Letter On The Iraq War

[astrov]

"To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII)."

 

Nice writing ... supposedly by a Ph.D?

 

Also, OP:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/promulgate

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

"To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII)."

 

Nice writing ... supposedly by a Ph.D?

 

Also, OP:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/promulgate

 

Gotta love how the majority of the negative responses:

 

1) attack the author's grammar

2) attack the source (fake author)

3) do anything but address the points raised in the letter

 

[astrov]

"Whether Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal and that includes the Politicians and media of our country and the free world!"

 

Nice writing.

[StevenSeagal]

"To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII)."

 

Nice writing ... supposedly by a Ph.D?

 

Also, OP:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/promulgate

 

Gotta love how the majority of the negative responses:

 

1) attack the author's grammar

2) attack the source (fake author)

3) do anything but address the points raised in the letter

 

Nice lack of capitalization.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Nice lack of capitalization.

 

LICK SACK YOU CLOWNPUNCHER

[StevenSeagal]

LICK SACK YOU CLOWNPUNCHER

 

Nice all caps and lack of a period.

[Crux]

LICK SACK YOU CLOWNPUNCHER

KK -- yer always begging for sex from the guys here, even though there's little doubt this is mostly a hetero site. Tell me, is it too much trouble for you to just do a Google on latent-queer-bait (dot-com), or are you obsessed with one day turning a straight guy?

[mattp]

Jclark, thanks for bringing some real world experience into the discussion. I think few of us have any doubt that much that drives radical Islamic terrorism is based in a religious fanaticism that will persist whether we fight them or not, and certainly it is clear that the war was mismanaged.

 

However, I don’t think the ongoing fanatical element means there is no benefit in seeking to build allies among more moderate Muslims or considering whether our actions abroad will be perceived as selfish, immoral, or ill-advised by even our allies. JayB and others talk in circles trying to make the point that if you worry about the politics of our policies in this manner you cannot be focused on addressing the fanatics, but I don’t think anything could be further from the truth: where we alienate both our longstanding traditional allies and our temporary friends in a current conflict with tough-guy go-it-alone rhetoric, blanket statements of disrespect for all Muslims, or statements from the very top of our administration that we are going to use torture – followed by that reality on the ground - we are weakening our ability to get after the truly bad guys. We need all the help we can get if, as you say, the terrorism we fight is rooted in religious fundamentalism that is not going away. Bombs and combative rhetoric is not going to stop it.

 

And, as to the lies that Bush used to get us into the war, I am very surprised to hear ANYBODY still claim he didn’t lie. It is well documented that they cherry picked intelligence to bolster the argument that Saddam was a threat and ignored copious information that he really was not much of a threat. Remember the aluminum tubes that the Bushies said were for centrifuges when the experts said they were not suitable? The alleged meeting with Al Queda for which there was no evidence in support? The Uranium purchase in Africa that they’ve admitted should not have been in the SOU? The “pipeline” whereby intelligence information supporting claims of weaponry were skimmed off the top and denied the normal scrutiny whereas information debunking those claims was buried? Remember the statements of AlBaradi that there was no nuclear weapons program? Ho about the claim that there was an active terrorist training camp on the Iran border when all there was were some sheep herders? What happened to the mobile biological labs – has there ever been even a shred of evidence that one ever existed? I am sure you could work through my list and find somewhere a web-based reference that one of them was real but with a few clicks of the mouse I could find mor examples of lies or exaggerations and the overall pattern is clear: the Downing Street memo documented their plan to manufacture a case for war and history has proven that memo reflected reality.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

LICK SACK YOU CLOWNPUNCHER

KK -- yer always begging for sex from the guys here, even though there's little doubt this is mostly a hetero site. Tell me, is it too much trouble for you to just do a Google on latent-queer-bait (dot-com), or are you obsessed with one day turning a straight guy?

 

The last time I gave it to KKK, he didn't even say "I love you" afterwards.

