Transform this...
Posted on 03/14/2006 3:24:08 PM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
The DPW deal seems to have done something which needed doing: expose some serious flaws on the right side of the political spectrum. I called the isolationists Chickenhawks for not being able to stand next to an Arab businessman while they supported sending troops into the Middle East to arm, train and fight by Arab freedom fighters (the real ones, not the Michael Moore mythololgy).
Rich Lowry came up with a better term: the-hell-with-them hawks. The term describes those who have surrendered on the idea of bringing the Middle East into the modern world. These folks have quit and given up and have no interest in trying anymore. Rich has also perfectly described the context of our battle:
“The contemporary Middle East has featured a competition of radicalisms - who can be religiously purer, and more hostile to the West? The project in Iraq is an attempt to shift the terms of the competition to who can better deliver peace, prosperity and representation.”
And that competition includes America and Americans. When combined with the waste byproduct of the DPW deal we see two factions competing here in the US: one group seeing who can raise the most alarms about Muslims and Arabs in America, and one competing to seperate and isolate Islamists from the broader Muslim community while reaching out to that broader community to follow our path. Not the path of the Islamists.
Liken this competition to how the ancients dealt with Lepers and their enforced isolation verses how a surgeon removes a cancer using modern medicine. In ancient times the individual who was ill was left to die away from the ‘healthy’ people. Today the individual is saved by removing the illness and remains part of society. The ‘individual’ in this case is the Muslim religion which can be salvaged, just like Christianity was from their bout of world domination and forced adherence in the Middle Ages.
John Podhoretz expands on this theme today and captures the ‘blunt instrument’ mentality driving these folks who have found the effort to continue forward too difficult:
Their argument seems hard-headed and unsentimental. People are trying to murder Americans, and such people ought to die. Kill as many of the bad guys as you can abroad. Strike Iran from the air if you have to. Do whatever you must to secure the homeland. Don’t let Arabs run the ports. Racially profile Muslims and Arabs out the wazoo. No crocodile tears for the excesses at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
John also identifies the flaw in this view, which is the result these views will achieve. In the competition for ideas the one that promises an end to hostilities, no matter how hard to accomplish, is the better path. Here is what John envisions as the result if we quit now:
The problem is that the policies advocated by the “hell hawks” and by defeatist Democrats offer no real possibility of an end to the war against Islamic radicalism. It will go on forever.
And if it does, it seems certain that at some point in the next few decades, millions of people are going to die in a successful terrorist assault using weapons of mass destruction.
I agree, the easy near term solution is the wrong long term one. We cannot give up on the idea of transforming the Middle East, to foster the competition of peace and prosperity, as long as the majority of people there are willing to fight and die for that future. And they are. People waiting for a perfect situation so that obtaining the goal is easy are waiting on a fantasy. Reality never offers up a slam dunk to a hard problem through sitting back and waiting.
Paging Mr. Levin. Mark Levin please pick up the Hell Hawk phone.
Never have listened to him. Is he talking about this now?
Levin's handle here is "holdonnow"
Mark Levin is sharp as a razor,just wrong on his Dubai position.And he`s sticking to it.
Really ?
Every Muslim state is an ethnic civil war waiting to happen. Once an American army enters a Muslim state this disrupts the internal ethnic pecking order and all hell breaks loose. By our very presence we get sucked into the ethnic civil war that follows.
Willing to die for that future ? Are the Shiite militiamen imposing Sharia on Basra fighting for that future ? And the most effective units in the Iraqi military are simply Shiite and Kurd militias in uniform. Believing that the ethnic groups that find us useful for the moment are 'allies' fighting for 'democracy' is incredibly naive.
I convinced my m-i-l this past weekend that the DPW business deal wasn't that bad after all. I filled her in on a bunch of info, and she said "I didn't know any of that."
Maybe we need to try and transform the ME without military forces.
If you think America can sit back and isolate ourselves at this point, you are sadly mistaken. The world will go on right past us.
I don't know what to do about the one world thingie going on now, but it's pretty much beyond being stopped. Just like our mammoth federal government.
There are homogenous Muslim states.
Congratulations!
Transform this...
Bump!
And why are you so certain the Middle East has the least wish to be transformed ? Isn't that an incredibly arrogant certainty on your part ? Who told you that they look up to and admire you and want to be just like you ?
Isn't the entire point of oil wealth that they don't have to transform ? That they can just buy Western things and remain medieval societies ?
You globalists like to present false dichotomies.
You bandy around the term 'isolate' as if that is some bad thing that we are supposed to shrink back from like a vampire from a cross. What you really mean is to look out for ourselves first and foremost instead of trusting people who hate us.
And no, the one world thingie is not unstoppable. This is a sovereign America no matter what the WSJ says and last week the American people told the one worlders to go to hell.
One world thing ? You think China and India are not old fashioned great powers, hardly the one world globalists of your imagination ? You think Japan's motives aren't patriotic and nationalist ?
Who are you to say what people in the Middle East want? You don't have any more credibility than President Bush...in fact, I would say less.
Apparently you understand less than nothing.
Shiites voted for Shiites. Sunnis voted for Sunnis. Kurds voted for Kurds. Hardly the 'transformation' you and Echo Talon are babbling about. Indeed, if there were a completely free election in Egypt tomorrow the Muslim Brotherhood would win. That is why there will never be one if Mubarak can help it.
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