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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (1193)	9/24/2001 10:07:22 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

I am trying to back off SI as much as possible, but I may post occasionally. I've spent most of my adult life outside the US, and have some interest in foreign affairs. I posted this on another thread, where it received little response; I wonder if it might do better here.... Why do they hate us so much? Children all over America must have asked that question; like most questions asked by children, it is a very good question and deserves more attention than it gets. Knowing sophisticates will answer by speaking of strategy and geopolitics, of Israel and oil. These are important factors, but they do not lie at the core of the hatred. The mullahs would hate us even if Israel did not exist, and every American soldier was within our borders. They hate us because we terrify them. The greatest terror of the fundamentalist is secularism, and we are a secular state. We are the secular state, the standard bearer for secular liberalism around the world. We also sit astride the world like a colossus, delivering through our very existence a message from which none can hide: secular liberalism is both materially rewarding and fun. We terrify the mullahs because we have written medieval superstition out of our public lives, and we have flourished doing it. Our fundamentalist warriors are reduced to spasmodic bible-beating in the dessicated corners of Internet message boards, their leaders to barfing hysterical inanities on trailer trash TV. They are devoid of influence, fossilized relics of another age. The mullahs know how seductive our message is, and how easily and quickly they could be reduced to that same level. The mullahs do not fear the America of John Wayne, Ron Reagan, and Charlton Heston. They know all about upright, moral, manly men with a steady stride and a closet full of guns. They have plenty of those themselves, and the mujahedin would kick the Montana militia's ass without half trying. They do not fear our weapons: they can dodge our air force and outlast our army. They have done these things before. What they fear is the America of Baywatch and Sex and the City, of raunchy magazines and Rock & Roll. They fear the freedom, the unabashed sexuality, the fun. They fear the power of free thought and free action. They fear the right the right of the citizenry to tell the local religious prudes to get the fuck out of their bedrooms. They fear prosperity and they fear pleasure. They fear America because that's what America is all about: what other nation has ever declared that its citizens have the right to pursue happiness? They fear these things because they have no weapons with which to fight them, and because they know that these things will eat the support right out from under them in a generation. The mullahs hate us because we are living testimony to their own irrelevance, a testimony written so large that none can mistake it. That is why they believe that they must destroy us. Because even if we never send a soldier near their borders, even if our airplanes never leave the ground, we are going to destroy them in short order if they don't. They don't hate us because of what we do. They hate us because of what we are, and because they know that secretly, their own people want to be like us. They also know that when that desire stops being secret, they are history. They do not fear the power of our belief. They fear the power of our disbelief, for they know that against it no belief will stand. I also think that like fundamentalists everywhere, they are fighting a losing battle. Reactionaries always lose. Time only runs one way; you can slow change down, but you can't stop it. It's nice to see history on our side.