Ok then bringing him into this discussion is therefore inapt.
Clinton meddled in Haiti to level Haitian society in the name of "Democracy." Frum and some others, including some who still have influence with the Administration, would meddle on the other side of the world, to level Arab and Aryan cultures, also in the name of "Democracy."
So we've established that the verbal utterances of people surrounding the two situations have the word "democracy" in common. That's far less of a commonality than you seem to think.
I suggest, however, that the differences between Clinton and Frum are more those of personality and background than ideology.
If you say so. Still don't know why you care about Frum so much. This is David Frum, right? Baby-faced guy who writes for "National Review Online" and wrote some hagiography of Bush a couple years back? I mean seriously, who cares about this guy. Guy's a damn columnist, if that. Aren't there any bigger fish to fry? Who's next, Richard Roeper?
Now you also confuse cases where we won a war, after being attacked, with our aggressively meddling in an other culture. [Japan and South Korea, vs. Haiti]
I didn't "confuse" them. I am well aware that each of the two participants in the two analogies "Japan and Haiti" and "South Korea and Haiti" can be distinguished from each other in a number of ways, thank you very much. What I did was mention them as both cases where we "meddled". Because you are here complaining abstractly about "meddling" as such. You did not seem to differentiate amongst different types of "meddling"; all your earlier statements seemed to indicate that to you all "meddling" is equally bad. So, whatever their differences, Japan and Haiti (and likewise, South Korea and Haiti - by the way in the South Korea situation we were not "attacked") are both situations in which we "meddled" in something, and may thus be compared and contrasted as such. If I am not taking note of any important differences between the two, it's only because you gave no prior indication that such differences could be operative in your view.
Now I guess you're saying otherwise...? Well *good*, then you admit that not all "meddling" is created equal, that some can be more successful than others, etc., and that this does not necessarily depend all that much on geographical distance. Hey, that was precisely my point! I'm glad we now agree :)
... the gap between most of those nations and Japan is immense. Japan has quite possibly the highest average IQ level among the major powers in the world. She also has a basically homogenious population-- [...]
You're implying that the success in Japan was dependent on their IQ level + homogeneity, that in "most of those nations" in the Middle East the IQ level is lower (and seems clear even to me that homogeneity is lower), and thus success in the Middle East will be more difficult than in Japan.
Ok. I'll take your word for it and defer to your apparent expertise regarding the IQ of the average Iraqian. We'll see what happens. But this consideration, correct or not, is not an argument against anything. "B will be more difficult than A" does not in and of itself mean that B can't be done, just that it's (drumroll) more difficult than A.
The reason that I pick on Frum rather than one of those others, whom you and the writer of the lead article refer to as "neo-cons,"
Just FYI, I don't really refer to them as "neo-cons". I am borrowing the author's term, you will notice I put it in quotes. Honestly I have never really been clear just what the heck a "neo-con" is and have never quite been able to pin down a definition of the term. (At one point I had come up with about four names of people who were ironclad "neo-cons"....) The very reason I jumped in this thread, of course, was to ridicule the windmill-tilting involved in spinning all these puerile yarns about the dreaded "neo-cons"....
It is outrageous that he, his patriotism hardly demonstrated, would dare suggest sending young Americans to their deaths in pursuit of a half-baked theory.
Frum can't state an opinion cuz he's Canadian. Got it
anything else?
Best,
The rest of your post is simply a rehash of what we have already discussed, save for your Korean comment. The argument between us is whether America should be trying to change other people's cultures. The fact that we cannot do so off our shores, is certainly a reason for not trying to do so on the other side of the globe, but the real argument between us is over whether we should be trying to do so in the first place.
As to Korea. Korea had been ruled by Japan from 1910 until 1945. We went in Korea as liberators, and did have a hand in helping them establish their Capitalist independence in 1945 (that is in South Korea); while the USSR, unfortunately, set up a puppet state in North Korea. In that case, I would agree with your possibly implied, though not stated, premise that it would have been far better to have had America rather than Russia meddling in Korean affairs. But, I think that if you look at our meddling in the South, it was not in conflict with traditional Korean values. (If it were in any particular, I would be critical of that aspect.)
If your reference to Richard Roeper was intended to be a reference to Richard Roper, my fictional MIT Professor, you truly do amaze me; as I have never provided any link to that work, at Free Republic. (I am not familiar with a Richard Roeper, the way you have spelled it, if that refers to another.)
William Flax