..but then again: the unknowing vanguard of USA

[Peter_Puget]

Radical Islam's lasting contribution to history might be the establishment of global American power.

 

U.S. military forces can now achieve something unprecedented in military history, namely they can project and sustain sea-based and air-based power into Central Asia. This unprecedented capability allows the United States to project and sustain power anywhere in Asia from anywhere else in Asia, from the Middle East to the Pacific, with virtual impunity, constituting a veritable strategic revolution

link

 

Facing pressure from Russia and China to end America's military presence in two Central Asian states, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld won assurances Tuesday from Kyrgyzstan's new leaders that they would not shut down a U.S. base on Kyrgyz soil used for combat and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan…snip snip cut…In 2001, there was a sense that Russia was incapable of providing security for Central Asia," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Moscow. "But Russian leaders always had this nightmare scenario: What if the U.S. did not leave? What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"

link

[Dru]

namely they can project and sustain sea-based and air-based power into Central Asia.

 

I'm sure the Kirgiz and Afghan navies are shaking in their fucking boots.

[foraker]

What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"

 

and lord knows we'd never screw over our little central asian buddies, right?

[cj001f]

 

That's right PP. That's why we're considering cutting our Air Force modernisation plans to finance the war on "violent extremism". Meanwhile China is surpassing up in electronics, optics and all the other areas required for defence. Do we think they are as stupid as we are? That they will finance our war against them as well as build the weapons.

 

On a more serious note, sense you spend so much time on them, are the walls of blogs covered in virtual jizz stains?

[cj001f]

Then again, there's always those nasty little things like facts.

[olyclimber]

well then, its clear the facts aren't relevant in this case.

[JoshK]

PLOP...

 

another PP turd drop.

[Peter_Puget]

Egads you guys as usual miss the point so I will clarify. Imperial ambition is not defined by success but rather a state of mind. Historically those with imperial ambitions have not succeeded. (also please see this related post) Short-term concessions do not necessarily indicate a change in strategic design

 

As far as Uzbek I would only note that two other Stans are on board and that the US has been critical of the Uzbek government as noted in the W P article.

 

The eviction notice came four days before a senior State Department official was to arrive in Tashkent for talks with the government of President Islam Karimov. The relationship has been increasingly tense since bloody protests in the province of Andijan in May, the worst unrest since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union.

 

I never argued for the "US as Imperialist" viewpoint but the quote shown above is supporting evidence for my assertion that the foreign policy put forth by Bush & Co represents a distinct change from the past.

Edited August 1, 2005 by Peter_Puget

[foraker]

sure is. now, instead of just pissing off our enemies, he pisses off our friends too and a good percentage of the country. not all change is good (or effective)

[Toast]

Radical Islam's lasting contribution to history might be the establishment of global American power.

 

U.S. military forces can now achieve something unprecedented in military history, namely they can project and sustain sea-based and air-based power into Central Asia. This unprecedented capability allows the United States to project and sustain power anywhere in Asia from anywhere else in Asia, from the Middle East to the Pacific, with virtual impunity, constituting a veritable strategic revolution

link

 

Facing pressure from Russia and China to end America's military presence in two Central Asian states, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld won assurances Tuesday from Kyrgyzstan's new leaders that they would not shut down a U.S. base on Kyrgyz soil used for combat and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan…snip snip cut…In 2001, there was a sense that Russia was incapable of providing security for Central Asia," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Moscow. "But Russian leaders always had this nightmare scenario: What if the U.S. did not leave? What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"

link

 

Dude, you are so fucked up in the head. Radical Islam exists BECAUSE of us.

[Peter_Puget]

Toast -

 

Being fucked up makes me s-l-o-w please expand on your comments.

 

[Dechristo]

...pissing off our enemies...

I don't believe much of anything can be done to assuage most of the enemies of the U.S.

 

...he pisses off our friends too...

Karimov is not a friend to anyone unless his palm is getting greased; he's a despot. As in most third-world countries, that are not plagued by radical islamic fundamentalism, the people throng for contact with Westerners and Americans as they desperately desire to improve their and their family's condition. If Karimov had more oil than cotton, he'd be another Saddam; his days are numbered. Just as the Kirgiz leader was overthrown recently, the same may happen for the Uzbeks... but, with more bloodshed.

 

he pisses off...a good percentage of the country.

In these days, with our shrinking globe, unprecedented access to information, increasing fervor for violent demonstration of religious fundamentalism (not islamic only), and significantly disparate opinions of what is "right", any leader of the U.S. is guaranteed disfavor by a significant portion of the populace.

 

We are witness to wild worldly winds.

 

I watched "Truman" last night (Gary Sinise is great). The film ends with the Truman quote, "what a paradise we can make of this Earth... if we don't make a mistake". The problem, of course: everyone is sure to make mistakes, no exceptions.

[cj001f]

Imperial ambition is not defined by success but rather a state of mind.

Bullshit. Perhaps a short course on the British and India?

[JayB]

Radical Islam's lasting contribution to history might be the establishment of global American power.

 

U.S. military forces can now achieve something unprecedented in military history, namely they can project and sustain sea-based and air-based power into Central Asia. This unprecedented capability allows the United States to project and sustain power anywhere in Asia from anywhere else in Asia, from the Middle East to the Pacific, with virtual impunity, constituting a veritable strategic revolution

link

 

Facing pressure from Russia and China to end America's military presence in two Central Asian states, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld won assurances Tuesday from Kyrgyzstan's new leaders that they would not shut down a U.S. base on Kyrgyz soil used for combat and humanitarian missions in Afghanistan…snip snip cut…In 2001, there was a sense that Russia was incapable of providing security for Central Asia," said Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Moscow. "But Russian leaders always had this nightmare scenario: What if the U.S. did not leave? What if they deceive us and stay in Central Asia for much longer than planned?"

link

 

Dude, you are so fucked up in the head. Radical Islam exists BECAUSE of us.

