a continuation

[rone]

... of this.

For values of "not as bad" that include "vastly better in every measurable way."

Yeah, having your house uprooted by bulldozers and your children killed is vastly better.  And that wall Sharon is building is a surefire crowd pleaser.  I'll tell you what: i'll soften my stance on Israel once they stop disobeying UN resolutions.  I mean, that's one of the things that got Iraq in hot water, yeah?

Having interests in a region hardly equates to an alliance. We send Egypt billions in foreign aid each year also, but nobody would suggest they're an ally.

That hasn't been the impression i've gotten.  As far as i know, Hosni Mubarak has been tight with US presidents for years now.

That's nonsense. Germany wasn't a democratic state at the beginning of 1945, but democracy took off pretty well once its facist leadership was forcibly removed from power. Ditto for Japan, and Spain.

OK, here's your "apples to oranges" badge.  Good job.  Japan is probably the best comparison here, and it took two fuckin' nukes to break them.  You wanna go for that now?

What, in your view, makes the Arabs inferior in this regard? On what basis do you claim they're "not ready" for democracy, as opposed to simply being enslaved in a social structure which prevents it?

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.  And if you think that our aggression is going to free them from that social structure, you're very deluded.  But, hey, we can just kick back and see how our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan bear fruit in the next 10 or 20 years.

Here, I'll rephrase: If you're right and they're not read for the 21st century, that would seem to make it all the more important from preventing them from obtaining weapons of horribly destructive power.

Then maybe we shouldn't SELL IT TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, DICKHEAD.

Jingoistic cultural snobs?  You're the one saying those brown folk aren't ready for modern governments, and I'm the cultural snob?

You're the one who called them "thuggish" and "medieval" (not to mention "brown folk").  You're trying to enforce, through violence, a culture that you consider superior on other people; you're a cultural snob.

Comments

[venividi.livejournal.com]

It is almost impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the Middle East, because the situation there is complex, has been so for a very long time, involves religion, culture, and oil, and most of us are ill informed on the history; having until recently access to only a limited set of sources, unless we have the ability to read arabic and hebrew.

It turns out that the creation of the states of Israel and Palestine was a mistake, for a lot of complex reasons, that people now tend to characterize as the debate over "the right of return" and "the right of Israel to exist." But 50 years later, it is not one we can easily undo.

Israel argues that it is only protecting itself, but there is no evidence that this is working. To the contrary, Israel is the least safe place to be a Jew in the western world; and the more that Sharon ratchets up the violence, the less safe it becomes.

Palestine is a mess. In part because of misplaced loyalty to Yassir Arafat, who, to be gentle, has not been a competent leader. In part because Israel has, for 50 years, systematically worked to destabilize and undermine Palestine. The US's tendency to ignore Israeli excesses and to reward Israel's "cooperation" has contributed unfavorably to this situation -- and thus to the negative view of the US held by the Arab world.

US foreign policy has failed in the Middle East for the same reason it failed in Africa, and before that in South America. This is not a product of a few administrations, it is a flaw in the character of US foreign policy. The US sees "third world" countries as sources of resources to be exploited. It props up evil governments because they are willing participants in that exploitation. Eventually, for one reason or another, those governments get out of hand and the US finds itself with an "ally" that is really an enemy, and a subjugated population that blames, in part, the US for proping up the government.

That the current administration was unable to recognize that the current situation in Iraq was the inevitable consequence of its invasion speaks of an incompetence that borders on criminal.

The irony is that there are those in the US who understand this, and who understand how to use the free market, and foreign aid to effectively introduce stable democratic government into countries. These were the people behind the Marshall Plan, who understood not only that WW-II was, in large part, a punitive consequence of the punative nature of the treaty of Versais, but also understood that democracy takes many forms, and that Germany, Italy, and Japan had to each be treated seperately, and distinctly. (We were two for three, by the way. West Germany and Japan effectively made the transition. Italy did not. Spain was not one of the principle targets of the Marshall plan, and only recently has begun to emerge as a democratic country.)

Consider this: Egypt and Saudi Arabia have repressive governments that are, in part, propped up by the US, but that are not US allies. Where did the terrorists for 9/11 come from?

The action of the US government after WW-II went a long way towards alleviating the problems in Europe. The action of the US government after 9/11 is going a long way to exacerbate the problems in the Middle East.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Houses that are bomb factories and cover smuggling tunnels get smashed. I have no problem with that.

Of course, whether that's always the case is a different matter.

Off subject, but still relevant

[skipernicus.livejournal.com]

Two nukes on Japan.

Harry S. Truman is a war criminal. Japan had surrendered. Repeatedly. But you see, it wasn't unconditional surrender, as they had an interest in their lifes past the war.

"If only Truman had taken the advice of his top advisors, such as Joseph Grew, the former ambassador to Japan, he would have dropped the unconditional surrender proviso, ensured the continuity of Japan's imperial dynasty, and negotiated an end to the war."

I guess I needn't mention the Japanese internment camps. We'll be revisiting that any minute now with Arab Americans.

Okay, so we don't play fair, or evenly. So why play the ethics game at all? Why not just shout "manifest destiny", and bulldoze the world? Or do you suppose that would cause people to get off their asses and do something?

Word, man

[bebopmonkey.livejournal.com]

The only thing i take issue with is your assessment of democracy... Its an experiment right? The Greeks abandoned it cause it didnt work. I, for one (though i relish the right to vote) question whether it works now.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

I guess I've never really had a problem with the 'superior culture' argument. My culture is superior to many -- I would say all -- other cultures in the world, by any serious measure, and in the specific case of aggressive, hostile foreign cultures, I consider it a high-quality solution to impose my own culture, by force if necessary, to eradicate that aggression. The base minimum requirement of the problem is to break the foreign culture's aggression -- successfully imposing my own culture is an optimal way to prevent recurrence.

In the specific case we're talking about now, I don't think we're doing a stellar job of imposing it successfully, but I don't think it's going abysmally. But that's really a separate discussion from the underlying-principles one.