Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Monkeyleg on March 04, 2011, 11:07:53 PM
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It's seemed as though almost no one has wanted to even suggest that what Bush started in Iraq may be contributing to the upheavals in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. So, it's interesting to read what one mainstream conservative columnist--Charles Krauthammer--has to say on the matter.
It will also be interesting to read what comments the usual suspects on APS will have. ;)
The column is here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/03/AR2011030304239.html)
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Krauthammer is usually an interesting, intelligent read. For my part, I am not convinced that these ... "revolutions" are a good thing. For that matter, they may start out "good" and then degenerate.
The French Revolution (inspired by our Revolutionary War) started out that way and wound up slaughtering 40,000+ innocents including even babies and gave europe Napoleon Bonaparte.
Any of these mideast revolutions could go south the same way, and when the Muslim Brotherhood is involved, the chances are high it will be engineered to go bad, from our perspective atleast.
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TommyGun, I think that's been the nature of revolutions for as long as there have been governments.
At least with a revolution in these countries, there's some chance of getting a better government.
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But probably no more than "the nature of revolutions for as long as there have been governments."
Statistically speaking .... looking at history, it would seem there's a very little chance any particular revolution will turn out positive as ours did. If these are being machinated then I think the likelyhood of any good resulting is even less.
I like to be hopeful .... just don't think so.
And given the decisive, insightful, thoughtful, well reasoned,* ability of our current commmander-in-chief, I am rather pessimistic about the whole thing and what it means for us ....... [tinfoil]
* This is sarcasm, for those who are reading this in Rio Linda.
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The French Revolution (inspired by our Revolutionary War) started out that way and wound up slaughtering 40,000+ innocents including even babies and gave europe Napoleon Bonaparte.
How did you get to 40,000 innocents? 40,000 dead is the highest possible estimate for total number of all executions in the French Revolution (most historians put it at less), including things like military desertion and criminal offenses.
On the other hand, the French Revolution ended slavery and serfdom in France, freeing 1,000,000 people. Napoleon, too, was nothing like the great Tyrants of the 20th century.
More importantly, the French Revolution succeeded in the long run, slaying the hydra of unrestrained autocratic rule in France - no restoration of the monarchy could later be engaged that didn't respect the rights of Frenchmen. It's just not true that the French Revolution had failed completely.
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Rather benign take on Napoleon. One might argue that the French Revolution didn't liberate Europe, Wellington did.
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Rather benign take on Napoleon. One might argue that the French Revolution didn't liberate Europe, Wellington did.
Ha! That is so rich. Oh yeah, the English monarchs who fought for monarchy against France brought freedom!
Monkeyleg, Iraq is undergoing the same protests. The iraq war contributed by delegitimizing the dictatorships in the eyes of their own people, since they didnt oppose the Iraq war. Not exactly success of the bush doctrine
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Ha! That is so rich. Oh yeah, the English monarchs who fought for monarchy against France brought freedom!
Monkeyleg, Iraq is undergoing the same protests. The iraq war contributed by delegitimizing the dictatorships in the eyes of their own people, since they didnt oppose the Iraq war. Not exactly success of the bush doctrine
The usual suspects are here!
It took you 5 hours, 24 minutes and 7 seconds, De Selby. Next time be more prompt.
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So, let's make sure I understand. We're at fault for a) propping up dictatorships b) removing other dictatorships, and c) screwing up by delegitimizing remaining dictatorships? Do I have that correct?
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How did you get to 40,000 innocents? 40,000 dead is the highest possible estimate for total number of all executions in the French Revolution (most historians put it at less), including things like military desertion and criminal offenses.
On the other hand, the French Revolution ended slavery and serfdom in France, freeing 1,000,000 people. Napoleon, too, was nothing like the great Tyrants of the 20th century.
More importantly, the French Revolution succeeded in the long run, slaying the hydra of unrestrained autocratic rule in France - no restoration of the monarchy could later be engaged that didn't respect the rights of Frenchmen. It's just not true that the French Revolution had failed completely.
The 40,000 figure was a gross figure I heard relating to the French Revolution. Perhaps the error I made was to use the term "innocents" but OTOH, a great many were.
