Hi ratan lal; There are plenty of countries with high percentages of Islamic believers but that don't cut off people's hands for stealing.
Re: "Unfortunately, if you lived amongst the muslims, you would realize that the vast majority of muslism still believe in koran as it interpreted by the fundamentalists."
From this I can conclude that you've lived among the "vast majority" of the muslims. Since they're something like a billion of them, that's quite the trick.
Re: "And I guess you believe these nations are assisting or supporting out of the goodness of their hearts?"
They're assisting because the ruling elites feel that it is in their best interest to assist. My take on the situation at this time is that the ruling classes in most Moslem nations (Pakistan in particular) are assisting the U.S. because they know that the fundamentalists would be much more of a disaster for them than they would be for the U.S.
In each of these nations, one of two things is going to happen. Either the ruling elites are going to keep the lid on the pot, or they are going to let it boil over. As long as they keep the lid on the pot everything is okay. If they let the lid off the pot, that is when I will worry, but my worries will still be far, far, far less than the worries of the people who live in that boiling over pot.
Afghanistan is an example of a pot that boiled over, and what the U.S. is doing there will be an example to the ruling elites of other pots that boil over in the future. (A pot that boils over still has a ruling elite, just a different one than the one they started with.) Teach your people to hate, let the pot boil over, and then have the United States come in and blow your ruling elites to hell. Then see your country put back together with the assistance of occupation armies assembled from your neighbors. This is not an attractive proposition, and the ruling elites will mostly find ways to avoid it.
Re: "But what about the people who still live in Iran? What do you think their children will be influenced by?"
The ruling elites will eventually realize that their standard of living, in fact perhaps their lives, depend on their keeping their pots from boiling over. As this fact dawns on them, they will become more careful about keeping the heat down.
Re: "Do you know that even as Pakistan is supporting the US against OBL, there are terrorists groups who bombed a govt. bldg. in India killing 42 people. The terrorist group in Pakistan took credit for the bombing. Did Pakistan hand over the leader of that group? For that matter did the US insist that pakistan hand over teh leader of that group? Instead president Bush said that India and Pakistan should 'stand down' while we fight in Afghanistan. "
Yes, I read (and post) articles from the Times Of India with regularity on this thread. Maybe you've mistaken me for some idealist who would like to see all the world's problems solved through peace. The fact is that I want to see the US safe. India is not of much concern to me. The United States does not have a history of giving assistance to India, so the Moslems aren't pissed at us for the self destructive things that India did in Kashmir. Eliminating India's Kashmir problem wouldn't help us any, and besides, India shouldn't have occupied a territory that didn't want to be a part of India. Maybe if we started giving military assistance to Sri Lanka and the Hindus decided to start bombing us for it, then we'd have a problem with terrorism in India. But fortunately for us, Sri Lanka doesn't seem to have anything we want, and they don't have a big population of "Sri Lankan-Americans" perverting our election process in order to award military gifts to their homeland. If we did, we'd probably have a Sri Lanka terrorist problem too.
In a world of violent, backward, and hate filled 3rd world nations, isolationism can be very attractive. Unfortunately, it wasn't attractive enough.
Every one of these third world countries has their hands and arms bright red with blood. If there's one ethnic group that doesn't (the rain forest pygmies, perhaps?), well, it's only because they were so powerless that they couldn't hurt a flea. I know we're not going to solve everyone's issues, and I don't propose to try.
These countries complain about how the United States treated them as pawns in our global struggle with Communism, but the fact is that they see us primarily as useful tools in their efforts to get back at the neighbors they hate.
Until they give their hatred up they're going to be pains in the ass for us, but at least as long as they're fixated on their ancient rivalries they won't be able to compete with us economically. From a realpolitic point of view, it could be argued that the best thing for the West is to let the 3rd world continue to boil. Maybe this is part of the reason the 1st world has let the situation continue as long as it has. But the level of inconvenience reached on 9/11 is too high for us to let this go on.
Re: "One needs to grow up and realize that selfishness is the one human trait that will take a lot of personal effort to eliminate or even diminish. And it is this selfishness that is driving some muslim countries to reluctantly offer their support to the US in Afghanistan. "
I don't think that it's a realistic goal of foreign policy to reduce selfishness. In fact, I don't see it as much of a realistic personal goal. Like I said before, I care only about what happens to the US. If other countries care about what happens in their countries, they'd do well to emulate us, or at least our ideals. The United States is the most self sufficient nation on the planet, and because of its good relations with its neighbors it is the least militarily threatened. Why should we get involved in thousand year old arguments between countries the size of Vermont? This is not some new idea of mine invented since the WTC. Here I am asking for the US to return to isolationism on September 10, 2001:
"We have not yet got used to it being peacetime. When we have, I expect the Republican party to return to its traditional isolationism. Frankly, I look forward to that. During peacetime, military expenditures should be concentrated on R&D, making sure that productive capability is available, (as opposed to actually producing weapons that quickly become obsolete), and reserves instead of standing army." #reply-16328470
During the Cold War, isolationism was not an option, and the US had no choice but to use the 3rd world to fight Communism. This pissed a lot of them off, but the alternative was to either ignore the problem and hope that it went away, or threaten to push the button and see what 40,000 nukes would do to the planet. We were in a fight for our lives. When that war ended with our complete victory, I wanted the US to return to its traditional well armed isolationism.
Our error with Israel was supporting a country in the middle of hostile territory that was not militarily defensible. That was stupid of us. Our error with Kuwait was in not destroying Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, bringing in occupation forces from their neighbors, converting them to some pale imitation of democracy and then completely exiting the region.
As far as I'm concerned (and I believe that the vast majority of Americans share my opinion, at least in their hearts), the 3rd world isn't worth the powder required to blow them all to hell. The only reason I exempt, for instance, the Germans and Japanese is because the experience of being occupied by our troops for a decade or two seems to have improved their politeness.
I didn't get the peace I wanted. Instead I got war, and we will now have to (again) make the planet safe for the United States. It looks to me that in order to achieve this we will have to (again) make (another) part of the world safe for democracy. But there is no way that we are going to achieve that goal by listening to rabble rousers who are claiming that a substantial portion of the world's population believes in a satanic religion.
-- Carl |
