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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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 Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:23 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| II've seen articles from those who are beginning to argue (W. Bush's "we need to break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil" proposal didn't come from thin air, you know) that we ought to think of containing the Islamic Fundamentalist revolution as we contained Stalinism and Soviet Communism earlier. There is no reasoning with most of these people; even "allied" govts like Saudi and Pakistan barely walk a tightrope where the slightest misstep throws them into an abyss. This new containment strategy would entail writing off and shutting off the entire region as best we can, hoping that the revolution will burn out, perhaps produce a Gorbachev or Yeltsin, and then we can move forward as an international community. This, of course, would entail major transformations in the global political economy. But so be it. |
However that is impossible. These "major transformations" would destroy the world as we know it. The simple truth is that N.A (among others) is dependent on the Middle East supply of oil. We simply can't do without it. Shutting off the taps would drop the U.S from the sole superpower status to a third world ecomony. Same goes for Canada. Without oil=no tanks, jets, factories, cars, jobs... And China for one would NEVER go along with this strategy. They'd buy as much oil as they can to meet their goals of industrising their nation. By the time this "revolution" had burned out, China would have risen to sole superpower status. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:12 am Post subject: |
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| if they let the bearded ones run American ports they may as well let Osama get a job in the white house. |
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desultude
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Location: Dangling my toes in the Persian Gulf
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:20 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| if they let the bearded ones run American ports they may as well let Osama get a job in the white house. |
Profound.  |
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supernick
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:52 am Post subject: |
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| The USA can preach free trade around the world, but when we close our borders only because 'they're' Arabs, we're shown to be hypocritical despots who want to take our ball and go home the minute we start to lose the game. |
I'm glad you said it. If I had, those in the peanut gallery will be calling me an anti-American Canadian with an inferiority complex.
I don't like Bush for his misguided adventure in iraq, but this time I have to agree with him. This is not a Dem or Rep issue as it looks like all sides wanted the deal blocked.
Fine for me. I think that the U.S. and the UK can start taking their port operations out of other countries. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:07 am Post subject: |
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Gopher wrote:
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I know little about the details of the contracts you are citing. But if you are looking to say that "it's all about money" as part of the "it's all about oil" argument, I won't waste my time getting into any kind of discussion over that, even though I cannot imagine that there is no outrage being expressed over the issue, particularly given the oft-cited "it's all about Halliburton" variant that I hear at least once a week in the U.S. media.
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My take on it is more like this...
Politicans and pundits saw an opportunity to demagogue on the ports issue, so they did. But at the end of the day most of them realize that it's a non-issue, and that purging the American military and allied industries of all arab involvement would be a colossal waste of time and money. So they're not going after the Army and Navy contracts. But their indifference to those contracts pretty proves that there was never much of an issue re: ports.
And no, this isn't some "oh those awful yanks" thing. I'm sure I could find similar examples of demagogery in any country you choose to name, including my own. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
Gopher wrote:
| Quote: |
I know little about the details of the contracts you are citing. But if you are looking to say that "it's all about money" as part of the "it's all about oil" argument, I won't waste my time getting into any kind of discussion over that, even though I cannot imagine that there is no outrage being expressed over the issue, particularly given the oft-cited "it's all about Halliburton" variant that I hear at least once a week in the U.S. media.
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My take on it is more like this...
Politicans and pundits saw an opportunity to demagogue on the ports issue, so they did. But at the end of the day most of them realize that it's a non-issue, and that purging the American military and allied industries of all arab involvement would be a colossal waste of time and money. So they're not going after the Army and Navy contracts. But their indifference to those contracts pretty proves that there was never much of an issue re: ports.
And no, this isn't some "oh those awful yanks" thing. I'm sure I could find similar examples of demagogery in any country you choose to name, including my own. |
I do not really disagree with the substance of what you say here. There is an element of demagogery to this.
But demagogery is not all there is to understanding what is going on here. It is not entirely without substance.
When the Chinese took over operations of the Panama Canal, there was nothing comparable to this. That is because the context was different.
Surely you can at least recognize that. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:49 am Post subject: |
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The entire globe faces a threat that policy-makers are too timid even to name: the collective psychosis of Islamic terrorism. But this is not the first time that leaders have had to confront a baffling, dangerous and arguably delusional enemy.
In 1946 and 1947, Great Britain and the United States struggled to make sense of a threat that loomed ambiguously on the horizon. Was the Soviet Union poised to take over Western Europe, or not? Had an Iron Curtain fallen, as Winston Churchill charged, or was the old Tory making too much of Bolshevik bluster? State Department analyst George F. Kennan penned the essay that tipped the United States and Britain toward the policy known as containment.
