From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 09:28:32 MST
On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, Max M wrote:
> Don't attack the symptoms, attack the disease.
I'm not going to get into the tete-a-tet that Max and Ron seem
to be having. I'll simply note that I read a very interesting
article in the NY Times a few days ago about the mini-war that
seems to currently be going on in northeastern Iraq. It seems
that there is a collection of Islamic militants, perhaps including
terrorists funded by Iran and/or remnants of the Taliban and or
Al Queda who are in the process of taking territory away from the
Kurds. The Times offered the suggestion that they are trying
to create a strict Islamic state (ala the Taliban/Afghanistan
model) in that part of Iraq).
Another example of the problem with Islam could be the difficulties
found in Nigeria (Google on Nigeria, the Miss World pageant and
violence).
There is a fundamental problem out there in the world -- intolerance.
Large numbers of people want to force the world to be the way *they*
want it to be -- this isn't just an "Islamic" thing, one can see it in
everyone from hardline Jewish settlers in Palestinian lands to
the anti-abortionists in the U.S.
The question I would ask Max and others is "When does one act?".
How much of Northern Iraq should we let the Islamic fundamentalists
take from the Kurds? Do we allow them to create another Afghanistan?
Should we stand by while violence takes 100+ lives in Nigeria?
What about 1 million+ lives in Rwanda?
I don't think we (the U.S., Europe, etc.) apply our interventionist
policies in very consistent ways. I can think of Yugoslavia, East
Timor and Afghanistan as cases where we intervened with some success.
But it was only after a lot of human suffering had taken place.
Sticking our heads in the sand doesn't solve the problems because
there are intolerant and/or power hungry people out there who
*will* take advantage of that situation (Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic,
Khomeini, Osama, Saddam, etc.). The real question is how to
intervene in ways that don't create bigger problems down the
road (as many cold war activities may have done).
Robert
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