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> it became clear early on there is a whole very naive narritive[sic] justifying US foreign policy in that part of the world. I think that was obvious at least

by wtbob 11y ago

> it became clear early on there is a whole very naive narritive[sic] justifying US foreign policy in that part of the world. I think that was obvious at least when Mr. Bush was talking about how freedom was the desire of every human heart, which is quite clearly naïve nonsense. Simply put, the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, wouldn't know what to do with it, and will misuse it when given it. That fundamental misunderstanding caused his government to try to install democracies, when it could have installed confessional republics instead.

616c 11y ago
I am not sure we agree, wtbob. This extends before and after the Bush administration. Beyond democracy building, our routine of divide-and-conquer and other silliness is why they route around our interventionism. This goes to WWII and earlier. It is not just Bush. I get frustrated because this is a common explanation: the neocons, of which I was one at the time, are the elitists who started this. Which is sad, because the wealthier states in the Arab world are now engaged in this "we know how to fix you, lesser Arab state" mentality. I think there is a belief that money solves all ills, and if only then they will see it from our eyes. Local and foreign states engaging in this behavior always fails. In the Arab world, foreign countries have engaged with this stuff for modern recorded history.
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  If you terrorize the world long enough, like many of the groups in the middle east, you will get people that just want to give you what you want, in an attempt to make it go away. Others will even blame themselves: "Maybe I did something wrong. Why would they bomb my cities unless we did something to them??" Terrorism seems to work most of the time. Quebec,Canada is a good example of this. In the 70s, there was a separatist group that set off hundreds of bombs and even kidnapped the vice chairman at the time (and ended up killing him). This was mostly because they didn't feel they should be forced to learn English and wanted the French culture and language to dominate. Fast forward a few decades and the roles are reversed. French is required everywhere in Quebec and businesses basically have to communicate all in French and are subjected to massive fines if their signs are not in French (and it has to culturally make sense). The separatists have won and it had nothing to do with equality. They wanted their culture to dominate and have the power..and now it does..all through the power of terrorist activities. It even happened much earlier with groups like the Vikings. They were never really defeated. They stole, raped, and pillaged across the world, and countries gave them what the wanted and they even ruled entire nations. Eventually, their children's children didn't want to lose wealth or power and didn't continue the violent ways of their ancestors. To stop them, the world had to give them wealth and power...while they murdered the innocent. I guess it worked, but many innocent people had to die along the way. If we listened to people like you, terrorist groups in the middle east would continue to conquer that part of the world and gain more and more power until we have no way to stop it. I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. Especially since many here can't even tolerate humane corporal punishment in the US or a simple bible verse spoken in a public school.
  - proksoup 11y ago
    Ha, misread your first sentence and thought you were talking about US terrorizing the world, but thinking now you don't view the us war on terror as terrorism itself eh?
  - sosborn 11y ago
    > I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. I don't think the empathy is really for that group. I think it is for the majority of people in those regions who aren't partaking in that bullshit and really just want to live a normal life.
  - meric 11y ago
    >> I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. No empathy. No empathy for the U.S. government who were supplying weapons to "moderate" rebels who turned out to be Al Qaeda, who sent operatives to destabilise nations, either. If there were no meddling by foreign states, Assad would have crushed the rebels and reinstalled stability several times over by now.
danharaj 11y ago
Freedom is a purely instrumental word for government. The freedom Bush promised Iraq was bombs, kleptocratic puppet government, and siege from apocalyptic fanatics. Yeah, I'd pass on that sort of freedom too. I find your judgment of humanity, really, just disgusting. People love and cherish autonomy. The freedom the West sells to the rest of the world is poisoned milk.
kingkawn 11y ago
Everyone cares about freedom. I think the problem with Bush and crew was their belief that they were the gatekeepers of the only legitimate path toward it.
- bgilroy26 11y ago
  The Bush administration's actions in the Gulf were based on a funny contradiction:they were confident they could push further than Gulf War I because it was so successful; the reason it was so successful in the first place because they did not push further
  - nxzero 11y ago
    They knew, but didn't care. Generally speaking, the Bush's goals were to help the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia, which have very strong ties with the Bush family; which is to say, the goal was to help his family and himself.
