On 31 Aug 2015, at 16:52, smitra wrote:
The real problem i.m.o. is that big powers tend to have a big
inertia, it takes them a long time to see that the World has changed
and that they need to focus on other issues than they currently are
engaged with. In some cases that can lead to escalation of a
pointless conflict that has its roots in past issues that are no
longer relevant, as is the case with the war on drugs. And that then
can cause a lot of harm.
But I think the general issue is this huge inertia. So, when
Gorbachov was in power and he was ready to deal seriously with the
West, it took us a very long time to engage with him. A point on
which we never engaged with the Soviets in a constructive way was
Afghanistan.
The Soviets were willing to withdraw from Afghanistan, even before
Gorbachov came to power, but on certain conditions like leaving
behind a stable government. We never wanted to engage with the
Soviets on that, because of pur mondset that the root of all evil
was communism, and the Soviets were just talking bullshit about our
allies there, the Jihadists.
Them posing a threat to the World? that to us was just ridiculous.
We knew for sure that with the Soviets gone out of Afghanistan,
their communist puppet government dismantled, the Afghan population
would be able to form a democratic state. We were so sure about this
that we never critically analyzed all the hidden assumptions made
here.
It later turned out that we were wrong and that the Soviets were
right, not in their general approach but about seeing the threat of
Jihadism that we helped to fuel. Also they were right about the
dangers of having failed states. Our ideology at the time was that a
failed state would quickly get itself organized into a flourishing
democracy if you could only keep the evil communists out.
Another fallout of this was that Gorbachov's political position was
weakened in the Soviet Union, which made his nationalist opposition
who were critical of the West politically stronger. When Yeltsin
took over he had to deal with an economically weak Russia while in
the background there were forces lurking who were extremely critical
of the West. In any country you'll have the opposition that tends to
question the government's policy especially if things are not going
well economically and especially when there has been a recent
radical change. In the years after the collapse of communism that
move was democratization, liberalization of the economy etc. etc.
It's easy for us to say that the Russians who were critical at the
time were stupid, just look at the opposition in the US against a
universal health care system. Now, if we could turn back the clock
and had dealt with Afghanistan differently, then the outcome of that
might not just have prevented the rise of international Jihadism,
you would also have had the pro-Western reformists in Russia to be
in a politically far stronger position. Likely you would not have
had Putin in power today, or Putin may not have become that anti-
Western (he wasn't when came into power).
Another thing is that we would have improved the UN Security Council
System to deal with complex problems. As it currently functions, the
UNSC is a panel of prosecutors who are the World's policemen,
prosecutor, jury and judge at the same time without a requirement
for members to recuse themselves when they are involved.
The system works fine in emergency situations, like when Iraq
invaded Kuwait, just like a police can intervene effectively when
there is a bank robbery going on. But when the emergency situation
is dealt with, we all know that you need a proper justice system to
deal with the problem on the longer term. We know that what cannot
work is a system where the local police can have a caucus with
other police officers from neighboring areas to deal with that.
Even if you assume that police officers can be 100% objective, you
would still not have much faith in a system where the police
officers could be the prosecutors juries, judges, appeals judges
and Supreme Court judges all at the same time.
This i.m.o. is the reason why Iraq was invaded. Iraq under Saddam
Hussein (supported by both superpowers in the 1980s) could never
prove that it had no WMD within the current system once some
prosecutors decided to throw the book at him.
Had instead the Western powers thought critically about how to
improve the international institutions instead of seeing the
collapse of the Soviet Union as a big gain in their power within the
current system, the UNSC could have been reformed. You can think of
a system where the UNSC continues to exist in its present form but
that it creates a new institution where judges rule on contentious
fundings of facts. The UNSC could then have referred difficult
dossiers like the Iraq WMD case, Iran's nuclear program etc. to such
an institution where decisions are made on the basis of real
evidence instead of political rhetoric.
I think I agree with your analysis, but I think there is much more,
which is the disparition/erosion of the separation of power, which is
part of the making of the rhetoric.
So, I put most of the blame of the current situation on the West's
failures to just think about the long term during the late stages of
the Cold War.
As long as prohibitionist are not all in jail, or amnestied perhaps,
some corporatism will will continue to make huge profits in diseases
and war selling.
The war on terror is fake, because if that was genuine, the most
urgent thing which would have been done is to stop prohibition, which
is the fuel, even the main engine of international crimes and
terrorism, and it is know today that whatever drug is prohibited, the
consumption of it is multiplied by a large factor (which is normal as
you offer the market to the criminals).
I mean that it is not just our incompetence, there is a part of
unwillingness. We tolerate the lies on important things, like on
cancers, indeed we tolerate that people think for us about what is
good or bad to us, but that's contradict already the intent of most of
the founders of America.
As long as prohibitionism is not abolished, I think we must remain
skeptical about any *official* theory by default. Liars lie rarely
only once. Prohibition rotten everything. International prohibition
can only lead to international chaos, mafia wars, well disguised.
Bruno
Saibal
On 30-08-2015 22:34, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/30/2015 10:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
- the governments know that prohibition is the main fuel of
criminality and terrorism.
So Muslims flew planes into buildings government (which one?)
prohibited something (what?).
Brent
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