My OperaHmm?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 11:34:05 AM
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/03/jawbreaker.aspx
*cough*
You know, it's funny. Just the other day I read another wistful rationalisation coming from a palestinian militant (see the previous post):
Now, I am of course a crazy, leftist stalinist hippie quickly allying myself with palestinian militant logic like the above - but it is the case that the "freedom agenda" would dry up and disappear, if peace actually did come to the middle east.
And this is a problem I've been worrying my more smarterer and more connected friends with for a long time - that the real enemy here, as some see it, is to reach a status quo that does not allow for change.. as "we" picture it, at any rate. Because, as they see it, democracy is just about breaking out all the time, and they only need a little push in the right direction (to include us in the "budget" negotiations). Which again gives a justification for our efforts in the area in a way that does not respect institutions of any kind, local law, regional diplomacy, and so on. Even as that is apparently our larger goal.
Which, of course, is simply the high road to perpetuating the situation that has been there for a few decades now - where any hint of an institution like a justice- system is simply cut down by the fact that a load of freedom- loving reformists keep shooting people in the streets, with western- made weapons.
Again, I'm a crazy america- hating communist and so on - but I think it's fair to say that something isn't completely right here.
"I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who were trying to defeat us in Iraq."-- George W. Bush to Lt. General Ray Odierno today, as quoted by the Associated Press.
*cough*
You know, it's funny. Just the other day I read another wistful rationalisation coming from a palestinian militant (see the previous post):
“You know,” says [Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades], “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise. […]
Now, I am of course a crazy, leftist stalinist hippie quickly allying myself with palestinian militant logic like the above - but it is the case that the "freedom agenda" would dry up and disappear, if peace actually did come to the middle east.
And this is a problem I've been worrying my more smarterer and more connected friends with for a long time - that the real enemy here, as some see it, is to reach a status quo that does not allow for change.. as "we" picture it, at any rate. Because, as they see it, democracy is just about breaking out all the time, and they only need a little push in the right direction (to include us in the "budget" negotiations). Which again gives a justification for our efforts in the area in a way that does not respect institutions of any kind, local law, regional diplomacy, and so on. Even as that is apparently our larger goal.
Which, of course, is simply the high road to perpetuating the situation that has been there for a few decades now - where any hint of an institution like a justice- system is simply cut down by the fact that a load of freedom- loving reformists keep shooting people in the streets, with western- made weapons.
Again, I'm a crazy america- hating communist and so on - but I think it's fair to say that something isn't completely right here.
