Bilow,
I was thinking that I wouldn't do much posting about what the US should do from here, as I've pretty much said what I wanted to say. But I find your post so astounding in its assumptions, I can't help but respond. Your fundamental underlying assumption, which is that the answer to the problem before us is to make people so hopeless that they'll willingly become putty in our hands I think is a grave mistake, and the kind of thinking that can lead to a holocaust in which millions of lives could be lost. In fact, part of the problem is that we're dealing with crazy people, driven mad by the extent of their powerlessness, so that they're willing to throw away their lives, and the lives of their victims, simply to feel like they have *some* impact in this world. In the complexities of this situation, it'd be too long a dialogue to go into how to separate perpetrators from accomplices, the deterrent power of retaliation balanced against incentives to behave in lawful ways that concur with our very legitimate security interests, etc. But let me address some of the more outrageous assumptions I find in your post:
<<I know that the propaganda is that the fundamentalists will fight on forever, but the fact of human nature is that people are only inclined to give their lives up to causes that have not yet proved to be hopeless>>
I think the absolute reverse is true. People who feel absolutely hopeless with no shred of a chance of betterment are more willing to sacrifice their lives in an instant, since such lives are meaningless. And such people tend to concoct crazy rationalizations as to why it's a good idea (e.g., we're going to heaven as reward for our sacrifice - or the Indian Ghost Dance movement of the late 1800's, when they felt so hopeless that they believed their medicine men when they told them that they would become invisible to the soldier's bullets, and that dead warriors would arise and help them defeat the US army - absolute hopelessness makes people absolutely nuts, to put it simply). Now, we're not necessarily responsible for much of the hopelessness in the third world - you can find a lot of reasons for that - ranging from a cultures that saw their last golden age, when they were at the zenith of their wealth, knowledge, and importance more than 1,000 years ago, to the exploitation of the people by corrupt plutocrats, but it doesn't mean we can simply ignore their plight in coming up with a viable solution to the problem of terrorism that suits the needs that we have in this situation. Your solution of making people feel even more hopeless and powerless guarantees that you'll breed future generations of crazy people who will strike at America at any cost.
<<Iraq should be relatively easy to convert into a more or less (for the Middle East anyway) liberal democracy.>>
Geez Louise!! What on earth makes you so arrogant that you think it's a snap to remake other cultures in our own image? Or that doing so doesn't create such resentment that it creates fertile recruitment ground for the opposition? You're advocating exactly the same stance as the Arab terrorists - make the world conform to our ideals (in their case, a world under Islamic culture and laws), regardless of what the people themselves want - if they don't like it, just shove it down their throats by force. With enough force, they'll be too scared to resist. Great plan! Works every time - just ask the Vietcong and North Vietnamese who instantly dropped their guns and peed their pants after 20 years of incredible sacrifices and struggle when they heard the undefeatable Americans were coming. ) (No, I'm not advocating Communism - simply that people with strong beliefs, even if misguided or downright evil, don't abandon them because you threaten them.) I'd suggest that you ask yourself how you'd react if the Islamic extremists who propose to make the world an Islamic theocracy and abolish all other religions, if they had the power to impose this. According to your theory, you'd roll over and start reading the Koran, right?
<<The secret is that you must make a decisive military victory in order to thoroughly discredit the old regime. Germany in WW1 was not sufficiently demoralized at the time of the Armistice. If they had been chased fighting into Berlin they would have understood their weakness and GFUTI.>>
Again, I think you have it very backward. At the end of WWI, as pointed out by Andreas (I think), we heaped war reparations and restrictions on the Germans which, combined with the subsequent economic depression, helped erase all hope from these people. And what we got in return was an expression of their crazy rage in the form of Hitler. In WWII, we lawfully prosecuted the leaders, and dealt the German people into the game economically so that *they would have a stake in supporting our causes and ideals* - and it's arguable that that was the difference between our winning and losing the cold war.
Your premise that imposing force, hopelessness and powerlessness are our greatest weapons just doesn't hold up very well. When the British violated our sovereignty in the 18th century by imposing taxation without representation, the Americans just lay down and yielded to the greater force, right? When Washington's force was demoralized by the bitter cold, disease, and impossible odds they faced in the winter at Valley Forge they just folded their tents and bowed before the Union Jack, right? And that's why, today, this country is a British colony, right? What a maroon, to quote McMannis. I believe the only thing I can agree on with you is that there is a commonality to humanity - but I see that commonality more in terms of the striving of all people to have a sense of autonomy, a sense that they matter in some way, an urge to resist the violation of their sovereignty, even at the cost of their lives. Let me state the obvious- I again restate that I do think we need to respond to this atrocity and impose consequences on those responsible for these actions. I think your approach to the problem almost guarantees a terrible holocost which is self-perpetuating - it'll make the Hundred Years War look like a brief nap. Yes, military and diplomatic pressure and force have an important role - but if it's the only card we play, God help us all.
Jamok |