As other have said your "take" on Napoleon is rather benign. The French may have eventually been better off ... even the Germans could be said to have been "better off" after Hitler's death ... but I do not believe they achieved the degree of freedom we did by a longshot.
Even "Napoleonic Law" (which the defendant is presumed guilty until innocence is proved) is hardly what I consider conducive to freedom.
Anyway, my main point was simply that most revolutions seem to come out the cr@ppy side of reality ... atleast in comparison to ours. Very few people had the principles our founding fathers had.
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Even "Napoleonic Law" (which the defendant is presumed guilty until innocence is proved) is hardly what I consider conducive to freedom.
Napoleonic law has never had a de-jure presumption of guilt in it. On the other hand, it did have provisions for freedom of religion and equality before the law.
I don't think it's a fair gauge to say that most revolutions failed because they haven't succeeded as well as the U.S. revolution. America is the freest country in the world. To say that you have failed because you're not as good as the best guy is ridiculous on its face. On this argument we're all idiots because we're not as smart as Albert Einstein, and paupers, since none of us is Sergei Brin or Bill Gates.
The other important issue is this:
The main problem of living under a dictatorship is that it's extremely difficult to achieve policy change peacefully. You either suffer through the regime's injustices, or you overthrow the regime. Yes, innocents will suffer. So if you live under a dictatorship, that's the choice you need to make - either you risk having a worse guy come to power, and innocents suffer in the inevitable street fighting - even the Egyptian revolution hasn't been 100% peaceful so far- or you suck it up.
A democratic system is actually more conservative because it allows for minute changes being made without outright overthrowing the government.
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Say it aint so, former President Bush was correct? Nah, must be some sort of post traumatic Bush derangement syndrome. Everyone knows that obama is author of everything that is good and boosh is the originator of all that is evil.
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It's seemed as though almost no one has wanted to even suggest that what Bush started in Iraq may be contributing to the upheavals in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.
Of course not. They were inspired by the example of Barack Obama, who won the presidency, against all odds.
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Won the presidency? Don' t you know that the success in Iraq today is one of this administration's "greatest accomplishments" (per Joe Biden)?
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Won the presidency? Don' t you know that the success in Iraq today is one of this administration's "greatest accomplishments" (per Joe Biden)?
Obama is equally ridiculous on this subject - his policy and approach is no different from George Bush's.
Let's try this - can anyone find a protestor in one of these countries citing Iraq as inspiration? How about any positive comments at all about Iraq's new government from these places?
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So, let's make sure I understand. We're at fault for a) propping up dictatorships b) removing other dictatorships, and c) screwing up by delegitimizing remaining dictatorships? Do I have that correct?
Yes. Interventioninsim has netted us instability.
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Yes. Interventioninsim has netted us instability.
Don't forget dead soldiers and more debt.
Chris
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Yes. Interventioninsim has netted us instability.
Evil regimes being destabilized is a good thing.
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Evil regimes being destabilized is a good thing.
Iraqis aren't worth what we've spent in terms of lives and money.
Neither would be Europeans for that matter.
Chris
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OK. Then let's build the wall. Now.
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Maybe the reality of the powder keg that is and has been the ME might just seep into the American consciousness at last! Then instead of sitting on our hands we'll begin to get serious about electing people who have America's progress on their mind with respect to energy, borders, getting the government in it's proper place with respect to industry and business, welfare and taxation.
We've had 40 years to get our country free of foreign energy sources and we've accomplished what? We've had a war on poverty for nearly 50 years...where is the exit strategy, Liberal Left? Fill in the rest of the blanks.
Maybe if we ban latte unless we get an "All of the above" energy policy, or you can't send your kid to Harvard unless we build a nuclear powerplant; one kid, one plant. Or you can't have an electric organ donor vehicle unless we repeal the law against recycling nuclear material. Or you can't name your daughter Muffy till we secure our borders and have a guest worker/sane immigration policy.
Didn't the Constitution say that there is a "Wall of separation between Liberals and State". Can you find me a judge? :P
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Let's try this - can anyone find a protestor in one of these countries citing Iraq as inspiration? How about any positive comments at all about Iraq's new government from these places?
