I'm looking at the Islamists as a single tribe. I know there are huge differences between them, which will eventually lead to their undoing, but in the meantime they will unite against a more hated enemy, which is us.
You cannot do this. Our intelligence agencies, Pentagon, and White House can't afford to do this. The reason the MENA is a basket case is because their tribes have not allowed for a unification under one cause. They haven't been "unified" since before the World War I. When the Turks declared independence in the early 1920s and started a democracy, they effectively ended 1,400 years of caliphate rule. Muslims in the MENA have been having an identity crisis ever since as they dabbled with military dictators and religious theocracies. Sunni nations immediately invaded Israel in 1948. The Shia in Iran had no opinion on Israel until the Lebanese Civil War of the late 1970s when the Sunni dragged the Shia tribe in and Khomeini used Israel as a rallying cry for Islamists. As time went on and social crisis developed, religious leaders found (created) more reason to dig deeper into religion and to blame Western "infection." Arab countries were denied independence from the 1920s all the way through to the Arab Spring of a few years ago. There is some cause for them to hate us, however, most of it is exaggerated and scapegoating. The MENA suffers from the narcotic of blame, but they have so many enemies in their local environments due to religion and tribe mentality that their blame game is mere surface accountability. It's rhetoric that goes nowhere and only serves to perpetuate their own denied problems. Denying a problem also denies a solution.
Our enemy in the MENA number around 100,000 to 150,000. Our enemy is not the terrorist. He is merely the face and the symptom. The terrorist is a fish that swims within a sea of radicalism that sustains him, supports him, and breeds more of him. We can kill him, but that only addresses the surface wound, not the broken bone underneath. Because of this, we have to accept that this is regional. It is not a single country, a single dictator, or a source of black/white threat. This is largely an internal issue that only they can find solution. Democracy is the first step. The West proves that healthy regions produce less radical extremists in any light. More close to home, Turkey proves it to the Middle East. This is not an Islamist thing, but it most definately is a regional thing. Ever notice how much healthier religions and people got the further away from the Arab heartland they went? Even within Islam we see an Islamic Indonesia and an Islamic Turkey outside the Middle East (Turkey's location is arguable, bt they do lean away from the brittle concrete of Islam that the heartland prescribes).
Is a democracy they want? If so what type?
Yes. Otherwise, the Arab Spring would have voiced for "caliphate" rather than "democracy." It doesn't matter what type. Their goal is social justice and this exists no matter the type. It's what Arabs wanted a couple centuries ago when Europe began colonizing. It's what Arabs wanted when Turkey declared a democracy in the 1920s (a first "Arab Spring" occurred). It's what Arabs wanted when their military leaders led coups in the 1950s. It's what the Shia in Iran wanted when they installed a democracy post WWII before we replaced it with the Shah. Today we see an Iranian population angered with their theocracy and an Arab Spring looking to finally move to the next step in social evolution. Our reply to this should not be a cowardly fear of instability. Democratic whined about it during Iraq and Republicans whine about it now with the Arab Spring. The Middle East was never going to be the odd man out in a world of evolving democracies forever. The longer it took for this take place, the worse it was always going to be. The absolute worst thing would be to wait until these countries get nukes. Pakistan is proving that danger. Historically, democracies are accountable, worldy educated, and more economically dynamic. This means an absence of wars for resources.
Of course I hope you're right.
I am absolutely right. Of that I have no doubt. The only inconsistencies of this I have found have been from books written by politicians and media commentary. Since they are generally regarded daily as being full of crap and biased to agenda they cannot be trusted for anything. Textbooks, cultural experts, religious experts, and works of historical studies all carry the same themes and lead to very like conclusions. Human development and social movement cannot be the same throughout the world, except in the Middle East. They are not special. They are merely approaching it from a place the rest of us didn't have to. Because of our current day times, their social evolution is more dangerous. This is all the more reason to deny Iran nuclear power. We screwed up with Pakistan. Introducing the region to the "Shia" bomb will only entice the demand for a "Sunni" bomb. In the mean time, we have to deal with this region's symptoms (terrorists) getting their hands on airplanes, chemical weapons, etc.
Agreed, but my concern is the direction it will take. More will be known in the next couple of years.
Decades, not years. Consider the French who declared independence and democracy in the 1790s...
1) Their "independence" resulted a cycle of royal power limited by uneasy constitutional monarchy...
2) ....then the abolition and replacement of the French king with a radical, secular, democratic republic...
3) ....which became more authoritarian and militaristic and property-based.
