What do you do when the people are the problem?
In the case of Egypt, a country with two-thirds of its people on the land that imports half its caloric consumption, a 45% illiteracy rate, a university system that can’t train an employable engineer, a 30% rate of consanguineous marriage, and a 90% rate of female genital mutilation will have difficulty voting for anything but short-term survival. The Muslim Brotherhood in good Leninist fashion has increased its power on the street, and large parts of the Egyptian people depend on Islamist organizations for basic necessities.
In the case of Greece, fertility fell to among the very lowest rates in the world in 2005, or just 1.28 children per female.
Period Total fertility
- 1950-1955 2.29
- 1955-1960 2.27
- 1960-1965 2.20
- 1965-1970 2.38
- 1970-1975 2.32
- 1975-1980 2.32
- 1980-1985 1.96
- 1985-1990 1.53
- 1990-1995 1.37
- 1995-2000 1.30
- 2000-2005 1.28
- 2005-2010 1.46
Source: United Nations World Population Prospects
The slight uptick in fertility after 2005 probably reflects the growing proportion of immigrants in the Greek population.
If the crisis zones seem caught between “pre-liberal” and “post-liberal” democracy, it is in large measure because their peoples are caught between pre-modern and post-modern social habits. The extreme turnaround in Muslim countries reflects a shift from pre-modern to post-modern fertility within a single generation. For more, see my 2011 book, How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too).
Friedrich Schiller wrote of the French Revolution that history had brought forth a great moment, but the moment encountered a mediocre people. Today’s Greeks and Egyptians are the wrong sort of people to solve the problems that beset them. Bret Stephens ended his June 18 column on an upbeat note: “The good news is that Egyptians may have a wider conception of freedom in 30 years or so, about the same amount of time it took Khomeinism to lose the masses in Iran.” I am less sanguine; Egypt, I believe, will enter a prolonged and terrible chaos. We shall see. What matters now is that a new national debate begin on America’s role in a world where some grand problems have no obvious solution, and perhaps no solution at all. Bret Stephens has made a big contribution to this debate.
Thanks, Spengler, for this very nice piece. It is nice, because it says things that are really not very nice, but totally true. The most important of these is that countries that get themselves into inextricable messes, usually do so because they have a rotten culture, or as you say – a mediocre people. One doesn’t solve this problem by rearranging the political furniture. In democratic systems, rearranging the furniture just means voting into power a different regime with the same mediocre, corrupt people, who will fail yet again to solve the county’s problems, but in a slightly different way.
Drawing the connection between Greece and Egypt is, as you and Bret Stephens have done, apropos and the dim light bulbs at the NYT OpEd Page ought to go on, if they are reading this. The Arab Spring, as you point out, has been a disaster. But so was the Mubarak Regime, and Khaddafy, and Assad. So was Papandreou, so will be the current government in Athens. It doesn’t really matter at this point, who Greece or Egypt puts into power. The die seems to be already cast for social and political breakdown.
For the rest of the world, then, the task would seem to be, to prepare for the chaos that will unfold. I think you warned us about this a year or so ago. Some people were listening, and some clearly were not (Thomas Friedman please call your office).
A disaster for who? Countries like Egypt are criticized for not having the backbone to take to the streets and upend dictators and when they do they’re criticized for that too. These people are Muslims – I don’t understand why people are surprised they like Muslims and Muslim ways. In fact there is not a Thomas Jefferson inside every Muslim struggling to get out.
It’s the culture, stupid.
…..that’s a very rude tone.
Ellen,
There really is a different tone to the dialogue. The disappointment over the Arab Spring has changed the way a lot of people think about things, and promotes a far more reticulated understanding of democracy than the cheerleaders entertained just a year or two ago, as well as a more sober and realistic view of things. I see this in the reception of my work, among other things. I’m almost mainstream now.
“I’m almost mainstream now” heh
NEVER Spengler! We need you out on the edges!
In a way like the backlash that occurred after the excesses of the French Revolution. You are a modern day Edmund Burke, Mr. Goldman.
I’m constantly surprised at people who thought the Arab spring would indeed be the springtime of Arabs. Robert Graves has old Claudius saying, “Let all the poisons lurking in the mud hatch.” We have daily reminders of these “poisons.” There’s very little that can be done for slow learners except give them the time and space, provided they behave and don’t stink up the place too much.
Thanks David. A year ago I was participating in a community group project which met once a week for a year and a half. World events were part of the discussion, including the so-called Arab spring, and I was astonished that so many “well-educated” people were uninformed about Egypt.
They assumed that the Arab Spring would “free” Egypt from dictatorship and then Egypt would move into a prosperous economic system which was tolerant and valued individual civil and religious rights after “freedom” was obtained. I nearly choked. I said have you read about the charter of the Muslim brotherhood, the only major organized movement in Egypt? These folks want the caliphate back: polygamy, dhimmitude for “others”, subjection of “enemies”, women’s rights reversed, more, not less, of fathers,husbands,brothers domineering their females in forced marriages, forced clothing, etc.
I questioned: what about the burning of churches and more dangerous situations for the 10% Christian minority? What about Egypt subsidizing bread for a huge swath of the population and that it doesn’t grow enough food to feed everyone? What about Egypt running out of its foreign reserves to purchase food? What about the high illiteracy rate, especially outside the cities? What about university graduates trained for very little more than government work? What about almost no private sector investment (or trained Egyptians) to create the kind of jobs we have in the USA?
A former colleague of mine, a Christian Arab (family originally from Joffa) worked in Cairo before getting his US green card. He said it was very difficult for Christians there, and that was 30 years ago, when there was a somewhat secular constitution. A Sharia constitution will surely make life more insecure and dangerous for Egyptian Christians, which community predates Muslim Egyptians by 600 years.
Well, what can we expect of US adults and their low knowledge levels? We have Pravda and Tass and Goebbels-type hacks determining what most Americans read in print or see on tv
“changed the way a lot of people think about things” – so they are only 10 years behind the Israelis.
LOL! So funny, and yet so sad.
I wish I was wrong about it but it was clear to me from day one this will be an Islamic Winter – we’re still not in the middle of it, yet, BTW. A lot of Israelis knew pretty well what’s to happen. And those who didn’t had a lot of signs in the last year: 1. Gas pipe being blown up by terrorists more than 10 times 2. Egyptian street mob (small group, only some 5,000 lunatics – try to imagine they are after you!) trying to lynch the Israeli embassy employees 3. publication of hatred (including songs) against Israelis for years.
I’m an Israeli. I have nothing against Egyptians. In fact, I’d visit there if it was safe. Most Israelis feel the same way.
Reality is we are surrounded by savages. That will change, maybe, in some 30-50 years.
Making a fetish of democracy, or, in fact, democratic forms, was a great failure of the ‘neo-cons’ and the Bush 43 Admin.
Tragically for us, it continues today with even greater gusto within the Obama Admin, but only to the extent that it empowers Muslim regimes. When they had a chance to push democracy during the upheavals following the last Iranian ‘election’, they passed.