 

Not very nice.

[tvashtarkatena]

Jclark, thanks for bringing some real world experience into the discussion. I think few of us have any doubt that much that drives radical Islamic terrorism is based in a religious fanaticism that will persist whether we fight them or not, and certainly it is clear that the war was mismanaged.

 

However, I don’t think the ongoing fanatical element means there is no benefit in seeking to build allies among more moderate Muslims or considering whether our actions abroad will be perceived as selfish, immoral, or ill-advised by even our allies. JayB and others talk in circles trying to make the point that if you worry about the politics of our policies in this manner you cannot be focused on addressing the fanatics, but I don’t think anything could be further from the truth: where we alienate both our longstanding traditional allies and our temporary friends in a current conflict with tough-guy go-it-alone rhetoric, blanket statements of disrespect for all Muslims, or statements from the very top of our administration that we are going to use terror – followed by that reality on the ground - we are weakening our ability to get after the truly bad guys. We need all the help we can get if, as you say, the terrorism we fight is rooted in religious fundamentalism that is not going away. Bombs and combative rhetoric is not going to stop it.

 

 

It's interesting to me how American conservatives, who have argued vehemently against any form of socialism for decades, consistently argue for centralized control and against local control. They continually defend big agribusiness at the expense of smaller family farms, foreign intervention through the use of force over working with soveriegn governments to resolve problems within their own borders, and a larger military; the most socialist organization ever created by man.

 

It be all funky n shit.

[JayB]

Jclark, thanks for bringing some real world experience into the discussion. I think few of us have any doubt that much that drives radical Islamic terrorism is based in a religious fanaticism that will persist whether we fight them or not, and certainly it is clear that the war was mismanaged.

 

However, I don’t think the ongoing fanatical element means there is no benefit in seeking to build allies among more moderate Muslims or considering whether our actions abroad will be perceived as selfish, immoral, or ill-advised by even our allies. JayB and others talk in circles trying to make the point that if you worry about the politics of our policies in this manner you cannot be focused on addressing the fanatics, but I don’t think anything could be further from the truth: where we alienate both our longstanding traditional allies and our temporary friends in a current conflict with tough-guy go-it-alone rhetoric, blanket statements of disrespect for all Muslims, or statements from the very top of our administration that we are going to use torture – followed by that reality on the ground - we are weakening our ability to get after the truly bad guys. We need all the help we can get if, as you say, the terrorism we fight is rooted in religious fundamentalism that is not going away. Bombs and combative rhetoric is not going to stop it.

 

And, as to the lies that Bush used to get us into the war, I am very surprised to hear ANYBODY still claim he didn’t lie. It is well documented that they cherry picked intelligence to bolster the argument that Saddam was a threat and ignored copious information that he really was not much of a threat. Remember the aluminum tubes that the Bushies said were for centrifuges when the experts said they were not suitable? The alleged meeting with Al Queda for which there was no evidence in support? The Uranium purchase in Africa that they’ve admitted should not have been in the SOU? The “pipeline” whereby intelligence information supporting claims of weaponry were skimmed off the top and denied the normal scrutiny whereas information debunking those claims was buried? Remember the statements of AlBaradi that there was no nuclear weapons program? Ho about the claim that there was an active terrorist training camp on the Iran border when all there was were some sheep herders? What happened to the mobile biological labs – has there ever been even a shred of evidence that one ever existed? I am sure you could work through my list and find somewhere a web-based reference that one of them was real but with a few clicks of the mouse I could find mor examples of lies or exaggerations and the overall pattern is clear: the Downing Street memo documented their plan to manufacture a case for war and history has proven that memo reflected reality.

 

I don't think I could be called ungenerous in characterizing the entirety of your thinking on these matters thus far as "I don't know what the right policies are, but the policies that we've adopted thus far are wrong."

 

Here's some straightforward questions for you, that should be relatively easy to answer given your oft-stated positions on these matters. How about some straightforward answers?

