On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 06:04:44PM -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 04:55:01PM -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/landesman.htm > That understanding implies that some tactics - appeasement - will not > work, while others - resolve - might. This sounds like Sharon's strategy. Doesn't seem to be working yet. Me: But the Palestinians believe (correctly, I fear) that Israel will be forced eventually to give up what it requires for its security, and then they can destroy it. They believe, in other words, that if they continue on, Israel will be forced by a world community that does not care to distinguish between terrorists and victims (as long as the victims are Jewish, of course) to sacrifice itself on the altar of moral equivalence. Israel does not have the option of acting as we can. Me: > But it's not one that people who ask that question usually like. It > suggests that changes in policies (most of which shouldn't be changed > anyways, but let's ignore that for the moment) won't help. This isn't > about poverty, Erik: "....There is no future here, and we need to start over. So many people think this. Have you been to the villages of Pakistan, the interior? There is nothing but dire poverty and pain. The children have no education; there is nothing to look forward to. Go into the villages, see the poverty. There is no drinking water. Small children without shoes walk miles for a drink of water. I go to the villages and I want to cry. My children have no future. None of the children of Pakistan have a future. We are surrounded by nothing but war and suffering. Millions should die away." Me: But India, oddly enough without the benefit of billions of dollars of American aid, doesn't look like that, does it? Not at all. All of that is an excuse, anyways, since the people in Pakistan who are actually terrorists are not actually poor. It's the Pakistani middle class and elites, as it is in the Middle East, who most support terrorism. So this is an excuse. Those small children aren't the terrorists. For that matter, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Does anyone think that _poverty_ is the biggest problem facing Saudi Arabia? Of course not. Something much, much more important is at work here. > It's about hatred and evil and the worst parts of human nature, parts > that cannot be satiated, only defeated. _Knowing that_ we can move > on. But first we have to accept that fact. >From the article, it sounds like a great deal has to do with poverty. While most of these causes of poverty cannot be fairly blamed on India nor the Western world, when people are suffering they look for a scapegoat. If the poverty were less, or if the Western world were to offer more help to alleviate the poverty, then perhaps the hatred could be reduced. I don't see a clear path of "resolve" accomplishing much against a foe with nuclear weapons and the despearation to believe they have nothing to lose in a nuclear war. "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/ Me: Resolve means making sure that they don't get nuclear weapons, and taking them away if they get them and seem to threaten us. The suicide bombers don't do what they do out of desperation. They do it because they think they will win. They think that they can get the American people to surrender, to give up, to allow them to establish their religious tyrannies. They think, in other words, that they can break our will. Resolve will demonstrate that they cannot. We have already taken a large step - we were attacked, and we did not launch a few cruise missiles. We didn't dispatch the FBI, as Clinton so often and so idiotically did. We didn't arm wave about how we deserved what had happened to us. We annihiliated the government that was most directly responsible for the attack. If we are attacked again, we should do so again. Topple Saddam and we demonstrate further that we are not going away. That there are no rewards to terrorism - that, in fact, any organization that attacks us will be destroyed. Do that and the terrorism will stop. Let it get itself a governmental organization supported by European money - as we sadly forced the Israelis to do with the PLO - and it will not stop. Why are countries like Pakistan poor? Why are they, when you get down to it, hellholes? They are like that precisely _because_ of the influence of the Islamists and the dictators - of the influence of those people who are most supportive of the terrorists. It is their policies that are responsible for the poverty. The best thing we could do for those countries is to show that their is no route to victory through violence and terror. Fanaticisms claque disperses when the fanatics are defeated. If Hitler had been faced with strong British and French opposition in 1935 - do you think he would have survived? Instead they appeased him, and appeased him, and appeased him - showing the German people that Hitler had a way for them to regain the position they had lost in the First World War. The West made this mistake once before - must we do it again? Let me tell you the analogy that springs to mind here, Erik. From what I can tell, you want us to conduct a Marshall Plan. I'm entirely in favor of that. The problem is, you want us to do it in 1940. First you have to win the war. We can, and should, do everything we can to make these countries better places to live. But we _can't_ do that until they have decent governments, until the people of these countries have given up their alignment with Bin Laden and radical Islam. The Marshall Plan could only happen _after_ Hitler had been toppled and a democratic government had been installed in Berlin. Then we could rebuild Germany. Similarly, we can't help Pakistan until its people learn that there is no future in radical Islam. It cannot restore the Islamic world to the prominence it once had. That way lies only defeat, death, and destruction. If we give them what they want - if we appease them, compromise, yield up some goals, or pay the equivalent of blackmail, then we strengthen the radicals. We demonstrate that theirs is the way to victory. We cannot do that. Do you want to be Churchill or Chamberlain? They both wanted the best for Europe. But Churchill understood the nature of his enemy - he saw that appeasement would only strengthen Hitler's hold on Germany. Chamberlain didn't. We have a similar choice today. We can strengthen our enemies by showing that their tactics lead to us weakening our own position - Chamberlain's tactic. Or we can do the opposite. The abiding mantra for our policy now must be - not one inch back. No compromise, no surrender, no deference to the "Arab street" or any other such mythical creations. Not one inch back. The Marshall Plan was a wonderful idea. But first we have to win the war. Gautam