Kennan wrote that the Soviets were innately antagonistic and had �no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds.� The Western powers could best defend themselves by �the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy � which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.�
Today, many public spokesmen are still hoping to reason Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers out of an implacable hostility. This effort is as futile as a 1947 Candygram to Stalin's Red Army.
Where does the current hostility come from? Apologists like former Sen. Al Gore and Javier Solana, foreign minister of the European Union, suggest that the West has done something to deserve it. If Westerners are nicer toward Muslims, the problem might go away.
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of who the enemy is and what they want � which is total capitulation to their inchoate demands, including the extinction of Israel. Yet Muslims are not the enemy of the West and haven't been for five centuries. Indeed, many Westerners are Muslims.
Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are the enemy, and it is they who insist on the existence of a religious war between Islam and �infidels, crusaders and Jews.� Gore reinforced this stereotype by recently telling a Saudi audience that the United States persecutes Muslims. In doing so, he played directly into the hands of those who scapegoat without compunction. When Javier Solana concurred with the Islamic Conference that the Danish cartoons criticizing terrorism were insensitive to Islam, he, too, buttressed the fundamentalists' fantasies and enmities.
Consider this. Sunni Muslims reject depictions of the Prophet Muhammad as idolatrous, yet Shiites feel differently and may have images of the prophet in their homes. Mennonites forbid the taking of photographs because the First Commandment prohibits graven images. Other Christians allow portraits. But no sensible person expects those outside their religious sect, especially on the other side of the globe, to abide by their precepts. Hindus might as well expect the rest of the world to give up hamburgers.
This is why the word �psychosis� applies. Terrorists exploit every opportunity to fan collective hysteria. The further that anything is from the truth, the more alluring it becomes as a point of propaganda. (Did you know that the CIA, Ted Turner and the Mossad bombed the World Trade Center towers?)
We've seen this before. Just as hatred of the aristocracy during the French Revolution culminated in the Reign of Terror, and Bolshevik paranoia led to the Gulag, the Islamic fundamentalist revolution has sparked a wave of violent, self-glorifying fanaticism that defines anyone outside its circle as enemies deserving of scorn and even death.
Through the audacity of their acts, terrorist organizers have attempted to condition ordinary people to expressing disapproval violently. Corrupt, hypocritical governments tolerate violent demonstrations because it allows them to posture as defenders of the faith. Western defensiveness seems to prove that Europeans or Americans are at fault.
The Danish cartoon most frequently cited portrays Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. Terrorists have planted bombs not only in their hats, but also in their coats, pants, and shoes. The cartoon alleges that fanatics acting in the name of the prophet threaten the world. They do. So when our own leaders suggest that recognizing this fact constitutes an insult to Islam, they are feeding the ever-more-absurd claims of those supposedly aggrieved � and thus the psychosis.
What is the alternative?
History suggests that governments might consider a policy of unapologetic containment. It's not possible to persuade revolutionaries enamored of aggression to peaceable behavior. But governments acting together can limit the damage aggressors do until they burn themselves out.
What might containment look like? It would begin by holding states strictly accountable for the actions of their citizens. So, if a state failed to prevent its citizens from torching an embassy � such as occurred last month in Syria, Iran and Lebanon � all cooperating nations would respond promptly by downgrading the diplomatic status of the country in question. Ambassadors might be recalled. Visa and immigration services ought to be suspended until the perpetrators are apprehended.
Containment also suggests reduced trade relationships, as occurred with the Soviet Union. Self-evidently, this means drastically decreasing reliance upon oil from the Middle East. The industrial world's fossil fuel binge has gone on far too long in any case, damaging the atmosphere. Terrorism is one more incentive to break the addiction and find new ways to generate energy.
Fundamentally, containment rejects the enemy's definition of the problem, rather than countenancing it. As Kennan showed, it is possible to understand people's fears without agreeing the bogeyman exists. Instead, the world powers must be prepared to apply judicious �counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.�
Such a policy will be fraught with difficulties. President Kennedy called containment a �long twilight struggle.� The policy reaped substantial criticism. The left considered it too confrontational, while the right denounced it as �cowardly.� But despite real flaws, the strategy worked overall. We avoided a third world war while giving the Russian people time to make sense of their own history, goals and demons. A new policy of containment might achieve the same in the Middle East. |
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:02 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:49 am Post subject: |
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I'm very surprised how big of an issue that has become in the USA and elsewhere. It seems that we are in another period of increasing nationalism. Admittedly, I am finding myself more and more isolationist, like my American neighbours, but at the same time less nationalistic.