 

 

What is the ethically and diplomatically sound way to deal with unsavory, undemocratic regimes when the forces likely to displace them are likely to be both more repressive and more hostile to both the West and many of the rights and freedoms that (small d) democrats around the world consider - or at least claim to consider - fundamental rights that no one should be deprived of?

 

Does the case of say - Iran - support the claim that active or tacit US support is either necessary and sufficient for the establishment of a repressive regime?

 

Have any of you considered non-political forces that promote the development and maintenance of repressive political models? If you look around the world, it's clear that in states around the world - not just the Middle East - in which the economy is driven by a single resource, authoritarianism is the rule rather than the exception. In states in which a wide range of industries and business - which cannot easily be seized or capably administered by a single entity - generate the tax revenues that the state depends upon for its existence, some degree of public involvement in and acceptance of the political system is a necessary condition for the state's survival, and taxation guarantees some degree of representation. In states where the control of a single resource generates all of the revenues that the state needs to function, there's no need for taxation and no impetus for representation. Moreover - in this scenario, the state, rather than independent economic activity - determines who eats and who starves, who prospers and who suffers, and this is a state of affairs that provides the autonomy or material security necessary for sustained dissent. My contention here is that no matter what the US or other western powers did in the region, there'd be very strong tendencies towards autocracy there, and that these tendencies will continue to present an obstacle towards democratic reform in the region for as long as oil provides sufficient revenues for the regimes that are currently in charge there.

 

...

 

I think the argument I've seen is that political repression in Arab countries has been dramatically higher as a consequence of US support - explicit or tacit - for the regimes doing the repressing, and that attacks by persons inhabiting these countries on the US and other Western powers are an outgrowth of and reaction to that repression.

 

I am curious what the consensus is amongst people who hold this view concerning what would transpire if the US were to immediately disavow anything that could be construed as support for, and abandon all regimes in the Middle East which are undemocratic and/or repressive. Would the repression end? Stay the same? Get worse? And what implications would this have with respect to the frequency and intensity of attacks carried out against the US by citizens of these states? Does the fact that a significant number of the terrorist attacks carried out against the US and other Western powers were conducted by persons who had either lived in Europe for a number of years, or were born there, and who thus never experienced or had escaped from the type of repression in question have any bearing on your thinking about the role of US-fostered political repression in bringing about attacks of this nature?

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I think the argument I've seen is that political repression in Arab countries has been dramatically higher as a consequence of US support - explicit or tacit - for the regimes doing the repressing, and that attacks by persons inhabiting these countries on the US and other Western powers are an outgrowth of and reaction to that repression.

 

I don't think this is a widely held argument at all. I would guess that it is a mistatement of the argument that US military involvement in Iraq has destabilized the region and inflamed fundamentalist extremism there...which it certainly has by anyone's analysis, including supporters of the war. This has resulted in more repression in the region; by extremist governments (Iran), by governments trying to contain extremist elements (Egypt), and by weak governments under threat of collapse (Lebanon).

 

I would also argue that many, myself included, believe our Middle Eastern polices have been flawed not because of some simplistic belief that our involvement per se leads to repression, but that the US does not consider the repressiveness of a regime as a primary determinant for lending support. Rather, alignment with US interests (Israel) and a willingness to sell oil on favorable terms (Saudi Arabia) have determined who we favor in the Middle East. Social justice has had little to do with it. As a result, we are now reaping a huge debt, decreased security, and a less stable and less democratic Middle East for our decades of massive investment in the region.

[mattp]

Jesus, Jay. Get over yourself and your “straightforward questions.” You type 800 words of nonsense, trying to get us myopic liberals to trip over ourselves, get pissy when we don’t want to play your game, and you state nothing.

