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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fred Levine who wrote (68526)	3/12/2003 12:06:47 AM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Fred, I must not have made myself clear. I am trying to be absolutely realistic about the limitations of good intentions in ending "genocide" in a world that seems to be rapidly dividing along ethnic and religious lines. No state is willingly going to cede territory to constituent religious or ethnic parts that seek their own sovereignty. They will fight tooth and nail to resist such fissiparous tendencies, including Britain in N. Ireland, and that struggle may be viewed by some as genocide. Invasions by foreign forces, even UN peacekeepers, are not going to permantly solve such problems. Just look at the history of the State of Israel. One reason the UN wisely resists is that it would be exceedingly difficult to know where to stop. Was it an act of genocide by India when it attacked the sacred shrine of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, to put down a group of separatists wanting to establish an independent 'Khalistan' in the Punjab? What about the Indian war against terror taking place in Kashmir? Is that genocide? Are Israelis committing genocide against Palestinians? Are Arabs committing genocide against Jews or Zionists? I think it would be constructive to end the cargo-cult notion that the UN should simply get its act together and put an end to genocide everywhere once and for all. The problem just doesn't lend itself to such a simplistic solution. The only solution I can think of to the type of problem that the Kurds face in Turkey and Iraq is for the nation to adopt a federal style of government, where substantial power is granted by the feds to semi-autonomous state governments. But secular principles must prevail and be enshrined into both federal and state constitutions. We in the US have more experience with this system of government than any nation on earth and we can do a much better job of sharing it and teaching it than we have done to date. This is the way to teach Peace -- to show governments how to avoid bloody civil war, and to demonstrate the tangible benefits of democracy, secular society and pluralism. But it cannot be imposed through the power of the sword, as Bush is devising. Violence only begets more violence. Remember the Said Aburish interview when Saddam was begging to find out more about the American system of government and asked the Lebanese journalist, "But why have these American officials constantly lied to me?" That is why I repeat: We have failed spectacularly to educate Saddam. He was born into a tribal family but is an intelligent secular minded planner. If we had succeeded in educating him, or at least earnestly attempted to do so, instead of simply using him and transferring to him the very chemical and biological technologies that we are now using to justify an invasion, to use against a theocratic Iran that we feared even more, we might at least have earned Saddam's respect and perhaps we might have succeeded in preventing these atrocities and changed the tragedy we now find ourselves engaged in. And just maybe we might have taught him something that was constructive, instead of destructive. Peace in the Middle East isn't something that just happens. And it certainly is not going to happen through violence. We have to earn it. Sam