(Let us hope that with Obama gone, the future political prospects of the ghastly Clinton family will go with him)
It seems do-gooders suffer the same vision defect that some people in love do. They have what I call saving angel syndrome. They think they can change basic human nature with money and promises of freedom through self governance. They forget that money is the root of all evil. So throwing it around attracts evil. They forget our own founders admonsihments against democracy as mob rule, worse than a despotic king. They forget that religion is a reflection of the deepest held beliefs. A people will default to manifesting those beliefs whenever opportunity arises. Attempts to alter certain cultural dispositions without addressing their foundational supports is bound to fail.
Your reference to our founding fathers and their prescient, wise construction is apt and in need of much more attention. As the SOTUS duels with the POTUS this week, we should again rejoice that we are unable to elect an all powerful savior to be our leader. Limited government and personal liberty are the best secular mechanisms for improvement.
“What do you do when the people are the problem?”
1. Reread “A Christmas Carol”
2. Build more prisons and labor camps
3. Emigrate to Germany
4. Let things get worse before they get better
5. Bomb Iran
6. Mind you own business
Why the democratic process? Why should every not-clinically-insane adult inidvidual have a vote? Well, presumably because such a procedure is an expression of (a) man’s intrinsic dignity and (b) everybody’s equal worth as a citizen.
Value-laden assumptions about man’s existential dignity, freedom of choice and expression as well as about the equal citizenship rights for everybody thus precede the formal(istic) procedure of democratic voting, indeed are its foundation.
A government which has been elected through a formally acceptable democratic voting process, but which then goes on to deny these ideas and violate the rights that flow from it on a non-trivial scale, and possibly even purposefully and systematically, can not lay claim to being respected. We are under no moral obligation to cooperate with it. It is a travesty of “democracy”, only mimicking its outward form.
Democracy is more than a procedure. The procedure itself flows form certain anthropological assumptions (which themselves perhaps can be traced back to theology). The results of procedural democracy thus must never lead to an erosion of its substantive foundations, which underpin it and generated the procedure in the first place. If and when that happens, civilized man is not morally at fault if he rejects the results of a merely formal democratic process.
English is not my native language. I hope this fact doesn’t obscure my reasoning too much.
Michael
Thank you for a thoughtful comment.
I believe you’re speaking of another application of Reynolds’ Law (Glenn Reynolds, of “Higher Education Bubble” and Instapundit.com fame), confusing the marker for something for the thing itself.
In the context of education, this means that “The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
The same holds true for democracy.
Michael,
Your writing is very clear to me, perhaps because English is not my natural language either, but I just fell in love with it, as you apparently did.
I spent some time in Japan, and had a chance to inquire about how the Japanese relate to democracy. My sense is that they have not really rejected it, nor have they fully embraced it. They live with it, and it works well enough for them. But the Japanese tradition has long put a lot of burden on the citizen (formerly the subject). Once trust has been established, it is not to be broken, and one is expected to deliver what one promises, as a matter of honor. One is also expected to respect the power structure. Also, Japan’s literacy rate is almost 100%, with a language that is hard to read and even harder to write. One might suspect a language that is particularly well suited to an imperial form of government, since it puts a serious obstacle on the path of the upstart. This of course applies to China in the first place, where the script comes from.
Without such a level of personal ethos and discipline, one can reasonably question whether democracy can take hold. So, where could such prerequisite individual qualities come from? The culture! If the culture is not one that builds the character of the individual, democracy might only serve as a fashionable facade to some illiberal regime. The most successful democracies in existence today are those who have been the most influenced by the West, and therefore fundamentally by the Judeo-Christian values.
This does not bode well for the success of democracy in a culture that clings to Islamic tenets, according to which western influence is precisely the ultimate curse. From the beginning, Islam has claimed superiority to Judaism and Christianity. This claim is not sanctioned by empirical measures, nor does it need to be, because it is axiomatic!
So Mr. Goldman question is right at the center of the issue: What do you do when the people are the problem? I don’t know, short of converting them to Christianity.
Thanks for the flowers, everybody.
I found this to be a brilliant post, thank you. And the article was great as well. I love this website and it’s commentators. A lot of time I have the exact same thoughts and feelings that are posted here. Yet I don’t always know how to accurately formulate them into something that is coherent, but this wonderful website and the people here, help me greatly with that. So my immense thanks to this site and it’s vocal advocates.
Joshua
It is always the politicians who elect a new people. Turks love their cheap Kurdish labor, Israelis their Palestinians, and Spain their Moroccans. They first rig the property, education, and health care industries to destroy their young, and then rig immigration to flood their country with stupid drones. It only takes about 50 years.
Drones kill their hosts soon enough, which is what the young ought to have done in the first place. Every country has to have a threat of revolution so politicians won’t destroy them.
The average Egyptian might deserve his leaders, but the average Greek does not. Ordinary Greeks are very highly educated and ready to work if the government (or the Germans!) would simply make the work for them. Greece is intentionally being destroyed by the international financiers unless they fight back!
When in doubt, just go after the rich; you’ll get those responsible eventually. Greece (and France!) is now making the right decision in moving to the hard left, because the “respectable conservative” neocons do nothing but trash their own countries in the long run.
The Israelis are getting rid of their reliance on palestinian labour. Unlike Germany, Turkey and the US, the prevailing opinion in Israel is to end their reliance on guest workers because they recognize as you have that this setup decays and destroys societies.
“Ordinary Greeks are very highly educated and ready to work if the government (or the Germans!) would simply make the work for them”
Right there in that one sentence is the fundamental failing of communistic idiocy. Who in Hell says anyone is to “make the work for them?” It may well be that the “Ordinary Greeks” are so educated, credentialled anyway, that they’re mind-numbed robots like much of the product of US education in the last thirty years and really are fit only for the slavery of having a job made for them by their self-annointed and even more fashionably credentialled betters.
Hopefully there are enough sane people left in America to extirpate the influence if not the fact of the “higher game” types here.
“Ordinary Greeks are very highly educated and ready to work if the government (or the Germans!) would simply make the work for them”
This way of thinking embodies exactly the spirit of defeatism that brings civilizations down. Train the population to a high level of uselesness and then hope that the “entrepeneur” will take chances and create jobs. Afterwrds create unions, try to milk the entrepeneur for all he is worth, tax him to death and call him the worst kind of human in existance. After the job provider decides enough is enough and the economy tanks, take all you “highly educated” drones that were created and burn down the cities, because they feel let down by the system they alone helped destroy.Time for these peole to read Ayn Rand and start using their “high degree of education”.
re: “and then rig immigration to flood their country”
Are you referring to the 1965 Immigration Reform Act signed into law by LBJ? This act quadrupled the US immigration quotas: from 20,000 a month to 80,000 a month. I believe the primary eligibility requirement is no criminal record: skill or literacy is not required.