De Selby, you're once again putting the onus on other APS members to spend time gathering information to dispute your positions.
Why don't you go find a credible news source that proves that none of the protestors were moved by the freedom Iraqi's now enjoy.
I expect you to give this your due diligence, and to not post on other topics until you've completed this research.
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Sorry, Monkeyleg, but I don't think that's DeSelby's job here. He's asking for more direct evidence of Krauthammer's position, which is not out of bounds.
That being said, Krauthammer could be right, even without any protesters saying nice things about Iraq. What the protesters don't say doesn't necessarily prove anything.
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Napoleonic law has never had a de-jure presumption of guilt in it. On the other hand, it did have provisions for freedom of religion and equality before the law......
The possibility for justice to endorse lengthy remand periods was one reason why the Napoleonic Code was criticized for de facto presumption of guilt, particularly in common law countries. However, the legal proceedings certainly did not have de jure presumption of guilt; for instance, the juror's oath explicitly recommended that the jury did not betray the interests of the defendants, and took attention of the means of defense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_law
OK .... :angel: Maybe I was "wrong" .... but I was sorta right. =D :angel:
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Fistful, De Selby is asking for facts that are I believe unavailable to dispute Krauthammer's opinion.
He's asking for these facts as he's been challenged on his assertion as fact that Ghadaffi (sp?), Mubarek, etc are being overthrown because they didn't oppose the Iraq war.
I've never said that the upheaval in these countries was due to the success of the Iraq war, but I've questioned whether there could be a conneciton. That's considerably different than making blanket statements, as De Selby has and always does, and then demanding that others produce evidence to disprove those blanket statements, which De Selby is doing now and has done before.
In another thread, De Selby made the blanket assertion that Iraq was poorer and had slower economic growth since the beginning of the Iraq war. He used as his basis a blog written by an anonymous blogger. I produced information from the CIA which countered the facts from his anonymous blogger.
At some point I think it should be up to De Selby to do some legwork, instead of making bold statements and then making others do the research to disprove them.
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Monkeyleg,
You got citations and examples in that other thread - one of them was a blog that listed citations, and explained them very well. I'm not sure how that would have been different if I'd just put the citations in my post, as they were there for you to check.
In this example, the point is that a claim like "Iraq inspired protest" can only be verified by...examples of inspiration. I'm contending, based on a good familiarity with reports, that no such inspiration exists. The proof is in seeing no single example of a reference to Iraq as inspiration, and seeing conversely that Iraqis are now protesting after the Tunisian and Egyptian protests.
If you can't find a single example of protestors admiring or citing Iraq as an inspiration, wouldn't you consider that to be fairly good evidence that Krauthammer's claims are baseless?
In that same other thread, I'll note that when you asked for examples of the protestors being anti-Israel, I provided them, as would make sense - you couldn't be expected to prove the non-existence of those sentiments. I'm asking for the same here.
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Yes, and your blog citations were at odds with information freely available from the CIA.
I'm contending, based on a good familiarity with reports, that no such inspiration exists.
There you go again. "Familiarity with reports". Why don't the rest of us ever get these "reports"?
If you can't find a single example of protestors admiring or citing Iraq as an inspiration, wouldn't you consider that to be fairly good evidence that Krauthammer's claims are baseless?
I don't have anyone I know in the Middle East to ask questions of. Then again, I'm not saying that Krauthammer is wrong or right, as you are, but that he has an interesting opinion.
In the last year there's been uprisings against the governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other ME countries with fairly oppressive regimes. Some of these governments, such as Libya's, Iran's, and Egypt's, have been in power for 30, 40 or even nearly 50 years.
There seems to be more than a coincidence, which is reason to ask why. It's not a reason to draw firm conclusions.
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Fistful, De Selby is asking for facts that are I believe unavailable to dispute Krauthammer's opinion.
He's asking for these facts as he's been challenged on his assertion as fact that Ghadaffi (sp?), Mubarek, etc are being overthrown because they didn't oppose the Iraq war.
Oh, OK. I see what you're referring to, and you're quite right. He asks for evidence that Iraq regime change inspired the protesters, but doesn't supply any evidence from the protesters that supports his contention about regimes being weakened by failure to oppose the war.
