Pirates me hearties, pirates!

[--Pete]

Hi,

Not so much that Islamic culture has a special affinity, as no culture (not even and perhaps even especially the Greeks themselves) have kept the culture of golden age Greece from antiquity to present.

I said "trace back to Socrates", not "is that of Socrates". I realize that there is a small gap of two and a half millenia. Then again, to ancient Egypt, that was but a little time.

If you're drawing the lineage chain back, the Islamic world is on it, the closer to the Mediterranean the better.

Superficially, yes. I can buy (and have bought) a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War in America. Doesn't mean that America's culture was greatly influenced by classical Chinese thinking. Did the Arab literati know of the Greek philosophers? Yes. Did it have much influence on their own philosophers? From what I'd read, no. But I assumed you had something specific to show otherwise.

But it's silly to pretend that, say, Britain, or the US, derives their culture directly from the Greeks.

Again, I reiterate: "trace back to Socrates". Christianity, greatly mutated by Paul to make it palatable to the Greeks, became the ruling influence in Western Europe from at least 313 CE (Edict of Milan) to the present. Augustine who introduced (or perhaps just reinforced) classical thought into Catholicism. His follower in thought, Thomas Aquinas, was said to have 'baptized' Aristotle. And, indeed, it was the Catholic Church's insistence on the correctness of classical beliefs which led (and still leads) it into conflict with science. So much for the theological side. The secular side follows equally, from Des Cartes, perhaps the first secular Christian philosopher on down to the present.

If anything, it's closer the other way around.

Provocative, if vague. True, the 'laws' of physics are symmetrical in time (whoops, sorry entry of peas, I overlooked you), but I hardly can think you mean it literally. If you meant it in the "God made man in his image, and since then man has returned the favor" sense, well, first, it's been done. And, second, it isn't really appropriate, since much of what the Greeks thought and taught has survived. The Greeks are history. It isn't like archeology, where modern ideas are often overlaid onto ancient artifacts.

But I suspect I've shot wide of the mark. So do elaborate, please. B)

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

Back to "problem solving" as it were. Warlords and their bankers. Send them a lead telegram. Whoever is handling that ransom money has blood on his hands. Or hers. Or both.

Indeed. Overt or covert? For if covert, you'll need a big box of lead. Like weeds, every time you wipe out one generation, another will grow in to replace it unless you spray that b-gone constantly. If overt, can you dream up a situation with an exit strategy of less than three generations? I can't.

Not our tar baby -- best not to punch it.

I suspect that there are, in some naval archive somewhere, plans for PT boats. Upgrade to fiberglass and turbine and modern (cheap) weapons. Give them to a bunch of alpha type lieutenants. Make the ROE: "no pirates, no questions." I suspect the problem will Darwin itself out in short order.

Or, like the Europeans did with the Barbary Corsairs, lets just pay tribute for a few centuries. Yeah, that's the ticket -- danegeld.;)

--Pete

[Jester]

West is West, and the rest is East, right? Actually, technically we should say Oriental, but that term is out of vogue. I'd say the largest Western kill was entirely unintentional. It was when they traveled to the new world bringing their diseases to the natives who had no resistances. I can't think of a culture (Eastern or Western) historically without any blood or repression on its hands. As an example, even Mr. Gandhi will have heard about the Conquest of Kalinga. That meager battle pales in comparison of what has been wrought in the Orient during the past few centuries.

I'm consciously not buying into your self loathing. We are at the present, and what we can do relates to now. Because you are a product of the excesses of the British empire doesn't mean the repentant thing to do is to offer up your booty to Somalia pirates.

No, no, no. That's not the way this goes. You have to wait for me to actually *say* something about the pirates before you accuse me of wanting to surrender to them because I'm a self-loathing liberal who's still desperately trying to scrub the blood of the British empire off his pathetic skin!

So, let's see if I can do this right...

