[lit-ideas] Re: Nation Building

  • From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:58:47 -0700 (PDT)

Lawrence,

You seem to hold the position that you must have the
last word in every debate, but if we leave it at this
we will have to leave it at a lot of nonsense. Your
claim that: "We are in the
business of protecting our own and not riding about
the world like a demented Don Quixote. " combined with
the claim that it's also not about the oil leaves us
utterly in mystery as to what the US is doing in Iraq.
You may believe in General Sada's tall stories about
magically disappearing WMDs if you want; I am not
interested in that debate. Your dismissal of
well-documented and widely accepted claims about the
US oil interests (also long-term ones), corporate
interests etc. as conspiracy theories leaves as
usually with discussing ideological windmills that
have little connection to reality. Then there is the
matter that your style of discussion consists of
quoting (or sometimes just naming) the authors whom
you consider authoritative, and that is supposed to
suffice as proof.

I agree with you that nation building has never been
high on the real list of the Administration's
priorities, but prior to the attack on Iraq we were
told that it was. As an experiment in nation-bulding,
Iraq failed. It did not contribute in any way to the
US security, and it contributed in a negative way to
the security of its allies. Whether it was successful
in relation to some other objectives remains
uncertain. The reason I brought this up is that you
were claiming that the US wanted to bring democracy to
Muslim countries; that was never my own position.

As to Turkey, I deliberately did not mention it as a
secular democracy because there remain doubts as to
whether it is a democracy. Attaturk whom you so admire
comitted a genocide against the Armenians, the
military removed elected governments several times,
and there remain issues of repression of the Kurds,
intellectuals and so on. I posted an article on Turkey
recently which I though you would relate to but you
don't seem much interested in things that are not
mentioned by Bernard Lewis, Huntington or some such
big neo-con names.

O.K.


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

> 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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