Small War on Basilan (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

A general point and heard repeatedly a few years ago in London at an Islam seminar, which I'd filed away until reading Bob's last post:

...they want liberty, self-determination, respect, justice under the law. They also want to feel that their government answer to them and to God as they see appropriate (not as some Western power sees appropriate based on completely different values, culture, etc).

Nearly all those speaking, mainly from the Middle East, wanted ACCOUNTABILITY. Yes, we want other non-material things, but what we want will not be what you prescribe or have followed. We will follow our own path.

[Bob's World]

Dave,

Excellent add. The US used to promote self-determination and take the position that we had no right to levy moral judgments onto others, and certainly no duty to intervene in small conflicts where we had little direct stake at risk.

Then came our emergence to the top of the heap following WWII, and our series of policy and prinicple compromises made over the course of the Cold War; our belief that those compromises and our efforts "won" the Cold War; to where we are today.

A country that has been too quick to apply military force, a country that has become so convinced of its "rightness" that we proclaim our values to be "universal" and call for a "new world order" under US leadership in our National Security Strategy. We push for Democracy as we see it and presume ourselves to have a "responsibility to protect" popualces seeking to sort out their own futures in far away lands. Until we turn and look back to where we came from, we will never realize how far we have drifted.

Said another way, we have grown up and become our parents; and frankly, we were not much pleased with them when they acted in this same way....

[Dayuhan]

Bit of rush at the moment, will have more to say re previous post, but I have to ask about this...

The US used to promote self-determination and take the position that we had no right to levy moral judgments onto others, and certainly no duty to intervene in small conflicts where we had little direct stake at risk.

When exactly was this the case?

[Ken White]

1801???

:d

[Bob's World]

1801???

:d

I suspect Ken might have been at that particular cabinet meeting, so I defer to his assessment...

But the true sea change was as we came to realize post-WWII that it was not going to be all sunshine and roses with our good allies, the Soviets and the Chinese, and found ourselves in a bi-lateral contest for influence that came to be divided along ideological lines.

You can't argue "self-determination" when the insurgency you are trying to stop from throwing the puppet government of your Colonial French pals out of power are employing a Communist ideology that will likely expand the influence of our own opponent and reduce our influence at the same time. So we switched to selling "Democracy" as a counter. Sorry to all you nations in the buffer between East and West, self-determination is now off the table.

Earlier, when we were competing with the Brits for influence over the Saudi Oil market, and the Brits were making a stink over the Saudi prractice of slavery and offering a very low ball price based on what they were "stealing" oil from the Iranians for; we offered a much more attractive price and assured the Saudis that we had no right to comment on slavery or offer any other moral judgement.

A slippery slope....time to put our climbing spikes on and get back up to the high ground that we imagine ourselves to still be standing on.