 

I don’t know the “best way” to deal with “bad” nations, OK? There certainly is not any one “ethically and diplomatically sound way to deal with unsavory, undemocratic regimes” and any attempt by me to answer the question you’ve posed would be loony except to state, as I have, that we should NOT proclaim to the world that we are the lone superpower and everybody else is either “with us or against us,” because that is guaranteed to spark resistence by friend and foe alike. Instead, we should be seeking working relationships with our allies, traditional and temporary. We should NOT be making speeches about how Islam is the root of all evil. Instead, we should be seeking to get the world including moderate Muslims to help us isolate and prosecute the terrorists as the criminals that they are. We should NOT be proclaiming to the world that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to us, and maintaining programs of detention and torture that virtually nobody says have done us any real good except your retired Surgeon quoted above who says that the people held in Guantanimo or tortured at Abu Graib or elsewhere were the same people who gassed the Kurds. Instead, we should be making a big display about how we treat prisoners fairly and respect the rule of international law. As far as I know, there have been few if any interrogation experts who have said we gain much useful information through the torture, and I havn't heard even the Whitehouse spokesman argue we've made great progress in the war on terror through our holding of the enemy noncombatants at Guantanimo without trial, formal charges, etc. that we couldn't have made without a more - as you put it - "politically correct" detention.

 

Where we have a problem with Iran, for example, we need to figure out a way to engage them and to get other nations in the region to help us at least contain them - rattling our nukes is not going to solve the problem. I suppose we could actualy nuke them into submission, but do you argue that this would be a good idea?

 

Remember, even your Air Force surgeon argues that these fanatical terrorists are not going to stop trying to kill us - so clearly we need not only a strong military but we also need the help of their cousins and brothers if we are going to stop or reduce their activity.

 

As to the rest of your ridiculous post, Tvash has answered the heart of it pretty well.

 

Now: before you respond with some 800 word series of circular questions, how about you tell us what YOU think should be the U.S. policy?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Jesus, Jay. Get over yourself and your “straightforward questions.”

 

pot. kettle. black.

[mattp]

KK-

I thought you had me on ignore.

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

KK-

I thought you had me on ignore.

 

I couldn't find it on the UI for your user ID. YOu must be special.

 

It was easy to add/remove Kevboner from ignore.

 

[JayB]

How is this statement:

 

"I would also argue that many, myself included, believe our Middle Eastern polices have been flawed not because of some simplistic belief that our involvement per se leads to repression, but that the US does not consider the repressiveness of a regime as a primary determinant for lending support. Rather, alignment with US interests (Israel) and a willingness to sell oil on favorable terms (Saudi Arabia) have determined who we favor in the Middle East. Social justice has had little to do with it. As a result, we are now reaping a huge debt, decreased security, and a less stable and less democratic Middle East for our decades of massive investment in the region."

 

Materially Different than this one, that no one holds, and gives credence to, and is not widely referred to as "Blowback":

 

"I think the argument I've seen is that political repression in Arab countries has been dramatically higher as a consequence of US support - explicit or tacit - for the regimes doing the repressing, and that attacks by persons inhabiting these countries on the US and other Western powers are an outgrowth of and reaction to that repression."

 

The central argument in both variants is that our involvement there - whatever the motives - has resulted in a net increase in repression over and above that which would have resulted from any endogenous forces in the region, and the net result has been a set of political conditions which has given rise to the terrorist attacks against the US.

 

If alignment with our interests, especially during the Cold War, and a willingness to sell oil on favorable terms (how the term "favorable" jives with the creation of a cartel created for the express purpose of restricting supply and thereby artificially elevating prices, or pondering for a moment what the Saudis would do with their oil if they weren't selling it on the open market, in which case it invariably winds up in the hands of whomever is willing and able to pay the most for it would make an interesting discussion in its own right), or containing Islamists that would institute a set of laws that would result in more repression than the existing regimes have exerted and have a decidedly more hostile stance towards the US....are not legitimate policy interests for the US to consider when considering how to play it's cards in the Middle East - what are? If you have a complex set of conflicting perogatives at play in an extremely consequential region - are you confident that calculating our moves on the basis of a single variable at all times will necessarily result in a set of outcomes that's to our liking and which advances our interests, and improves the lives of the people living in the region?

