Posted on 03/28/2006 7:27:52 AM PST by quesney
Some interesting thoughts from a friend based on a Washington Post op-ed today on the Christian convert facing the death penalty in Afghanistan (link to that op-ed follows):
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The problem Bush faces is that democracies are rare. There are even fewer examples of one democratic nation transforming another country into a democracy. Bush is wrong in saying that democracies don't attack each other. Hitler was democratically elected and it devolved into a tyranny. Same thing happened in Haiti and in much of South America. Trading partners tend not to attack each other. The wisdom of George Washington's Farewell Address again comes through: Trade with everybody...but avoid their political entanglements.
As outsiders we can judge Afghanistan and the Middle East with disgust. They are barbaric but Islam has been around for 1600 years and its becoming more militant. If Bush or any western leader thinks they can intervene and transform these countries into the judeo-christian models we have in America, Canada, Austriala and UK (that's about it), then they don't have a full appreciation of history and human nature.
Bush liberated Afghanistan but since he chose to intervene again in their affairs to save face with the media, the Afghans are now carrying signs that say 'Death to Bush'. You can accuse them of being ignorant and ungrateful but is it wise to draw the ire of crazy people when what you need from them to protect your own country is their docility?
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Unfathomable Zealotry ("Is This My Fellow Man?") Richard Cohen Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR2006032701299_pf.html
Neville? Is that you? Welcome back, I think? Peace in our time, eh?
Your post implies that the US was essentially pursuing an isolationist foreign policy before 9/11...which is 100% inaccurate...American foreign policy since the end of WWII has been anything but isolationist...the American government, military, special ops, money, influence, corruption, support for dicatators, training of paramilitary groups, etc. has grown unabated since the end of WWII...and indeed since the end of the Cold War (truly a policy that makes no sense from the perspective of the average American)...much or even most of American foreign policy is carried out through programs unknown to most Americans
Closing down all of the huge military bases that the American military continues to maintain around Europe and Asia...pulling American troops and military advisors out of the 130 countries that our acknowledges they are present...ending all foreign aid...shutting down some of the huge, "international" (but American-controlled) agencies such as the IMF...all of this will do more to reduce America's status as the world's most reviled country than all of the good will wars we could ever wage
And the Quasi War and War of 1812 were fought because? Sometimes foreign entanglements find you.
We can ignore the world all we want. Problem is the world does not choose to return the favor.
That's a shame, is it not?
Bush is wrong in saying that democracies don't attack each other. Hitler was democratically elected and it devolved into a tyranny.
Hitler was not democratically elected, that's an internet talking-point which is a perversion of the truth. Hitler's party won a bloc of seats; Hitler himself was appointed Chancellor. Along the way they generally behaved like, well, fascists (Reichstag fire, etc), which grossly distorted any claims to democratic legitimacy existing in that country.
Same thing happened in Haiti and in much of South America.
Which democracy did Haiti attack? Which democratic countries in South America attacked which other democratic countries?
Remember, your friend was supposedly countering the idea that democracies do not attack each other. I guess he forgot.
Trading partners tend not to attack each other.
We've been doing the trading partners routine (Saudi Arabia?) and the problem is, if we take a tyranny as a given and become a trading partner with them, that de facto aligns us with that tyranny in the eyes of dissidents/rebels/envious usurpers (Al Qaeda?), and puts us in their sights. So, your friend is right that being a nice trading partner doesn't get us attacked (openly..) by the regime in question - but it causes a different sort of problem, one that we call "terrorism" (your friend may have heard of it).
The wisdom of George Washington's Farewell Address again comes through: Trade with everybody...but avoid their political entanglements.
Sounds nice. What exactly does it mean? What's a "political entanglement"? And how do we "avoid" it? Does your friend know, or does he just assume that if it's a policy your friend doesn't like, it must be that "political entanglement" thing Washington was talking about.
In what way exactly does deciding "We're going to get rid of that tyrant, and pave the way for the people there to form their own government" represent a "political entanglement"? And is that really the sort of political entanglement Washington was advising against?
As outsiders we can judge Afghanistan and the Middle East with disgust. They are barbaric but Islam has been around for 1600 years and its becoming more militant. If Bush or any western leader thinks they can intervene and transform these countries into the judeo-christian models we have in America, Canada, Austriala and UK (that's about it), then they don't have a full appreciation of history and human nature.