  - cturner 11y ago
    There was some other important narrative: post-war Germany, post-war asia, and the asian economic miracle. After the second world war, a lot of asian countries were in ruins. Consider Korea. Before the war, it was a servant of the Japanese empire. Then in the 50s the country got flattened by war, and split in two. The northern half became an Orwellian nightmare. After all this, and under a US security umbrella, the southern half transitioned into a first world economy in less than forty years. Within easy artillery range of the nastiest country on the planet. This is a miracle of our time. It's amazing. Over the same period, Japan transformed from a brutal empire into a Scandanavian country: innovation economy, doesn't like war, etc. Similar story in Germany. Another strong western country and US ally. Something similar with Taiwan. So if the west had been able to affect that kind of positive change on those countries, why not bring the same kind of change to the arab world? Either we did something different, or something about these countries isn't reacting the same way. Ethnic divisions make things more complicated. Particularly as the middle eastern dictators have been so good at poisoning the well by playing ethnic groups off against one another. Typical Syrian Christians will hate Assad, but also be terrified at the reprisals that wait for them if he collapses. In post-war Europe, a lot of that was avoided because nobody powerful minded relocating populations of ethnic Germans to Germany. It might be better if we'd thought of the middle east as a really nasty version of Yugoslavia, rather than another Asia. An easier place to start might be to understand why Southern Sudan is failing. This was an opportunity to build a new state from scratch. It has fewer of the usual excuses. Largely Christian country but there is ethnic conflict. The new state is not working. Why? Can we learn anything about that from how we screwed up in the middle east?
PavlovsCat 11y ago
I think it's more being in bed with greedy sociopaths that made him start this war of aggression, greatest of all crimes. Also, freedom can never be given, only taken away.
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  Counterarguments would be neat. Or at least downvote me into the grey so I can stand with the other comments that get punished for calling out this particular butt naked emperor; unless HN shows one's own comments in black always, in that case nevermind, I'll just state that the grey comments are right IMO, and especially agree with danharaj. But if you expect me to be not snarky in response to something like "the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, wouldn't know what to do with it, and will misuse it when given it.", then just ban me, get it over with. Something like this matters more to me than HN or computers ever could, and though I was being polemic I'm willing and able to back up every last word in that comment, and until proven otherwise I'll assume that's why I don't get challenged on it, but simply downvoted.
JabavuAdams 11y ago
This is a common rationalization used by people who are not merely idle bystanders. The world is a vastly different place for someone who is protected by American hegemony vs. someone who is on the kinetic end of American foreign policy. If we brutalize people for decades, or prop up those who brutalize them, we shouldn't then blame the victims of this brutality for being damaged or for hating our system. EDIT> We may still have to fight some of these people, but we should do it without bigotry and with compassion for non-combatants lest we continue the cycle indefinitely.
rdtsc 11y ago
I see you have been downvoted and I think it's unfair. Agree with your point essentially, but I can see why what you are saying is controversial. The reason is because it strikes at the core of American beliefs. We claim we do a lot of things in the name of it. Because of it, saying, "people don't like freedom" forces us to re-evaluate maybe we have been living a lie so to speak, so the mouse pointer just kind of gravitates towards the down arrow there a bit. > Simply put, the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, Yes, the idea that hungry, poor, sick, afraid people would rather have the freedom to express their opinions instead of the above issues fixed is rather silly, but that is how ideology works. Moreover, freedom is one of those things the people themselves should say they want rather than be told "this is what you want, you just don't know it yet". There is a big difference between the two.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Its not so much that people dislike freedom, but that freedom is hard to define. Out of WW2, the western world operated under a "freedom from" definition. Freedom from oppression and coercion. But come the 80s onwards, it was a subtle flip to "freedom to". And with it came a resurgence of robber barons and corporate "colonialism". So when someone in a suit stands on a podium and talks about freedom, you have to ask yourself what exactly he means by that term. More and more the American meaning has been for the corporations to con, cheat and exploit without repercussions.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    > so much that people dislike freedom They don't dislike it as much as they are just unwilling to obtain it at the expense of losing security, healthcare benefits, jobs, income, peace, food and many other things.