Less than a century later and after Napoleon wrecked Europe, the French got their democracy right. Surely we can forgive a misstep or two from the Arabs who may not get it perfect leaving the gate. One thing is sure, they won't stmble like the French did.
But we can't decide that our role is complete.
This is true as well, but the social conflict within their tribes is a problem we can't solve for them. We can remove a dictator and assist them in removing a dictator, but our military role is limited. The burden of globalization makes us have to be keenly aware of developments, because ultimately we are in the business of regional stabilities. Most of what we can do, however, revolves around economic aid, the creation of programs that encourage social reform, and to permit them to stumble. A religious civilization in crisis will turn to God. he worse the crisis, the worse the remedy that religious men will submit.
On the other hand it took a long while for the Communists to lose. Had the left had a glimmer of how evil it was, rather than referring to it as an alternate lifestyle, the war could have been over much sooner.
I don't think so. We never invaded Moscow. Doing so would have been a disaster and quite possibly hardened the Soviet case. Like Keenan stated, "Communism is a fig leaf that the Soviet Union wears." Our enemy was the empire, not the ideology. We quickly got confused. Tens of millions of corpses lie under the ground between Berlin and Cambodia in the name of communism, but really at the hands of dictators. Stalin and Mao tried to "perfect" their civilizations under a communist ideal. Hitler tried to "perfect" Germans under a fascist ideal. Do we think these men would not have slaughtered under a different ideology? This is why we haven't seen this sense of massacre in the West. Unlike socialism, communism, and fascism, Democracy is not an ism. It stands aside from the chaotic Age of Ideology. It simply will not permit the type of empire that would slaughter out its own. Communism can work in a small community level. Catro's Cuba did not seek to slaughter out the Caribbean or its own population. Communism, however, in the hands of a militaristic empire like the Soviet Union or China proved a travesty.
And a part of that was having to deal with dictators who would not normally receive the time of day.
Some of this was necessary at the time. Some of it was out of confusion. Despite our preaching to Europe to end its colonial holdings in the world after WWII, we erred to support our allies against people who wanted self-determination and pleaded for us to help them. We denied our own beliefs out of a fear of communism and out of hurting our allies' position. If Europe wrecked the world through colonialism, then we continued it by supportig their colonies in the beginning of the Cold War.
There wasn't an 'Arab Spring' under Bush. There was a very impressive election in Iraq but that's about it.
Yes, but the point was the same. Regime change and democracy in Iraq was themed to the UN before our invasion, yet all protestors could whine about was how there was no WMD. othing else seemed to have mattered. Democrats used that and the internal instability that removing Hussein caused. Later in 2009, one month after Iraqis voted without international security making it safe, The Arab Spring kicked off in Tunisa with chants of "democracy" in the air. They weren't blind to what was happening in Iraq. Nor is the rest of the region that followed in the quest for democracy. Despite the occassional violence, Iraq has been proving that Arabs can do it. In fact, I would say that Iraq's experiment was the last chance the Arab world had before they completely paved their path to hell. Yet, the instability and uncertainty of Arabs removing their dictators in prior years has caused Republicans to criticize Obama for, I guess, not stepping in and supporting existing pro-American regimes. They have both been wrong, hypocritically and ignorantly, since 2003. The only ones that seem to have it right are the Arabs in the MENA who are finally self-determining. Give them time. Eventually, religious radicalism and extremism will subside. Healthy regions do not permit the degree of religious crisis that the Middle East currently produces.
I agree about Europe but that seems to be an indication of how weak the democracies really are. They'll continue to be anti American while Muslims take over their demographics and their freedoms. Only the UK has a reputation for fighting for democracy and I'm not sure of their direction at all. Even being pro British is often frowned upon.
Well I would submit that this explains Europe, not democracy. Europe has a talent for staring at a threat until it bites half their face off. They have proven time and again, their ability to deny a threat until they suck the rest of us in. They did it for both World Wars. They did it with Kosovo and Bosnia. In all cases, it took the UNited States to get involved. Our talent lies in pretending that what happens in the world across the oceans have nothing to do with us until the issue becomes so great that we have to dedicate more treasure and blood to its solutions.
Democracies weakness is that it will always cater to the individual's wants rather than the nation's needs. This is why fools bitch about taxes, but insist on road repair. Even our Forefathers knew of the dangers of a democracy. This is why they wanted a Republic where an "aristocracy" led the nation in virtue. They didn;t trust the common man to think beyond himself. They were quickly dissapointed when their concerns proved true before the end of the 18th century.