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

To: Sam who wrote (158898)	3/8/2005 8:41:00 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes, but Japan did have a very long history of social cohesion and obedience to their government and social structure. Oh, man, so do the Arabs, under the Ottoman empire for 400 years! And, puhlease, not the bugbear of "colonization" again. The Arabs were colonized for about 20 years starting 85 years ago, it was hardly a tranformative experience, and it ended generations ago. Since then we've had various forms of Arab fascism, pan-Arabism, socialism and general kleptocracy. The Arabs' real problem is not what Europe imposed on them, but those parts of Europe that the Arabs seized on for themselves - the worse the idea, the more Arab dictators liked it. not that I'm trying to idealize the Ottomans, but the British motives for dismantling them were surely suspect No, they weren't, because by the end of WWI what was left of the Ottoman Empire just fell apart. Europe had been propping it up by mutual agreement between the powers for 50 years already, it was rotten and it had to go. Blame them if you like for the things they decided to put in instead, but not for the demise of the Ottoman Empire. And also why I was opposed to this invasion to begin with, and I will have to wait for years before believing that I was/am wrong to believe that the kind of violence that we have and are committing in Iraq, the way we have gone about this whole thing from about March 2003 on, is not the right way to get what Bush says we want. And what was the right way? Wait around for ever as the Mideast autocrats drag the region into the abyss, spawning world-wide terrorism as they ever more desperately blame their own disfunction on the West, the author of all ills? Wait for the demographic bomb, those 150 million Arab younsters with no job and no hope, to flood into Europe or join Al Qaeda? Watch the autocrats start more wars, attempting to kill off the dangerous bulge of unemployed young men? Action has its costs. So does inaction.