Hi Hawk, and fellow disputants -
"I'm more concerned with the current situation, and what it portends for the future, not with who did what to whom, and historical actions which have led us to this point..."
I'd like to suggest that the United States has come to view the situation in the Middle East as somewhat equivalent to that in post WW2 Europe - with its history of bitter and divisive conflict - and that what's about to unfold in Iraq is the equivalent to putting a client state (much like West Germany) into the local geography.
Those who believe that the Killer Clown, Saddam Hussein, is the issue here, are mistaken. With his unerring instinct for the wrong move, he has placed Iraq in exactly the position that is required for fulfillment of this policy. Like a bad chess player, Hussein has only seen 2 moves ahead. Others have seen the whole game.
So Iraq will become a "pro-western" (for lack of a better term) client state, with a tremendous geographical advantage in the Middle East.
Those who would have Israel as such a state would be as wrong as those who believed that Great Britain was a client state of the US. What is needed, among other things, is a Middle Eastern state that can bring to fruition the benefits of democratic western industrialized civilization - and within which, religious parity can be maintained.
In my mind, there is no question that fundamentalist Islamic movements have been co-opted - politically shanghaied - by the emergence of a group of radical thugs who have inserted their indoctrination at the grass-roots level of what was once accorded the status of a religion.
Through the medium of that religion, they have declared war on western industrialized society - in particular, on the United States, as the exemplar of democratic capitalism.
The question of whether we can reach the hearts and minds of those who are being politicized is one thing; the question of whether Islamic peoples, and their teachers really want their religion cast as a combatant in this theistic war is one they will have to answer themselves. If they decide not, it's still not clear that they can wrest control of their religion from the murderous zealots who have commandeered it.
One thing's for sure: it wouldn't take much to scupper the delivery of oil from the Middle East. If that aim were accomplished, western industrialized civilization as we know it will be plunged into deep, dark recession. The global economy will be in ruins.
Despite the hand-wringing anxiety of many Euro states, the United States is taking a position of leadership in resisting this anarchic spiral into economic chaos.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the United States, and those it leads, will be successful. The establishment of a client state in Iraq is fraught with peril; whatever regime follows is bound to be encumbered by continuous attack and subversion.
In a broader sense, the appeal of western industrialized society is at issue, here, much as it was in the ascendancy of Communism. That was a long, costly fight: composed in equal parts of containment and actual warfare. Yes, the innocent died, too. Yes, mistakes were made. It was war.
Many have not yet grasped the seriousness of the situation. This is no longer a trivial matter. It's war. It doesn't matter that many Islamic peoples are unaware of the fact: they are not being asked to comment. They may have an opinion, but they have not exercised sufficient control to have a vote.
It's not a war against Islam, any more than the Cold War was a war against the people of Russia. But those pseudo-Islamic "leaders" who are decreeing the slaughter of innocents in the guise of theistic orthodoxy have made captives, and ardent followers of many who have been taught, since birth, to hate.
Remember, again, that the United Staes is the exemplar: but the whole global economy is what's at risk. Not Japan, not France, not Sweden, not Canada, no nation will be exempted.
Few have grasped how far this has gone, and how far it can go. Our industrialized society is a delicate mechanism of carefully intertwined parts: 9/11 showed its resiliency, but also its fragility.
Read what follows at this link; anyone who believes there is any "Peace Dividend" left is dreaming in technicolor.
"...While the aspirations of few Islamic countries to acquire nuclear weapons are wedded to the ideas in the realm of “Islamic Bomb”, the motivation of the so called jehadis for the weapons of mass destruction components and know-how reflect pertinently on the rise of nuclear terror throughout the world. The challenges of nonproliferation advocates do not stop here only and so require attention in addition to these two assumed realities."
saag.org
Regards,
Jim |
