fittest baby and if someone is stupid enough to take my money, then good for me.

Money is a luxury and it's not always a good luxury (it's also not always a bad luxury- funny how life is such a complicated thing.)  If you don't believe, look at the Army in the U.S. or look at prison life in the U.S.  In the Army, pay is merit based and delivered in cash.  The amount of cash you earn is the same as anyone else in your rank (with the exception of stipends for things such as: housing allowances and combat pay.)  You don't make as much money in the Army as you might make as a civilian.  You lose freedoms in the Army that you'd have as a civilian in the United States of America.

In this sense, civilian life in the United States of America is a true sense of capitalist life.  You have the right to make as much as you have the ability to make.  You also have the right to starve to death if you don't make anything.  In the Army, you won't starve unless you go out of your way to starve.  The Army takes care of food, clothing and shelter- plus they give you some spending cash.  There's the mess hall and then there's also a Burger King on base.  Private property and government property co-existing in the same space.  The Army in this metaphor is a socialist society.

Prison, on the other hand, takes care of everything for inmates.  You can't have cash (demonstrating that cash is a luxury) and you only get paid in products (e.g. cigarettes, soap, reading materials, etc...)  Your food, shelter and clothing are automatically taken care of in prison.  Again, you won't starve unless you go out of your way to starve.  You get paid dirt in prison compared both to the Army and civilian life.  Prison is communist life.

Another day, another fifty-nine cents sir!

If you're looking for some answer here, I'm going to disappoint you.  There are no answers only the situation upon which we've been delivered.  Answers are always too simple, so we must think in terms of life and the pressures life brings to bear on us all.  When we look toward prison recidivism rates, we might ask: Are recidivism rates so high because Americans are morally evil, or is prison life simply an alternative to working 9 to 5, 40 hours a week?

Do we still believe capitalism is morally superior to every other economic possibility?