by wtbob 11y ago

616c 11y ago

I am not sure we agree, wtbob. This extends before and after the Bush administration. Beyond democracy building, our routine of divide-and-conquer and other silliness is why they route around our interventionism. This goes to WWII and earlier. It is not just Bush. I get frustrated because this is a common explanation: the neocons, of which I was one at the time, are the elitists who started this. Which is sad, because the wealthier states in the Arab world are now engaged in this "we know how to fix you, lesser Arab state" mentality. I think there is a belief that money solves all ills, and if only then they will see it from our eyes. Local and foreign states engaging in this behavior always fails. In the Arab world, foreign countries have engaged with this stuff for modern recorded history.

pink_dinner 11y ago
If you terrorize the world long enough, like many of the groups in the middle east, you will get people that just want to give you what you want, in an attempt to make it go away. Others will even blame themselves: "Maybe I did something wrong. Why would they bomb my cities unless we did something to them??" Terrorism seems to work most of the time. Quebec,Canada is a good example of this. In the 70s, there was a separatist group that set off hundreds of bombs and even kidnapped the vice chairman at the time (and ended up killing him). This was mostly because they didn't feel they should be forced to learn English and wanted the French culture and language to dominate. Fast forward a few decades and the roles are reversed. French is required everywhere in Quebec and businesses basically have to communicate all in French and are subjected to massive fines if their signs are not in French (and it has to culturally make sense). The separatists have won and it had nothing to do with equality. They wanted their culture to dominate and have the power..and now it does..all through the power of terrorist activities. It even happened much earlier with groups like the Vikings. They were never really defeated. They stole, raped, and pillaged across the world, and countries gave them what the wanted and they even ruled entire nations. Eventually, their children's children didn't want to lose wealth or power and didn't continue the violent ways of their ancestors. To stop them, the world had to give them wealth and power...while they murdered the innocent. I guess it worked, but many innocent people had to die along the way. If we listened to people like you, terrorist groups in the middle east would continue to conquer that part of the world and gain more and more power until we have no way to stop it. I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. Especially since many here can't even tolerate humane corporal punishment in the US or a simple bible verse spoken in a public school.
- proksoup 11y ago
  Ha, misread your first sentence and thought you were talking about US terrorizing the world, but thinking now you don't view the us war on terror as terrorism itself eh?
- sosborn 11y ago
  > I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. I don't think the empathy is really for that group. I think it is for the majority of people in those regions who aren't partaking in that bullshit and really just want to live a normal life.
- meric 11y ago
  >> I am shocked sometimes to see empathy here for anyone that would execute you by cutting your head off, stone women and homosexuals, and rule a nation with an archaic religion. No empathy. No empathy for the U.S. government who were supplying weapons to "moderate" rebels who turned out to be Al Qaeda, who sent operatives to destabilise nations, either. If there were no meddling by foreign states, Assad would have crushed the rebels and reinstalled stability several times over by now.

danharaj 11y ago

Freedom is a purely instrumental word for government. The freedom Bush promised Iraq was bombs, kleptocratic puppet government, and siege from apocalyptic fanatics. Yeah, I'd pass on that sort of freedom too. I find your judgment of humanity, really, just disgusting. People love and cherish autonomy. The freedom the West sells to the rest of the world is poisoned milk.

kingkawn 11y ago

Everyone cares about freedom. I think the problem with Bush and crew was their belief that they were the gatekeepers of the only legitimate path toward it.

