Support the troops, don't give them nightmares...,
2003-04-07 15:03:03
| Main |
To the victors go the get out of jail free cards....,
2003-04-07 19:23:06
Re: Invasion will provoke wave of terrorism against Americans:
It has already provoked a wave of state terror against Muslims and other dissidents - a terror campaign which will continue to be supported by the US under the ostensible hubris of the "war on terrorism". The result of spoiling for a clash of civilizations is a clash of civilizations, and those in the middle will feel compelled to pick sides not politically but in the tactical spectrum between aggression and self-defense. Pacifism, in the face of political violence, is a fading quality.
Take Uzbekistan as an obvious example. Or support-for-oil deals with the Kazakhstan autocracy. Or Israel. Or Pakistan. Or here. Or Egypt, where the war has
reinvigorated the Muslim Brotherhood and where the police are torturing anti-war protesters. And in regimes outside the growing sphere of US dominance the war on Iraq is being used as cover for increased repression, or such is how the Financial Times fits China, Zimbabwe and Cuba's latest waves of human rights abuses into their narrative. I'm hardly one to disagree, we share the onus for encouraging aggression worldwide.
But you can still misread the Bush doctrine completely and believe that a "U.S. occupation of Iraq offers Arab people hope"; apparently a US colonial dictatorship over Iraq is superior to the "creation of a 'benevolent' Iraqi dictatorial regime in the current Arab mold". These societies have serious internal problems, even if I agree that the "fact remains that most of the day-to-day oppression of Muslims takes place from within" I can't consider supporting newer tyrants and invading countries to replace old tyrants as serious alternatives.
If those "who live under [repressive] regimes are ... scared and powerless to rid ourselves of them" it is much because foreign nations support the repression, or - through economic sanctions and embargos that primarily effect those living under such regimes - because foreign nations actively render the population scared and powerless. The US is certainly a world leader in these regards, and could do much to end the pattern of behavior internationally by persuing mutual reductions in foreign interference among other industrial powers.
We'll see how well post-Saddam Iraq is handled, but at this point I have absolutely no reason to suspect any signficant "benevolence" from the US beyond what it offers other nations, and the inevitable outcome of our mishandling of other peoples' affairs is our being blamed - and justifiably so, at least in part - for their problems.