[lit-ideas] Nation Building

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 07:57:56 -0700

Omar, we already have a secular Muslim democracy, Turkey.  And the trouble
it is having with Islamism is one of the reasons the nay-sayers say no
Muslim land can tolerate a Liberal Democracy.  Attaturk's government would
have crashed several times had it not been rescued by the military.  But at
least their military is to be admired.  They have always stepped back out of
government once a given threat was eliminated.  

 

As to the rest of your note, it is assuming conspiracy theories I don't
credit.  During the Clinton administration his attempted "nation building"
in the former Yugoslavia was criticized by the Republicans.  We are in the
business of protecting our own and not riding about the world like a
demented Don Quixote.  When Bush ran against Gore, "no nation building," was
one of his platforms.  Thus, after 9/11, the nation building of Afghanistan
was never high on anyone's list of "things to do."  We were after those who
hit us on 9/11 and they were in Afghanistan.  

 

Your moral obligation to help Afghanistan after the Soviets were driven out
doesn't take into consideration that the U.S. was fighting the Cold War
using realpolitik.  We used Kennan's "containment" thesis.  We opposed
Communism wherever it cropped up as we could.  Our policy was to help
nations oppose Communism, not change those nations into images of the U.S.
Our congress would never have paid for nation building that wasn't the
result of a war wherein a defeated nation would have been left in chaos, or
hostile to is, if we didn't nation-build.  There were multiple reasons for
our nation building efforts in West Germany, Japan, and South Korea, but we
had no policy of nation building.  We certainly didn't engage in it in the
Philippines and that would have been an excellent opportunity for the
practice if that was one of our national goals, but it wasn't.  And so we
went after the Taliban and Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and were perfectly happy
in letting the enemies of our enemies take care of building their own nation
building.  Every book I ran across on Afghanistan seemed to pertain to the
efforts against the Soviets and not about the Taliban period.  Those books
came later; which is to say that the criticisms of our not nation-building
there came later.

 

The idea that we invaded Iraq because of the oil has been disproved from so
many different directions I don't want to rehash them.  We have closer
relations in the Middle East than we have say in sub-Sahara Africa because
of the oil to be sure, but that is because our companies helped the oil
producing countries produce their oil.  But if all we wanted was to Iraq's
oil, we could have gotten it more cheaply by lifting the sanctions.  Had we
and the British decided to lift them, they would have been lifted.  France,
Germany and Russia would have been delighted to continue their close
relationship with Saddam, build back up his nuclear facilities, and sell him
any weapon he wanted.   I need only say that to show how silly the idea is.
In our perception we were threatened by Terrorists and Rogue Nations that
encouraged and supported terrorists.  The "you are either with us or with
the terrorist speech" was aimed at the terrorists who couldn't care less and
the Rogue Nations who also couldn't care less.  Those Rogue nations were
identified: North Korea, Iran and Iraq.  The idea of a "rogue nation,"
probably came from the African hunters' descriptions of "Rouge Elephants."
Rogue Elephants were a threat to everyone.  They didn't behave as normal
elephants but went on rampages destroying everything in their paths.  Thus,
"rogue nation," conjures the image of "rogue elephant," and it seemed
especially apt in the case of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran.  We were
concerned about Saddam's roguishness and not his oil except to the extent
that we didn't want to impact the flow of Iraq's oil.  

 

It is true that Bush is interested in Nation-Building Iraq, but this
Nation-Building of his was not a long-held belief as witnessed by the fact
that he opposed it during his campaign against Gore.  But if we are faced
with eliminating the roguishness of Iraq and replacing it with something,
why not (the Neocons would have argued) replace it with a democracy?  Thus,
his interest in Nation Building is recent and it by no means indicates a
long standing principle held by Americans at large.  

 

Many of the authors I have read imply that Islam (traditional Islam) is
incapable of sustaining a Liberal Democracy.  Arab states are appalled at
Turkey's Liberal Democracy which they call Secularism.  Secularism they
argue is the antithesis of Islam.  Thus, Bush's efforts at providing Iraq
with an equitable society is sure to fail, they argue, and yet many of those
who predict ultimate failure say it would certainly be a good thing if his
Quixotic attempts succeeded, and even if they fail whatever results in its
place is sure to be something less dangerous than a Rogue State.

 

Lawrence

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 3:33 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Fukuyama, Arabists and French Multiculturalists

 

 

 

--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

> As to "things" being "great in Afghanistan, and so

> on," things are not great

> there, but as has been discussed before, the primary

> task of the

> administration in regard to these matters is

> American security.  Secondarily

> it is the security of our allies.  By "great" I

> assume you mean flourishing

> liberal democracies.  Few of the aforementioned

> experts thinks Bush will be

> successful in that, but Bush thinks he will.  He is

> unwilling to listen to

> those who argue that Muslim nations are incapable of

> Liberal Democracies.

 

*Actually, the article I posted today reminded me

that, if there was one Muslim country which the US

could have helped to build secular democracy, it was

probably Afghanistan. The country had already been

weary of religious fundamentalism and sectarian

conflicts; it had a history of pro-American

sympathies; it wasn't Arab and it did not have a great

historic significance to Islam, so that the US

presence was not particularly inflammatory. The US

also had a moral responsibility to help Afghanistan,

since its support for the fundamentalist resistance to

the Soviets (as we know, "Islamists" were good enough

allies then) contributed to the devastation of the

country before Taliban came to power. Instead, the US

chose to occupy Iraq, which had a history of sectarian

strife and conflict with the US. What more proof do

you need that the US government was interested in oil,

not democracy ?

 

As for fighting Islamism, that doesn't seem to be the

primary goal either. In Afghanistan, the US merely

replaced one fundamentalist faction in power with

several others, and went on to topple the secular

regime in Iraq. Of course, the US government also

supports the fundamentalist authoritarian monarchy in

Saudi Arabia, co-operates with the Shiite Islamist

parties in Iraq (which, btw, have a history or

terrorist activities dating back to Saddam Hussein

era) an so on. So, when you ask "who are we at war

with ?" I am not sure who "we" are. Your position may

be motivated by sincere (if, as I suggested before,

dogmatic) opposition to political Islam, but these

don't seem to be the motives of the US government. The

government seems much more concerned with mundane

matters such as controlling the energy resources,

revitalizing America's military industry, enriching

the corporations etc.

 

We see no need for modern nations to go

> through all the "building

> block" steps we took.  We know it is possible to

> take a willing nation, like

> Japan, and put them on the fast track, and it is at

> least conceivable that

> if the Iraqis and the Afghans truly want all or most

> of what we have in the

> way of Liberal-Democratic government that they can

> (like Japan) make it

> work, but if the Islamist influence is as great as

> those in my "roll call"

> believe, then as Alexander says, perhaps "equitable

> societies cannot exist

> in Muslim lands."

 

*This whole debate seems rather pointless. Iraq can

hardly be taken as a test of whether "equitable

societies can exist in Muslim lands."

Whether or not the Iraqis and the Afghanis want

liberal democracy, or some other kind of democracy,

the US government either doesn't want it or it doesn't

care sufficiently to do what it takes to make it work.

If we really want to see whether democracies can

function in Muslim countries, and in what form, we

would do better to look somewhere like Malaysia or

Lebanon, countries that are not currently occupied. If

we are trying to excuse the US failures, then we can

blame Islam, or the Arab culture, or the European

betrayal, or anything that comes to hand.

 

O.K.

 

 

 

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