"The more immediate, dangerous enemy..."


Another take on international relations and American guilt, it matches mine from a few months ago
It's nice to be validated.

From Was Osama Right? at OpinionJournal.com.

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"

From my piece American Guilt.

Since Vietnam, that has been pretty much the only foundation of our foreign policy. We've conditioned entire nations to accept American guilt and profit by it.

America goes in, rattles swords, abases itself, cedes moral authority, and pays through the nose.

No wonder before 9-11 America was considered a paper tiger.

We felt guilty about being powerful. And along with that guilt, we prostrate ourselves hoping to be loved.

Mercy may be the gift of the strong, but this behavior invites irresponsibility. Like any serial victim, the actions of our government appeal to the worst side of human nature. Abase ourselves and expect to be rewarded for our sacrifice? Hardly.

This later bit from the OpinionJournal piece is telling though. Emphasis added.

...The more immediate, more dangerous enemy was the Soviet Union, already ruling a number of Muslim countries, and daily increasing its influence and presence in others. It was therefore natural to seek and accept American help. As Osama bin Laden explained, in this final phase of the millennial struggle, the world of the unbelievers was divided between two superpowers. The first task was to deal with the more deadly and more dangerous of the two, the Soviet Union. After that, dealing with the pampered and degenerate Americans would be easy.

We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility.

The whole piece is worth your time and thought.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - May 17, 2007 at 12:40 PM  Tag


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