There's this scene in Graham Greene's The Quiet American where the narrator, an English reporter in Viet Nam in late days of the French war there, is thinking about the Vietnamese people and comes to the conclusion that they just aren't ready for democracy. It isn't a racial thing - it's an estimation of their history, their economy, their education, and their culture. Democracy could never have flowered in feudal England, for example.
Yet America believes that it can blow into a country, drop a few tons of bombs, oust the current guys and create freedom. It just doesn't work that way.
Freedom is like a thought virus. It has to travel from person to person, it can't be imposed from the outside. When enough people have this thought virus it will reach critical mass and things will happen. There are ways to foster the spread of this thought virus, but it can never be done with the barrel of a gun.
What happens when Iraq is "liberated?" Well, we take over for a couple of years, and American oil companies come in to help take care of that nation's oil wealth, so the people of Iraq can use it (I'm not making this up, Rumsfeld said it on TV earlier). But who leads the new nation? I imagine that we bring in an Iraqi expat who will be in thrall to the oil companies. Maybe we bring two of them to give the semblence of a democracy, but I guarantee that if the Iraqi people chose someone we did not like to lead their country - well, I don't think they would be able to choose someone like that.
So now there's a new government, kowtowing to the oil interests, since the oil interests are helping to rebuild the economy of the nation. But the people are still uneducated, are scarred by decades of war that cost millions of lives, did not come to this place on their own, have an authority imposed on them from abroad, have angry neighbors who look at Iraq now as a beach head of American imperialism...
How long before this all goes south?
I'm no fan of the cultural imperialism America has marketed across the globe for the last few decades. The fact that Mickey Mouse and McDonalds are the symbols of this nation for most foreign people sickens me.
But it's this cultural imperialism that COULD spread the freedom thought virus. Imagine our efforts aimed at educating and feeding the world, helping people discover democracy, instead of turning them into consumers.
Imagine a world where America used its wealth and might in positive ways, instead of bombing desert nations or pissing off the majority of the planet.
People are going to respond to this with invective or snide jokes or they won't even bother reading past the first paragraph. Hey, I hate long posts too. But I think what I have written in here is true, and right, and I think you all know it in your hearts as well.
Yet America believes that it can blow into a country, drop a few tons of bombs, oust the current guys and create freedom. It just doesn't work that way.
Freedom is like a thought virus. It has to travel from person to person, it can't be imposed from the outside. When enough people have this thought virus it will reach critical mass and things will happen. There are ways to foster the spread of this thought virus, but it can never be done with the barrel of a gun.
What happens when Iraq is "liberated?" Well, we take over for a couple of years, and American oil companies come in to help take care of that nation's oil wealth, so the people of Iraq can use it (I'm not making this up, Rumsfeld said it on TV earlier). But who leads the new nation? I imagine that we bring in an Iraqi expat who will be in thrall to the oil companies. Maybe we bring two of them to give the semblence of a democracy, but I guarantee that if the Iraqi people chose someone we did not like to lead their country - well, I don't think they would be able to choose someone like that.
So now there's a new government, kowtowing to the oil interests, since the oil interests are helping to rebuild the economy of the nation. But the people are still uneducated, are scarred by decades of war that cost millions of lives, did not come to this place on their own, have an authority imposed on them from abroad, have angry neighbors who look at Iraq now as a beach head of American imperialism...
How long before this all goes south?
I'm no fan of the cultural imperialism America has marketed across the globe for the last few decades. The fact that Mickey Mouse and McDonalds are the symbols of this nation for most foreign people sickens me.
But it's this cultural imperialism that COULD spread the freedom thought virus. Imagine our efforts aimed at educating and feeding the world, helping people discover democracy, instead of turning them into consumers.
Imagine a world where America used its wealth and might in positive ways, instead of bombing desert nations or pissing off the majority of the planet.
People are going to respond to this with invective or snide jokes or they won't even bother reading past the first paragraph. Hey, I hate long posts too. But I think what I have written in here is true, and right, and I think you all know it in your hearts as well.