I am not sure how the current president was authorized to do so, but his administration gave permanent legal residency(green cards) to an avg. 120,000 a month in 2011.
I lived in a green card neighborhood in Brooklyn for three years: 2007 to 2009. The families in this neighborhood purchased their groceries with food stamps and were not charged by the pharmacist for prescriptions (Medicaid cards) Was I snooping? Hardly. If you are waiting in line in 98 degree heat in a 100-yr old building to buy your dinner ingredients, you notice when the line slows up, and in NY, the food stamp card swipe approval process is tediously long.
Huge immigrant populations are a win-win for politicians who wish for a gradual transformation to full socialism (in which they of course will sit at the top): 1)they get a brand new population who likes the no worry state of things in the USA, and indeed most of the young families on my block gave birth to so many children it would take a six-figure income to sustain, and 2) the pols get voters who have experienced the advantage of re-distribution(you work, I eat) and would not like this to change.
By the by, during my Brooklyn sojourn, I looked up New York’s food stamp policies. Per annum, the allottment was about $1800 per child and $2100 for adults. For a family of 6, this amounted to $11,400. It is certainly a good investment to prevent future American citizens from food insecurity, but are we selecting immigrants who will soon sustain themselves and their families without help from American’s workers?
In the interest of accuracy, US workers, who pay the lion’s share to run the government’s social programs, are subject to mandated wage contributions (SSI,Unemployment, Medicare, etc.) plus what’s left in wages is subject to income taxes once a year. These US workers use what’s left to pay their bills.
According to the census, the US population in the past 40 years has grown by nearly 80 million people. The population experts predict we will add nearly 30 million people per decade going forward, nearly all due to the 1965 Immigratin Reform Act and its amendments, plus higher birth rates of green card families, plus their rights to sponsor relatives and import spouses. The populatin experts also assume that undocumented foreigners will continue to give birth in the US to infants in unprecedented numbers. These infants receive US citizenship and it is unlikely any Congress will vote to force these families to leave.
Word is out, friends. The USA is a kind of Candyland. If you can’t get a green card, or can’t cross a river or desert, get a visa and an airline ticket – and don’t leave (aka the president’s Kenyan aunt and uncle who overstayed their visas for decades, despite deportation orders.
Fecundity literally pays: Give birth to 3 or 4 infants in a sanctuary city and you will get an apartment, free food, and your children get all expense paid medical care, free education, etc.
Whoever thought utopia was impossible?
……US workers, who pay the lion’s share to run the government’s social programs, are subject to mandated wage contributions (SSI,Unemployment, Medicare, etc.) plus what’s left in wages is subject to income taxes once a year.
Uh, a quibble here. You pay Federal Income tax on those contributions, too.
Excellent points, Beth.
I have been wondering when anyone will approach the subject of Obamacare from, as it were, the bottom up: the real outrage lies not in wishing to deny the poor health care but in knowing, as stretched taxpayers and the self-employed know, that the program is merely another way to impose additional burdens on contributors while asking nothing of those who choose to live off others.
The indigent already receive higher levels of healthcare than the working poor and much of the self-employed middle-class. And they do not pay for it, nor will they pay if they refuse to purchase health insurance because they are exempted from the penalty. Those of us insuring ourselves will experience more instability while paying yet another tariff for those who organize their lives to live off others. And our insurance rates — already the highest for the most fragile coverage — will only rise and grow more insecure.
This is the problem — and half the betrayal. The other half is Medicare. I live in an area with an enormous retirement community. These folks, even the healthy ones, go to doctors and dentists and every other provider on the taxpayer-funded menu (an impressive array) constantly. They view their benefits as an endless buffet and act accordingly, and while this “greatest generation” contributed to society, as opposed to the freeloaders above, in reality they did not contribute enough to sustain the medical expenses they are incurring — and far too much of it is unnecessary. It’s not malice, I think, on anyone’s part: it’s the reality of medical progress. But to say that they refuse to examine the problem rationally is an understatement. The local medical staffs joke about it — ruefully, because they know how much of it is unnecessary and wasteful and how it is bankrupting the nation — literally. We are in a demographic bubble of another sort that cannot be sustained — and it is squeezing the middle like a balloon animal.
Sorry that this is terribly off topic for the article above, but for the demographic discussion. I am glad the demographic of people who are exposed to Mr. Goldman and comprehend him as mainstream is rising. Thank God for the internet.
What do you propose instead of democracy?
When I read leftist articles expressing a negative view of democracy I always ask what they propose instead. Often such articles paint a favorable portrait of China and its economy, in which case I know what they want to replace democracy with. When I read an American conservative saying similar things it’s hard to figure out what do they want to replace democracy with. Many conservatives say the US isn’t a democracy, but a republic, by which they mean a consitutional republic with basic freedoms guaranteed in fundamental laws that can’t be easily reformed by electing, say, a fascist party, which is fine by me – a constitional republic isn’t a non-democracy, it’s a particular model of democracy with certain limitations. If that’s what you mean, fine. If not, what do you mean? Hereditary monarchy? Non-hereditary dictatorship? Theocracy? A council of wisemen selected according to their IQ and university grades? Which of these is better than a democracy?
All systems will fail in the long run, but it’s better sooner than later. Constitutional monarchy is historically a great substitute for democracy in tricky times. It’s in just the right spot between vulgar tyranny and divine right absolutism, a resting spot.
Will you be the king? If not, why would you want to live under such a system?
One word. Just one word. Jobs.
The biggest threat to republican democracy in the US is idiots like you. There’s nothing “tricky” about these times that isn’t attributable to the fact that 52% of America are idiots and elected a communist to the Presidency. The fools that supported him believed the Democrap propaganda that convinced them that the best economy of modern times, maybe of all time, was the worst since the Great Depression. We have a majority of the electorate now composed of parasites, dependent, insecure women, and over-credentialled punks who think that since their $100K degree in Angry People Studies won’t get them $100K/yr. and a corner office that there are no jobs. And what do the little punks do? They camp out in public parks and f**k a lot instead of packing up the Volvo and moving to North Dakota or Texas where there are jobs. ‘Course, they aren’t $100K/yr. with a corner office. You can make $100K/yr. and more, but not if you’re some slack-jawed little metrosexual punk that has no physical skills and can’t stand the thought of being outside and away from the fashionable clubs and theaters.
In my almost 50 years in the workforce I have NEVER been without a job when I wanted one. I took on the adult responsibilities of a wife and child in the economic backdraft of LBJ’s inflationary “guns and butter,” Nixon’s price controls and wage freezes, and Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” and “stagflation.” Frankly, I’ve never made more in real, inflation adjusted dollars than I made during the Carter and early Reagan years, but then I packed up wife, kid, and dog and moved to Alaska during The Pipeline years to make it; it wasn’t fashionable and some of it was uncomfortable and dangerous, but it sure paid good. So, if you’re looking for a job, get off your sorry a** and go find something that somebody will pay you to do and if you do it well, more people will pay you and pay you more; that’s kinda’ the way real world economics works. That crazy lefty crap they taught you in school and taughy you that you were superior for believing doesn’t work at all, but you have to get out in the real world to learn that.
