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Originally Posted by Lothar5150
Nexxo
You my beg all you like but you wrong here. Dictators give lip service to an ideology but they maintain control buy the use of fear and brutality. Terrorists maintain control of their followers by cultive personally and ideology. These are two are as different as apples and oranges. The aims of a dictator is to operate a state and maintain order, the aims of a terrorist are often to destroy a state.
Your argument about N Korea is a bate and switch. Further, it is a poor example because we sold them fuel oil in exchange for their promise not to enrich nuclear materials. They broke the agreement so WE cut them off.
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Actually they are the same animal, just at different stages of development, so to speak. Dictators often start out as terrorists (or "freedom fighters" as they might prefer to call themselves). Especially as they are establishing themselves, cult of personality and ideology are paramount tools of the trade. A successful dictator rarely relies on fear and brutality alone --because people can turn fear to desperation and can get desensitised to brutality. If he does it right, Big Brother only has to be Watching You. If he does it right, you will not fear Big Brother, you will
love him.
The aim of a terrorist, by the way, is not just to destroy authority, but to take it over.
You nicely illustrate my point about N. Korea: doing business with some parties simply will not work! But what if, say, it sat on enormous resources that we want to get our hands on? Option number two: change the guy in charge. How? Court local contenders to the throne who
do look likely to do business with us in the future... in return for, say, some weapons and money now. OK, another example: why are you still boycotting Cuba? You could destroy Communism within a decade over there just by giving entrepeneurs there a healthy taste of the American Dollar. But that doen't happen, because he is your
token Communist, just four hours out of Miami. You have a big lobby of ex-Cubans who might get pissed off. You cannot be
seen to do business with him. Moreover, Cuba has got nothing to offer you.