Thoughtful post, Sam.
<most such attempts at cultural imperialism are doomed to fail and that the most successful examples of reform are those that boil up from within the indigenous culture, instead of being imposed from without.>
Force will not work. The War must contain some Force, but only as a minor component. Imperialism, yes, that is doomed to failure, which is why Bush's methods are going to lead to disaster. Did you read my analogy between the WarOnDrugs and the WarOnTerrorism?
Message 18631996
But that doesn't mean all solutions are local. It doesn't mean nobody listens to anybody else. Actually, the opposite process is happening. The Global Village means everyone pays attention to everyone else's successes and failures. There are very very few original ideas. "I see far because I stand on the shoulders of Giants." King read Gandhi. And the million E. Germans who held a sitdown strike in the streets of E. Berlin, and faced down the Communist's tanks, they too read Gandhi.
I think the ideals in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independance are Ideas that will eventually displace all competing Ideas. And Gandhi told us how the Astronauts With Grenades on Spaceship Earth should act and think. That's the thrust of history, and it will continue. But it will not happen by U.S. Generals doing Nation-Building, after ShockAndAwe with massed tanks advancing behind a barrage of cruise missiles. That's just not the right tool to use to spread the memes of Democracy and Freedom.
Cultural change is done by persuasion, not force. The NeoCons say that Islamists (and N. Koreans, too) are sub-human savages, inherently violent and anti-democratic, and the only method to deal with them is to put them in a cage, take away all sharp objects, and bludgeon them whenever they try to get out of their cage. The NeoCons don't believe in persuasion, or talk of any kind. They Demonize the Other, which creates the intellectual justification for unlimited violence against the Other.
In 1872, the Japanese had a Revolution, and then started a successful response to the West. The Japanese thoroughly studied the West, sending their sons to study in England and America and Germany. Then, they carefully chose some aspects of Western Culture to imitate. After picking and choosing, they deliberately replaced parts of their traditional culture. Other, actually most, of their pre-Western culture, was maintained and defended. The parts of the West they imitated, gave them the technological and economic advances to deal with the West.
This is what the Muslim world has to do, to find their house in the Global Village. OBL wants to defend Islam by rejecting everything Western, and it won't work. An uncritical pan-imitation of the West, or Westernization imposed by Force, isn't going to work, either.
There is nothing inherent in Muslim culture, that prevents this. In fact, from the founding of Islam through the 1600s, the Muslim world was closer to the Enlightenment ideals than the Christian world was. |
