People who are interested in this topic may enjoy reading _Sands of Empire_ by Robert W. Merry. My wife heard him interviewed on public radio's "The Diane Rehm Show" and got me the book.
Merry describes two Big Ideas that have driven Western thought: the Idea of Progress, which holds that the tendency of life is toward more and more, and the Rise of Civilizations, which holds that natural law takes different expressions in different parts of the world. (Love those SCI shorthands!) Each idea has its own ramifications on foreign policy. Current neoconservative policy subscribes to the Idea of Progress with a twist, which is that American capitalism and democracy is the highest point of human development and worthy of being nurtured the world over. It's just a matter of time before the world catches up to us, so why not hurry the transformation along? Merry thinks the current adminstration's thinking is naive crap. Merry makes a case for how useful Saddam would have been in what he calls, frankly, a clash of civilizations with Islam. The way to manage clashes of civilization is for the leading states of the different civilizations to treat with one another and maintain stability. For example, Nixon opened the doors to China as a way to manage that power and offset the Soviets. Merry goes so far as to propose some visionary politician do the same thing with Iran that Nixon did with China. Now that Iraq cannot be the leading power of the Islamic states and Saudia Arabia is vulnerable, we need to work with someone over there. Bush's plan to establish a military presence in the Arab and Muslim world is a recipe for disaster, Merry says, not a plan for enforcing stability and modernism in the region. Merry's thoughts may rub many liberals here the wrong way, but it's the kind of conservative thinking that I, for one, miss among the Republicans. Hard-nosed, pragmatic realism. Not this fantasy world that Wolfowitz passed along to Cheney and Cheney smeared onto Bush. - Patrick Gillam P.S. If anyone here has read Oswald Spengler or Arnold Toynbee, you would dig Merry's _Sands of Empire_. And if you can explain Spengler's more metaphysical flights, I'd love to hear what you think of them. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