And if one reads to the end of Krauthammer's piece, he does provide a substantive reason why the Iraq war weakened Gaddafi - by intimidating him into surrender of his WMDs.
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If that's the sole issue, the Iraq war's destabilising influence, it should almost go without saying - that war was almost as unpopular as Israel among Arab populations. The fact that their dictators lent support to the US in carrying it out would be yet one more way in which the popular voice was ignored by the leadership.
Does anyone honestly doubt the unpopularity of that war among Arabs enough to require a statistic?! Well, here's one from before the protests: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2009/0519_arab_opinion/2009_arab_public_opinion_poll.pdf (http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2009/0519_arab_opinion/2009_arab_public_opinion_poll.pdf)
Percentage of people in Arab countries who think Iraq is better off as of 2009? 6%. I'd say record negative views of "progress" in Iraq is a pretty good sign that they're not inspired by Iraqi "democracy", which itself is finding it necessary to shoot protestors to defend Government buildings.
The point of my request was to illustrate how silly Krauthammer's point is - it's not possible to find a single protestor citing Iraq as inspiration, because there isn't anyone in the Arab world inspired by Iraq. Indeed, it's only single digit percentages of people who believe it's better off. Funny how the people who can speak the Iraqis language, and who live right next door, are almost universally convinced that the place is worse off after the war, yet there are people like Krauthammer arguing (without evidence) that it's an inspiration to them.
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Yes, and your blog citations were at odds with information freely available from the CIA.
There you go again. "Familiarity with reports". Why don't the rest of us ever get these "reports"?
1. The information from the CIA, as I explained in that thread, didn't actually track quality of life. You can have low death rates with extremely high homicide rates; likewise, you can have economic growth without any growth in jobs. The blog explained why those measures you were citing weren't useful, and cited others that are useful, like job prospects and risk of being killed.
2. Most of us don't get these reports because we don't read academic/specialty newswires on the middle east. If we did, it wouldn't be that surprising to find out things like - Iraq has been infiltrated by Iranians at every level of government; the protests in Arab states are following the successful revolt in Tunisia; hardly anyone in the middle east thinks Iraq is better off; etc.
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De Selby,
You've said numerous times that the Arab world doesn't believe Iraq is in better shape after the war. But Krauthammer isn't claiming that it does. What he is saying is that Iraq demonstrates that dictators can be overthrown, and replaced with democratic governments, even if they are "fragile and imperfect." He is saying that "the Bush Doctrine set the premise" that democracy could be spread even to the Middle Eastern nations that Bush's detractors had written off as hopeless.
Since (elsewhere) you have dismissed rational self interest as "unrealistic," you may have to back down from the notion that Iraq can only serve as inspiration if Iraqis are "better off." It may be, as you suggested in another thread, that principle (a desire for self-determination) can overrule the concern for material well-being.
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fistful,
There's no evidence that anyone in the middle east sees Iraq as "democracy against a tyrant." There's plenty of evidence that they see it as a military occupation - ie, not democratic. The only evidence for a "premise" set by Iraq is that the US attacks and occupies Arab countries in the eyes of the Arab public. The overwhelming majority of them think the US is the problem in Iraq, and that it should leave. (That's in the link as well.)
You don't need to join Krauthammer in his desperation to rehabilitate Bush to explain these events. The obvious answer is staring us all in the face, and that is the revolution in Tunisia. It's not coincidence that all of these states fell shortly after Tunisia.
Ironically, the states that GW was most supportive of and dealt with the most are now gone or going - Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain, being the prime examples. In contrast, Iran and Syria are by all accounts weathering the storm of democracy just fine. (Hizbullah doesn't need to; it won a popular majority, and now has control of parliament through means that could've occurred in a European country.)
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(Hizbullah doesn't need to; it won a popular majority, and now has control of parliament through means that could've occurred in a European country.)
Ahhh, SnS, always good for a laugh.
Of course you're perfectly right here, so long as the European country you're talking about is Germany.
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Ahhh, SnS, always good for a laugh.
Of course you're perfectly right here, so long as the European country you're talking about is Germany.
I'm not sure what you're disputing here - Hizbullah won a popular majority in the last election, but didn't control the government because of the parliamentary coalition formed by Saad Hariri.