 

I'm not sure that a single-variable policy in which we lend our support to whatever political outcomes are consistent with whatever manifestations of the popular will that happen to prevail at any given moment would have resulted in a Middle East that's any more peaceful or free than the one that we've arrived at via our consideration of the multitude of other variables that have driven our policy in the region for decades. I also think that this kind of analysis gives far too much significance to the role that external forces have played in the region, and pays far too little attention to the endogenous forces at work there. Pretend what you want, there are precious few circumstances in which the cultural and economic forces at work in the region would yield a political situation in which the Middle East had transmuted into an equatorial Holland. Sorry.

 

 

 

 

[JayB]

Jesus, Jay. Get over yourself and your “straightforward questions.” You type 800 words of nonsense, trying to get us myopic liberals to trip over ourselves, get pissy when we don’t want to play your game, and you state nothing.

 

I don’t know the “best way” to deal with “bad” nations, OK? There certainly is not any one “ethically and diplomatically sound way to deal with unsavory, undemocratic regimes” and any attempt by me to answer the question you’ve posed would be loony except to state, as I have, that we should NOT proclaim to the world that we are the lone superpower and everybody else is either “with us or against us,” because that is guaranteed to spark resistence by friend and foe alike. Instead, we should be seeking working relationships with our allies, traditional and temporary. We should NOT be making speeches about how Islam is the root of all evil. Instead, we should be seeking to get the world including moderate Muslims to help us isolate and prosecute the terrorists as the criminals that they are. We should NOT be proclaiming to the world that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to us, and maintaining programs of detention and torture that virtually nobody says have done us any real good except your retired Surgeon quoted above who says that the people held in Guantanimo or tortured at Abu Graib or elsewhere were the same people who gassed the Kurds. Instead, we should be making a big display about how we treat prisoners fairly and respect the rule of international law. As far as I know, there have been few if any interrogation experts who have said we gain much useful information through the torture, and I havn't heard even the Whitehouse spokesman argue we've made great progress in the war on terror through our holding of the enemy noncombatants at Guantanimo without trial, formal charges, etc. that we couldn't have made without a more - as you put it - "politically correct" detention.

 

Where we have a problem with Iran, for example, we need to figure out a way to engage them and to get other nations in the region to help us at least contain them - rattling our nukes is not going to solve the problem. I suppose we could actualy nuke them into submission, but do you argue that this would be a good idea?

 

Remember, even your Air Force surgeon argues that these fanatical terrorists are not going to stop trying to kill us - so clearly we need not only a strong military but we also need the help of their cousins and brothers if we are going to stop or reduce their activity.

 

As to the rest of your ridiculous post, Tvash has answered the heart of it pretty well.

 

Now: before you respond with some 800 word series of circular questions, how about you tell us what YOU think should be the U.S. policy?

 

Thus US policy on what? Narrow it down a bit and I'll answer.

 

The reality is that any serious attempt on your part to address any of the questions would be impossible to reconcile with your viewpoints, and your posts are a tacit admission of as much.

 

And - to address a minor sub-point of your hystrionics:

 

"We should NOT be making speeches about how Islam is the root of all evil."

 

Can you find me a single example of a case in which a single official associated with the executive branch hasn't taken pains to distinguish jihadists from the average Muslim. If you look at Bush's actions - like visiting multiple Mosques on multiple occaisions - or the content of his speeches, you will not find blanket condemnations of Islam, but repeated assertions that our conflict is restricted to those who invoke Islam to justify the intentional murder of civilians.