*ahem*

"I hate myself so much because my ancestors were very white. Sure, they may have been farmers and pianomakers in Devonshire, but I'm sure in their own way, they contributed to the voracious dragon of empire! Now, in order to assuage my personal white-liberal-rich-male guilt, we all must be kidnapped by Somali pirates, who, by virtue of having been born in a country with a history of not being Britain, are definitionally blameless!"

Should I throw in a good word about Hugo Chavez as well? Might make it more convincing.

Or, alternately, we could go back to what I've actually said, which is to question whether our being "Western" or having "Western" values mitigates the danger caused by *modern weapons* (not ancient empires, not diseases from five centuries ago) when "Westerners" have killed more people (mostly Westerners as well as Occhi rightly points out) with those weapons than the rest of the world put together. (The increasingly strangely named "East", or "Orient", a category which would surely surprise the average Somali to learn that they are a part of.)

-Jester

[Jester]

Hi,

But I suspect I've shot wide of the mark. So do elaborate, please. B)

--Pete

What, you mean like Averroes, or Avicenna? Al-Khwarzmi? The most important minds in all Islamic history were working from an explicitly Greek root of knowledge.

If anything, the criticism of Islamic learning is that it relied too much on ancient Greek learning, and did not invent enough for itself. Not that the "West" was doing any better at that point.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

"I hate myself so much because my ancestors were very white. Sure, they may have been farmers and piano makers in Devonshire, but I'm sure in their own way, they contributed to the voracious dragon of empire! Now, in order to assuage my personal white-liberal-rich-male guilt, we all must be kidnapped by Somali pirates, who, by virtue of having been born in a country with a history of not being Britain, are definitionally blameless!"

I suspected as much!

Or, alternately, we could go back to what I've actually said, which is to question whether our being "Western" or having "Western" values mitigates the danger caused by *modern weapons* (not ancient empires, not diseases from five centuries ago) when "Westerners" have killed more people (mostly Westerners as well as Occhi rightly points out) with those weapons than the rest of the world put together. (The increasingly strangely named "East", or "Orient", a category which would surely surprise the average Somali to learn that they are a part of.)

Sort of. The middle east, source of the Jihad has also been on the march in Africa helping to destabilize nations, including Somalia. Not that the century or so of colonialism helped, or the vacuum caused by shattered empires of WWII, and then we had the Cold War with Africa acting as the stage for various proxy wars. I'm not ready to accept your premise that the "The West" has killed any more than "The East", or the "Middle East". In fact, due to the fact that gunpowder, land mines and cannons are Chinese inventions, we might equally say that our modern war killing machines are directly descended from eastern culture. Europeans certainly stole all the blueprints they could, and vastly improved the weapons lethality. I can think of no examples of societies that have not been atrocious from time to time. You can simply look at WWII Japan as an example of a nation that commingled its Bushido code with grenades and machine guns. The Somali's get their Russian made weapons mostly from Yeman, which is middle eastern.

My premise is that the entirety of humanity is a murderous lot, and only redeemed by appealing to our better natures (and that includes the judicious use of "killing" when criminal miscreants violate their societal contract).

[BruceGod]

Back to "problem solving" as it were. Warlords and their bankers. Send them a lead telegram. Whoever is handling that ransom money has blood on his hands. Or hers. Or both.

It is necessary to disincentivize this kidnap for profit bit. In Somalia, and in Mexico, for that matter.

Occhi

I think singing missile telegrams would be more cost effective, since everybody can get the message at once!:D

[Jester]

My premise is that the entirety of humanity is a murderous lot, and only redeemed by appealing to our better natures (and that includes the judicious use of "killing" when criminal miscreants violate their societal contract).

No doubt humanity seems to have a knack for murdering its own. Occhi will no doubt chime in with the idea that this is a perceptive issue, that there is no "its own", only a whole series of "our owns". He might be right.

However, the statistics for "the West" are grim at best. The European-theatre deaths in WWI and WWII, almost all of which are the direct result of the weapons under discussion, counting conservatively, are something like 45 million people dead. Even if we left aside every other conflict the west has been in, either with itself or with non-western peoples, that's a huge lead to overcome.