That parliamentary coalition fell apart when MPs from Walid Jumblatt's party joined the Hizbullah MPs. That happens in parliamentary democracies all the time. Why would that only be applicable to Germany?
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fistful,
There's no evidence that anyone in the middle east sees Iraq as "democracy against a tyrant." There's plenty of evidence that they see it as a military occupation - ie, not democratic. The only evidence for a "premise" set by Iraq is that the US attacks and occupies Arab countries in the eyes of the Arab public. The overwhelming majority of them think the US is the problem in Iraq, and that it should leave. (That's in the link as well.)
You don't need to join Krauthammer in his desperation to rehabilitate Bush to explain these events. The obvious answer is staring us all in the face, and that is the revolution in Tunisia. It's not coincidence that all of these states fell shortly after Tunisia.
Ironically, the states that GW was most supportive of and dealt with the most are now gone or going - Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain, being the prime examples. In contrast, Iran and Syria are by all accounts weathering the storm of democracy just fine. (Hizbullah doesn't need to; it won a popular majority, and now has control of parliament through means that could've occurred in a European country.)
OK. You could have led with that, instead of the mis-reading of Krauthammer.
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OK. You could have led with that, instead of the mis-reading of Krauthammer.
Uh, where would that misreading of Krauthammer be?
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I'm not sure what you're disputing here - Hizbullah won a popular majority in the last election, but didn't control the government because of the parliamentary coalition formed by Saad Hariri.
That parliamentary coalition fell apart when MPs from Walid Jumblatt's party joined the Hizbullah MPs.
When's the next fair and honest election i Lebanon again?
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When's the next fair and honest election i Lebanon again?
Not sure - the last one was 09.
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Uh, where would that misreading of Krauthammer be?
It you weren't misreading Krauthammer, then did you just not read the article?
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It you weren't misreading Krauthammer, then did you just not read the article?
You're going to have justify the implication that I misread or didn't read the article for us to discuss it. It was a simple claim he made, and I see nowhere in my posts here that misrepresent it.
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Already did that.
De Selby,
You've said numerous times that the Arab world doesn't believe Iraq is in better shape after the war. But Krauthammer isn't claiming that it does. What he is saying is that Iraq demonstrates that dictators can be overthrown, and replaced with democratic governments, even if they are "fragile and imperfect." He is saying that "the Bush Doctrine set the premise" that democracy could be spread even to the Middle Eastern nations that Bush's detractors had written off as hopeless.
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Not seeing how that illustrates a lack of reading the article - all I see there is you stretching (based on a misinterpretation of my point on economic behaviour in other threads) to explain away the evidence that Arabs are not inspired by Iraq. The measure I posted (overwhelmingly negative views of Iraq) is pretty good evidence of the point.
What you posted was a theoretical and unlikely explanation as to how those numbers could still be consistent with Krauthammer's claim.
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Now you're misreading my post as well. If not twisting it beyond all recognition. I don't think we have anything further to chat about here.
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Sigh. Fine. I do get a little tired of some people taking every explanation as an argument for or against some binary system of opposing views. Krauthammer didn't say Iraqis were materially "better off." He said that their system of government had changed. Yet you attempt to disprove Krauthammer's point by talking about whether Middle-Easterners think that Iraq is "better off."
That was pretty much it. I'm not disputing your other points with regard to Iraq vis-a-vis the larger Middle East. I'm not championing Krauthammer's. Just sayin'.
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Did you read the survey? Where did it confine the question to "material" benefits? The series of questions polled are pretty telling against Mr K's point.
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As you know, I never claimed that the survey limited the question to material benefits, or discussed it in any way. And no, I didn't read it.
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In contrast, Iran and Syria are by all accounts weathering the storm of democracy just fine. (Hizbullah doesn't need to; it won a popular majority, and now has control of parliament through means that could've occurred in a European country.)
Since MB thought it necessary to bump a thread crediting SnS, I had to bump this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-26-syria-protests_N.htm
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Since MB thought it necessary to bump a thread crediting SnS, I had to bump this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-26-syria-protests_N.htm
But you just don;t get it. The Al-Qeda fighters, tribal warriors, and renegade Libyan Army units are defenseless civilians we are intervening to save from a humanitarian disaster. Those protesting in Syria are Jew-financed Zionist stooges.
