Thursday, March 30, 2006

The Fallacy of Wilsonianism/ Bush Doctrine

The previous post is obviously not what I believe but is the mental process by which many interventionists think, including our current President. The reason for this is that "self-determination" has become rather confused with "US-Determinism." The Iraqi's did not choose a democracy. We TOLD them that they will have a democracy and they may set it up how they like within that semantic framwork. The same thing holds true for Afghanistan with their "democracy."

Too often do we associate democracies with human rights and high standards of living. Belarus is a democracy but has very little in the way of human rights. Afghanistan's flowering democracy is still based on sharia. And so it is foreign to our own views of a democracy. We should not cry foul when a nation develops a democratic system that is in opposition to ours when we are the ones who told them they are free to set up said government. This smacks of the highest hypocracy and makes me want to vomit.

The whole idea that we should base our diplomatic ties on human rights is absurd form a practical point of view. Case in point, Pakistan. Pakistan is run by a military dictatorship. Yes they promise to have elections but we all know that they are pretty meaningless. Pervez Musharraf is however an ally with us against Al-Qaeda and similar factions. This makes them acceptable. Yes we are pressuring them to adopt more democratic reforms, but this also matters comparatively little since Pakistan's poeple are not exactly deomstrating in the streets for western human rights. We are selling that government f-16 fighter jets and providing them with foreign aid money (bribe money) to help us. Still they balk at allowing our troops to cross the Afghani border in to Pakistan to pursue terrorists (and yes we do it anyway).

Practicality wins out over human rights any day. In a society that is essentially a theocracy we should expect to see women degraded, and free thought stifled as well as the free practice of religion. Quit complaining. And for the love of God and all that is Holy, quit trying to find dragons to slay President Bush. All future politicians who wish to succeed GW ought to learn this lesson at well. George Washington knew about this danger at our founding. Yes we were a small and relatively impotent nation at the time, but entangling alliances are still entangling no matter one's size.

Wilsonianism and the Bush Doctrine are just adventurism by another name, and are merely another way for us to foist our cultural superiority upon the savages. What fun we shall have when the chickens come home to roost.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

The appeal of Wilsonianism/ The Bush Doctrine

President Wilson is famously quoted "The world must be made safe for democracy." Let us presume that being of a a democratic form of government is true. Second let us hold that this form of government is not only the most moral, but also gives us as a people the moral duty to enlighten the rest of the world. Thirdly and lastly let us hold that all healthy human beings are essentially rational. Being the most moral, any non-democratic style of government is a threat not only to us, but to the entire world. The fact that another government has not democratic processes means that it may in fact disagree with us on other issues and may result to the use of force to get its way.

Here comes the Bush Doctrine

THEREFORE we must act to make sure that our democracy and thus all democracies (since we are friends with democracies) are safe from this threat. So we will be morally justified in using military force against a nation that does not (yet) threaten force upon us. We can only assure our safety by using pre-emptive force against a non-democratic state. The citizens of said nation obviously desire to live in a democracy even if they do not know it yet for it is the natural yearning of the human spirit. No rational human being could deny this, especially in connection with what we feel are unalienable human rights. We know what is best for them.

*correlary* Supposedly democracies do not fight one another

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Another Christian on the Bahhbie (well he's been spared this time)

Well after reading many stories about Abdul Rahman, the Afghani who converted from Islam to Christianity, I was happy to see that he was released to the custody of his family rather than being put to death. Sure they had to justfy his release by saying he wasn't mentally fit to stand trial, but sometimes you have to take a win where you can get it. The downside is that now Mr. Rahman has the entire religious community and no small number of devout Muslims in Afghanistan after his hide.

Having said that, its this kind of thing that makes me want to avoid American Adventurism. Yes we went to Afghanistan to "get the terrorists in Afghanistan." So now we want to secure Afghanistan as a pro-western pseudo-democracy, and thats where we run in to trouble. We mainly run in to trouble because Islam as a religion is not tolerant of OTHER religions when the nation's core law is based on sharia. In the United States we have a guarantee of a freedom to practice one's religion without government influence (unless due process otherwise contradicts this such as being charged with the promotion of a crime or inciting a riot). This is quite obviously not the case in Afghanistan.

We should ask ourselves several questions.


  • Should we enforce our value system on the Afghanis?
  • If so, how would we enforce these foreign values?
  • If the Afghanis resist us, what then?
If you are of the Wilsonian mindset as our current President is, then you would at least want to change the Afghani mindset at the governmental level as to how other religions should be treated. Of course these government officials know that their constituents will not accept this as it is clearly a cultural betrayal.

This is the cultural imperialism that is most eggregious to muslims and other ethinicities and religious groupings world wide. It is not so much the big corporations and "decadent" western films as it is our rather meddlesome foreign policy.

I am sure there are voices within the State Department screaming for a more hands-off approach, to let the Afghanis run their own nation, that we have so benevolently given to them.

But as I sit back and look around me, I am glad that I was born in the United States of America, where this is not even an issue. My problem now, is with this nation that I love, exhausting itself by trying to make other nations clones of its own enlightened framework.

-- JC