Given that the original thread was locked, thanks in large part to a great of trolling by both sides, I open this thread as a way of continuing the discussion on the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I didn’t want to post this yesterday, because the article had not yet been published, but this is meant as a response to the following post:
I just wanted to know your thoughts after reading this: Nation Wrecking in Afghanistan.
What does Israel have to do with it?
It was part of the quoted thread. It had to do with the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and also U.S. support of Israel in the event of a Middle Eastern war, or something like that.
oh, i didn’t see a thread, only a blog link. thanks for explaining
I don’t know why you think this piece could have an effect on somebody in terms of supporting/opposing the war. It has its value as a scholarly piece into looking into the whole dynamics of what a powerful central government entails, but as a piece of agitation it is not much. You even fail to condemn the aggressor for being such.
I meant to tell you that I read your article and I enjoyed it. Didn’t want you to think i just glossed over it.
Well, overly accusative language often times turns the reader off if that person ascribes to that specific ideology.
But, given the information presented, how do you justify the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan? And, we might as well talk about Iraq while we’re at it. I’m not trying to push you into a corner; I am genuinely interested in starting a discussion on the wars in the Middle East.
Well what do you want us to do, leave them alone?
Why not?
Just read it and I quite enjoyed it. I agree that just pulling out and letting the thing boild down itself is the best alternative.
Well, I mean it sounds nice in principle but lots of nasty things could happen as a result. I see it as a trade off and I personally don’t see the pull out and go home option as being worth it even if it’s right in principle it’s dicey in practice. But ofcourse staying there has its downsides too. There’s no easy solution here and I am always a little worried at how people can let ideology get in the way of practical concerns. Everything has a price.
The big problem in the Middle East in the end boils down to one thing: minorities are not protected the states that arise there.
In the past, state taxation, bureaucracy, and inflation in Ottoman Empire and Egypt had stunted development (see David Landes, Bankers and Pashas; see also the article, Lewis, Bernard. [1960] 1970. The Arabs in Eclipse. The Economic Decline of Empires. Edited by Cipolla, Carlo. London: Menthuen & Company).
Today, certain historians have identified the problem as the honor/shame system. To accept foreign ideas is shameful; to tolerate successful businessmen or technologists–if they have different social/economic opinions–is shameful; to accept aid is shameful; etc.
Example: Why there is still a conflict in Palestine? (1) The economic purpose of the original attack, when Israel was just founded, was that land that settlers bought cheaply since the nineteenth century and began irrigating had gained substantial productivity and value because of these efforts; many people wanted it back now that it was more valuable. (2) The Egyptian, British-trained Iraq, Jordanian, Syrian, and local armies and militias lost the original attack against Jews who had inferior weaponry and a massive numerical disadvantage. (3) The purpose after that failure of the attack despite such military superiority was shame that many of the next generations feel. (4) It is this shame that prompts action to ‘remove the shame’…
Capitalism cannot function in an honor/shame environment, because many people around the capitalists feel life as zero-sum game. Marginal success is respected, but large success is hated. Marxist ideology is so popular the Middle East, for this reason.
The problem in the Middle East is three pronged:
(i) pro-capitalistic minorities in the Middle East will not survive in the states that existed since the 1600’s in the Middle East.
(ii) State-building from outside will not resolve the problem, especially when every success at protecting minorities prompts further hate from the dominant majorities. Of course, finally, fact the State-builders, the politicians in the United States, have no understanding of building a free market state: they focus on arbitrary political goals instead of measures that provide security for a liberal-professional class to safely develop in the Middle East. This means the conflict never stops. State-builders are waging a war against liberal capitalism in their own countries, how can they build it anywhere else?
(iii) Withdrawal means attack from a centralized anti-western position. Staying in means no success at State-building and limitless economic loss, because only internal change can cause successful removal of the honor/shame system.
In other words: a total mess, with no solutions in the current political climate.
Who are these pro-capitalistic minorities? Where are they hiding? Can you please point them out.
If I could point them out, then they’d be dead pretty soon…
People don’t go calling themselves capitalist in that kind of environment. If we were in the Soviet Union as it existed, could you point out more than a handful of capitalists? Of course not.
Only when freedom exists can unbiased signaling and self-association occur.
I thought you were talking about free market ideologues? were you? Because I don’t get it. If somebody says he believes in Laissez-faire, he will be assassinated?
People are unsure whether they will have security in a year or two, so they do don’t go out and say their views if unpopular. And laissez-faire is, among other things such as women’s rights, are highly associated with the so-called ‘West’.
They may very well be severely punished or jailed if later on a different fraction or a different state entirely appears and they are remembered as sided with the enemy that ‘shamed’ the former opposition. Yes, they could be lynched, jailed, have all their property confiscated.
You are right, puling out will not make all would-be terrorists get a job, and especially will not make safer. But keeping troops in the whole makes hatred grow exponentially.
What I would see as the most sensible way out would be to pull every single soldier from the Middle East, keeping only troops to defend private oil fields if the owner wants to (of course they will if you operate in a country like Saudi Arabia), and at the same time have special forces guys hunt for those believed to be terrorist. It worked for for decades, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work now.
If would also allow free trade and stop pestering Arabs (especially by alowign the easretn half of to be autonomously governed) within 10 years I’m sure that its position would be much, much safer. But it is true that there’s no quick answer to the quagmire where , and the States, have put themselves.
Anybody interested in the subject should pick up Chris Coyne’s After War, I’m just finishing it now, fascinating read.
Israel didn’t put itself in any quagmire. And making the Eastern half of Jer. governed by the PA will just increase violence.
I don’t think you understand that honor/shame prevents there ever being peace in Palestine. Its either capitalism and the nonviolence that implies; or honor/shame.
Honor/shame means: since the powers that attacked Israel in 1948 attempted to commit a robbery while it was their advantage, and failed despite such as was their advantage, they can only remove the shame of that by succeeding where they failed. Nonviolence will not remove shame as sufficiently many people in the Middle East see it.
Its the analog to chivalry in Europe, with all that implied way back when: honor cannot be gained; but it can be lost. It can be recovered; however, but only with success exactly where failure before. If and only if the honor/shame way of thinking disappears, perhaps sent on its way by modern analogs of people like Mandeville, then you can have peace.
Edit:
Here’s Richard Landes’ concise summary. Honor/shame research is became unpopular to American and European economic historians and poltical scientists who subscribed to Lenin’s theory of Imperialism, and in many universities H/S fell under the boat during the first half of the twentieth century as Marxism became a popular studying paradigm in IR (international relations).