HTH.
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Let us not forget that the uprising in Libya started with Quaddafi slaughtering civilian demonstrators.
'Tribal warriors' who have learned to shoot a gun yesterday or who wave a Strela missile about and insist it is an anti-tank weapon that they're about to mess up a tank with are as close to unarmed as a man can be. Hell, in a sense I am better armed than such men. I have only two knives and a folding shovel, but at least I have a vague clue of how to use them. And I know that the shovel is not actually an anti-tank weapon.
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Since MB thought it necessary to bump a thread crediting SnS, I had to bump this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-03-26-syria-protests_N.htm
There was always a chance this would happen - it was simply less likely to in Syria and Iran. Go back and see my comments on this; I never said it was impossible.
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And I know that the shovel is not actually an anti-tank weapon.
Wuss. :P :lol:
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What you said is this:
In contrast, Iran and Syria are by all accounts weathering the storm of democracy just fine.
Syria is not weathering it 'just fine'. Assad is afraid.
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What you said is this:
Syria is not weathering it 'just fine'. Assad is afraid.
Yeah, you need to judge that comment by the date it was said. What seems to have changed the calculus for the Syrians was the decision to massacre. Previous efforts had petered out with minimal intervention. Why they decided to start shooting now is a mystery, but it may signal a loss of confidence by the military in Assad.
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Yeah, you need to judge that comment by the date it was said.
You made the comment 19 days ago, not 19 months.
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You made the comment 19 days ago, not 19 months.
It was possible 19 days ago that this would happen, too, as I noted. It wasn't, however, likely.
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Bush didn't ignite what's going on today in the Muslim orbit. All he did was provide the wrong solution ("spreading democracy").
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It was possible 19 days ago that this would happen, too, as I noted. It wasn't, however, likely.
Here's your post. Where was it "noted"?
fistful,
There's no evidence that anyone in the middle east sees Iraq as "democracy against a tyrant." There's plenty of evidence that they see it as a military occupation - ie, not democratic. The only evidence for a "premise" set by Iraq is that the US attacks and occupies Arab countries in the eyes of the Arab public. The overwhelming majority of them think the US is the problem in Iraq, and that it should leave. (That's in the link as well.)
You don't need to join Krauthammer in his desperation to rehabilitate Bush to explain these events. The obvious answer is staring us all in the face, and that is the revolution in Tunisia. It's not coincidence that all of these states fell shortly after Tunisia.
Ironically, the states that GW was most supportive of and dealt with the most are now gone or going - Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain, being the prime examples. In contrast, Iran and Syria are by all accounts weathering the storm of democracy just fine. (Hizbullah doesn't need to; it won a popular majority, and now has control of parliament through means that could've occurred in a European country.)
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Monkeyleg,
I made the comments on Syria in this thread: http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=28037.msg554631#msg554631
This is fairly consistent - Syria won't be gone before Yemen, that's for sure. Bahrain needed a foreign army to stay afloat, and it still may fall. Iran is of course in no danger of falling.
It's also far from clear that these righteous Syrian protestors will win, at this point.
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And yet Saudi Arabia remains comparably stable.
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And yet Saudi Arabia remains comparably stable.
It's hard to gauge - they've had protests too, but those are shut down swiftly. The medieval brutality of the regime makes public opinion harder to measure. It could be stable, but if cracks do open, I do not think it will last very long at all.
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De Selby, please give me the post # where you said that Syria could fall "victim" to the democracy movement. Every post I see of yours says that Syria and Iran will be able to withstand it.
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De Selby, please give me the post # where you said that Syria could fall "victim" to the democracy movement. Every post I see of yours says that Syria and Iran will be able to withstand it.
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=28037.msg554631#msg554631
Iran and Syria are not great, freedom-loving places by any stretch of the imagination. They oppress their people and do not govern only by consent. Still, they're so far ahead of the medieval basketcase that is Saudi Arabia (and all of its allies) that they are honestly the most stable regimes in the region. They will be the last to go, if they go at all (and I hope they will - I believe in democracy everywhere.)
