No. The whole operation is organized by Liechtenstein and the other countries only offered their support and joined the coalition of the willing due to important geostrategical considerations, political pressures from Aloïs III and vital trade relationship with the principalty. What makes this scenario implausible in your mind?
Your third sentence is accurate. Your first two are nonsense. The Arab-Islamic governmental failures are not indigenous; they are a direct result of the several hundred years of imperial meddling by the Turks, Brits, and French (with a touch of the Italians). The economic problems are also not directly of their own creation; the land was either played out with excessive irrigation or has been overcome by natural desert over the period of a few thousand years.
Standing around saying “It is all their own fault” displays ignorance on a massive scale.
There is no particular reason to believe that it will take direct miitary action to do this. I love how some folks seem to think that military action is required in places that either have no power to affeect us (Central America) or have raw materials that we desire (M.E.N.A.), but thinks that some sort of on-going diplomatic and economic interaction is more appropriate when nations can defend themselves and have markets we wish to exploit rather than materials (China, Russia).
If this had any scintilla of truth or accuracy, we’d have invested about half of we we have wasted in Iraq trying to actually build Afghanistan. Iraq was no more an example of “Islamic fascism” than Mississippi (at least prior to our benighted intervention that replaced a firm secular monster with religious chaos, turning that country’s borders to Swiss cheese and inviting every fanatic Muslim in the world to come play there).
Can we have the Dutchy of Grand Fenwick organize it, at least?
While I agree that poor land management makes those nations in the Middle East difficult to grow food on, proper land management and land reclaiming techniques would be of great benefit.
Taiwan was a fishing village until about 60 years ago. Now it’s a thriving metropolis, albeit a small one. Stable economy, with a mostly stable government.
Poland had been colonized, disected, parcelled out and otherwise shat upon for most of the last 500 years. In some times, Poland ceased to exist entirely. Now, a stable nation, with secure borders and a growing economy.
South Korea, Germany, the region of the Greek/Turkish border… all places where colonialism and imperialism all disrupted the “natural” growth of the nation-state for a while.
Now all quiet (mostly) and stable, with growing economies.
Iran is a festering sore of Religious hate and extremism because the people in charge have their heads stuck in the 1600’s. Iraq was a festering sore because the guy that ran the country was a lunatic who had invaded (for whatever reason, and I’d like to not get into the “the US said it was ok” fight at this time, thanks) two of his neighbors within 20 years. Saudi Arabia is a festering sore, though not openly oozing at this time, because it is run by an elitist group of mysoginist bigots with their heads, again, stuck in the 1600’s.
Lebanon
Palestine/Israel (on both sides there… no one is the “good guy” anymore)
Libya (though that one may get better)
While it’s understandable to state that these nations had some issues because of colonialism and imperialism, they’ve all had between 30-50 years to get it figured out, same as Poland, South Korea and other nations throughout the world. Romania, the Czech Republic, Eastern Germany… all stable, growing nations with few if any of the problems plauging the Islamic Arab world.
While I agree that the contributions of the Muslim world have been great in the past, that time appears to be over and the Muslim world retreats into a world of paranoia and hate. You can’t blame the West for everything.
/hijack
Taiwan is very much a product of massive amounts of aid (and some oversight) from the U.S.
Poland disappeared as a nation, but never disappeared as an entity. Beyond that, the U.S.S.R. actually ensured that it existed as a state throughout its hegemonic rule, and poured aid into it, as well.
Korea was a recognizable entity for hundreds of years, disrupted for fewer than fifty years (and still kept as an entity) by Japan, then re-organized and massively supported by the U.S. and China for the last nearly 60 years.
Germany was created from states surrounded by other states moving toward representative governments and after WWII, it was massively supported by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
Each of those countries, even as puppets, operated under ostensibly representative governments, establishing a tradition which made it easier for truly representative governments to succeed them.
In contrast, few of the M.E.N.A. nations had any existence as separate entities prior to the post-WWI cut-and-paste create-a-state situation and nearly all were handed to oligarchies, monarchies, and plutocracies by the colonial powers. The one state that actually has a tradition of some stability is Iran–which, of course, is not Arabic and, tragically, is the one nation for which the U.S. does share significant blame for its current condition. The rest of the region has not been harmed by the U.S. so much as ignored.
I am well aware that most of the continuing problems of much of the region are government inflicted, but since the governments tend to not be representative, the fact that they survive with direct outside support places a certain level of blame on the outsiders who continue to support the cliques that rule them. Making the claim that their problems are due to “their” failures is disingenuous, at best.
