Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: RE: Against hate
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 13:15:13 -0400
From: Herb Schorr <schorr () ISI EDU> To: "'Robert J. Berger'" <rberger () ultradevices com>, farber () cis upenn edu, Herb Schorr <schorr () ISI EDU> Subject: RE: IP: RE: Against hate Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 10:03:56 -0700 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) SO people have a very short memory or understanding of history, though i am not a historian. we essentially were at war with communism for over four decades. In that war we started the Truman doctrine to prevent Greece and Turkey from falling under communist domination; we fought in Korea etc. People seem to forget that the TAliban were opposing a communist takeover of Afghanistan. In hindsight, maybe it didnt matter and perhaps the communist rulers in Afghanistan would have gone away with the end of the cold war and certainly we are living with the consequences of our tactical actions in arming and training the Taliban. Ditto for Iraq vs Iran and maybe the answer should be we dont ally with dictatorships. Well then think about the second world war: both Russia and China should then have been left to possibly fall to Hitler and the Japanese respectively. Both of these countries bore the brunt of the fighting until we could arm and train ourselves so that we could be a signifcant factor in the fighting; our role was to supply large amounts of munitions and foods to both of these countries (does this role appear familiar ?) Now Ive never heard anyone argue we shouldnt have aided the Soviets and the Kuomintang in the second world war; there was a good chance that Hitler would have beaten the Soviets without our help; and maybe we shouldnt have aided the British via lendlease because they were an obvious imperial power subjugating many peoples. So basically the problem is that war makes strange bedfellows and very often one has to choose between what appears to be the best of your options at the time and yes there are consequences down the road for supporting unsavory regimes. Stopping the flow of money doesnt involve warfare, just trying to make certain countries come up to responsible behavior rather than look for profit. Finally i suggest reading Tom Friedman's book entitled the "Lexus and the olive tree" to get a little more sophisticated view of whats going on. Or read his article a few days ago in the NY Times: to paraphrase it.. two strains in Islam today the modernists who believe we (Western democracy) offer a better life (ie would you like to be a woman in a traditionalist Islamic society?) vs the traditionists who oppose any attempts to move the mass of people out of their misery if it means changes to traditional society in any way.
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