"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote in
:
"Nate Perkins"
Instead of flexing our military muscle in the Middle East, we would
be better off to exercise some of the other tools in our toolbox.
Economic incentives, for one. Cultivate economic development and
mutual trade with the moderate countries in the Middle East.
Prosperity and economic development are bigger promoters of democracy
than military might is.
How much oil do we need to buy before you consider it cultivating
economic development? And wasn't Iraq sanctioned by the UN for
10 years or more? That seems like a big incentive to me.
Sure, the developed world buys lots of oil from the Middle East. But
the wealth created by the oil goes to relatively few, and lots of it
goes to buy arms. Unemployment is high, the workforce is largely
uneducated, and the sustainable industry is nearly nonexistent through
much of the Middle East. The entire Middle East has not joined the
globalized economy, and that increases the volatility of the entire
region and creates a division between the globalized economies and the
Middle East.
Here's a study and plan on the topic by Sen Richard Lugar, a prominent
Republican senator from Indiana:
http://lugar.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=219740
I agree with most of what he has to say on this topic. I think if the
neoconservatives started thinking about a more comprehensive approach,
such as the one advocated by Lugar, then our chances of success would be
much greater.
Close our bases in Saudi Arabia. Those just give the Al Qaeda types
fuel for their fire, and it does little for us in a practical
military sense. Move them all to Qatar or elsewhere.
Is that what the Saudis want? Aren't we protecting them from
a hostile take over?
Our bases in Saudi Arabia are to give us a strategic base in the Persian
Gulf.
I don't see by what reasoning do you believe our airbases in Arabia are
protecting the Saudi government, particularly against Wahhabi
revolutionary forces.
And how are our strategic needs diminished if the bases are in Bahrain
or Qatar instead of in Arabia?
Stop our one-sided support for the Israelis. Use the threat of
withdrawing our foreign aid from Israel to force them into ceasing
settlement expansion. Promote an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on
mutual recognition and the 1967 boundaries. The Arab-Israeli
conflict has been the centerpoint of terrorism in the Middle East for
decades, and our recent work to promote Mideast peace has been
window-dressing at best.
Nonsense. Arafat had 95 percent of what he asked for. He wanted
the elimination of Israel, not co-operation. Even with Israel gone we
would still have terrorists because the extremists hate western
culture, what our freedoms have introduced into the world.
Sure, you'd still have some terrorists. You'd just have fewer of them.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been screwing up political
stability in the Middle East for decades. That has consequences for our
security, especially when we are seen through most of the Middle East as
being primarily sympathetic to Israeli causes.
And of course we should try to make sure another attack doesn't
happen in America again. Fundamental to that is to look critically
at why the first attack was allowed to happen. Frankly a lot of the
administration and a lot of the government agencies were all asleep
at the wheel. Frankly a lot of them are still miscommunicating and
acting inefficiently in this regard.
Hindsight is 20/20 but I think they got the hint.
Do you think homeland security has really improved all that much? I
would like to think they have, but the FBI and CIA are still under
separate leadership, and Homeland Security seems to have done little of
real practical significance. Our borders are still as porous as ever,
our freight containers are still not inspected, obvious targets like
chemical plants are still poorly protected, etc etc. Seems to me like
we ought to be doing better.
I think your implication is that by fighting them over there, we can
avoid fighting them over here. I think this is a bad assumption.
Really, it only took 19 of them to do the 9/11 attacks.
Not true. They had quite a bit of training and support from entities
that are out of business or on the run.
The point is that the Pentagon now numbers the insurgency in Iraq in the
tens of thousands and growing. And 9/11 was conducted by relatively few
attackers. So it is not a question of fighting them there or here ...
if we are unfortunate it could be both.
Don't you
suppose that they can fight us with a few tens of thousands over
there and still find a way to send another 19 here?
I didn't see any solutions from you except spend money in the mideast
and turn support away from Israel. I don't think you understand what
they want. The extremist don't want to live peacefully with the west
and they'll keep the moderates from it if they can.
It's a long range war and (particularly given our current committment
and previous actions) you can't just wave a wand and make it all better.
But you have to start to do things that increase your odds of success by
using economic and political tools as well as military tools. It's a
lot easier to steer a country to democracy over time by investing in
industry that promotes mutually profitable trade, employment, and
stability than it is to try to rapidly democratize a country at the
point of a gun.