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Are Conservatives Capable of Winning Hearts and Minds in Iraq?
5-19-04 | Pinochet

Posted on 05/19/2004 5:55:49 PM PDT by pinochet

With all the recent talk about winning hearts and minds in the Arab world, we need to speak honestly about ourselves as conservatives.

Many conservatives are impatient, angry, and don't kiss butt. Many are from working class homes, and are not schooled in the high society culture of good manners and etiquette, in the mold of a John Kerry. Many of us never had French lessons like Kerry, and did not attend an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland, which would have enabled us to understand people of different cultures. Many of us cannot even play the piano or the cello.

Most here are fanatically pro-Israel (present company included). How are we able to "understand" the "perspectives" of the Arab world, where the regard Yasser Arafat a great world leader (as do the Europeans).

Let's face it. At least 30 percent of people I talk to on this site are rednecks, hillbillys, country folk, but they have plenty of good common sense ideas on the role of government. Can we win hearts and minds of Arabs and Europeans?


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: arabs; conservatives; fallujah; hearts; iraq; minds; muslims; shiites
Can we?
1 posted on 05/19/2004 5:55:50 PM PDT by pinochet
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To: pinochet

Weird post.

Conservatives don't believe that our Federal Government can run the local high school effectively. So how in the Heck, in the name of all that is holy, do we think it can make Iraq a democracy?

That is point 1.

Point 2:

For some "conservatives" on this board they don't even want to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. They just plume hate them. And I mean HATE with a Nazi like "kill them all" hate!

Ain't hard to find those posts.


2 posted on 05/19/2004 6:03:09 PM PDT by Burkeman1 ("I said the government can't help you. I didn't say it couldn't hurt you." Chief Wiggam)
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To: Burkeman1
For some "conservatives" on this board they don't even want to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. They just plume hate them. And I mean HATE with a Nazi like "kill them all" hate!

Gee... I freakin' wonder why.

3 posted on 05/19/2004 6:13:11 PM PDT by Klaus D. Deore
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To: pinochet

Why bother? For many years (at least since the end of WW2) we've gotten everything upside down. The Weasles Commies, Islamists and other haters should be trying to win our hearts and minds. So long as they fail to do so, we need to assume that they all have it in for us, and use the old Green Beret philosophy of blasting them all and letting God sort them out.


4 posted on 05/19/2004 6:14:12 PM PDT by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Right makes right!)
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To: Klaus D. Deore

How many Iraqi civilian dead are there now?

How many Americans died on 9/11?

What is the tie of Iraq to 9/11?

Please use only those facts that are backed by Bush directly?


5 posted on 05/19/2004 6:20:18 PM PDT by Burkeman1 ("I said the government can't help you. I didn't say it couldn't hurt you." Chief Wiggam)
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To: Burkeman1
How many Iraqi civilian dead are there now?
Not enough. Our boys are still being shot at.

How many Americans died on 9/11?
Too Many - and their only crime was going to work (hint: they weren't setting up IED's)

What is the tie of Iraq to 9/11?
None that I know of... but Hussein's ties to Al Quida, as well as supporting Palistinian terrorism are beyond dispute.

6 posted on 05/19/2004 6:29:26 PM PDT by Klaus D. Deore
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To: Klaus D. Deore

Yeah- joined yesterday. Since I have zero credibility on this site can someone say this clown is a troll?


7 posted on 05/19/2004 6:33:14 PM PDT by Burkeman1 ("I said the government can't help you. I didn't say it couldn't hurt you." Chief Wiggam)
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To: Klaus D. Deore

I can tell you one thing. American troops don't kill civilians for fun. And they would never post something like that first line.


8 posted on 05/19/2004 6:36:06 PM PDT by Burkeman1 ("I said the government can't help you. I didn't say it couldn't hurt you." Chief Wiggam)
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To: Burkeman1
No they don't kill civilians for "fun".

They kill them because these "civilians" are terrorists.

Or do you believe the "Wedding Party" bull?

9 posted on 05/19/2004 6:37:14 PM PDT by Klaus D. Deore
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To: Burkeman1
Ahh so your an Iraqi insurgent sympathizer.

No wonder you have no credibility in 5 years.

10 posted on 05/19/2004 6:38:50 PM PDT by Klaus D. Deore
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To: pinochet

Winning hearts and minds isn't the objective. The objective is to kill terrorists who wish to harm this country. Winning "hearts and minds" won't magically change the evil that persists in minds of those who wish us misfortune.

The only thing the Islamic culture has ever yeilded to has been those nations that were and are powerful enough to oppose it.


11 posted on 05/19/2004 7:27:53 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: pinochet
I tell you what, you send a bunch of guys like Tommy Hammil over there and get the damn professor types out and things will progress just fime. Be honest, don't take any cultural BS but have respect for genuine beliefs and things will work out. I will bet that the 25 year old kids in the service are our best ambassadors just the way they have been in every other war we have fought. They are there in every race and ethnic group and do truly represent America.
12 posted on 05/19/2004 7:39:07 PM PDT by JimSEA ( "More Bush, Less Taxes.")
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To: pinochet
First of all you are probably wrong in your assertion that FR is made up of uneducated Rednecks etc. My personal experience is that the typical freeper is college educated and above the median in regard to income and wealth. As to can conservatives "win hearts and minds" I don't think that is what conservatives do or believe in. To "win hearts and minds" in the context of today's world generally translates to giving "them" what they want without any requirement of accountability. Iraq is NOT a humanitarian mission. It is a battle in the WOT and the efforts there are part of the strategy to begin a loosening the stranglehold of the Mullahs in that region. Iraq was an object lesson to the other countries in the Middle East and that lesson, by an large, has not been lost on a few of them.

Foreign policy must be completely amoral in order to be effective. If something good happens for the Iraqi people then it is just a happy happenstance derived from the actual policy of wining the WOT. I personally do not care one way or the other about the Iraqi people beyond wising them well in taking advantage of the opportunity we have given them to take control of their own destiny and become a peaceful country in the middle of a hostile region. If they decide to spit in our face and continue policies of the past then I have no objection to leveling the place as a further object lesson to the region.

13 posted on 05/19/2004 7:59:43 PM PDT by Texasforever (The French love John Kerry. He is their new Jerry Lewis)
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To: pinochet

The ghettos of the inner cities are not exactly what I call 'High Culture'. Get a life !


14 posted on 05/19/2004 8:08:51 PM PDT by John Lenin (If there were no God, there would be no Atheists)
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