John Kelsey wrote...
The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality >in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that >we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and >then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to >themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in >the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make >that sort of thing break down.
Let's remember that any regime is only temporary, no matter how fundamentalist. The main flaw in the whole "save the world" logic is that it assumes that some regime (Islamist, Communist or whatever) would actually be able to hold on to everybody in perpetuity, and I think history is now at the point where we have a good indication that this ain't the case.
In the case of China, Vietnam and, to some extent, the Islamists, I don't get the impression that a hatred of free markets was he underlying reason for the adoption of commusim (or whatever). Communism was merely a political pole that could be held on to so as to crystallize a movement whereby outside influences could be pushed out, and then the internal issues resolved. I would argue that the more we proclaim ourselves to be the evanglists for free markets throughout the world, and then ram our cocks up Abu Ghraib inmates asses, to the same extent what we have to offer looks tainted and foul. They need to puish us out so they need to reject free markets. They need to reject free markets so a new "pole" is created.
Mr Donald woul think that I argue against free markets, but instead what I am arguing against is methodology which retards free markets.
-TD
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