We can shift the emphasis from voting rights to property rights–the two rights co-exist, but increasingly problematically, in liberal democracy. If the majority can decide to redistribute wealth through taxes, or regulate the way I use my property, then voting rights trump property rights; if my use of my property is protected against majoritarianism, then property rights trump voting rights. If we consistently support property rights in any conflict between the two, the logical conclusion is a stateless libertarian order–we may never get there, but why exclude the possibility? Anyway, we can always keep pushing in that direction, and keep replacing governmental institutions with voluntary ones.
That prospect is for us to consider in the Western world; regarding countries like Egypt, which we have, to say the least, very little ability to influence right now, we can offer trading relations, which they will only be able to take advantage of to the extent that they respect property rights themselves. Those countries that do respect property rights, regardless of the scope they provide to majority rule, will be more successful, and we can improve our relations with them. But we shouldn’t expect much from the Muslim world–they may need to implode and we may need to quarantine them. And, either way, re: truepeers, we will have to overcome our White Guilt one way of another, even to save ourselves.
Instead of democracy I suggest a constitutional republic, with clearly delineated limits on Federal power and a constitutional assurance of minority freedoms. Perhaps a form of government where one vote cannot usher in a permanent dictator merely a set of office holders that wish there were no pesky constitution or supreme court so they could be much more efficient dictators. That’s what I suggest. The US has really let the middle east down by selling it democracy without the very rigorous intellectual background required. Heck it can be argued that many a European state also doesn’t quite understand why one needs a first Amendment say no matter how inconvenient it can be short term.
Speaking of the First Amendment, I believe Hillary recently assured the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)representatives visting Washington that the United States WILL support their upcoming UN treaty proposal to make criticizing religion a crime!
EU RULE: INSULTING RELIGION IS ALREADY A CRIME!!!:
Criticizing religion is already a crime in Europe thanks to various EU treaties which all 27 EU members must follow. Two native Brits have received jail sentences recently for remarks made which hurt the feelings of foreign-born residents. I read UK Telegraph every week and many writers there grouch that the UK vacated its sovereignty to Brussels when it became a members.
UN PROPOSAL: INSULTING RELIGION WILL BE A CRIME!:
How could this happen? a) Democratic Senate majority, b) re-elect this POTUS c) both approve a UN treaty which supersedes our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Up to now the USA has been a sovereign nation. Will this continue?
.
Spengler basically says there is no solution for Egypt. That’s to say there is no model of a hierarchical or traditional Islamic society that can hope to keep the peace or make the people productive in the modern global economy. But there is really no model anywhere – in China or India, etc. – that is a likely alternative to Western liberalism for those who want to compete in a global economy with its need for educated, mobile, workers who know and respect their stake in the future.
Thus, the long-term horizon for all societies remains something like liberal democracy. There is no doubt that many many hurdles and calamities remain in front of that horizon for many people. But Spengler’s argument for America here is just short-term pragmatism; it is not a serious argument against the need for long-term strategies for using American might, whether military, cultural, commercial, on behalf of those who want more freedom.
There is one other long-term solution. Live and let die. And when those who are dying fully realize it, be ready, in case they wish to go out with a bang instead of a whimper.
Yeah but in an age when white guilt is already ripping Western societies apart from within, how do you think our societies will fare if we just watch huge swathes of humanity die off? The problem with any strategy of isolating and quarantining socities like Egypt is that it is sure to produce more desire for terrorism against the West. And when they hit us, we have to retaliate. One can readily imagie the situation advancing to the point where we face the option of wiping out millions. Can our own societies today do that and survive the guilt?
Just win, baby, just win. If you do this, there will be plenty of time to rationalize out every sin, genocide including, as we did with Hiroshima nuking.
The only problem with calling that genocide is that the Japanese were warned about the bomb before it was ever dropped and told to implore their leadership to end the war.
Military historian DM Giangreco wrote a book titled “Hell to Pay, Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1946-1947″. In it he laid out the facts about an allied invasion and the defenses being prepared by the Japanese Imperial General HQ. The Japanese knew when we were coming and where we had to land (kind of like the Germans figuring out that the obvious choice for an allied landing would be either Pas de Calais or Normandy). One of the most frightening aspects of the Japanese defense plans, called ketsu-go, was not the number of allied casualties they hoped to inflict, but the number of Japanese civilian casualties (who were to form part of the home island defense forces) they considered acceptable in helping them secure a negotiated peace. That figure totaled around 20 million.
So, now I ask you, who really should have been guilty of genocide?
sergey,
Are your loved ones Russian? If so, then perhaps you know that Stalin and his generals were hoping the USA and Japan would suffer horrific invasion casualties, weakening them sufficiently so the Red Army & Navy could move down and add Japan to its Iron Curtain.
So, from the viewpoint of Stalin and his propaganda machine, the Atomic bombs which precipitated the surrender were a double catastrophe. Japan became a vibrant capitalist economy. Russia stayed a closed economy, which is tragic because every Russian I have met is incredibly intelligent, practical, and motivated. Who knows? If Russia had adopted an open competitive economic system, perhaps the microprocessor industry would have originated there.
Most young Americans are uninformed or misinformed about the situation in the Pacific War in 1945. Truthfully, it wasn’t taught well in the 1970s when I was in school.
Take 45 minutes and read Dr. Paul Fussell’s superb article on this subject.
The article was originally published in 1981 in the New Republic as “Hiroshima: A Soldier’s View,”. Dr. Fussell was the soldier. It is compelling reading and I only discovered the author and the article last month after reading his on-line obituary.
If you google: “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb”, Dr. Fussell’s original article is the first hit. It is in PDF format, courtesy of a WW II history buff with a website at crossroads.alexanderpiela.com.
If Dr. Fussa is correct (as President Truman and the generals also believed), then many millions of Americans and Japanese would have perished in horrific and bloody conflict, including hand-to-hand. My oldest son lived in Japan from 2002 to 2009 and he can assert to the willingness of the Japanese to follow authority. This cultural value is central to the Japanese mind set.
If the invasion of Japan had proceeded, it’s fairly likely I would never have been born, plus my children also. You see, my dad was a 22-yr old medic and he was assigned to the invasion.
Well, White Guilt by itself won’t produce an alternative to watching lots of people die. And what is that alternative? Sending food? To whom? You can’t send food to people whom the government doesn’t wish to have receive it unless you are ready to go to war with that government. Who’s up for that? We also can’t give food to an enemy government if doing so will enable that government to escape a crisis of its own making. We actually seem to be quite good at looking on at very destructive crises–what white guilt prohibits is not letting suffering occur, but rather intervening on our own terms, or for our own purposes.
