Condemning the dentention of women drivers in Saudi Arabia

The petition? Silly and ubernaive. Say they get 10 ... no 50 million legitimate signatures, will Saudi Arabia listen to anything our state department says if they even got the nerve to speak out against this heinously outdated human rights violation? Not even if Mohammad came down and told them to change these policies, would they change.

Took too long to load, but I admire the sprit. I doubt anyone pays attention to essentially anonymous petitions.

Well if you looked at the specifics of the petition you might not agree. The petition is basically about people wanting the government to directly and officially condemn this in another country. I don't agree with it for one single fact, it's another country. We are not the police of the world and have not right to judge any other country for what they do. As people we can disagree with whatever we want but the government should not be involved in this. We aren't the police of the world and no government should the right to force their views on any other country.

The petition is obviously useless but the thinking behind it is on the right track.

Hitler and the National Socialist Party of Germany would have loved you to have led the Isolationist movement in the US in the 1930's and 40's. If Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, this same exact thinking might have handed all of Europe and most of North Africa to the Third Reich.

[We need a thumbs up emoticon for occasions like this.]

What would you do differently then? How would you change this to make it more effective?

What I would do is obviously what the government would never do. I'd place sanctions on the Saudi government. Sanctions that would make countries like sanction deluged North Korea or Iran glad they weren't Saudi Arabia.

Squeeze the bank accounts of the major oil conglomerates and have them pressure the Saudi tyranny into change.

Is there anything done by a foreign nation you think we should not condem? Think on it for a bit.

...and people wonder why we're considered to be one of the most arrogant countries in the world. When ever there's something that we want to whine about we just bully and force people into changing and accepting our views? I don't think so, don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do anything about this. I just think that it should mainly be the work of various groups such as Support Saudi Women. At most, if the government should get involved it should definitely be on less "hostile" terms.

It's not that we shouldn't condemn it, it's how we go about it. We most definitely shouldn't force our opinions on other people but we should speak out about what we don't agree with.

Whine while we bully and force, huh. I'm not sure all the words belong in the same sentence. Anyway, as tsarstephan asked, what would you have done with Germany in 1938? Or choose from a dozen or so current examples around the world.

Perhaps "whine" was more of an exaggeration but it was to get the point across. I actually purposefully ignorned Tsarstephan's comment referring to Hitler in 1938 because there's really no comparison there. The only thing that Saudi Arabia is doing that these people are complaining about, is that women can't drive...How is that of any comparison to Germany in 1938? I wasn't aware that the Saudi Arabians we're also trying to take over all of Asia or killing and enslaving these women because they're driving. What Tsarstephen is suggesting is that we become a tyrannical force of the world and force everyone to accept our views and i don't think that's right.

Now, wait a minute. You equate State Department condemning the detention of women drivers in Arabia with forcing our opinions on the rest of the world. How would that be different with my equating their detention with cutting the feet off of opponents in Rwanda or Sierra Leone?

Not that I think anyone is paying attention to the US State Department.

Well played Roger.