Eliot Abrams made a good point on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. We are not worried about “the people” taking over Egypt when Mubarrak falls; we are worried about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over
The dictators we prop up in exchange for their cooperation end up suppressing the people, not the dangerous organizations we hope to guard against. They squander the breathing room we buy for them, snuffing freedom and giving oxygen to freedom’s enemies.
84% of Egyptians support killing apostates
There is a liberal-conservative tug-of-war going on over the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. Are they terrorists, or are they benign? Given the results of Egyptian public opinion polls, this is an irrelevant question. Caroline Glick injects some reality into the discussion:
According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion. ( Caroline Glick)Take the Muslim Brotherhood out of the question, and Egypt is still a scary society. And those trumpeting the announced partnership between the secular El Baredei and the Muslim brotherhood need to remember a similar partnership in Iran. The clerics joined with the academic left to topple the Shah, then slit their throats and unleashed the Islamic brown shirts once the revolution was won.
It's a crazy world over there and we don't understand it, so why pick winners and losers?
We cannot make Middle Easterners love the US and our western-style freedoms. We don’t even share an understanding of what our basic human rights are. Our attempts to win them to our side have failed. They’ve got to come around on their own. If they must pass through 100 years of darkness to realize they are wrong, then so be it.
Our further presence there will only bias and distort the decisionmaking of ordinary people. Time for us to abandon these miserable societies to their miserable fate.
Neocon Nightmare or a Come to Jesus Moment?
Neocons and foreign policy realists make a compelling case for staying engaged and even for supporting rotten tyrannical regimes. There are no good solutions. But let's stop and ask what would happen if we abandon the Middle East. Maybe it will burn if we leave, slide into chaos, or rot in hell, who knows? Maybe China will step in to protect its interests.
Maybe the Middle East will melt down. Maybe it needs a meltdown that will destroy the old dysfunctional order once and for all. The cognitive dissonance caused by an inflated sense superiority while inhabiting a cultural toilet has driven the Umma to the brink. A drunk needs to land in the gutter before he realizes he needs to change. Nations and cultures are no different.
What about US?
The most important question is not what will happen to this region and its hordes of of bug-eyed America-hating fanatics, but what are the consequences for us and our national security? How would the cost/benefit ledger settle out if we completely disengaged?
Would it spell disaster for us? Or would it force cowardly governments inside and outside the region to grow up and shoulder some responsibility? Perhaps we have vital interests in the region, but we're not the only ones. Time to force the other players to turn over their cards and face reality.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028255.php
Christopher Hitchens - Shame
9 comments:
Stop policing the world, stop policing the world, stop policing the world!
It's almost like our bloated government,years of special favors layers of bureaucracy ,nobody wants to give up anything or look politically bad. In other words nobody has the cahones to "just say no".
I agree with Divine.
Besides, no educated observer of the Egyptian situation honestly believes the Egyptian military would allow Muslim extremists to take over the country. The military is utterly dependent on the two billion dollars a year we send them. They know that would be instantly cut off if radical theocrats took over Egypt. These silly, paranoid, sleazy rantings from some in the American Right that the Muslim Brotherhood may take over is just fodder for extremists - here and abroad. It is sleazy, dishonest, stupid, paranoid and counter-productive.
JMJ
>Stop policing the world, stop policing the world, stop policing the world!
I would add: Stop giving other countries our money, stop giving other countries our money, stop giving other countries our money!
Not one cent more.
Ever.
And....close our borders! Close our borders! Close our borders!
Does that count, too?
Bastiat,
We made a deal with Israel and Egypt to please stop trying to kill one another. As part of that deal, we give them both military aid. It's a good deal. It's not that much money as far as we're concerned and it's bought a lot of pease. I'll tell ya' this for a fact: it would have cost us far, far, far, far, far more if we ended up dragged into a serious conflagration between the two.
I've been saying this for years - One of the reasons we don;'t need a massive military empire to secure our international interests - and face it guys, the future has arrived and we will never again be a closed, isloated society - is that we have MONEY. Money is a far greater tool for peace and stability than the military is, and we have one hellacious military. We could have bought off teh Republican Guard in Iraq and avoided thousands of casualities and saved trillions of dollars.
As for cutting off all aid, it sounds almost malevolently cheap, and ideolistically tunnelvisioned.
Leticia,
Good luck with that. Tell the agro sector that they can't have their 75% immigrant workforce, tell the chicken producers and meat packers, tell the rich people all over the country with their cheap housekeepers and poolboys and lawn workers.
It's all well and fine to try to shut down the border, but it will never work until we STOP HIRING THE WORKERS. Our borders are just too big. Theer are 2000 miles of border with Mexico, let alone the thousands and thousands by sea. You could never do it. It would nowhere near be worth the cost.
JMJ
"We cannot make Middle Easterners love the US and our western-style freedoms."
Exactly, and besides all you need to do is make them understand your devastating lethality when provoked into war. That is the only language islam has ever understood over the centuries. You don't need love from them, you need respect, the kind of respect that comes with force.
"But let's stop and ask what would happen if we abandon the Middle East. Maybe it will burn if we leave, slide into chaos, or rot in hell, who knows?"
To be honest, no one really gives a rat's ass what's happens in the middle east, most out there are only concerned with the effects on us.
It's like the people always saying no one was ever able to win in Afghanistan. What they don't realize is that there is no sensible reason to 'win' in Afghanistan, never was, never will be. It's like getting into a punch-up with the neighbors over a broken toilet, pointless and stupid.
All the west and those who conquered that craphole wanted was to ensure it did not endanger their security.
The same should apply to the middle east, the majority of those savages want the stoning, child-rape, sharia and all the other accompanying barbarity that comes with islam. Let them have it, but only until they start plotting to send it to us, then you must punish them severely.
Exactly, MK. Our touchy-feely approach just increases their disdain for us.
JMJ, you are right, but one can only hope.
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