We in the US and the West more generally need to get our own house in order before we instruct others–how could we tell others, with a straight face, that they should become like us? The problem is, of the two polarities of liberal democracy, protecting property rights on one side and majority rule on the other side, majority rule is the easiest to export and the most attractive to the world’s poor. It is also, without a strong presumption in favor of property rights when the two clash, mostly destructive–for us as well as for peoples without experience in the arts of freedom. If we get our own priorities right in this regard, and find the strength to renounce the resentful pleasures of majority interference in the free use of private property, then we might be in a position to set an example for others.
Thanks as always, Adam.
I appreciate your point about property rights, indeed am following it in your blogging.
In the case of Egypt, sure any food sent will perhaps not get to those out of favour with the Brotherhood members on the street. And yes, white guilt is capable of watching suffering without doing much about it. But who can’t send food to allow a government to escape a crisis of its own making? Whether wise or not, isn’t that an established practice of guilty/compassionate Westerners? Egypt is a place many in the West have visited; many think of it as one of the West’s birthplaces; it will always be in mind of the intelligentsia and media obsessed with their scandal of Israel. Do you think that when the news is full of stories of Egyptians on the point of starvation there won’t be pressure on governments to send shipments of grain, and pressure on the MB to accept delivery whatever their revolutionary tactics? which wouldn’t be a problem presumably if it could be distributed on their terms. We do need to get our houses in order, but we still grow a lot of grain.
I agree with you about not criticizing otherw until our own house is in order. We have only to take a good look and listen before we judge others.
“…on behalf of those who want more freedom.”
It would be cheaper just to give both of them visas. There may be a handful of Egyptians or Syrians who want or understand something like liberal democracy but hard to find them outside of a few blogs.
“In the case of Egypt, sure any food sent will perhaps not get to those out of favour with the Brotherhood members on the street. And yes, white guilt is capable of watching suffering without doing much about it. But who can’t send food to allow a government to escape a crisis of its own making? Whether wise or not, isn’t that an established practice of guilty/compassionate Westerners? Egypt is a place many in the West have visited; many think of it as one of the West’s birthplaces; it will always be in mind of the intelligentsia and media obsessed with their scandal of Israel. Do you think that when the news is full of stories of Egyptians on the point of starvation there won’t be pressure on governments to send shipments of grain, and pressure on the MB to accept delivery whatever their revolutionary tactics? which wouldn’t be a problem presumably if it could be distributed on their terms. We do need to get our houses in order, but we still grow a lot of grain.”
Maybe, maybe not–it’s easy to imagine a lot of handwringing stories, a lot of aborted and ineffectual efforts, etc., and people focused on lots of other things. Anyway, isn’t this the shortest of short-term pragmatism–a momentary appeasement of our feelings of guilt? None of this would really get us any closer to the transformation of the region through the promotion of democracy imagined during the heyday of the Bush Doctrine. Those days are long gone and I don’t think they’re coming back. For the foreseeable future, at least, we’ll be leading from behind, at best.
It seems that “meaning” is even more important than “freedom” and liberty – which is not exactly the same thing. Meaning is so important for some, they’ll accept abject poverty of every kind, in exchange.
Apart from the Suez Canal America has no fundamental interests in MENA.
We are pulling out-wisely-and leaving them to their sectarian, ethic, colonial land squabbles.
Americas fundamental interests are
1/ Our domestic economy
2/ The Pacific- to deal with the threats from China
We need to end all handouts to the MENA- the only country in the region is the loyal US ally and NATO member is-Turkey-which furthers our interest-so far-and is the rising democratic power in the region.
Jason Pollard a traitor and a spy- who caused the death of many US agents-
Turkey never betrayed us as Jason Pollard clearly did.
Time to move on and focus upon American fundamental interests.
We have to choose between Turkey and Jason Pollard?
Is that you, Dr. Paul?
The lies that are told about Pollard
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2012/06/lies-that-are-told-about-pollard.html
to those who understand -
every time vikey posts – he just hocks a chainik.
If you’re going to push all those big lies on people, pretending to be such a great expert on the matter, shouldn’t you at least make the minimal effort of learning his name? (Hint: it isn’t Jason.)
And the US has its own “Pollard” in Israel, called Yosef Amit, an Israeli citizen who spied for the US and got caught:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Amit
At one point Israel even offered to trade him for Pollard.
And if anyone imagines Amit is the only American spy ever in Israel or that the US doesn’t have spies in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Micronesia, and everywhere else in the world, or that Britain doesn’t have spies in the US, France and Israel, or that the French don’t have spies in Germany and Australia, you probably still believe in the tooth fairy too.
The whole incident of the Turkish F-4 is starting to look more and more like an act of incalculable stupidity by the Turks. They sent an unarmed 1970′s era plane on a mission for whatever reason. The plane clearly was flying fast and low in what would look like a threatening approach to any defender. There was no apparent armed fighter cover or electronic countermeasure employed and it went right into missile range during a time when they know the Syrians are going to have itchy trigger fingers.
To compound things instead of responding right away in force the Turks go running to NATO and the UN like a kid with a skinned knee. Now the mighty Turkish military look like cowards and fools. The whole point of helping the Turks build up this mighty arsenal was to have a bulwark against the Soviets who no longer exist. Now we see that they will not even defend their own interest let alone ours.
The US does have a compelling interest in Syria. Right now al-queda and friends are all over that place and there are large stockpiles of chemical agents and missiles of all sorts. We need to be able to deal with that when Assad goes down.
I agree that in the event Assad’s regime falls, Obama OUGHT to prevent Syria’s dangerous weapons from falling into the hands of dangerous operatives.
But what is Obama’s track record?
Obama didn’t prevent Libya’s cache of weapons (including shoulder fired missiles) from being stolen in the chaos after Kadafi was killed.
Weapons and military vehicles disappeared into the hands of religious fanatics who left Libya after the fight ended, loaded with armaments. These fanatics are now well armed and using their Libyan arsenal to destabilize west Africa (see Mali) So-called enemies of the militant religious fundamentalists (Christians and others) are dying or fleeing. I believe this is religous cleansing; should we invent a new term: religio-cide?
Obama & Hillary have spoken out: OOps! They haven’t. Their narratives don’t cover murders of Christians or Jews or non-conformist Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, or, er, anywhere.
Counries like Egypt don’t need to be quarantined to starve. They’ll starve on their own without aid. Aid may come from the West or from regional powers vying for regional domination, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
What’s happening in places like that is that the culture is not advanced enough to produce its own advance technology that will allow it to produce enough food or products that can compete in the global market and buy food, yet the people enjoy many of the fruits of Western medicine. Healthcare in Egypt may not be as good as in the West, but it’s far more advanced than what the local culture could produce by itself. As a result life expectancy has dramatically risen and infant mortality dramatically reduced, which, combined with high birth rate, means population explosion. Egypt doesn’t have the means to sustain its entire population on its own.