Woo hoo... watch the straw fly as your friend does some fancy footwork and builds a GIANT straw man! What a display. I've seen some wacky stuff, but I've never seen anyone try to sincerely pretend that what Bush is doing is trying to transform Iraq into the "Judeo-Christian model"... yeesh.
Doesn't merit a response.
Bush liberated Afghanistan but since he chose to intervene again in their affairs to save face with the media, the Afghans are now carrying signs that say 'Death to Bush'.
What is "intervene again"? I can only guess at what he's talking about (the Christian apostate?).
Notice how your friend cannot see individual Afghans. There is no individual Afghan. There is only "The Afghans". The Afghans either do X, or they do Y, and your friend can tell/learn/describe what The Afghans are doing in a breeze. Right now, The Afghans are holding signs, according to your friend.
I'm assuming he knows this because he saw it on TV.
Just rephrasing what your friend is saying, to make it more clear how silly it is.
Some elements of the current Afghan government were about to murder a man for being a Christian. To the extent that Bush did anything about that (he actually didn't do very much), I'm glad for it. That's what decent communities do: pressure people who intend to do an injustice. Your friend seems worried/angst-filled that it made some fascist theocrats in Afghanistan (i.e., "The Afghans") mad.
I'm glad it made them mad. I don't want them to be happy if being happy means killing apostates.
You can accuse them of being ignorant and ungrateful but is it wise to draw the ire of crazy people when what you need from them to protect your own country is their docility?
"Docility"? What we need from them is a government with democratic legitimacy that protects a modicum of human rights, so that it can stamp down on terror havens and supporters in its midst (which we may, of course, have to pressure them to do from time to time) from a position of good political and moral strength, instead of from the position of being a "strongman" merely doing our bidding.
Your friend seems to have wanted to toss the Christian apostate under the bus so that it doesn't make the crazies mad. Let them go ahead and kill him so they don't get mad at us. That's just wrong and cowardly. More to the point, that's the mentality behind the policy approach that's done so well for us in preventing terror against us these last 20-30 years.
Islam can't take over the world with car bombs, IED's and the hijacking the planes of others. Why should they be in a hurry? All they have to do is wait for the effects of our contraception suicide pill and investors that need foreign labor.
don't you know it's one "unified" world now... at least that's what the liberals want...
Don't expect that to happen. To argue on the merits, one needs to have a strong grasp of history from the beginning of the 20th century moving forward. Something more than one receives from Republican talking points and articles from Victor David Hansen. Iraq was an invention post WWI, another war that 'spreading democracy' was used as an excuse. Two points, among many, that will not be addressed. Washington's policy was not isolationist but rather to be friend to all. No interference in the internal affairs of other nation states. Many will state such a policy 'didn't work' before however since these United States have become a world power, it has never been followed.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Indeed it is.
Like every problem that the government rides to the rescue to address, the problems are often of the government's own making...Afghanistan has a long complicated history of meddling by the US and Soviets in the context of the Cold War...direct involvement by the CIA against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan started even before the Soviet invasion in late 1979...then, obviously, American meddling ramped up in support of many of the same characters that became America's enemies after the Soviet collapse
We can ignore the world all we want. Problem is the world does not choose to return the favor.
Agreed 100%...but the American government has hardly been ignoring the world for the past several decades...there has been no bigger arms dealer in the world for the past several decades than the US government...its not even close...
the American military dwarfs any other military in the world...when one contemplates the scale and number of US military bases around the world, its absurd. Can you imagine German military bases in the US...or Italian...or Egyptian...of course not...its a ridiculous notion...yet Americans think nothing of the fact that we have American military bases around the world...who benefits from the existence of the these bases?...not you or me or the natives of the countries where they exist...but many parasites do...the corporations that build, maintain and supply them do...the professional military personnel that live lavishly on these bases certainly do...the government departments and their employees that run them do
After all, as Randolph Bourne stated "war is the health of the state"
Your forgetting what else Washington said, " if your feeling blue, try some leeches". Honestly its the freaking 21st century!!!
