Zorlond wrote:Stating dissent does have valid purpose. It tells those in charge that we're not satisfied with their choices. Enough dissent, and they better start looking at other options. Or start looking for new jobs.
As for a real solution, only two rough plans come to mind. One, we go in and actively build up their economy. Technology, factories, workers, whatever it takes to bring their economical power to something closer to our own. They hate us for our riches, don't they? If we actively aid them in making their own riches, that hatred may be at least lessened. Probably unworkable (and potentially dangerous), but it's something.
Two, very obviously unworkable, would be to throw them all into ReEducation Camps and teach them how civilized people behave, that you don't hack people up for things that happened centuries ago, that you don't fight to the death over a hunk of land that has no intrinsic value whatsoever (we're talking not even grass, here), and that you don't butcher people just because you're in pain and you want them to be in pain too.
Does stating these plans help at all? Not really......
It ain't that they're poor, Zorlond- remember, Bin Laden, along with a large number of his Lieutenants, (including most of the hijackers that executed the 9/11 murder-suicide) came from families that, by american standards, were fairly well-to-do. Most of the leaders and backers of these groups, are better off financially than they are made out to be. One of the main reasons why the bulk of the Middle-east has populations that are so poor, is that their culture, fundamentally, rejects the values that enable an industrial, western-style Civilization to flourish- Open discussion, for instance, the application of pragmatic and practical over the dogmatic, when applying solutions... Their poverty in relation to the West is, when you get down to it, their own fault- they still want it to be 1053 A.D., they want to have their Clan Feuds, their Religious leaders controlling their governing bodies, etc, etc. Meanwhile, they also hunger for the fruits of the Western ethic- Telephones, automobiles, modern medicine, air conditioning and central heat, advanced military hardware that works... you get the idea. This is the split that confuses most western observers- that our most virulent opposition in these places is led by those who have benefitted most from our efforts, while the bodies they sacrifice are those they claim to be serving. What's funny is, we could dispose of our dependence on their oil tomorrow by running a pipeline from Siberia to Europe- there are oil fields in central asia that make the Middle-east look like a dry hole. Back in 1990, we fought the gulf war, not to ensure a flow to the United States, but, to ensure the flow of oil to Europe. The U.S. has access in N. America to enough domestically produced oil to feed our needs for the next 300 years or so, based on current growth projections. Most of our oil-fields have been "Capped", the holes filled with Cement, and the fields themselves set aside. (this doesn't even go into the processing of Oil-Shale, and the "Hydration" of Coal into oil, both technologies that have matured in the last 50 years.) We import some 15% of our energy supplies, and, most of that from Canada and Mexico, not Southwest Asia. But... We invest multibillions in the Middle East every year- everything from Desalination plants, Factories, and, media outlets, to Military Force. Why? Most of the Oil Companies are Partially to wholly owned by American companies, and, OPEC nations contribute huge amounts to both of our major Political Parties to ensure a friendly regulatory environment for their products.
That's right-
BOTH PARTIES.
This is the reason that, in 1990, both Dick Gephardt, and, Bob Dole, were in favour of the Gulf War. It's also why we stopped short of removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, a move that insured that several thousands of Kurdish villagers would get to learn to breathe VX and Sarin gas. This may also explain why our State Department looks the other way when American Citizens are held against their will inside the borders of our so-called 'Allies', not because they're criminals, mind, but, because their mothers had the poor taste to be married to a Saudi, and, then, to get a divorce. We also tend to turn a blind eye towards other despicable practices- Slavery is alive and well in the Middle-East, along with a large variety of other "Medieval fun stuff" that our ancestors disposed of some time ago.
These are not things you can "Re-Educate" out of that region, they're not things that you can solve by pumping yet more billion$ into their economies, or, by capital investiment in their infrastructure. "Understanding" them won't help, and, if you give 'em what they want, they will hate you even more, because no matter how much you pump in (and, between us, the Brits, and, the global market, that's a
lot of investing), the undercurrent is, that they are unable to build it for themselves, no matter how many of their sons they send to our technical schools. It isn't that the individual people aren't capable, it's that the culture is, at its core, opposed to Logic, and, to logical approaches. This is why, after more than 6000 years of Civilization, the region has gone from being the cradle of civilization, to being the dependent Vassal-States of whatever empire is dominant- a state of being that has existed, off and on, since the Romans.
What is even more disheartening, is that this is the same region that produced so many of the very same reason-based approaches we have used so successfully. Once, during Islam's heyday (Shortly after Mohammed's Empire was formed), the region was host to learning, while our ancestors shivered under the thumb of the Church. The Islamic Empire was a bastion of Learning and philosophy- a far cry from the fundamentalist psychosis that it is infected with now, it was a shining beacon of sanity in a world gone mad with the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Sometime between then, and, the first Crusade, that changed. When it did, they tried to make time stand still- and, in doing so, made themselves dependent on nations that accepted change. They became brittle, rigid, inflexible. This is why they are now The Third World- and, it is why they hate us. Y'see, they hated the Turks, first, then, when the Turks went away, they hated the British- who'd
made the Turks go away, built railroads, gave 'em electrical power, running water, and, the tools to administer themselves. After the British empire collapsed, we were dragged in as the replacement evil for them to hate. Why? because, like or not, we are the only functioning Global Empire left- though, unlike the preceeding ones, we do not attempt to control our clients openly or directly. Most Americans aren't comfortable with the role of Global peacekeepers- we're stuck with it, though, because we won the Cold War, or, maybe, because we inherited it from the english along with our language. Whatever the cause, we are stuck with problems that, in the end, were caused by other people before us- the most recent one being the formation of Israel, something done by Europe from British-Held Palestine in 1948, an act that happened because the Powers that won the second world war were horrified at what the Nazis had done, and, felt guilty enough to do it.
WE did not support Israel openly until the late 1950's, we didn't send them our top-of the line stuff until much later than that- they fought the 1967 war with surplus M-4 Shermans they'd rebuilt, Second-World-War machines against the Soviet Line tanks of the time. Now, it's a relationship that we can't afford to get out of- we've tied Moral Capital into it, made statements we can't afford to back out of, and, efforts towards peace that did not work because the hatreds go back so far that they are invisibly tied to the national identities of the players in the region.
What I am trying to get across, is that it isn't about who's poor, who's rich, or, who's right or wrong- it's a conflict between the Old ways of Heart over mind, and, the new ways, of mind over matter. Our culture is Egalitarian, because our culture is focused on
Logic,and,
Reason. This drives them crazy- because it is also the fundamental reason we are better at War than they are- and, in that place, at least, being good at War is considered to be a hallmark of masculinity. We show them all that they have failed to achieve, by our very existence. It isn't "How can they hate us?" it's "How can they
NOT hate us?"
They have thousands of years of continuous Civilization, yet, they cannot get their act together without outside help.
