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

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with having a superior culture, just on the "ours is so cool, you MUST ADOPT IT" attitude. You can deal with hostility in many ways, but this seems to be a less-than-optimal tack.

Eradicating aggression is easier said than done, especially when you consider how widespread the "America == Great Satan" attitude is. You say, "successfully imposing my own culture is an optimal way to prevent recurrence," but i'd disagree with "optimal" — you're saying we should put the entire Muslim world to the sword. That doesn't jibe with any definition of "optimal" i can find.

As you say, we're not doing a stellar job, and while "abysmal" might be an exaggeration, i'd say it's closer to abysmal than ideal.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with having a superior culture, just on the "ours is so cool, you MUST ADOPT IT" attitude.

Fair enough, and that's not really my position. I prefer my imperialism spreading through cultural means, like media and other entertainment products. But it's a slow process, and in some specifically spelled out contexts, we can't afford to wait.

you're saying we should put the entire Muslim world to the sword

I never said any such thing, and never will. I'm sorry that's what you see in my position. There is a specific, narrowly addressable, highly inimical and malicious set of beliefs that come from a particular cross-pollination of traditional Arabic culture and a sect of Islam (though arguably it's no longer Islamic at all), Wahhabism, that started in the early 19th century. That particular twisting of Islam -- cursory examination of Islamic history and tenets will reveal how strongly heterodox Wahhabism is with pretty much all the other Islamic sects -- will not stop attacking the Western world.

We can't stay on defense all the time, partly because any effective defense requires an unacceptable surrender of freedoms, and partly because even an effective defense can be penetrated in time. The best way to maintain both safety and freedom is to stop the attacks from being launched in the first place, and if the people trying to kill us will not desist, then their will and ability to fight must be crushed utterly.

It pretty much comes down to:

• Crushing a specific pathological subset of an enemy culture, as we crushed Japanese militarism


• Restrictions on freedoms at home that dwarf the Patriot act


• Losing a major city or two to terrorist attack


• Becoming an Wahhabist/Islamic state under strict Shari'a

All these choices suck, but we gotta pick one.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Is it really just Wahhabism? The Iran mullahs aren't Wahhabis and they seem to hate the US just as much. And is any Muslim country openly denouncing and stamping out such behavior?

It seems to me that one way to make things easier on us is to stop provoking the Muslim world with our arrogant behavior (not to mention our irrational support of Israel). That is, if we were actually and truly acting in self-defense, then we should have the moral high ground. But it's obvious we aren't. Afghanistan was defensible, even ignoring our grievous lack of follow-through. Iraq is not, and it's getting worse.