--- Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > No, _I'm_ interested in doing the right thing as, I > believe, are the vast > majority of the people (not > governments) of the world.
How nice for you. It must be nice to be able to operate in such a world. Want to, say, take an opinion poll in Syria on what they think the right thing to do is in Israel? Heck, how about one in France? > It was wrong because it didn't have anything to do > with 9/11 or the war on > terrorism. So you say. Yet there is, in fact, a pretty coherent argument otherwise. You don't like it, but that doesn't make the people who feel otherwise deluded or anything else. I'm a pretty well-informed guy, and I think that you are wrong, in fact. > The straw man is constructed and then... No, I believe that this was a logical belief from your argument. I wanted to engage in an honest discussion. This whole thing is reminding me why I stopped bothering to try to do that with you a while ago. > Popularity doesn't have anything to do with it. Except when it does, as you say below. > The reason we need to preserve good relations with > other countries is > because the terrorism we are fighting is stateless > and has tendrils in > many other countries. If we work together to root > it out we stand a far > better chance of defeating it. If we piss everyone > else off we'll not > only not get cooperation, many of them may even > decide that it's just ok > to help our enemies out. > > Doug OK, we piss everyone off by supporting Israel. Your point, again? Also, of course, the faith that other states will cooperate out of the goodness of their hearts. France has (for example) recently teamed up with Syria in order to attempt to force us out of Iraq. Those of us who don't froth at the mouth when the name George Bush is mentioned might think that this says far more about _France_ than it does about the United States. Maybe they won't help us because they don't think it's in their interest to do that. Some states help out our enemies because _they_ are our enemies. Some do it because they think they can profit from it, and they really don't care what happens otherwise, one way or the other. Some do it because they've been bribed. Some don't because they are _idiots_ (Schroeder, apparently). And some don't because the Bush Administration has a remarkably abrasive style, to go with its remarkably abrasive enemies. You have more in common than you like to think, it seems to me. If not pissing people off is an important concern of yours, then there are simple policies that you should advocate - that, in fact, quite a few distinguished realists do advocate. Three of them are: 1. Abandon Israel 2. Abandon Taiwan 3. Stop supporting democracy in developing countries (Cut Yuschenko off in the Ukraine, for example) I can't even come up with a plausible story in which defending Israel and Taiwan is in our national interest defined in anything but idealogical terms (democray is good, basically), which makes those policies harder, not easier, to justify than Iraq. Supporting Israel pisses off _everyone_, basically. Supporting Taiwan pisses off China, only the second most important country on Earth. So those policies impose a very high cost on us. In fact, if we abandoned Israel, we could get much more cooperation from Arab countries (whose cooperation is, overwhelmingly, most important in dealing with terrorism - something you somehow manage to forget when you talk about Saudi Arabia). If we abandoned Taiwan we could get more cooperation from China, which would probably be useful. If we cut off the Ukraine we could improve our relations with Russia, which might be helpful. If international cooperation from not pissing people off is so important to you, you should want us to do these things. Now, there are plenty of respectable people who believe that these are three good ideas. I don't, but them, I'm not a realist. Simple intellectual consistency from you, however, would suggest that you should. I'll even make it easier for you - the Bush Administration supports all those policies, so you can be a consistent realist _and_ proclaim the incompetence and criminality of President Bush. Should be an irrestible temptation, really. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Dress up your holiday email, Hollywood style. Learn more. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
