Quote:
Originally posted by Agamemnon@Sep 12 2004, 08:44 PM
Just to comment on Muslim leadership and their role in perpetuating the problems in the Middle East. Several people asked why bin Laden and Arafat don't provide their own cash to help the poor and downtrodden in the ME. Basically, as most of us know, the problems out there are a consequence often of the regime in place, not direct Western influence.
Of course, given that the West either set up or is instrumental in sustaining these very same regimes sort of places a bit of the blame back on 'our' shoulders. We love the Saudi regime because it sells oil to the West by the shipload, but then decry Middle Eastern leadership for not curtailing intrusions on women's rights and such. I'm sure if we stopped buying their oil and reaping the economic benefits of being involved there, we might see some of these highly unpopular regimes start to become replaced. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are decent examples of this. They use billions of Western dollars to buy state of the art security resources to maintain their hold on their populations. The oil comes from them, the money comes from us.
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O.K. lets get to the problem with that scenario
Lets say tommorrow Bush stands up and makes the speech
"Due to thier oppressive policies towards woman, and thier poor track record in human rights, the American people will no longer spend money on Saudi Oil, we'll send out money to South America instead"
So what happens.
The Saudi economy collapses completely. Working Saudi's are thrown out on the street. People become angry and the Saudi royal family, and the American's for screwing them over. A new government overthrows the royal family, a true radical Muslim government comes into place, because of thier anger in place over the American's and thier inability to fix the economy (Muslim lead governments seem to have a lot of problems with creating a stable economy). They cast a wide net of blame at the American's for destroying the economy of a Muslim nation, creating a lot of anger.
Young men, desparate for money and work, begin to join terrorist groups that promise money to thier family.
The moral, no matter what the American's or the West does in that region, they will lose.
The almost smart thing to do would be to emulate Reagan's plan with the Soviet Union, which would be to pressure thier economies into complete collapse and hope that a more moderate leadership can force thier way to power.
No matter what they do in the Middle East they're going to be un popular. If America got sick of the whole thing and withdrew, they would take blame each time some kind of disastor happened. If they continued to send humanitarian aid to these destitute regions, the radical elements would grow angrier at the American's for trying to meddle in on the Middle East.
Again I ask why Bin Laden, and Arafat and the other millionaire radicals in that region won't step up to feed and educate thier people
1) They don't want these people to be happy, and content because then they can't recruit new members, because then they can't count on popular support. They don't want them educated because as P.T. Barnum once said there's a sucker born every minute, and the dumber the better. An educated wise person is less likely to strap on a bimb and step on a bus
2) Most of the funding for these terrorists come from outside sources who would cut off thier funding if these terrorist groups moderated and used the money to build schools and housing as opposed to buying grenades, machine guns and plastic explosives from the countries that fund them.
There are a lot of innocent people in Palestine that just want to live a normal life, but they're finding themselves unable to do that due to the actions of the radical groups there, and there's no help on the way.
Its a screwed up region, and there's probably no way to fix it for the next 500 years.
Have the American's been a victim of thier own foreign policy? Absolutely there's no doubt. however you have to throw a heavy amount of the blame on the Radical Muslims who would prefer to see thier own people suffer, because it makes thier own recruiting purposes easier.
Whats my proof of this. The American's are more than willing to pump Billions into rebuilding Iraq, but at every turn the Radical terrorists are killing thier own people so the rebuilding can't be done properly.
does this sound logical, you'd think these idiots would want thier people to have a better life.
But they don't, you can't recruit a well fed happy man to sacrifice himself.