Agree as to our Cold War engagement
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Presley Cannady
Couldn't be helped. Americans were damned lucky to tear those governments away of the Soviet sphere in the first place.
Presley,
Agree, the US waged the Cold War hard in the Middle East. And well from our perspective. The problem is that we locked those Cold War control measures in place and rode them from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Twin Towers. Then, we modified them by adding an aggressive CT layer of engagement and HN security force capacity building directed at capabilities to go after "terrorists." AQ guys are really very few. AQ AP, HOA and Maghreb are made up primarily of nationalist insurgents with a handful of AQ hardcores running the UW program to organize, train, finance, supply, etc.
We let our intel guys throw a big net over the whole mess and call it "terrorism" and granted hunting licenses, provided support and encouraged aggressive pursuit of all.
If we are going to do Security Force Capacity Building with some Ally we need to focus it on dealing with external threats 99% of the time. Help the Saudis deter or defeat an attack by Iran? No problem. Help the Saudis round up the dissenting members of their own populace? I have a problem with that. If the Saudis want to do that, that is there business, but it flies in the face of US principle and law and it weakens us globally when we support suppression abroad of actions that are legal, encouraged, and honored at home.
Bottom line is that we got off track. Our handling of the current rash of popular uprisings, both in how we deal with those governments and how we deal with those populaces, is critical to getting back onto azimuth with our national ethos and principles. We will still do hard things when hard times such as the Cold War dictate. But now is not such times, and there must be healing when conditions change.
Prerequisites for anti-Western rhetoric
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tequila
Note that the organizations you listed all originated as clandestine resistance movements in countries under Western military occupation, which might have something to do with their penchant for such rhetoric
Tequila,
Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Gaza was Egyptian until 1967). Please note that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's ideologue at the time (Said Qutb) never needed a Western military occupation to have a penchant for anti-western rhetoric. In case you still have a doubt, please consult Qutb's writings.