Where, *counting deaths arising from the use of modern weapons*, does "the East" or "the Orient" or any other grouping, get the sheer volume of deaths to catch up? The worst death counts, such as The Cultural Revolution/Great Leap Forward or the Killing Fields were largely accomplished without guns or bombs, but with much simpler, time honoured ways of killing people: starving them to death, or letting them die of disease. And, even then, they don't add up to the West's figures. By my reckoning, they're not even close, and that's before we even adjust for population size.

-Jester

[Kevin]

Hi,
The disease is their disease. When the *people* of Somalia (ditto Afghanistan, China, most of the Balkans, pretty damned near all the rest of Africa, etc.) want to solve it, then we should be ready and willing to help them. Until they do, all we can do is make it worse. If there's a secret recipe for making it better, then history tells us it remains secret.

The symptom, on the other hand, is our problem. And it is a problem we can do something about, given leadership with guts and commitment. The price may be some hostages, but there's no profit in being a dead pirate. As we did two hundred years ago, so should we now -- speak to them in the only language they understand.

--Pete

So how do we help, even if they want it, even assuming they are wanting our ideals of freedom and democracy? How has any group of people ever really formed a nation. Has it ever happened non violently (I'm honestly ignorant of history, that's a legitimate question).

As Occhi says they are living in the past with modern equipment. But doesn't history show that it's pretty much been this warlord or that leader that united people under a strong will and eventually they realized it was better? Yeah the US history is better, it jumped off from a more developed start and had other ideals to build on. But it was still a stong group of leaders who drug the rest of the people to that point, violently. There were a lot of folks who didn't want the war, who didn't agree with the will of the founding fathers being imposed on them.

I fully agree with you that if we blow them all up, it only works if we blow them all. You can't leave one person left alive with that process or someone just replaces them and you can't know who it is.

The founders of the US had education and the benefits of building from a mostly stable state. How do you get education to the people, when there is no method of delivery?

Can you really blame the people for all of if? My uncles is so much less happy being a member of a co-op farm group than he had been, but the pressures of the mega farms boiled it down to, join a coop or slowly wither away and quit. How does a fisherman compete? Even if that person is a strong leader and organizes those folks into a collective to try and deal with the multinational finishing industry, with no central government how do they enforce their rights to the water they are fishing in? Maybe they did go what they thought was their government, which is a local warlord in this case.

I seriously look at that mess and can't see a way to cure the cause or handle the symptom effectively. Even if the people want the help. The Somali's don't want the religious doctrine thrust on them but they have no means of supporting a rule of law that they may want. How do we help them support that? Things are more stable in Iraq right now. It comes back to kill and destroy.

The whole of Africa is riddled with failure of support. Sending food doesn't work. Trying to build infrastructure doesn't work. How do you keep power in the hands of people when there are so many sources of power to enforce your will on other people available? The status quo can be very appealing compared to death. It takes some pretty strong motivation to die for a cause for most people. That's not in most people, but does that mean they don't have a right to it?


I've seen the pleas to Obama to step-up action on the pirates. But I don't see what it does. The people that have been screwed by living nearly a generation without a government and having the 2 or 3 they have tried to put together torn down by outside influences (Ethopia invading being the latest). How do we aid those people. Obama is screwed politically by any action he chooses here. Killing pirates left and right to watch more fill in their shoes doesn't do him any good because there is no way to fix the land base problems. As you say the magic answer is still just that magic, not real, nonexistent. If he doesn't step things up he suddenly doesn't have any balls or courage or something. Even if he is trying to do something to cure the root causes, that isn't high profile.

It's a mess, and I don't see any damn answer. Fixing Somalia doesn't even solve the issue as there are other countries there that will just cause issues as well.