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Bush didn't start it - it started when mass media was introduced to the medieval society, and started to bring it into the future. Knowledge is power, and shared knowledge is kryptonite for despotic dictators... Of any stripe.
The Bush invasions hastened things - and that's not bad. I think that the Bush administrations knew that this was going to happen, and I think that they also were sort of looking for an excuse to do it. The middle east is a sizable portion of the world, and having it stable is good for everyone involved.
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When has the Muslim world ever been "stable" as we in the West understand it? If autocracy equals stability then, yeah, they've had plenty, and they had that with Mubarek and Qaddafi and Saddam too. Stable doesn't mean oppression, it means liberty and the rule of law and the precedence of reason. Expecting that from Islamic nations, given their political and metaphysical convictions, is naive.
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And yet there are Muslim democracies.
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Really? Where? Turkey? Kosovo? Democracy without protection of individual rights is just one more word for tribalism.
This is where the insanity has led us: David Cameron saying today that "we" should restore the "mosques and minarets that Qaddafi destroyed." Is he crazy? We should pay for their mosques and minarets? This is not politics, it is mental disease. Or maybe it's just blatant cowardice from a man who's watching his own nation slowly but inevitably turn Islamic?
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We've brought these nations up here again and again. Indonesia, Mali, and yes, Kosovo.
Do they have the same levels of protection for human rights as America has? No, but neither did America, 60 years ago. And yet America 60 years ago was a wonderful place and a democracy, too.
It's ridiculous to declare that these nations have failed because, 12 years after establishing a democracy, they have not yet achieved the levels of freedom it took the United States two hundred years to accomplish. Even the wonderful countries of Western Europe were only sixty years ago engaging in inhuman butchery.
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http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=28037.msg554631#msg554631
Thank you.
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I'm sorry, Micro, you can't distinguish between American and Indonesia. But I can.
There are things going on in Kosovo and Indonesia and Mali that do not go on here and have never gone on here. "Liberating" Kosovo was a mistake; unfortunately it's become a liberal precedent for turning over rocks that never needed turning over.
Maybe you envision a great future for Indonesia. I don't, unless other nations choose to put their manufacturing there because it's cheap labor.
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I'm sorry, Micro, you can't distinguish between American and Indonesia. But I can.
Please re-read my post.
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Let us observe incredible religious Jihadism that goes on in Kosovo on a day-to-day basis:
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4cf2d08a82.html
Although the Office of the Ombudsperson assessed there was no legal basis to do so, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology issued an administrative instruction to secondary schools at the start of the 2009-2010 school year prohibiting students from wearing Islamic headscarves.
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Is that the same Kosovo that is known as the gateway for hard drugs into Europe, shipped from other "friendly" Muslim countries?
Was it not a Kosovar who shot American servicemen just a week or two ago in Germany? That he was shouting "Allah u akbar" when he opened fire must be just coincidence.
My point is that Indonesia was never like America nor like Europe either. I reject the equation you posit. That is not to romanticize any of these countries overmuch, just not to equate them either.
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Was it not a Kosovar who shot American servicemen just a week or two ago in Germany? That he was shouting "Allah u akbar" when he opened fire must be just coincidence.
And so?
An individual did it. This doesn't condemn the entire country in question.
Is that the same Kosovo that is known as the gateway for hard drugs into Europe, shipped from other "friendly" Muslim countries?
Drug prohibition is morally wrong. I shed no tears for the failure of the Europeans to enforce it.
But besides that - how is that different from Mexico's role?
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I doubt he's the only jihadist from Kosovo, don't you?
We haven't liberated Mexico...though maybe we should...and may yet.
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I also doubt Lindh is the only jihadist from America.
The question is the rate at which such things occur.
Kosovo is famous, among other things, for the pro-American sentiment of its people. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/world/europe/09albania.html?_r=1)
If it is your idea to invade any country from which an illegal product is sold to Americans who wish to buy it, you're going to be fighting a lot of wars.
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I don't believe in invading anyone who's not an existential threat to us. I'll let the Europeans decide if getting their society infested with hard drugs (and everything that comes with) is an existential threat.