As for terrorism, you don’t need to wipe out millions… If you stop Muslim immigration you have a chance of fighting terrorism on US soil. Any place where Muslim mass immigration continues will eventually see a rise in terrorism. It seems inevitable. And they will always have some excuse or another. There’s never a shortage in motivation. The Muslim Brotherhood official moto doesn’t have a part that says “forgive and forget” or “love thy enemy” or even “love thy neighbor”, it does have a part that says that dying in the cause of Allah is the loftiest goal. And you can’t die for the cause of Allah without taking a few kuffar with you. Where there’s a will excuses are easy to find. People like Bin Laden still call Spain Andalusia. They’re not ones to quickly forgive a slight, real or imagined. In Israel if we kill a big terrorist responsible for the slaughter of hundreds they have annual revenge days for quite a while. 10 years from now you can still have a successful terrorist attack in revenge for killing Bin Laden (I’m sure there have been many foiled attempts by now). And one successful attack doesn’t necessarily mean the account is now closed. You might have another one next year and the year after. And if while foiling such attacks you kill another big terrorist that’s a new annual revenge day. You can have terrorist attacks in revenge for depicting Muhammad, or banning the burka, or because someone threw a copy of the Quran to the garbage can.
That was supposed to be a response to truepeers in #10 thread.
I don’t disagree with you but in my earlier comment was thinking of the kind of terrorism that would flow from a state like Egypt if it were really left alone to starve. In such a drastic situation, political power would go to those most willing to channel resentment against the outside world. There would be a positive need to do whatever possible to reach out and hurt the world that doesn’t help. And the the more “state”-sponsored terrorism, the greater the urge to “quarantine” and then again also the greater the counter-reaction from those being left to die. Hence the downside of just watching a country starve, or actively isolating it, is a blowback leading to Western “complicity” in starvation and the urge to bomb and destry in response to any terrrorism the remaining authority in the Arab country could muster against the outside world. And all this comes back to provoke the West’s ongoing civil war between sides with differing understading of what we owe the rest of humanity.
Because Western politics remains centred on White Guilt, I doubt David’s predictions that Egypt will be left to starve.
I’m not in favor of letting the Egyptians starve, but for different reasons (just don’t like for people to starve). But I’m not sure at all that not helping them will make them any more hostile than they’re already are or will increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks. None of the Muslim terrorists I’ve ever heard of was starving, and very few came from a society where people are starving (in which case it was just a coincidence because many Muslim countries are facing an economic abyss). None of them cited financial reasons as their motivation either. They always say things about Crusaders, Zionists, offending Islam, Muhammad, the Quran and stuff like that. Most Western home-grown terrorists were educated and from a middle-class background or higher. Bin Laden came from the richest family in Saudi Arabia. We know that throwing money at them will not solve the problem, and I’m not sure that not throwing money at them will exasperate the problem. I just don’t see any evidence that terrorism has anything to do with poverty or with being angry because the West doesn’t care about said poverty. All the evidence point to a strong religious motivation.
And even if your theory that the power will go to those most willing to channel resentment against the outside world is correct – which seems to always be the case in the Middle East, whether they’re starving or not (the popular ideologies here in the last 60 years were/are Arab ultra-nationalism, Islamism and Marxism, all of which hostile to the West and blame it and Israel for every failure) – the immediate scapegoat is Israel. It’s a long way to America and it costs a lot of money. Israel, on the other hand, is right across the border. It doesn’t cost money to get here and they can use an existing smuggling route to smuggle the explosives. They don’t even have to come here, they can stay there and fire rockets and get money from Iran for doing so. And BTW, they will consider it a proxi revenge at the US too.
The best thing the West can do for them is to throw all the Marxist crap out the window and start stating boldly that Western culture is better and that Muslim cultures fail economically because their own religious fundamentalism inhibits their technological, social and political progress. This is the truth and recognizing the truth is the only thing that can save them in the long run.
Last paragraph is right on.
And yet the ones promoting the guilt are also those who would most like the darkies to starve. Been at that biznis for a hundred years.
Mr. Goldman: What I find interesting now, just as I did when you published them in an Asia Times column, are the Greek fertility statistics. Until 1980, they were fairly constant. But in the 80s, they practically fell off of a cliff–almost 1 child less per woman.
My guess is that was the period when the State became the country’s number 1 employer by adding layers and layers of patronage jobs, jacking up taxes, and making it nearly impossible to buy a home and start a family. I don’t know, but right or wrong, I would sure like to.
Interesting that the highest birthrates were under the Greek Colonels – late 1960s. Was that a prosperous time for the Greeks?
Subsequently, the Socialists took power and it was all down hill….
Spain and Greece should be kept away from democracy with a twelve deep wall of pikes.
Democracy is an adult game. Non-adult people should be subject to some form of paternalistic care, being it constitutional monarchy supported by hereditary aristocracy of their own tribe or a colonial rule.
Balderdash. The vast majority of people have always been mediocre. What’s different in the Middle East is the pathetic leadership from the “Free World”, including the allegedly intelligent opinion makers. There was never any serious chance that Egypt would end up any different than it did because the Muslim Brotherhood, and its associated groups, were the only organized political parties when the Mubarak regime collapsed.
The incompetence of Western Diplomats, the complete bungling by the White House, and the idiocy of the Western (Leftist) Media generated the outcome in their rush to remove Mubarak. To further compound the problem, the West hasn’t been a voice for freedom, liberty and economic prosperity since Reagan left office. What we see in Egypt is the vision the left has for the rest of us, they just don’t want us to realize that their utopia is a totalitarian thug state until it’s too late.
The solution for Egypt, and the rest of the world, lies in Niall Ferguson’s six “killer applications” that led to the rise of the West (competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the Protestant work ethic). Although I’m not convinced that those six apps don’t collapse into “Property Rights” where you own your stuff, you own your work product, and you control how your stuff and work product is utilized. Unfortunately, “Property Rights” weren’t on the ballot in Egypt, the only choice was who does the redistribution of wealth. Gee, that sounds like our upcoming election. Maybe Egypt was a summer preview…
Right now Yeats seems very appropriate.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
And on the home front, the people of the middle east are bringing their support for diversity and interfaith dialogue to our shores…..
American Muslims Stone Christians in Dearborn, Michigan
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/27/american-muslims-stone-christians-in-dearborn-michigan/
“The Greeks are supposed to have made the “responsible” choice in the person of Antonis Samaras, the Amherst- and Harvard-educated leader of the center-right New Democracy party. Responsible in this case means trying to stay in the euro zone by again renegotiating the terms of a bailout that Greeks cannot possibly repay and will not likely honor….”
And that’s in Greece, where they at least HAD some background in running a democratic form of government. The Islamic world has no such history and isn’t about to start now. Egypt is careening towards a civil war, with the Islamists, the Salafists, and the Muslim Brotherhood on one side, and the Army on the other side, representing the old ruling class. Obama and Clinton were supporting something that had no hope at all in succeeding and now they are reaping the “benefits” of it. This whole thing has been botched as badly as NATO’s intervention into Libya, which is also in the process of falling apart as well. All of these countries in the Muslim world have had no real background in democracy, having spent hundreds of years under the rule of kings, dictators, generals, or religious fanatics. Only in Lebanon was there a glimmer of hope that some form of democracy would take hold, but even that was snuffed out by the Syrians and Hezbollah.