Anyways, while I have no fondness of Islam, the Dubai company is a company, and for them profits are foremost. Also, the Coast Guard and the Dept. of Homeland Security would still be in charge of security. I don't really care who profits from the actual possession of the equipment. In fact, the incentives may be so that the ports would actually be safer should they own them, due to the increased awareness of the porous nature of the ports and the microscope the company would be under.
Though, I may be being a tad naive about the nature of that company. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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| you summed it up perfectly BJWD. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
The Argument for Containment...
| Quote: |
The entire globe faces a threat that policy-makers are too timid even to name: the collective psychosis of Islamic terrorism. But this is not the first time that leaders have had to confront a baffling, dangerous and arguably delusional enemy.
In 1946 and 1947, Great Britain and the United States struggled to make sense of a threat that loomed ambiguously on the horizon. Was the Soviet Union poised to take over Western Europe, or not? Had an Iron Curtain fallen, as Winston Churchill charged, or was the old Tory making too much of Bolshevik bluster? State Department analyst George F. Kennan penned the essay that tipped the United States and Britain toward the policy known as containment.
Kennan wrote that the Soviets were innately antagonistic and had �Ԥ�����o real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds.� The Western powers could best defend themselves by �Ԥ�����he adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy � which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.�
Today, many public spokesmen are still hoping to reason Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers out of an implacable hostility. This effort is as futile as a 1947 Candygram to Stalin's Red Army.
Where does the current hostility come from? Apologists like former Sen. Al Gore and Javier Solana, foreign minister of the European Union, suggest that the West has done something to deserve it. If Westerners are nicer toward Muslims, the problem might go away.
This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of who the enemy is and what they want � which is total capitulation to their inchoate demands, including the extinction of Israel. Yet Muslims are not the enemy of the West and haven't been for five centuries. Indeed, many Westerners are Muslims.
Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are the enemy, and it is they who insist on the existence of a religious war between Islam and �Ԥ�����nfidels, crusaders and Jews.� Gore reinforced this stereotype by recently telling a Saudi audience that the United States persecutes Muslims. In doing so, he played directly into the hands of those who scapegoat without compunction. When Javier Solana concurred with the Islamic Conference that the Danish cartoons criticizing terrorism were insensitive to Islam, he, too, buttressed the fundamentalists' fantasies and enmities.
Consider this. Sunni Muslims reject depictions of the Prophet Muhammad as idolatrous, yet Shiites feel differently and may have images of the prophet in their homes. Mennonites forbid the taking of photographs because the First Commandment prohibits graven images. Other Christians allow portraits. But no sensible person expects those outside their religious sect, especially on the other side of the globe, to abide by their precepts. Hindus might as well expect the rest of the world to give up hamburgers.
This is why the word �Ԥ�����sychosis� applies. Terrorists exploit every opportunity to fan collective hysteria. The further that anything is from the truth, the more alluring it becomes as a point of propaganda. (Did you know that the CIA, Ted Turner and the Mossad bombed the World Trade Center towers?)
We've seen this before. Just as hatred of the aristocracy during the French Revolution culminated in the Reign of Terror, and Bolshevik paranoia led to the Gulag, the Islamic fundamentalist revolution has sparked a wave of violent, self-glorifying fanaticism that defines anyone outside its circle as enemies deserving of scorn and even death.
Through the audacity of their acts, terrorist organizers have attempted to condition ordinary people to expressing disapproval violently. Corrupt, hypocritical governments tolerate violent demonstrations because it allows them to posture as defenders of the faith. Western defensiveness seems to prove that Europeans or Americans are at fault.
The Danish cartoon most frequently cited portrays Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. Terrorists have planted bombs not only in their hats, but also in their coats, pants, and shoes. The cartoon alleges that fanatics acting in the name of the prophet threaten the world. They do. So when our own leaders suggest that recognizing this fact constitutes an insult to Islam, they are feeding the ever-more-absurd claims of those supposedly aggrieved � and thus the psychosis.
What is the alternative?
History suggests that governments might consider a policy of unapologetic containment. It's not possible to persuade revolutionaries enamored of aggression to peaceable behavior. But governments acting together can limit the damage aggressors do until they burn themselves out.
