From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Fri Jun 06 2003 - 10:15:36 MDT
From: John K Clark [mailto:jonkc@att.net]
> > Their anger comes from their poverty (relative to us)
>
> Yes, and they're poor relative to Japan or Korea too, and
> they started from zero just 50 years ago and have no
> natural resources. With all that oil the Arabs should
> be the richest people on Earth, but they blew it
> big time.
I agree. The reason most Arabs are poor has little to do with natural
resources and everything to do with their political, economic, and
legal systems.
> > A real plan on terrorism would target these root causes by
> > spreading affluence, freedom, and opportunity. [...] it all
> > comes back to spreading democracy and affluence. IMHO,
> > that should be the US's #1 priority in foreign policy
>
> Certainly, I want freedom and affluence for everybody, but you can't
> accomplish that by lying and telling Islam what it wants to hear,
> that all the idiotic decisions they've made over the last 500 years
> were really good ideas. They were not.
Well I'm glad we want the same things. Though let me be clear - even
if I didn't give a damn about any other human being on earth, I would
still want them to be affluent and free. Because affluent and free
people are much less likely to cause me problems and far more likely
to help me than are poor oppressed people. So this desire to spread
democracy and affluence need not be altruistic at all.
In any case, I'm not sure where the lying or "telling Islam what it
wants to hear" comments in your post come from - I certainly haven't
proposed that the US do either of those things.
What I want to see from the US is:
1) A shift in strategy towards the spread of democracy and capitalism.
2) A focus on long-term results over short term action.
3) A shift towards the use of economic and cultural forces to
accomplish the above. Specifically, I propose US incentive foreign
aid for countries that liberalize their press, reform their legal
systems, reduce corruption, increase civil liberties, and hold free
elections.
Instead I see a US that is narrowly focused on short-term protection
of its interests, with no regard for the negative longterm effect of
the short-term methods being employed.
cheers,
mez
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