The Op Ed itself doesn't seem to have been given very deep thought, from what I can gather by reading the summary posted here. OTOH, my opinion is that there are good arguments to be made for our not having become "entangled" in the Middle East. Or for our ending the American presence there (I don't mean cutting and running from Iraq, but getting out of the oil trading business).
The argument that strikes me as most obvious is the clear fact that if not for the tremendous wealth we have handed, and continue to hand, to the monarchs and mullahs over there, they and their sorry excuses for countries would all continue to be mired in poverty, with no ability, and probably no desire, to threaten civilization as they do now. The West has essentially given them what power they now wield.
Beyond that, I also have the idea that Israel. in its own self interest, would long ago have put Islamic terror out of business, but again, the US government has consistently restrained her, in the interest of trading for oil.
I'm a free marketer, and thus, philosophically if not always practically, a free trader, but I sometimes think that it would be a proper use (national security) of federal power to limit or stop the importation of Middle Eastern oil.
So, are liberals isolationists these days?
How in the world do we get out of the oil trading business?
I don't know if we can, after the fact. Venezuela is a worry too. I do know that being dependent on foreign oil to the extent we are puts us seriesly between a rock and a hard place.
I'd like to see us open up the Gulf of Mexico and ANWR to drilling and let the open market take up the slack on any shortfall we might still experience. For instance, a couple months ago, I heard the governor of Montana on the Glenn Beck show trying to sell Montana coal oil, which he said could be placed on the market for $30 a barrel. I gather he can't find the investors for it because they fear the Saudis will reply by flooding the market and driving the price down below that figure. So let Congress do something about the Saudis and we might get $30 a barrel oil from right here in the USA.
Although I'm no authority on it, the more I think about this, the more doable it suddenly seems. I can imagine that in a situation such as I'm trying to describe, entrepreneurs and inventors might also be willing to put some serious effort into alternatives. In any case, it could sure be alot better than relying on the efforts of politicians to fix things in the Middle East. Though at this point they have no choice but to continue fixing some of it.
"Well, we liberated Europe twice in the last century from the combination of their own militaristic follies and cowardly appeasement...They're not REALLY our friends/allies now, are they?...I find it amusing that the French, in particular, are always quick to deflect criticism of their anti-Americanism with reminders of how Lafayette helped us during our revolution...Yet they conveniently FORGET things like Omaha Beach."
Part of my point exactly. Everyone is looking out for themselves and maybe it's time we do the same -- to our benefit and maybe the rest of the world's, which needs to grow up and stop looking us to solve all its problems. The rest of the world desperately needs to mature and by intervening as we have, we're arguably getting away of that messy, perhaps, but necessary process. I'm just not sure it's getting us anywhere and the evidence of that is getting stronger by the day.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions....And historically, the road to self destruction is paved by appeasement."
I don't favor appeasing anyone. We strike back -- pre-emptively if necessary -- at anyone who poses a big and immediate risk to our national security, but forget our government getting involved in anything short of that. Let foreigners sort things out for themselves. We can't do for them what they're not willing to do for themselves.
"#3. Why don't you argue the merits of why we should become isolationist? You do understand, don't you, that that will lead to intense economic stagnation for our nation and has often led to war."
Isolationist? I cite Washington's Farewell Address -- trade with *everyone* (or almost everyone). Just dont get involved in their political problems. Free trade is the best (and simplest) way to peace and democratic development. That's hardly an isolationist position.
Careful: If you visit Caen or any of the communities nearby, and people identify you as an American, you'll be treated like royalty. Not all the French forget what we did in Normandy.
As any recovering drunk in AA will tell you, what we're doing is ENABLING them.
We shouldn't be enablers. let 'em sink, or swim on their own....well, the only problem with that is do we really WANT Western Europe to fall to Islamofascism?
And that conquest has already started.
"We were involved on 9-11-01 you silly little man."
And would we have been? If we hadn't, for decades, ignored Washington's wisdom?
"I personally would completely remove our troops from Germany and South Korea (for starts), and put active duty forces on our own borders. I would also work hard to restore NATO alliances and tell the UN to go to hell...We spend too much time worring about the neighbors house, while the criminals walk in and out of our own house at will. As far as I'm concerned that's just stupid...But that's just me."
Ditto. It's time we got a lot more ruthless about what's in our national interest and what's not...before it's too late. It may already be too late.
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