Iraq falling apart?

[Valmy]

Well to be fair, if France had invaded the British Colonies and implemented a democratic constitution under its military protection and then left we probably would still be holding them responsible for anything that went wrong.

[Admiral Yi]

Nature abhors a vaccum.

What's your limitation period on this one? When does it start from. Does it apply equally to apartheid, 9/11, the holocaust and colonialism?

I don't understand the question.

[Neil]

At some point in time Iraqis have to be judged for the results of their own choices.

But really they can't, as they've been under foreign occupation or straitjacketed into a Western international order that prevents them from ever getting a proper nation-state together.

[Admiral Yi]

But really they can't, as they've been under foreign occupation or straitjacketed into a Western international order that prevents them from ever getting a proper nation-state together.

I don't understand the bit about the Western international order.

[Tamas]

The absence of security and empowering of extreme forces, both consequences of a failed occupation, did.

I guess if Berkut was here he would say that it is the Iraqis fault that the occupation failed.

[Gups]

Nature abhors a vaccum.

What's your limitation period on this one? When does it start from. Does it apply equally to apartheid, 9/11, the holocaust and colonialism?

I don't understand the question.

You said there has to be a statute of limitations for this kind of thing. A statute of limitations draws a line in the sand saying you can't be blamed for events that happen  x years for your actions. I was asking what number you had for x.

If you don't have one that's fine.

[Camerus]

For the record, I'd be much more sympathetic to the argument that if Afghanistan goes to pot once the US leaves, it's the Afghans' own fault.

As for ex-colonial states generally, how long can they continue to blame their problems on their ex-masters?  I think it depends on the nature of the colonial relationship and the type and quality of colonial administration.  However, even in the most abusive cases, there does come a time when the sins of yesteryear's occupier can no longer be used to assign blame to today's problems.

[The Brain]

If Africa is an example then the US will be blamed the next 50 years at least. And since the US used to be officially against colonialism... well that just makes it all the more sweet, non?

[Admiral Yi]

You said there has to be a statute of limitations for this kind of thing. A statute of limitations draws a line in the sand saying you can't be blamed for events that happen  x years for your actions. I was asking what number you had for x.

If you don't have one that's fine.

I don't have a number for x.  I think it has more to do with the number of election cycles.

[Valmy]

As for ex-colonial states generally, how long can they continue to blame their problems on their ex-masters?  I think it depends on the nature of the colonial relationship and the type and quality of colonial administration.  However, even in the most abusive cases, there does come a time when the sins of yesteryear's occupier can no longer be used to assign blame to today's problems.

As long as they need to.  I am reminded of Haiti, France still takes alot of heat for the problems there and in some cases rightfully so...but of course then one looks at the policies of the Toussaint L'Ouverture: military dictatorship, keeping his people enslaved for the benefit of the army for all intents and purposes, and so forth.  And well that sounds like every Haitain leader for the past 200 years to me.  It seems to be that a big reason the French are still the bad dudes is because the Haitians just cannot blame the great hero Toussaint L'Ouverture despite the very obvious damage he did to the country he founded.  I wonder if similar dynamics are at play for other former colonies who still blame their problems on their former oppressors.

[Martinus]

I love the ever-changing rethorics on Iraq:

Jingo: We go to Iraq because Saddam supported AQ.
RoTW: No he didn't.
Jingo: But he has WMDs!.
*invasion happens*
RoTW: Turns out he didn't.
Jingo: But it was worth it to topple Saddam and turn Iraq into a stable democratic state!
RotW: Okaaaay...
*trillions of dollars and thousands of dead US troops later*
Jingo: Yes, we won the war! Let's get out of Iraq!
RotW: Bbbbut Iraq is nothing close to a stable democratic state! It's worse than it was before the invasion.
Jingo: It was never our goal to turn Iraq into a stable democratic state.

[Valmy]

Jingo: Yes, we won the war! Let's get out of Iraq!

That has been my stance for years: claim victory and go home.

But you have it wrong on Jingo in this case.  He wanted to stay in Iraq forever.

[Martinus]

Slavery came to the US from Africa.

[Neil]

But really they can't, as they've been under foreign occupation or straitjacketed into a Western international order that prevents them from ever getting a proper nation-state together.

I don't understand the bit about the Western international order.

The West has done a fair bit to try and curb the ethnic cleansing on which a sucessful old-world state must be based.

[Oexmelin]

then one looks at the policies of the Toussaint L'Ouverture: military dictatorship, keeping his people enslaved for the benefit of the army for all intents and purposes, and so forth.  And well that sounds like every Haitain leader for the past 200 years to me.  It seems to be that a big reason the French are still the bad dudes is because the Haitians just cannot blame the great hero Toussaint L'Ouverture despite the very obvious damage he did to the country he founded.  I wonder if similar dynamics are at play for other former colonies who still blame their problems on their former oppressors.

Hmm...

Saint-Domingue was an incredibly violent society which thrived only thanks to the labour, and death, of thousands of slaves, which produced nothing except sugar, and which, in the last decades of the 18th century, saw the importation of more African slaves from dozens of different tribes than ever before in its history, who joined on plantations creoles who had never seen Africa. When the uprising began, tons of planters fled to Cuba, Florida and Louisiana. The fights of the Revolution brought division between royalists and republicans, between radicals and girondins, who in turn used and exploited divisions between free men of colour, creoles slaves and newcomer slaves. The British invaded. The French invaded. The Americans and Spanish threatened invasion.

Something tells me Toussaint Louverture's job might not have been that easy.

Of course, one can find Louverture's attempt at his plantation policy strange - but we must remember that the only way planters dealt with what they perceived economic injustice between France and Saint-Domingue was because they could hope to benefit from luxury, and send their kids to France for an education. The population of Haiti could not hope for that. Food, wine, cloth had to be imported somehow. There were no alliance to keep supplying the revolters.  For Toussaint - and I suspect a number of others - the plantation represented a) the only viable economic prospect in the short-term, which could both sustain the population, the army, and the economy and give Haiti its only bargaining chips and b) the only form of political and communautarian organization which existed outside of the few towns there were. In all early-modern (and modern) societies, control of population was of paramount importance. The Americans got away with it, first by the economic control of their elites (the speculation schemes), then by their own slave society, and last, because they figured the only victims of their lack of movement control would "only" be Native people.