[kandrathe]

The estimate for Mao's reign of terror alone are about 20 million (source). Would you call China "Western"? And, I do recall that Japan was involved in WWII, so while yes, Europe(esp. Eastern Europe) saw the bulk of the killing, there was a pretty lethal eastern component as well. Would you call Japan "Western"?

My sources show about 16.8 million combatants died in all theaters in WWII. As for non-combatants, between 7 and 12 million Soviets, about 6 million in the holocaust, and another 6 million in all other theaters.

I think it is absurd to limit a war casualty to one caused by a bullet or bomb. If your city is fire bombed, and you count only the fraction of direct casualties, what do you call the more significant portion who now succumb to exposure, starvation and disease? If entire populations are rounded up and forced to march for weeks through frozen mountains without shelter, water, or food are they merely unlucky? If your ports are blockaded, and populations that grew large due to the free flow of goods now starve because they haven't enough, is that bad planning?

It also seems wrong to think about counting deaths in proportion to population size. If you have two kids and we kill one, that is 50%, but if you have 12 kids and we kill 3, it is a mere 25%. I think these quantitative and qualitative justifications are equally ludicrous.

The genocides that are occurring in Africa now, are not as much the killing and the raping (which occur frequently enough), as they are about the armed displacement of people from their land and livelihood.

[kandrathe]

It's a mess, and I don't see any damn answer. Fixing Somalia doesn't even solve the issue as there are other countries there that will just cause issues as well.

It can be solved, but foremost, the people of Somalia have to want it solved and agree to the solution. The starting point is martial "Security". You need to control the borders and the ports to deny or starve any insurgency of their means of external support. Simultaneously, you need to remove the motivation for the people to fight, and this means provide food, clothing and shelter. Once you have enforced stability, then you can start to implement civilian run agencies at the local levels, then start to sew them together into a civilian authority which will eventually become their new government. Once you have a functioning civilian authority, you can ease back on the martial law.

That is the theory at least, and it has worked for Britain, and the US on a few occasions. It's very expensive, and as we've seen in Iraq, a million things can go wrong. I don't think the USA can afford to borrow more money from China to fix Somalia. The key to success is that during the transition from chaos to civilian control, the population are content with the transitional authority. If not, then you end up with the population fighting, and terminally disrupting the transitional authority.

It seems the UN has lost its gonads, or maybe its as I suspect that the power of the UN = USA + a few friends - a few 3rd world self absorbed dictators. The UN is like a basketball team with Michael Jordon (who pays most of the bills), Yao Ming, some decent earnest college players, and a whole mess of goof balls who just disrupt the game. Micheal Jordon is now frustrated and refuses to pay or play. I would imagine that the USA also has some credibility issues at the UN now. Next time we cry wolf, the security council will probably laugh at us.

[Jester]

I suppose perhaps some clarity is in order: My argument is not that the West is worse than the rest. My argument is that "we" have no good reason for self-congratulation when it comes to violence. It's just been done differently. However, the numbers still speak plenty loud.

The estimate for Mao's reign of terror alone are about 20 million (source). Would you call China "Western"? And, I do recall that Japan was involved in WWII, so while yes, Europe(esp. Eastern Europe) saw the bulk of the killing, there was a pretty lethal eastern component as well. Would you call Japan "Western"?

Well, I believe I actually addressed the starvation point in earlier posts. I think it is a slightly different (though no less horrible) thing to kill millions of people through misguided economic policies than it is to kill them either directly or indirectly through modern warfare. Since the question at hand is "does being western mitigate, even a little bit, the dangers of modern weaponry", my answer remains a firm no. But, even if you include Mao's famines, they are still more than canceled out by WWII.

As for Japan, if you cut out the entire Pacific theater from the WWII numbers, even the casualties inflicted by westerners (and that's a lot of Japanese dead, very obviously at the hands of westerners with weapons, justified or not), you don't substantially alter the figures, except to shave a couple million off the top.

My sources show about 16.8 million combatants died in all theaters in WWII. As for non-combatants, between 7 and 12 million Soviets, about 6 million in the holocaust, and another 6 million in all other theaters.

