Little Skittle said:
if generalizations are ok as long as they have a basis, is it ok for me to say "palestine is a county full of suicide bombers"? i dont think it is....
There is a very weak basis on which to presume that Palestine is full of suicide bombers. If this were the cas, wouldn't they all be dead?
My basis for generalizing Americans is quite simple - Bush won the election by a majority vote, therefore most Americans support Bush & his policies. This is a fair assumption on which to base a genralization.
Your answers to questions 2 & 3 tell me you condone hypocrisy (consciously or subconsciously).
Question 4 reinforces your answer to question 1. I can understand the point of putting the health of the nation before being too scared to go back on what you once said was the right thing but the problem is the burden of the mistakes America makes usually falls on other countries. Also, much of America's actions are not for the health of the nation, but to further the agenda of the few.
If you answered question 5 in your answer to question 4 then you condone this betrayal. If you knew what I was talking about you would never have had to ask for examples as there is one that should spring to the mind of anyone even half-read up on the situation, making me wonder how you can condone something you don't even know about....
Anyways, on Febuary the 15th 1991, the American President at the time - one George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqi military & the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Tired of Saddam's oppressive regime, the people answered the American call. On March the 3rd, an Iraqi tank commander returning from Kuwait fired a shell through one of the portraits of Saddam in Basra's main square, igniting the uprising in southern Iraq. The following week, Kurdish rebels ended Saddam's control over much of northern Iraq.
But while the Bush administration had call for the uprising, due to matters of policy, the administration refused to talk with the Iraqi opposition. Policymakers tended to see Iraq's main ethnic groups in caricature: The Shiites were feared as pro-Iranian and the Kurds as anti-Turkish. Indeed, the U.S. administration seemed to prefer the continuation of the Baath regime (albeit without Hussein) to the success of the rebellion
The practical expression of this policy came in the decisions made by the military on the ground when U.S. commanders spurned the rebels' plea for help. The US allowed Iraq to send Republican Guard units into southern cities and to fly helicopter gunships. (This in spite of a ban on flights, articulated by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf with considerable swagger: "You fly, you die.") The consequences were devastating. Hussein's forces leveled the historical centers of the Shiite towns, bombarded sacred Shiite shrines and executed thousands on the spot. By some estimates, 100,000 people died in reprisal killings between March and September. Many of these atrocities were committed in proximity to American troops, who were under orders not to intervene.
In light of the uprising, in future years Baghdad would shortchange the south in the distribution of food and medicine, contributing to severe malnutrition among vulnerable populations. Some 100 Shiite clerics were murdered, including four senior ayatollahs. Draining the marshes displaced 400,000 Marsh Arabs, destroying a culture that is one of the world's oldest, as well as causing immeasurable ecological damage.
It is said that, with US help, or even neutrality, the uprising could have succeeded. The US military was in prime postion to easily down Iraqi helicopters & Iraqi tanks - they simply decided not to.
The fact is, the Iraqis heard America's call & answered it with their hearts, paying for it with their blood & that of their future generations.
When the people of Iraq called on America to help finish what had been started however, the call was heard, but America refused to help & just turned their backs.....
This is the meaning of betrayal - this is America at work.