The point was to encourage debate, to find out what people here felt if they were in a similar situation to the people of Iraq. And, to a great extent, to try to get a handle on the motivation of the insurgents. I think that it is simplistic to think of them as religious nutjobs. I guess I pissed a lot of folks off with the OP, and that certainly wasn’t the reason that I posted, or I would have posted in the Pit. And yeah, it was a fantastic (as in fantasy) scenario, but the intent was to have people try to imagine the situation faced by a person in a country where we are an occupying force.
The death count of Americans in Iraq is over 2,000, and that number increases every day. Folks on this board have been (or are) in Iraq, and are in danger just by being there. We all want them to come back, and no one wishes them anything but a safe and boring tour of duty. The chief danger to their well-being is from insurgents, whether through suicide bombers or by Improvised Explosive Devices, or whatever mayhem they may think of next. It didn’t seem to be unpatriotic or stupid to me to try to envision what an insurgent might be feeling. It might shed some light on what is necessary to protect our troops from further harm.
For myself: If faced with foreign occupiers, I could definitely see myself up on a rooftop with a rifle. And this from a person who has never initiated a fight, or has shot anything other a .22 rifle at a paper target.
It’s probably clear to those on this board that I have no respect for GWBush, the man. I think that he is the worst president within my lifetime, and he is part and parcel of a power group that will savage and destroy anyone who stands between them and their goals. I look with mingled horror and disgust at what he has done to this country during his tenure, and dread what he would do if left unchecked.
But, if another country came here to tell us how to do things better, even if they were able to do so I’d do my best to send them packing. And if it came to another hypothetical situation (and I can’t believe that I am saying this :rolleyes: ), I might even put myself between Bush and a bullet. The love of one’s native land is a powerful one, and the office of the President personifies that. Poorly, in the current case, but nevertheless… With GW, I guess it’s a case of “He may be a fool, but he’s our fool.” I can’t imagine any situation where I would tolerate a foreign power coming here and telling our country how to run our government. Saddam Hussein was clearly a despicable and sadistic dictator, but he was their despicable and sadistic dictator. And, as of now, we haven’t exactly proven ourselves to be wise and benevolent occupiers, so maybe folks are wondering where the advantages are to our occupation.
Here’s a simpler analogy: You may have given your kid brother a dope slap on the back of the head when you were younger, or made disparaging comments about your parents. But if you saw an older kid down the street hitting your brother, or heard him making comments about your parents, how would you take it? Even if he might have been correct, you would probably have your fists up, wouldn’t you?
Thinking along these lines, there is only one thing an occupying force could say that would talk me off that rooftop. “Goodbye.” There is no way that I could accept a non-American forcing me what to do in my own country.
Applying this reasoning to the current situation in Iraq, I believe that the strongest motivation to their insurgency is that America is there. Theirs is a proud nation, with a culture that goes back as far as recorded history. They can hardly be considered to be backward or unintelligent or unlearned. We have declared war upon not only their country, but their culture as well. I think that we are seeing the reaction of a people who fear their assimilation into a culture (ours) that they do not embrace.
For me, the analogy with an occupied America may break down with the bombers killing innocent women and children. While I can recognize that they feel that the continual death of Americans will eventually sicken us and cause us to lose our resolve, I have never understood how any terrorist believed that killing innocent people - their own people – would further their cause. Using the occupied America scenario, I can only think of one way that Americans could conceive of killing fellow Americans in time of occupation, and that would be if they thought of them as collaborators. But, I have never understood the terrorist motivation, and I still can’t understand what motivated McVeigh. If anyone could answer, please enlighten me. I think that this motivation is another one in the consideration of the insurgency.
How many are dead now in Iraq? Hard to document, but I’ve read that it is over 100,000. I also read a statistic where something like one family in six has lost a family member. How would you feel if a member of your family was killed in a bombing raid that was intended to bring peace? Bin Laden has said that part of his hatred of the US stemmed from American presence on his sacred land. How many seeds of hatred have we sowed by the deaths of innocent men and women, whose children will grow up hating America? Right now, the insurgency is being fueled by Anti-American fervor, and by those who see a vacuum that can be filled.
If the anti-American motivation is what is behind the insurgency, as I think, then it really seems to come down to two choices:
We get out as soon as we can, and subsidize the rebuilding with as little presence as possible, or we plan to be there for a very, very long time until all insurgency is driven into the ground. I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime. I think that the former is much more likely. While it is not exactly analogous to what we have in Iraq, the only way that we stopped the American deaths in Vietnam was when we left.
I think that it is simplistic to say that it is only Sunnis that are the insurgents here. I’d agree that it may have started that way, but it is also fueled by outsiders coming across the borders, and by those in Iraq who are disillusioned with the entire American presence.
