Re: Re: Re: Re: Great points, Skeptic . . .
new drkitten said:
I think this is a key issue -- and one that Ziggurat and the others blindly supporting the "war on terror" shoudl think seriously about.
I've already provided an answer, but it's not nearly as useful a question as you seem to think.
It is the opinions of that 99.9% of the population that I am concerned about. The 99.9% of the population that aren't currently terrorists and that might even be persuaded to support the United States. That might be convinced to build a coalition with Western powers, that might even be able to help us root out the terrorist and criminal elements among the population.
Or, alternatively, the people who might be persuaded to hide, to support, and even to join the terrorist networks if they are angered enough.
You're onto half the issue, but you've still got it framed wrong. Yes, it would be nice to have the support of those great masses. But more than their support and sympathy, we need them to start acting rationally. Because right now, they aren't. Right now, those masses are not Al Quaeda members, but far too many of them actually do sympathise. Is it because they're angry at us? Perhaps they are, but that alone is not a sufficient answer. After all, the French are angry at us, but we do not worry about gaulic terrorists.
It's about more than just anger. It's about resentment, frustration, and impotence, and an acceptance of indescriminate violence as ordinary and acceptable, because they do not have the power they feel they are entitled to on the world stage, because their voices are not even heard by their own governments, and because indescriminate violence is the normal way power is excercised in the middle east. It's because their own stagnation is causing them to fall further and further behind, and they can feel this continual loss of power and wealth, and they hate it. And their governments, in order to protect themselves, deflect that rage at the most convenient target, the country which has everything they want: power, prestige, wealth. We have it all, and they have none of it. It's easy to breed resentment under such conditions. And that resentment easily turns to supporting or at least sympathising with terrorists because it is seen as being consequence-free.
How do you stop this? What, exactly, do most of those arabs really want, really care about? The ONLY answer to that that stands up to any scrutiny is more control over their own lives, they want a better future for themselves. Which means that their primary obstacles, contrary to everything we may hear, do not come from US policy or even the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It comes from the oppression and corruption of their OWN governments. If we want their help, if we want them on our side, then democratization is the only thing I can see that offers any hope of achieving that.
Just trying to placate the "anger" will never work. Charity does not create pride in the recipient, it creates shame. Similarly, we cannot simply give the majority of the middle east what they nominally want (withdrawl from Iraq, stop supporting Israel), because that won't make them any happier, and without democracy, they aren't even in a position to articulate any coherent desires anyways. How can we even know what they want when they live under totalitarian systems? Their governments work constantly to make sure their citizens can't even express it to each other, so they can't even recognize their own collective desires beyond what is government-approved.
I am not worried about the arab world being angry at the US. It would be nice if that were not the case, but it really isn't a high priority. I do care if it is dysfunctional and internally violent and oppressive, because that situation will ooze violence beyond the borders regardless of what we do to make them like us. Their relationship with themselves must be fixed if they are ever to have healthy, or even functional, relationships with the rest of the world.
All I have to say is, if Iraq is low hanging, I hope never to see the upper branches.