bgilroy26 11y ago
The Bush administration's actions in the Gulf were based on a funny contradiction:they were confident they could push further than Gulf War I because it was so successful; the reason it was so successful in the first place because they did not push further
- nxzero 11y ago
  They knew, but didn't care. Generally speaking, the Bush's goals were to help the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia, which have very strong ties with the Bush family; which is to say, the goal was to help his family and himself.
- cturner 11y ago
  There was some other important narrative: post-war Germany, post-war asia, and the asian economic miracle. After the second world war, a lot of asian countries were in ruins. Consider Korea. Before the war, it was a servant of the Japanese empire. Then in the 50s the country got flattened by war, and split in two. The northern half became an Orwellian nightmare. After all this, and under a US security umbrella, the southern half transitioned into a first world economy in less than forty years. Within easy artillery range of the nastiest country on the planet. This is a miracle of our time. It's amazing. Over the same period, Japan transformed from a brutal empire into a Scandanavian country: innovation economy, doesn't like war, etc. Similar story in Germany. Another strong western country and US ally. Something similar with Taiwan. So if the west had been able to affect that kind of positive change on those countries, why not bring the same kind of change to the arab world? Either we did something different, or something about these countries isn't reacting the same way. Ethnic divisions make things more complicated. Particularly as the middle eastern dictators have been so good at poisoning the well by playing ethnic groups off against one another. Typical Syrian Christians will hate Assad, but also be terrified at the reprisals that wait for them if he collapses. In post-war Europe, a lot of that was avoided because nobody powerful minded relocating populations of ethnic Germans to Germany. It might be better if we'd thought of the middle east as a really nasty version of Yugoslavia, rather than another Asia. An easier place to start might be to understand why Southern Sudan is failing. This was an opportunity to build a new state from scratch. It has fewer of the usual excuses. Largely Christian country but there is ethnic conflict. The new state is not working. Why? Can we learn anything about that from how we screwed up in the middle east?

PavlovsCat 11y ago

I think it's more being in bed with greedy sociopaths that made him start this war of aggression, greatest of all crimes. Also, freedom can never be given, only taken away.

PavlovsCat 11y ago
Counterarguments would be neat. Or at least downvote me into the grey so I can stand with the other comments that get punished for calling out this particular butt naked emperor; unless HN shows one's own comments in black always, in that case nevermind, I'll just state that the grey comments are right IMO, and especially agree with danharaj. But if you expect me to be not snarky in response to something like "the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, wouldn't know what to do with it, and will misuse it when given it.", then just ban me, get it over with. Something like this matters more to me than HN or computers ever could, and though I was being polemic I'm willing and able to back up every last word in that comment, and until proven otherwise I'll assume that's why I don't get challenged on it, but simply downvoted.

JabavuAdams 11y ago

This is a common rationalization used by people who are not merely idle bystanders. The world is a vastly different place for someone who is protected by American hegemony vs. someone who is on the kinetic end of American foreign policy. If we brutalize people for decades, or prop up those who brutalize them, we shouldn't then blame the victims of this brutality for being damaged or for hating our system. EDIT> We may still have to fight some of these people, but we should do it without bigotry and with compassion for non-combatants lest we continue the cycle indefinitely.

rdtsc 11y ago

I see you have been downvoted and I think it's unfair. Agree with your point essentially, but I can see why what you are saying is controversial. The reason is because it strikes at the core of American beliefs. We claim we do a lot of things in the name of it. Because of it, saying, "people don't like freedom" forces us to re-evaluate maybe we have been living a lie so to speak, so the mouse pointer just kind of gravitates towards the down arrow there a bit. > Simply put, the vast majority of mankind doesn't care about freedom, Yes, the idea that hungry, poor, sick, afraid people would rather have the freedom to express their opinions instead of the above issues fixed is rather silly, but that is how ideology works. Moreover, freedom is one of those things the people themselves should say they want rather than be told "this is what you want, you just don't know it yet". There is a big difference between the two.

digi_owl 11y ago
Its not so much that people dislike freedom, but that freedom is hard to define. Out of WW2, the western world operated under a "freedom from" definition. Freedom from oppression and coercion. But come the 80s onwards, it was a subtle flip to "freedom to". And with it came a resurgence of robber barons and corporate "colonialism". So when someone in a suit stands on a podium and talks about freedom, you have to ask yourself what exactly he means by that term. More and more the American meaning has been for the corporations to con, cheat and exploit without repercussions.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > so much that people dislike freedom They don't dislike it as much as they are just unwilling to obtain it at the expense of losing security, healthcare benefits, jobs, income, peace, food and many other things.