Except that your OP did not posit such a thing. The analogy to make, if you felt you needed to, was a dystopian America that had long been ruled by a cruel dictator, facing invasion by a democratic nation that did in fact have a history of leaving the nations in conquered freer and better than they were before.
Simply assuming that the circustances are equal whenever one nation invades another is facile.
No one has said that “trying to envision what an insurgent might be feeling” is a bad thing. The point is that the question asked in your OP is a poor way of going about it.
That’s fine; some of us are less nationalistic.
And that’s your error. Applying your own logic to a situation and assuming others will share it – regardless of cultural, religious, and other differences – is a silly thing to do. Indeed, you could make the ironic case that this is exactly the same error that the Bush Administration has made in Iraq.
May I take it that the Perfect Master’s column is also “nonsense,” or is “respectfully disagree” enough? 
And Israel Tom? Granted they have also received a lot of aid from the US (of course, several of the other nations received fairly substantial aid from the old Soviets)…but then, they also don’t have all that oil. What of them and their ability to use seemingly the same land yet to much more productive purpose?
-XT
You should have come right out and asked this question then. The problem is that the two situations aren’t really comparable. If the US was occupied by some chance it wouldn’t be the same as occupation of Iraq for myriad reasons. For one, a minority religious/tribal faction hasn’t held the whip hand over the majority of citizens for decades. Our country wasn’t kludged together by our Euro pals after the wreck of an earlier empire…nor is it made up of myriad tribal factions that have been at each others throats for literally centuries. There isn’t tribal and religious strife in the US that would lead to one group of citizens feeling duty bound to wack the other in horrible ways. Nor is it likely that fanatics from Canada or Mexico will come down during the invasion and try and keep the US from becoming a democracy again…and use any and all means to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Its YOU who are over simplifying things in Iraq to try and equate them to a hypothetical invasion of the US. No, they aren’t all ‘religious wack jobs’, nor is religion the only (or maybe even the prime) motivation for the insurgents (nor are all the ‘insurgents’ even on the same page as far as who or why they are fighting). If the US was invaded pretty much all the citizens who chose to fight would be fighting the invaders, and the reason we’d be fighting would be because we were invaded. This isn’t the case in Iraq. In case you haven’t been following along various ‘insurgents’ are as apt to kill off each other as they are to attack US or British troops…and this does’t even get into FOREIGN insurgents who are there for a whole other set of reasons (they aren’t necessarily ‘religious wack jobs’ either, having a separate agenda that only touches on religion).
-XT
Bolding mine.
:dubious: Um, furt, are you serious? Are you implying that countries that the US has “conquered” are better than they were because of our military action?
WWI Germany: Well, you can’t have this if you also want WWII Germany, because the economic troubles of post-WWI Germany eventually gave rise to the Third Reich.
WWII Germany: Possibly, if we ignore the fact that the country was carved up soon after the war as if it were spoils. I seem to remember a wall. The Western side did fairly well. Nothing on the Eastern side of that wall was different pre-cold war than the Western side, but it can hardly be pointed to afterwards as an example of being freer and better. Guess that was their tough luck.
WWII Japan: Nothing that a few bombs couldn’t solve. Who knows, with the current administration’s “no holds barred” approach, that could be in the cards for the mid-East. Post war Japan did very well as it industrialized, but then again, I don’t think that anyone would argue that it was a particularly oppressive government immediately pre-war, or in fact since feudalism had faded away. Our conquering Japan had to do with Pearl Harbor, not an attempt to replace their government.
WWII Italy: I’d accept this. With Mussolini out, free speech returned, and the country returned to be a nation of cantankerous, outspoken, opinionated, loudmouthed people. IOW, our kind of people.
Korea: Okay, we’ve learned from Germany. Why build a wall when you can have a no man’s zone chock full of land mines, and an eternal military presence? I guess we conquered half a country, and haven’t done anything about the other half for fifty years.
Vietnam: I can comment on this, but I don’t think I need to.
Bosnia/Yugoslavia/etc: What peace was won there came after most of the “ethnic cleansing” was done, leaving the Muslim world with the impression that the Western world had little value for Muslim lives. If you want to argue that it is better now, then I would argue that the most peaceful it has been for hundreds of years was under an oppressive Communist rule.
furt, I’ve enjoyed our discussions in the past, and I suspect that I must be misinterpreting your comment, although I can’t see how. I’m happy to give you a mulligan on this one if you like, because I think that your comment may be the facile one.
And therefore?
My comment was noting that violation of one’s land, of one’s freedom, of one’s family can turn even previously non-violent people to consider violence.