 

From the tone of your comments, it seems as though you consider statements such as these have played a significant role in alienating moderate Muslims. If you are correct in this assertion, then it's difficult to determine what statements concerning Islamists could be uttered by any public official without inflaming Muslim sentiment, in which case one has to ask whether it's US rhetoric that's caused a significant portion of the Muslim world to extend their sympathies to radical Islamists, or if there are other forces that might warrant consideration.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

If you look around the world, it's clear that in states around the world - not just the Middle East - in which the economy is driven by a single resource, authoritarianism is the rule rather than the exception.

 

This assertion evaporates under historical scrutiny. First of all, there are very few nations around the world that are 'single resource' based. Too few to draw any kind of simplistic conclusion regarding the relationship of that key resource and the oppressiveness of their regime. When one examines these few nations, no clear patterns emerge. Repressive Saudi Arabia is oil based, but then, so is the very democratic and socially liberal Norway. New Zealand's primary export is sheep. Repressive? Not very. For a more local example, visit Kuwait, another oil based nation, sometime. Pretty liberal and modern.

 

One thing Jay's arguments all have in common: they are in love with the 'Big Idea': a one size fits all, formula based, and thus centralized, solution for the world's problems. Unfortunately for this philosophy, which has failed spectacularly of late, successful foreign policy requires a more case by case approach and a great deal of local knowledge and dependence on in country relationships.

 

Using Saudi Arabia as an example, I would argue that their cultural and colonial history had much more to do with their present level of repression than the fact that they are a single resource producer. Islam, which was at its inception was a liberalizing force in what was a brutal nomadic culture, has morphed over the centuries into its present intolerant forms, the most intolerant of which reside in Saudi Arabia. No surprise; it is the birthplace of the religion. What we see today is a young, tenuous Kingdom, established under the auspices the colonial powers long before oil became a primary world resource, trying to maintain an uneasy peace with a fundamentalist population following a religion established, again, long before oil became a primary world resource.

Edited August 15, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[JayB]

If you look around the world, it's clear that in states around the world - not just the Middle East - in which the economy is driven by a single resource, authoritarianism is the rule rather than the exception.

 

This assertion evaporates under historical scrutiny. First of all, there are very few nations around the world that are 'single resource' based. Too few to draw any kind of simplistic conclusion regarding the relationship of that key resource and the oppressiveness of their regime. When one examines these few nations, no clear patterns emerge. Repressive Saudi Arabia is oil based, but then, so is the very democratic and socially liberal Norway. New Zealand's primary export is sheep. Repressive? Not very. For a more local example, visit Kuwait, another oil based nation, sometime. Pretty liberal and modern.

 

One thing Jay's arguments all have in common: they are in love with the 'Big Idea': a one size fits all, formula based, and thus centralized, solution for the world's problems. Unfortunately for this philosophy, which has failed spectacularly of late, successful foreign policy requires a more case by case approach and a great deal of local knowledge and dependence on in country relationships.

 

Using Saudi Arabia as an example, I would argue that their cultural and colonial history had much more to do with their present level of repression than the fact that they are a single resource producer. Islam, which was at its inception was a liberalizing force in what was a brutal nomadic culture, has morphed over the centuries into its present intolerant forms, the most intolerant of which reside in Saudi Arabia. No surprise; it is the birthplace of the religion. What we see today is a young, tenuous Kingdom, established under the auspices the colonial powers long before oil became a primary world resource, trying to maintain an uneasy peace with a fundamentalist population following a religion established, again, long before oil became a primary world resource.

 

There's actually a substantial body of research and empirical evidence to support my arguments and claims about the connection between economies driven by single-commodity or set of commodities and authoritarianism. When you have a strong set of democratic or cultural traditions at work, this tendency will be less pronounced. When a society that lacks these elements, or in which these factors are weaker, the tendency towards authoritarianism will be more pronounced.

 

In the case of the Middle East, I suppose one could claim that there are and have always been strong institutional and cultural tendencies that have manifested themself in a longstanding history of democratric rule throughout the region - whether the time period under discussion involves the Umayyads, the Abbassids, or the present - but that would be a rather difficult claim to reconcile with the historical record.