What might containment look like? It would begin by holding states strictly accountable for the actions of their citizens. So, if a state failed to prevent its citizens from torching an embassy � such as occurred last month in Syria, Iran and Lebanon � all cooperating nations would respond promptly by downgrading the diplomatic status of the country in question. Ambassadors might be recalled. Visa and immigration services ought to be suspended until the perpetrators are apprehended.
Containment also suggests reduced trade relationships, as occurred with the Soviet Union. Self-evidently, this means drastically decreasing reliance upon oil from the Middle East. The industrial world's fossil fuel binge has gone on far too long in any case, damaging the atmosphere. Terrorism is one more incentive to break the addiction and find new ways to generate energy.
Fundamentally, containment rejects the enemy's definition of the problem, rather than countenancing it. As Kennan showed, it is possible to understand people's fears without agreeing the bogeyman exists. Instead, the world powers must be prepared to apply judicious �Ԥ�����ounterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.�
Such a policy will be fraught with difficulties. President Kennedy called containment a �Ԥ�����ong twilight struggle.� The policy reaped substantial criticism. The left considered it too confrontational, while the right denounced it as �Ԥ�����owardly.� But despite real flaws, the strategy worked overall. We avoided a third world war while giving the Russian people time to make sense of their own history, goals and demons. A new policy of containment might achieve the same in the Middle East. |
[Could not paste the link, so the article is reproduced in full here.]
Author is Professor Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman, a Stanford-trained historian. |
so then what incentive would the UAE, Qatar, et al. have to change? They're being penalized for trying to modernize here.
I understand "containment" towards Iran and Syria, perhaps even Saudi and Egypt, but the small gulf states? No.
If all you mean is to lessen our dependence on oil, then yes, that's rather evident. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Jun 17, 2006 4:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject: |
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yeah, good luck with that. Keep dreaming there. Not even Israel would go for that because it would totally destroy Israel's relations with Egypt and Jordan. It would be 1967 all over again! yay!
And you thought the oil embargoes of the 70s were bad? ha ha ha.
gopher, may i introduce you to the 21st century and globalization?
You generally seem like an intelligent man but you're dreaming complete fantasy there. |
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Wangja
Joined: 17 May 2004
Location: Seoul, Yongsan
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Of course, USA Inc could have avoided the furore by simply buying the British company. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
yeah, good luck with that. Keep dreaming there. Not even Israel would go for that because it would totally destroy Israel's relations with Egypt and Jordan. It would be 1967 all over again! yay!
And you thought the oil embargoes of the 70s were bad? ha ha ha.
gopher, may i introduce you to the 21st century and globalization?
You generally seem like an intelligent man but you're dreaming complete fantasy there. |
I do not believe I ever said it was realistic or practical. Just my idea of one way to get out of this mess that is less severe than the "nuke 'em and start all over" option. In any case, we might be more or less moving in that direction, even though to a much smaller degree, and more specific against the Fundamentalist countries than my regional approach.
In another example I remember being a high school senior and a govt teacher said something along the lines of "now would be the time to gather all of those who are infected with HIV/AIDS and quarantine them somewhere."
It was harsh, unrealistic, and impractical -- "dreaming," you might say.
But it also sounded an awful lot like a permanent solution to the problem to me, one that would have been better for everyone in the long run.
Anyway, can't you disagree without suggesting that there's something wrong with my intelligence?
If I ever suggested that about you, show me where in a pm and I'll apologize.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Mar 12, 2006 5:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
yeah, good luck with that. Keep dreaming there. Not even Israel would go for that because it would totally destroy Israel's relations with Egypt and Jordan. It would be 1967 all over again! yay!
And you thought the oil embargoes of the 70s were bad? ha ha ha.
gopher, may i introduce you to the 21st century and globalization?
You generally seem like an intelligent man but you're dreaming complete fantasy there. |
I do not believe I ever said it was realistic of practical. Just my idea of one way to get out of this mess that is less severe than the "nuke 'em and start all over" option. In any case, we might be more or less moving in that direction, even though to a much smaller degree, and more specific against the Fundamentalist countries than my regional approach.
In another example I remember being a high school senior and a govt teacher said something along the lines of "now would be the time to gather all of those who are infected with HIV/AIDS and quarantine them somewhere."
It was harsh, unrealistic, and impractical -- "dreaming," you might say.
But it also sounded an awful lot like a permanent solution to the problem to me, one that would have been better for everyone in the long run.
Anyway, can't you disagree without suggesting that there's something wrong with my intelligence?
If I ever suggested that about you, show me where in a pm and I'll apologize. |
What's a government teacher? (govt) |
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