I don't know what sources you're going on, and I'm hardly a WWII expert, but that's certainly not what they've got over at wikipedia. They have 25 million military, and 48 million civilian, for a total of 73 million dead. The WWII civilian casualties alone would be enough to cover Mao's mass starvations, even by the most extreme estimations (15-50 million). Add in WWI, and now you have another 16.5 million. Add in Vietnam, that's a couple million more on the take, just counting the one side's casualties.

I think it is absurd to limit a war casualty to one caused by a bullet or bomb. If your city is fire bombed, and you count only the fraction of direct casualties, what do you call the more significant portion who now succumb to exposure, starvation and disease? If entire populations are rounded up and forced to march for weeks through frozen mountains without shelter, water, or food are they merely unlucky? If your ports are blockaded, and populations that grew large due to the free flow of goods now starve because they haven't enough, is that bad planning?

I agree. But by those numbers, it gets worse for the West, not better. At least three million died in the Holodomor. Plenty more in the Stalinist purges. Yet more from starvation caused by WWII. From starvation caused by WWI. In the Armenian genocide. The list does go on, although those are the largest contributors.

It also seems wrong to think about counting deaths in proportion to population size. If you have two kids and we kill one, that is 50%, but if you have 12 kids and we kill 3, it is a mere 25%. I think these quantitative and qualitative justifications are equally ludicrous.

Wouldn't matter for the argument, the West is still ahead. But if you kill 1000 people in a village of 1000, you wiped it out, total obliteration. If you killed 1000 people in the Soviet Union in WWII, that would be just another hour on the battlefield, or maybe even off the battlefield. Both the absolute and relative perspectives are important.

The genocides that are occurring in Africa now, are not as much the killing and the raping (which occur frequently enough), as they are about the armed displacement of people from their land and livelihood.

Yep. And if you total them all up, brutal though they may be, they're low tech. The West has them beat in terms of sheer numbers, hands down. Rwanda killed maybe a million, which is horrifying, but it wouldn't even be a year of the Holocaust, let alone the Eastern Front.

-Jester

[Kevin]

It can be solved, but foremost, the people of Somalia have to want it solved and agree to the solution.

First can you point me to some success stories? I'd like to broaden my knowledge.

And how do you get them to agree? There are people there that want the issue solved and some of them are going about doing it the way they want to. That's part of why there has been civil war there for decades. To me that still points to no solution and as things descend even more into barbarism, they need the help even more and are much less capable of asking for it. How do we keep it from being another proxy theatre of war, we've seen how much that helps a country like Afghanistan.

As you mentioned who pays for that transitional force even if they agree? Isn't what Ethopia tried essentially that but now they can't pay so they pull out and there is a big vacuum again which just breeds more of the same. Where are the safeguards on that?

So you say we don't want to go in there, I agree, but then should we be blowing up the pirates? I want the piracy to stop but what good is treating the symptom going to do. It might buy a few years of peace but it won't stop it. We don't have the money. The UN doesn't have the money or if they do they don't have the power. I agree with you, the UN has for whatever the reasons, been what the US and a few others actually provide. China is still very reluctant to get involved with support for it, and we aren't exactly happy with them getting them more involved either.

I'd like to see the UN restructured too. It's not that it's a bad idea and not all of the organization is flawed, but it needs some work so that it can better accomplish the mission it has. The US might also need to agree to supply power for issues it doesn't always agree on. Walking out on decisions doesn't always help. Sure if you really are diametrically opposed but we've been a big baby on stuff that we only had marginal issues with. If we want to believe in rule of law we can't still only do what we want to.

So I can believe that you can stitch things together, but I'm still specifically looking at the pirates here. I don't see that stopping until you stabilize the country. I don't see anyway for that to happen still. A forced unagreed upon change (Iraq) doesn't work. Since there are civil wars that indicates that someone there has been trying to organize something but who do you back? Do you back your ideals or do you back the group that will actually be able to bring a stable government that you can then work with? We don't agree with many of the countries we work with, but we can work with the stable ones.