And I would say that family and the territorial imperative are some of the most basic and primal emotions that a human being can possess. To *not * consider this is the error that the Bush administration has made, and to assume that these are emotions not felt by the Iraqi people is to consider them to be less than human.
To avoid making you uncomfortable? Not my job.
I posited an incorrectly perceived transgression, escalating tensions, economic sanctions, military skirmishes, coalition forces, an invasion and occupying troops. Sorry to ruffle your feathers.
Perhaps, but I sincerely doubt it. See my comments above to **furt ** with respect to family, national pride, love of the land. I think that these emotions are equally powerful in any country in the world.
Not to step into your discussion with tomndebb, but you mentioned Israel and that is a perfect example. If the desire for democracy trumps everything, then why don’t the Palestinians just assimilate themselves in the one real example of democracy in the mid-East? I would say that it is because their love of the land is a powerful one, and they can not forgive Israel taking what they feel is theirs.
I’m not furt, but I think that is what he is saying. If he doesn’t say it, I do.
Countries conquered by the US in the twentieth century are better off because we conquered them.
Your counter-examples are not very compelling:
Not sure what you mean here - I would not say that post-WWI Germany was conquered by the US, exactly. Read up a bit on what Wilson wanted for Germany vs. what the French and British wanted, and I think the difference will become apparent. And I don’t exactly see how the Great Depression was caused by the US conquering the Kaiser, if that is what you are saying.
Again, I don’t see your point. We are not talking how badly the parts of Germany conquered by the USSR did; we were talking about the US. I would say the marked contrast between the Wirtswunderschaft of West Germany vs. the stagnation of the East is evidence in favor of furt’s assertion, not a disproof of it. Is that what you meant?
You think we are going to nuke the Middle East? I rather doubt it, but still, this does not address the point.
I think the people of China and the rest of the members of the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’ would disagree with you on the benign nature of the Japanese under Tojo.
Again, I don’t see your point. In what sense did we conquer South Korea, and why does the fact that the South has been more prosperous by an order of magnitude or so than the North act as a counter-example?
Not unless you include something about the killing fields in Cambodia.
I don’t see that the US has conquered Serbia or the former Yugoslavia. Is that what you are suggesting?
And which of the examples you cited are of previously peaceful and non-violent nations turning to violence as a response to US aggression? Nazi Germany? The Serbs? Imperial Japan? Mussolini?
I’m not sure where you got the notion that “the desire for democracy trumps everything”, so I couldn’t comment on that. But I suspect that a “desire for democracy” in the modern sense has little to do with Palestinian hatred of Israel. I suspect that, in many instances, and especially in the case of the terrorists responsible for most of the attacks on Israeli civiliians, their “love for the land” is mostly a desire to kill all the Israelis and seize their land.
If that is what you mean, I agree, but it has nothing to do with the US conquering anybody.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan has already pretty much taken care of your examples. I’ll make a few comments of my own however.
The list of countries the US has conquered is pretty small. Japan, Germany and Iraq. I suppose you could list Italy, though they surrendered conditionally IIRC. Of those you could only make a serious case that they are worse off after the invasion than before in Iraq…and really you are going to have to wait a decade or so to really know for sure. Bit too early to tell right now.
Germany wasn’t conquered in WWI…there was an armistice (cease fire) and Germany was forced (by our Euro buddies) to pay reparations. As Shodan said, you might want to look up what the US plans were for Germany…and how they differed with what Britian and France actually imposed.
Well, since the Soviets arguably were the ones to conquere Germany, what did you expect? Besides, the side the US/Britian occupied did pretty well…hell of a lot better than before the war. So, I don’t see how this arguement by you is very compelling to make your point.
The US didn’t actually conquere Italy. Mussolini was overthrown internally by his own people (remember pictures of ole Benni and his babe hung from lamp posts?).
The US didn’t conquere Korea. You might notice that there is still a North Korea today? Lil Kimmy and his merry band? Millions starving? We didn’t conquere South Korea either…it was liberated from the Japanese, who DID conquere it.
The US didn’t conquere Vietnam either. Sorry but you aren’t really scoring many points here. You might have noticed that their IS no South Vietnam today…because IT was conquered by the North. We didn’t conquere South Vietnam either. Again, it was liberated from the Japanese, who DID conquere it.
If you are talking about the North/South split in both instances you really should do some research to find out why they were initially split that way (same with East/West Germany and many of the countries behind the Iron Curtain)…and how this was supposed to be temporary when agreed upon.
Talk to your Euro buddies…that was their war. The US didn’t conquere them in any case. NATO did, if anyone.