 

When can we expect the publication of your refutation?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

[chucK]

Jay is probably correct in his assertion that no official speeches have mentioned that Islam is the root of all evil. However, I do think there are examples where the language used could have been better phrased. The one example that looms large for me is the one-time trendy in the administration buzzword of "Islamofacism".

 

Wouldn't "extremsism", "facism", "religious fanatacism-fueled murder" have gotten the same thing across without specifically skewering Islam?

 

Now, you say, the obvious reason for this is Bush's well-known lack of public-speaking talent. But I think there's a different reasoning. Though "Islamofacism" may have been an unnecessary slur on Islam, that couldn't have done anything but hurt the cause of any US-friendly government of a predominantly Muslim nation (e.g. Pakistan) it did serve another purpose. It served the probably intended purpose of inflaming fear and hatred in the US, in order to prop up the popularity of an ever more indefensible war in Iraq. They used "Islamofacism" to play to those simpletons here in the US of A, who hunger for a final solution.

 

The internet-virus letter in the original post serves the same purpose.

 

 

[Jim]

I actually thought that was a pretty good refute.

[tvashtarkatena]

If you look around the world, it's clear that in states around the world - not just the Middle East - in which the economy is driven by a single resource, authoritarianism is the rule rather than the exception.

 

This assertion evaporates under historical scrutiny. First of all, there are very few nations around the world that are 'single resource' based. Too few to draw any kind of simplistic conclusion regarding the relationship of that key resource and the oppressiveness of their regime. When one examines these few nations, no clear patterns emerge. Repressive Saudi Arabia is oil based, but then, so is the very democratic and socially liberal Norway. New Zealand's primary export is sheep. Repressive? Not very. For a more local example, visit Kuwait, another oil based nation, sometime. Pretty liberal and modern.

 

One thing Jay's arguments all have in common: they are in love with the 'Big Idea': a one size fits all, formula based, and thus centralized, solution for the world's problems. Unfortunately for this philosophy, which has failed spectacularly of late, successful foreign policy requires a more case by case approach and a great deal of local knowledge and dependence on in country relationships.

 

Using Saudi Arabia as an example, I would argue that their cultural and colonial history had much more to do with their present level of repression than the fact that they are a single resource producer. Islam, which was at its inception was a liberalizing force in what was a brutal nomadic culture, has morphed over the centuries into its present intolerant forms, the most intolerant of which reside in Saudi Arabia. No surprise; it is the birthplace of the religion. What we see today is a young, tenuous Kingdom, established under the auspices the colonial powers long before oil became a primary world resource, trying to maintain an uneasy peace with a fundamentalist population following a religion established, again, long before oil became a primary world resource.

 

There's actually a substantial body of research and empirical evidence to support my claims about the connection between economies driven by single-commodity or set of commodities. When can we expect the publication of your refutation?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

 

You cite a wikipedia entry as your rebuttal? The kid who got tasered for streaking has a wikipedia entry, for Christ's sake. Why don't I just cite Noam Chomsky in response and declare victory? I've already published my refutation to your thesis...and I await your counter argument.

Edited August 15, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[JayB]

The entry is just a means of acquainting you with a brief overview of the scholarship, which you are clearly both unfamilar with and unwilling to address. If I had linked the wikipedia entry for "Evolution," could I expect a trite dismissal of the scholarship which that particular theory is based upon on the same grounds?

 

And..my argument is contained in previous posts, and unless your refutation is contained within a treatise in which the various economists and other experts who work in the field accept as such, then you can congratulate yourself on accepting your own argument, but nothing else.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'm arguing with you, not wikipedia. If wikipedia is the first thing you reach for when wielding your 'scholarship', well, I got nothin'.

 

Still waiting for you to back up your thesis...in your own words, with obvious historical examples...as I did.

 

Using sheep, no less.

Edited August 15, 2007 by tvashtarkatena