 

Hey Tony:

 

I would be willing to accept this conclusion if you define us as the collective historical entity known as "The West." If I had to define a date and events that lead to the genesis of radical Islam, I'd place that between the nearly continuous series of defeats and reversals sustained by the Moors between the Battle of Toledo in 1085, and their final defeat at Grenada in 1492.

 

Since that time, the Islamic world has been in a continuous state of decline and marginalization relative to the West, and has, for just as long, been groping for some means of changing their fortunes and restoring their civilization to the status it enjoyed in the past. There have been innumerable efforts launched to do so, but all have followed one of two basis paths - attempting to implant Western technologies, institutions, and a limited subset of Social values within the context of an otherwise Islamic society, or going the other direction and attempting to reassert the values, laws, and customs that allegedly prevailed during the period of Muslim conquest, as they believe that it has been the corruption of these values and norms by the West is what has lead to centuries of stagnation, decline, and humilation at the hands of peoples whom they once ruled. M.K. Ataturk represents the former, the Taliban the latter.

 

If you've got some time to kill, check out Albert Hourani's "History of the Arab Peoples" for more info.

 

Word.

[archenemy]

I have to laugh.

What an ego to think that we westerners are the cause of one of the world's oldest religions to form a new branch. The American Annex? That's funny.

[cj001f]

I have to laugh.

What an ego to think that we westerners are the cause of one of the world's oldest religions to form a new branch.

It's amazing what several trillion dollars will do.

[archenemy]

Oh, so fundamentalist Islamics are motivated by money? that's a new one.

[Dechristo]

Oh, so fundamentalist Islamics are motivated by money? that's a new one.

hash and virgin vagina in heaven.

[cj001f]

Oh, so fundamentalist Islamics are motivated by money? that's a new one.

No. The injection of several trillion dollars into a region that was an impoverished backwater at the periphery of our conception of the muslim world substantially altered the public perception of Islam. It's hard to argue that the West didn't finance radical Islam - all of the regions revenue comes from exporting oil.

[archenemy]

Oh, so fundamentalist Islamics are motivated by money? that's a new one.

No. The injection of several trillion dollars into a region that was an impoverished backwater at the periphery of our conception of the muslim world substantially altered the public perception of Islam. It's hard to argue that the West didn't finance radical Islam - all of the regions revenue comes from exporting oil.

bullshit

[cj001f]

bullshit

The Southern Baptist Convention. The Mormon Church. The list goes on....

[JayB]

I have to laugh.

What an ego to think that we westerners are the cause of one of the world's oldest religions to form a new branch. The American Annex? That's funny.

 

Yes - Hourani, Lewis et al tremble before your erudition.

 

What's really funny, actually, is that anyone with a passing aquaintance with the matter would know that in terms of antiquity, Islam is one of the younger of the worlds major religions, with Mohammad initiating work on the Koran in 611AD. Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism all arrived quite a bit earlier than the Muslims. But if you are ranking antiquity in a scale that includes the advent of the folks who intended to auto-castrate their way onto the Halle-Bopp comet in their purple robes, and other theological minor-leaguers in the mix then perhaps the expression "one of the world's oldest" would indeed be appropriate.

 

With regards to the remainder of your quip, the larger point was not that Muslims made fundamental revisions to the teachings of Mohammad in response to their waning fortunes vis-a-vis the West, but that their was a widespread recognition that a population that they had once utterly discounted as a geopolitical threat or source of anything other than slaves, tribute, and raw materials had driven them out, conquered them on their own turf, and utterly surpassed them in every single category of achievement outside of say, Koranic-recitation-from-memory and camel-husbandry. From this it followed that there was, indeed, a problem that had to be fixed, and virtually every solution proposed thus far has been some variant of of modernization/Westernization (Ataturk inTurkey), millitant rejectionism (the Taliban in Afghanistan), or some combination thereof (Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia).

 

The final, larger point is that the context for the present conflict between the Islamic world and the West extends back centuries beyond the founding of the colonies that would become the US, let alone the point at which they began to resent our interventions in the region. Try plugging "Versailles" and "Middle East" into Google and working backwards from there.

[JayB]

You: "Bullshit"

 

Carl: "No. The injection of several trillion dollars into a region that was an impoverished backwater at the periphery of our conception of the muslim world substantially altered the public perception of Islam. It's hard to argue that the West didn't finance radical Islam - all of the regions revenue comes from exporting oil."

 

 

Uh - Carl hates it when I agree with him, but reading a paragraph or two at some point on the relationship between Wahabism and the House of Saud, especially after commercial extraction of oil commenced on the Arabian Pinensula might help you. That is, if your aim is actually to make an informed counterargument, which seems doubtful at the moment.

[Dechristo]

There seems to be at least two issues here. (1) the financial empowerment of a religion and (2) the foment of hatred within one culture for another. The mixing of these two issues promotes the ludicrous idea that hatred is created in a culture by the culture that has enriched it monetarily.

 

Without doubt, the financial empowerment of radical Islam has taken place through the West's consumption of oil, and it can be argued, a continuing empowerment by the West's refusal to earnestly develope and employ alternative sources of energy. But, this does not justify, explain, nor place blame on the West for the hatred aimed at it.

[JayB]

Nope - I would say it's the 10 centuries of decline, defeat, and domination vis-a-vis/at the hands of the once-lowly infidel that made the principal contribution to the resentment.