Well, no. I wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d say a better reason would be to be honest and up front. When you have a political axe to grind, best to do it up front.
I don’t see how your comments to furt makes the case that you weren’t oversimplifying.
-XT
I’m gonna have to call BS on this one. America didn’t just “ignore” Middle-East states. We have supported the Saudi Regime since the 70s. We’ve been a pretty staunch supporter of Israel for a while, and we have been meddling with Iraq since the late 50s under Qasim. We helped Osama bin Laden carve out his legendary status, and helped him to build the network that is now Al Qaeda in the 80s.
The CIA hired Hussein to assassinate Qasim in 59, he failed. We helped bring Saddam to power. In the 80s the Reagan administration was selling weapons to both sides. We sold Saddam the chemical weapons he gassed the kurds with. We sold Saddam a good deal more weapons than we sold Iran. We could have stopped the invasion of Kuwait diplomatically by telling the Kuwaitis to stop slant drilling under the Iraqi border, and telling Saddam to cool his heals. Saddam was a tyrant down the chain, but up the chain he was pretty docile. We always had Saddam pretty well under our control until Desert Shield. Sanctions on Iraq caused wide-spread starvation. The Bush family’s connections to the Saudis and Kuwaitis formed a lot of our foreign policy for the past 25 years.
We didn’t ignore the middle-east by any stretch of the imagination. Middle-East meddling was a pretty central theme of cold war policy.
Erek
Yep, I am.
Shodan and Xtisme have made most of my points for me, but …
As Shodan has pointed out, the draconian punitive sanctions that ended up leading to WWII were imposed by the European members of the Allies *in spite * of US objections. Score one point for unilateralism; they’d have been better off if it had been the US invading, not “the Allies.”
The part that the US conquered (as opposed to the part Russia conquered) was unquestionably better off a decade after WW2 than they were a decade before it. It’s absurd to assert otherwise.
It’s very unlikely Japan’s economic boom would have happened without the massive cultural changes that the US occupation caused (which included such things as women’s rights). Also, I think the Manchurians, the Taiwanese, the Malaysians and the rest were mildly pleased to have the Japanese gone.
You can’t possibly be of the opinion that South Korea – the part we recaptured from the Communists – would have been better off if the US hadn’t retaken it.
We lost. I might argue that the Vietnamese would have been better off if we had beaten the North (as my Vietnamese freinds say they would), but the fact is we didn’t, so it’s a moot point.
Ditto. We didn’t conquer anything.
Two more:
The Phillipines. There is a reason that Filipinos by and large like the US: it’s because we are seen as the ones who kicked out the Spanish and eventually gave them their independance.
The Confederate States of America. No explanation necessary, I trust.
You’d have better luck picking one of the various Caribbean islands where we’ve gotten involved; I think you could probably make the case that Haiti would have been/would now be better off had US troops never once darkened their door. And of course the Native Americans have cause to complain, to put it mildly.
Nevertheless, for the last century, successful invasion by US has left the conquered better off than they were beforehand.
Yes it may; and dictatorial regimes such as Saddam’s do all three, which is why some people considered violence against him.
I think the sentiment that says one should accept an oppressive regime simply because the oppressor is “one of us” – and reject an invader *for no other reason *than that he is a foreigner – is essentially a nationalistic/tribal one. That isn’t to deny that many people are, in fact, nationalistic or tribal, both here in the US and most certainly in Iraq.
However, not everyone puts that sort of “my country right or wrong” nationalism above their committment to freedom, democracy, and self-government (to say nothing of raw self-interest). Hence the responses you see here from people saying that under similar circumstances to Iraq they might indeed welsome invasion.
I agree.
However, I think it is at least equally dehumanizing, and arguably more, to assume that Iraqis do not have emotions other than tribalism: e.g. a desire for freedom of conscience, for self-governance, for rule of law, for economic prosperity. All of those things are far more likely to come about under the US or a US-installed government than under Saddam.
Which set of desires wins the day in the breast of the average Iraqi? I really have no idea, and doubt that anyone here does either. However, I do know which ones I want to win.
However, with the exception of Iran–that I noted–most of the things you are addressing occurred subsequent to the 1960s when the formations and directions of those countries were already well established. Aside from contributing significantly to the destruction of Lebannon, U.S. policy in the Middle East had far less effect on the shape of existing countries (either regarding their borders and constituent peoples or their forms of government) than did the earlier interventions by European powers. Even if your claim was significant, it would support rather than undermine my basic thesis that the M.E.N.A. region has a history significantly different than that of Soviet dominated Europe.
I think the point is that they have gone backward from those days rather than forward. Well, not all of them. The Arab religious right, though, that’s backward by definition.