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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (163317)	5/31/2005 12:57:17 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hello Hawk, I hope you've got an air conditioned place to work over there. I read your post with interest. I know you've consistently been a war proponent but I note that your recent posts have focused on pragmatic concerns about what America can accomplish in the middle east. It seems that if we put away all of the "plant the seed of freedom and it will sprout into a mighty tree" magical thinking, the facts on the ground are that we are dealing with a lack of institutions that will support our goals for their government, a dearth of cultural values that readily support the type of democracy we are trying to instill and the existence of powerful theocratic influences that are dogmatic in nature and, if inflamed, will create havoc. When we consider the additional facts that many Iraqis have a personal connection to someone who was killed by American action in Iraq, and many others are outraged at what they see as lawlessness on the part of our armed forces that man roadblocks and break down doors, what is it that we bring to the table other than serving as a buffer between the various factions that will eventually have to fight it out or compromise to create stability? And, as you point out, with the fully bureaucratic nature of the institutions we're trying to utilize to do the job and the lack of leadership they're receiving, our efforts are many times inefficient and impotent. In the meantime our soldiers are, of course, wearing bulleyes on their uniforms for anyone trying to make a statement, trying to drive us out, following radical jihadist doctrine in the name of Islam or simply trying to make a name for themselves. And in the next year, or the next, or the next ten years, will that likely change absent some kind of cataclysmic violence that creates a rejection of the bloodletting among the majority of the fighting population? I don't think so. I think we're just keeping the lid on the pressure cooker while the pressure continues to build and it's our own young men and women who are cooking in the pot. Finally, you write; "The reality is that CORRUPT AND VIOLENT MUSLIM CLERICS are inflaming the tensions, not the US....That's who is doing the inflaming. And they must be the targets that we focus upon because they are ones who are recruiting the youth of the middle east to wage Jihad for their own cynical and totalitarian agenda." First, I think the chicken and egg argument about who's doing the inflaming is fruitless. If you believe that one side should accept the other's point of view then, of course, you'll believe that side is doing the inflaming but it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that each side is unwilling to live with the other's actions. That makes it a conflict. Second, and more importantly, do you really believe that the U.S. can intervene in the middle east and somehow take on what you characterize as "violent Muslim clerics" without engaging in a bloody and protracted struggle that would incite most Muslims to take up arms and create damage to us wherever possible? It seems to me that if those "violent Muslim Clerics" are not tossed out by their followers, then we certainly won't be able to, as you say, make them "the targets" without creating more harm than we can handle. And if we could endure the blood letting and the cost of that monumental endeavor, for what overall purpose are we now trying to "save them from themselves?" Why not just let them find that the cure for radicalism is a few decades of radical rule? The Iranians were well on their way to achieving that understanding before we stuck our rifle barrels in their noses. The actions we're taking in Iraq are, as the Bush people are belatedly realizing, creating more skilled and committed terrorists than the world has ever seen and in a few years I suspect the families of the dead "heroes" from Iraq will be asking "WHY?" So yes, let's give them a leaving date and the get the family out of town. I don't care that we didn't accomplish the lofty goals paraded at various times to justify the lives lost and hundreds of billions spent, I do care that we recognize the limits of what we can do with respect to attempting to intervene in the affairs of a sovereign nation and that we stop running the heads of our young into that brick wall. In the meantime, I don't know how much you travel over there but I hope you're able to keep your own head down. Good luck. Ed