The best that we can hope for is a pro-western dictator like Mubarak or pro-western monarch like in Jordan or Saudi Arabia. Aside from that, the Muslim world will never have any real democracy, let alone permanent stability.
Post-liberalism seeks to replace the classical liberalism of individual liberty, limited government, property rights and democratic sovereignty with a new liberalism that favors social rights, social goods, intrusive government and transnational law.
So it ain’t your daddy’s liberalism. (no, it certainly ain’t)
After the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and removal of Mubarak, the 2 candidates Egyptians were ultimately left with were both unsatisfactory, sort of a rock and hard place choice.
The statistic of 90% genital mutilation is horrifying in a country I had always considered, rightly or wrongly, not part of the Muslim backwater.
From the study you link: Fertility Decline in the Muslim World
“Whatever the case may be, the great and still ongoing declines in fertility that are sweeping through the Muslim world most assuredly qualify as a “revolution” — a quiet revolution, to be sure — but a revolution in which hundreds of millions of adults are already participating: and one which stands to transform the future.”
Surprising, going against the common assumption that Muslims are multiplying like mosquitoes and will take over through sheer numbers.
Must be depressing info. for Mullah Krekar et al.
It’s always the people, people.
If a society is prosperous and just and decent it’s because the people are industrious and honest and decent.
If a society is poverty stricken and corrupt it’s because the people are dishonest and unwilling to work.
It’s always the people. Can’t be anything else.
Did it ever occur to anyone that democracy succeeds when a people disagrees on what kind of dictatorship to set up?
The problem here isn’t Islam, although Islam has waaaaay too many problems.
The Problem is the fast food, instant gratification society of the West.
The MB will find out that grabbing power is easier then ruling. Take Israel as the most obvious example. MB has promised to resume the war against Israel. They won’t do any better this time then last time. Egypt still thinks they ‘won’ the ’73 campaign. They didn’t.
So maybe after losing the upcoming campaign, they will face reality. That reality is that Arab armies suck. Those Armies suck because of the culture that created them. You can’t change the Army without changing the culture. Change the culture and there will be no reason to fight Israel.
No the Arab Spring is a good thing in the long run. In the near future all it will produce is another one man, one vote, one time, President for Life “democracy” (yes, sneer quotes)
That in turn will produce another Arab Spring (Arab summer?). I figure it will take about 4 generations. By 2080 voting at regular intervals will be commonplace in the Islamic Crescent. Democracy about a century later, there being a lot more to democracy then a vote.
Meanwhile, sleep with one eye open and keep your powder dry.
What annoys me is those Americans who think that we can somehow avoid being involved in Islamic squabbles. Fools, that decision was made by FDR in ’42. Our choices now are win or lose. Cowards never win.
“Cultures evolve at glacial speeds” Jacksonian Libertarian
I disagree that the Arab Spring has been a wasted effort. It was unreasonable to expect the frozen and backward Islamic cultures to make huge evolutionary strides towards a superior western culture without first taking all the steps in between. In my opinion just getting these cultures unfrozen is enough, that they have been inspired by the purple fingers in Iraq is a victory for the American Strategy. If all the Arab Spring accomplishes is “one man, one vote, one time” that is still more cultural experience than they had before.
“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” Edmund Burke
I say just hit Damascus, Cairo, Tehran, and all the other Muslim country capitols with two nuclear missiles each. Why two? When hunting zombies, you should always double-tap.
Friederich Schiller also said ” against stupidity
the Gods themselves struggle in vain”
Without grounding in the principle of personal liberty, democracy is worthless.
Also, as Bertoldt Brecht said after the 1953 East Berlin bread riots and the DDR responded
(like the Red Queen in Wonderland) that because the people had lost confidence in the state the people
would just have to work twice as hard to make up for it,
“wouldn’t it be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”
The solution is that the people must learn.
In their own way, in their own time, and at their own cost.
Third World nations depend on American stability for their very survival. Our global dominance prevents warring between nation states. Everyone gets a flag and a seat at the UN – ambassadors are exchanged. It all looks great on paper. But in their natural state, colonial nations produce war, poverty and human misery. Citizens are starved and brutalized. Today’s patchwork of nation states is a creation of post-colonial collapse. At the time, independence for these unruly children was unavoidable. History demanded it. Now the world is speeding towards fiscal calamity. If instability rocks the U.S. and Europe, impoverished nations will again fall to savagery. Their populations decimated by war and Biblical famine. Afterwards outside forces will enter to fill the vacuum. This happen all over the world – Latin America, South America, Africa. Especially the Middle East. No doubt Islam itself will devour Arabia from within. Islam is too brutal, too oppressive…too wicked. Allah continues the demonic line of Baal. Baal’s nature grew from the harshness of dessert life. The scorching son boils blood to a violent rage. Once these fires cool and the ash settles, the folly of Third World sovereignty will be eradicated. The strong will again command the weak. It may take centuries or happen tomorrow. Just know history will record it as the bloodiest event to ever scar man’s soul. England and Spain won’t be dispatching their privateers and galleons. They’ll be in flames. China will avenge themselves against Japan. Russia will chew up the Eastern Block. Hollywood couldn’t write a more horrific ending to the modern age.
I’ve said for years that Islam is doomed. That culture can’t compete in the modern world. Doesn’t matter how hard they shake their fists or how much tempporary mayhem they can cause, until they forsake that hopeless religion, nothing will come of that part of the world except violence and anger.
At a high level, we shouldn’t even concern ourselves with them. Our strategy should be to contain and mitigate the damage, and understand that they really aren’t a threat compared to other challenges the civilized world faces.
Other than the fact that it is another example of his total disregard for the law, Marion’s drone tactic is pretty good. What should change is the sneaky, underhanded way he implements it. We should make it an official policy and state forthrightly that we will be killing terrorists with drone attacks and that we have a clear policy on how to conduct the business (without giving the specifics obviously), and take it from there. We should also maintain various strongholds in the Middle East (i.e., Afgahnistan, since we are there already), that can be thoroughly defended, and can serve as bases of operation. The Carriers are good, but they simply aren’t large enough for every situation. A 10 square mile, heavily defended fortress with secure landing areas and reasonable supply lines is best (or whatever size the military says is practical. Yes, soldiers will die, but the goal is to prevent many times the number of deaths that we incur. It will take decades to get rid of the maniacs. Pretending that the problem will solve itself with toothy smiles, big ears and bribes is far far worse than just doing what is necessary.
The solution is simple – You give them MORE of what they deserve.
In the Egyptian peoples case that is MORE “rule of whim” Islam, more poverty and a lot more mass starvation combined with economic collapse.