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I'm glad we agree that hard drugs do not constitute an existential threat to the United States.
Let us define a democracy for this purpose.
In my view, a system of government which protects, even in a limited form, the individual rights to free speech and private property, and conducts regular relatively-fair elections (nowhere in the world are there entirely fraud-free elections, not even in the United States of America), while not libertarian, is infinitely superior to what occured in practically every country in the world up until the very recent future (including countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain, considered generally to be part of Western civilization). If this ends up the state of affairs in even some of the Arab countries which are currently in rebellion, we will have made excellent progress and humanity as a whole would have benefited from this event.
Yes, this is a fairly minimal definition of democracy. Western countries - which have decades, and in some cases, centuries of experience at the democracy game - have more advanced freedom technologies. But to declare Muslim democracies, established 20 or 30 decades ago, failed projects because they have not immediately mastered and implemented technologies that took us decades to develop and implement is setting a bar incredibly high. It is like saying you are a cripple because you do not swim as well as Michael Phelps.
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I agree with you in principle, but my view is that truly representative governance requires a substrate of values, a metaphysic, a worldview that I believe is lacking in Islamic nations. You're right that something is better than nothing, but my primary concern is that they be harmless, not political examples of a congenial philosophy.
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This is something I disagree on.
In essence, I regard democracy, much like the free market, to be a technology of sorts.
Consider an example from the martial arts. If I take a sharpened entrenchment tool and execute a stabbing blow into a man's chin, that man is going to have a really bad day if I do it right. And anybody can do it right if they train in some combatives. They don't have to be a Shaolin Monk to really mess someone up, all they need to do is practice their moves and do them right.
Every culture has both totalitarian and liberal aspects to it, and while culture is important, if you maintain a semi-liberal democracy for a few decades, the more liberal aspects will come up more. Take Germany. They've invented some of the chief aspects of modern totalitarianism, and yet you'd hardly notice that looking at their country. Sure it's a welfare state, but it's hardly meaningfully worse than France, Britain, or Estonia. It's actually far better than most of the world (not an unimportant point). The totalitarian aspects of German culture have been suppressed so much people are shamed and ostracized for holding those views.
Now it is true that a modern democracy is much improved if the people who live in them have certain attitudes (Anglo-Saxon Protestants are better at it than, say, Slavic Orthodox!).
But here's the thing. If you manage to maintain a modern democracy for a few decades - a few successful semi-fair elections - it will lead to more prosperity and less brutality.
Similar is a free market.
Go to an African country. Lower taxes. Introduce private property. Lo and behold, the economy starts growing even if the people doing it are not Anglo-Saxonprotestants. Maybe it starts growing at a lower rate (although poor countries which recently implemented economic reform have explosive growth rates. Last anybody checked, Indonesia had 6% annual growth).
Let me be clear: In the long run free market economies and democracies springing up places are good for everyone involved. If these countries generate more wealth, that's more wealthy people to trade with and less crazy radicals. Sure they won't be harmless - nobody is harmless - but I prefer not to have incredible massacres next door, which is as viable a policy preference as anything else.
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The success of seeding "democracies" in unlikely soil must be measured long-term. We don't have that many examples to draw on. Germany was a democratic state interrupted by dictatorship, but its people understood, and very well, Enlightenment principles. Japan, a different situation, required a rather drastic turning of the soil before something we like could grow there. The evolutionary reforms you speak of are not inevitable; they require the cultural substrate I spoke of, at least in my opinion.
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Nothing is inevitable.
If there is something I learned at the end of two degrees in History it's that the desire to discover immutable historical laws is at best hubris for the historians.
But the fact is, Muslim democracies exist. It's not my argument that all of the Muslim states will immediately sprout rainbows and unicorn. It's merely my argument that the emergence of such limited democracies as have already sprouted in some other Muslim states is in itself a benefit to the region and to humanity as a whole. There is a moral angle to replacing a murderous tyrant with a democracy which cannot be discounted.
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Book recommendation micro - the poverty of historicism, by Karl popper
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Book recommendation micro - the poverty of historicism, by Karl popper
Quite aware of it. Wrote a large essay about Strauss' views on historicism too. :D