“Failed states.” That’s where the danger to us lies. Failed states. Countries that failed. Not just the good behavior test, mind you, but failed in every way as a nation.
Infrastructure? Fuggidaboudit. Have you ever seen pictures of the notorious Kabul Arena, where all those beheadings took place? Texas high schools have better.
Education? No, that’s propaganda, where it exists at all. “Education” is to extol the leader, excuse the government, and instill hatred. Nothing more. Arafat’s control of Palestinian education is directly responsible for the willingness of children to become suicide bombers.
Defense? Taking delivery of a shitload of Soviet gear does not provide a nation with defense. Just ask Iraq, or Syria or pre-1979 Egypt. There is not one failed state whose skies we cannot control in a week, or nation in six months.
Courts and police? Unless you mean kangaroo courts and secret police, please don’t make me laugh. “Justice” is whatever serves the state, and the police merely serve the leader.
But the governments aren’t solely to blame for the failure of their nations. The people are to blame, too.
Americans put up with about a dozen years of increasing British bullshit before taking up arms against the mother country. The next year, Thomas Jefferson wrote the most beautiful political statement of all time. Another decade later, and the Founding Fathers produced our Constitution, as close to perfect as any political charter has ever been. And we did it without benefit of prior example — we had to make things up as we went along, starting a philosophical revolution.
Two and a quarter centuries later, those two documents have allowed us to become the freest, richest, and usually most honorable people in all of human history. In just one century, we rescued Europe from itself, we saved the world from fascism, and stopped Communism cold. The previous century, we lost a million of our own in the battle to end slavery.
Compare that to the failed nations of the world. In almost every case, the locals threw off the “shackles” of British, French, or Dutch rule, only to shackle themselves worse. The mostly benign neglect of foreign rule was replaced with homegrown dictators, eager to sell their out their own people in exchange for foreign out. But have the people followed our example? Have they bundled their dictators out, passed a decent set of laws, and gone about the business of leading good lives in peaceful countries?
They have, instead, lashed out at the United States, the country that should be their role model and could be their savior. Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia, and others mass-produce hatred of the West like we mass produce cars.
These are the people we are supposed to defer to? These are the people in whom we are to place our security? These are the cultures supposedly as good or better than our own? Hardly.
I do not advocate a return to colonialism — I can think of nothing worse for us or for them. But the peoples of the world’s failed states had better soon realize that either they live by democracy, individual rights, capitalism, and the rule of law, or they risk becoming collateral damage in a war brought on by themselves.
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