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talkpoliticsIn studying how US foreign policy actually works. I've come to believe in a very good and simple reason as to why 'they' hate 'us.' This reason begins and ends with a pattern of backing repressive, sometimes genocidal, dictators and calling it freedom.
How and why should anyone who has a love for liberty back the likes of Saudi Arabia an Al-Maliki over a true and genuine freedom? How and why should people associate Mubarak, Mobutu, Pinochet, the Shah, the Emir of Kuwait, the various Kings of Saudi Arabia, Marshal Tito, Syngman Rhee, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier and the like as 'freedom'?
The irony in this is the simple dictum that has been followed since the Great Powers partiitioned Africa to abolish the slave trade and replaced it with industrial murder to the tune of 8 million and piles of severed heads and reducing bullet excesses by shooting civilians and civilized the Middle East in the 1930s with the crash of the bomb. This dictum can be expressed as follows in two related phrase:
All freedom is equal to other freedom, save where it disagrees with the vested financial and military needs of the Strong over those of the Weak.
All democracy is equal to other democracy save where people democratically elect movements that the person who holds this tenet doesn't like.
Freedom includes the freedom to make bad decisions, decisions that people won't like, and decisions contrary to the interest of Powers whose vested interests can and will go so far as to move aircraft carriers to support the carriers-out of genocide. To deny people the right to freely elect the like of Muhammad Morsi or any other such leader who wins a fairly won election is to be blunt and to admit that we favor freedom insofar as it agrees with our subjective rights to decide who is granted the right to decide for themselves and who isn't. As such, it's perfectly plausible to argue that the core of the modern concept of freedom is the simple maxim:
Freedom is for me, but it is not for thee.
As such when people invade other countries and deal death and destruction on a wide scale with all the lethal power of modern government, perhaps it might be simpler to attribute that to a more realpolitik motivation instead of arguing that the scenes of tremendous firepower reducing villages to rubble that bounces six or seven times over the course of a war brings genuine freedom, while also recognizing that the people whose villages are thus reduced to ashes and left with maimed and mutilated bodies might possibly resent *that* and the freedom issue is and always was a red herring?
Nah, that's crazy talk. We all know that Saudi Arabia, the Mubarak regime, the Pahlavi Empire and such states are the freest states in the world and only dirty, filthy evil Islamofascicommunazis object to freedom. People should be grateful to be delivered freedom from the iron bars of a camp and the torture dens of despotism. People should celebrate villages and cities ruined and scarred by greatly developed and lethal weaponry. People should be infinitely grateful that freedom as per the dollar denies them civil, financial, sexual, and cultural rights.
Because after all, slavery is freedom, and if people oppose freedom then they are slaves to their backwards medieval past where the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of propety were once held to be for all to enjoy.
Of course it actually could be that people really don't like these things, but as that would mean the Other is human and has rights as those who deny it to them do............
How and why should anyone who has a love for liberty back the likes of Saudi Arabia an Al-Maliki over a true and genuine freedom? How and why should people associate Mubarak, Mobutu, Pinochet, the Shah, the Emir of Kuwait, the various Kings of Saudi Arabia, Marshal Tito, Syngman Rhee, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier and the like as 'freedom'?
The irony in this is the simple dictum that has been followed since the Great Powers partiitioned Africa to abolish the slave trade and replaced it with industrial murder to the tune of 8 million and piles of severed heads and reducing bullet excesses by shooting civilians and civilized the Middle East in the 1930s with the crash of the bomb. This dictum can be expressed as follows in two related phrase:
All freedom is equal to other freedom, save where it disagrees with the vested financial and military needs of the Strong over those of the Weak.
All democracy is equal to other democracy save where people democratically elect movements that the person who holds this tenet doesn't like.
Freedom includes the freedom to make bad decisions, decisions that people won't like, and decisions contrary to the interest of Powers whose vested interests can and will go so far as to move aircraft carriers to support the carriers-out of genocide. To deny people the right to freely elect the like of Muhammad Morsi or any other such leader who wins a fairly won election is to be blunt and to admit that we favor freedom insofar as it agrees with our subjective rights to decide who is granted the right to decide for themselves and who isn't. As such, it's perfectly plausible to argue that the core of the modern concept of freedom is the simple maxim:
Freedom is for me, but it is not for thee.
As such when people invade other countries and deal death and destruction on a wide scale with all the lethal power of modern government, perhaps it might be simpler to attribute that to a more realpolitik motivation instead of arguing that the scenes of tremendous firepower reducing villages to rubble that bounces six or seven times over the course of a war brings genuine freedom, while also recognizing that the people whose villages are thus reduced to ashes and left with maimed and mutilated bodies might possibly resent *that* and the freedom issue is and always was a red herring?
Nah, that's crazy talk. We all know that Saudi Arabia, the Mubarak regime, the Pahlavi Empire and such states are the freest states in the world and only dirty, filthy evil Islamofascicommunazis object to freedom. People should be grateful to be delivered freedom from the iron bars of a camp and the torture dens of despotism. People should celebrate villages and cities ruined and scarred by greatly developed and lethal weaponry. People should be infinitely grateful that freedom as per the dollar denies them civil, financial, sexual, and cultural rights.
Because after all, slavery is freedom, and if people oppose freedom then they are slaves to their backwards medieval past where the concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of propety were once held to be for all to enjoy.
Of course it actually could be that people really don't like these things, but as that would mean the Other is human and has rights as those who deny it to them do............
(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 20:48 (UTC)/thread.
(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 21:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 20:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 21:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 00:12 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 18/9/12 01:00 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 17:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/9/12 02:35 (UTC)(self demonstrating point)
(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 22:16 (UTC)This framed within a religious mandate to resist the infidel armies of the world, who give them plenty of fuel.
Or maybe its just bad movies and cartoons?
(no subject)
Date: 17/9/12 23:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 00:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 01:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 01:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 09:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 02:43 (UTC)Also, it’s tough to make a case that the recent events in Libya were caused by US support for Pinochet. It’s strange that US support for Mubarak would turn Libyans against us while Chinese and Russian support for Gaddafi has much milder consequences. Are Libyans more concerned about injustices visited on Egyptians than the ones visited on them?
(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 11:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 12:11 (UTC)Anyhow, as far as our reputation for brutality, what can we do. We try our best.
(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 12:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 10:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/12 17:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/9/12 12:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/9/12 22:31 (UTC)