If Greece would give up its sovereignty to Brussels then Egypt would be more comfortable to do the same. Although that won’t happen, something unexpected will. Iranian revolution is expected but the potential explosion of a supervolcano gets no mention. But supervolcanos are too far apart to count on so what will it be? I dunno but Muslim women might be the only ones who can quickly shake the foundation of radical Islam. Give them guns and watch what happens. Maybe Obama shouldn’t have been trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels but to Egyptian women. So my answer is that gun traffickers such as Obama lost an opportunity and lost Egypt. Now the alternative is to deliver Glocks to them inside Mothers Day bouquets. I came to this conclusion today after watching a dozen or so young Muslim girls dressed from head to toe playing in the swimming pool with all the other white and Hispanic kids in bathing suits. I know I would shoot “the man” if I was expected to learn how to swim in my pajamas and hunting face mask, so I reasoned that they would too.
I think you are being optimistic. Islam has been creating savagery for 1400 years. It’s not going away overnight.
Yeah, but it’s been 1400 years of people hanging out in the desert with no technology. In the mid 80′s I predicted that it would take about a half century for the soviet union to fall apart but the Arab Spring seemed unsurprising. After the Iranian revolution, it will again be difficult for the West to maintain a confrontational posture because there will seem to be little resistance, again. Willy had it easy and the next POTUS might too. KSA is screwed. How will they protect their oil from the vultures if Iran is taken out of play? And alternative fuel sources are being developed not because we have a urgent need but because people have nothing better to do than to invent stuff. Maybe history books will record that 1992 and 2012 were somewhat similar but for different people. Catholics would also be losers for not reconciling with Orthodox in time for it to matter. Once radical Islam is isolated those who didn’t find a partner at the dance hall will regret. So Mr. X might have be right that Russia is looking for a partner before it’s too late to matter.
Islam isn’t going away. Radical Islam is being isolated.
I don’t say they’re looking for a partner because they’ll stop mattering. I say they need Jewish brainpower that left during the great post-1967 emigration. Putvedev know this, which is why there’s an Israeli on the board of RusNano/Skolkovo Foundation. If Putin can cause some heartburns/cognitive dissonance among Russophobes in D.C. who love Israel but can’t believe it’s cutting so many deals with the Kremlin, well that’s all gravy to him!
Ironically, as Anatoly Karlin writes, Russian attitudes have never been better towards the Jews and Israelis across the board (a cynic would respond that they started from a very low floor of rampant anti-Semitism, though even the anti-Semite Stalin did send the Irgun guns and captured Nazi weapons from Czechoslovakia in 48′ to woo kibutz socialists).
I think visa-free travel, the Israeli efforts into wooing the Orthodox Christians (to the extent that some Greek nationalists now want a tripartite alliance between Greeks/Cypriots, Russians and Israelis based on energy extraction and other trade) and just the fact that Jews are no longer seen as a ‘favored’ minority because there aren’t enough of them left — half a mil now, with probably more living in Moscow than the few thousand left in the (misnamed) Jewish Autonomous Region. (As one prominent former Soviet Jewish emigre who now commutes between D.C. and Moscow pointed out, the Soviets in fact favored lotsa minorities, whether Red Guard Latvians whose sons volunteered for the SS a generation later, Georgians, or Armenians [Mikoyan], as a play on the old Assyrian/Roman Empire strategy of divide and conquer against the majority).
At any rate, the game is clearly changing faster than a whole generation of thinkers and perhaps too many PJMers steeped in the Cold War can keep up with.
It isn’t only the Greek nationalists that support this coalition Mr, X, but large segments of Greek society. I would add that the Greece, Crete, Cyrus, Israel corridor has acquired vital importance. It is the only viable resupply corridor for Israel in case general hostilities break out in Israel’s neighborhood. It also gives Israel strategic depth. Let’s not forget that America is also involved in the extraction of EASTMED hydrocarbons in addition to the States you mentioned. This has the making of a beautifully balanced friendship. And the idea that the US and Russia could cooperate through Greeks and Israelis is something dreams are made of. If logic could now prevail and somehow the Egyptian are brought on board through joint energy extraction cooperation, it would stabilize the region to the benefit of all it s people.
Yes, a few weeks ago when Erdogan got uppity we had the spectacle of an American rig “guarded” from the Turkish Navy by a Russian warship drilling in Israeli waters.
And if today’s YNet story is true, then the Russians also helped the Syrians shoot down a Turkish jet in Syrian air space (no one save for a few Turks in parliament really denies it crossed into Syria’s territory). I would expect if the Turks push their luck for their sunflower oil, tomatoes and other key ag exports to Russia to suddenly get stopped at the border, if they want to get their boots on the ground in Syria so bad, they’ll pay an economic price for it. And per David’s frequent comments on the state of the Turkish economy, it is a price they can ill afford and that the likes of the French and British governments egging Erdogan on in Syria can hardly reimburse. I would only expect Putin to drop visas for Russians to visit Antalya (where there’s a Russian Orthodox Church, perhaps one of the few practicing ones left in Turkey) as a last resort if Erdogan goes all in with a full blown Turkish invasion of Syria. In other words, despite certain Twitterati longing for it, not gonna happen.
PS
I would go so far as to say that this Greco-Israeli energy cooperation is the portal for Israel’s eventual EU ascension. According Her, finally, a secure place in a community of like minded nations. Good luck to them. And, drill, drill, drill!
“I see this in the reception of my work, among other things. I’m almost mainstream now.” The Russian charm offensive toward Israel has gone from being fringe to mainstream now, too. One wonders if the Washington Post will acknowledge it with great embarassment next week two years after I saw it coming and figured it was the logical way those Kremlins would proceed.
Do you think anyone in the power echelons of the West, eg USA or Europe reads such assessments except as an Egyptian or African “leader” might and with good reason?
As a warning bell their time is almost up and to get what they can while it’s still gettable and then run for the hills. We have magnificent examples not only in the fiascoes in Europe and the USA, but in the foreign aid programs from the West to African and other Third World countries. To “help the people of those countries to self sufficiency”. That aid for the most part diverted into secret bank accounts of the dictators – sorry national leaders – their families and their cronies while the post-classical liberals with their agenda didn’t notice. Why should they have noticed? It’s only filthy lucre doncha know. AND it’s other peoples’ money. AND it probably comes from Trade. boo-hiss.
And then there’s that other construction of the post-classical liberals – why do we call them liberal when they are evidently nothing of the sort? -in attempts to develop an international empire on pattern of Woodrow Wilson’s League, the United Nations.
A most successful flower from their seeds of international governance outside accountability to member populations if we’re talking of corruption, open criminality and abyssmal incompetence. Costing tons of that filthy lucre from the poor saps – the commoners – who these modern Rousseauists so adore that they steal them blind to underwrite their schemes “for the good of the people”.
So to come back to the point of the article. Who asked these self-arrogating, self-propagating experts, saviours for their interference in “The Lives of Others”?