[--Pete]

Hi,

What, you mean like Averroes, or Avicenna? Al-Khwarzmi?

From Wiki on Islamic philosophy:

"Three speculative thinkers, al-Farabi, Avicenna and al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. They were considered by many as highly unorthodox and by some were even described as non-Islamic philosophers." Indeed, it is their influence on the *West* that is emphasized.

The remainder of the article cannot be easily summarized, but overall the impression that I get is that the Greek philosophers did influence some of the Islamic philosophers, but that influence did not extend to the Islamic populations. So, the parallel that I drew between ancient Chinese philosophy and modern Western life is, I think, still applicable. So, strictly speaking, modern Islamic philosophy does trace back to classical Greek, but mostly in the sense that it denies the validity of the Greeks' beliefs.

--Pete

[Jester]

The remainder of the article cannot be easily summarized, but overall the impression that I get is that the Greek philosophers did influence some of the Islamic philosophers, but that influence did not extend to the Islamic populations. So, the parallel that I drew between ancient Chinese philosophy and modern Western life is, I think, still applicable. So, strictly speaking, modern Islamic philosophy does trace back to classical Greek, but mostly in the sense that it denies the validity of the Greeks' beliefs.

Sure. But the great unwashed masses of Dark Ages/Medieval/Rennaisance/Early Modern Europe didn't even speak the Latin they were preached to in, let alone the Greek philosophers it was supposedly rationalized with. Nor does Joe Average American (nor any other Western nationality) have much to tell you when you ask them for a rundown of the philosophical relevance of Socrates to their life. So, having an influence on the "populations" is a pretty high standard, and I don't think Christendom fares any better than Dar-al-Islam.

As for denying the validity of the Greeks' beliefs, who doesn't? Christian authors only accepted them in exactly the same sense that Islamic ones did: as being wise ideas, but hopelessly in need up updating in light of the new religious revelations. The Greeks themselves don't believe in what the ancient Greeks wrote, and surely they have as fair a claim as anyone. Frankly, I think much the same thing about the Greeks, from a more secular standpoint. Who actually accepts the validity of ancient learning? Even the ancients themselves squabbled like schoolchildren over who was right and who was wrong.

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

So how do we help, even if they want it, even assuming they are wanting our ideals of freedom and democracy?

First, they must be the ones who want it. And with that we cannot help much other than by diplomacy and propaganda. Once they do want it (or at least a sizable group with some power does) then we can help. We can help mostly with education. Education in the democratic process, in improved farming, in low tech business start ups, in family planning, in basic health and hygiene. We can also help with financing (loans, not hand outs), with security, etc. But it has to be at their request.

How has any group of people ever really formed a nation. Has it ever happened non violently (I'm honestly ignorant of history, that's a legitimate question).

If you mean formed a nation out of nothing, then it as been a long time since this has happened. The original settlers in an area eventually formed nations when the population became big enough and something like government evolved. I suspect that, at least, some tribal warfare accompanied the process.

In historical times, founding a nation usually means replacing a nation's government with another government or form of government. The only relatively non-violent example I know of is the Glorius Revolution. Most often, the process is much bloodier.

As Occhi says they are living in the past with modern equipment. But doesn't history show that it's pretty much been this warlord or that leader that united people under a strong will and eventually they realized it was better?

The problem is that the process is slow. And by that, I mean generations slow. The bulk of the world doesn't seem to be willing to let the process play itself out. Perhaps they are right, but to date their attempts to fix things have lead to worse rather than better.

How do you get education to the people, when there is no method of delivery?

A little at a time. It's a bootstrap process, and it must be initialized internally.

Can you really blame the people for all of if?

That's a very complex question. You can't blame the people individually for it, because individually, the people are too weak to change it. But you can blame the people collectively for it, because collectively they do have the power to change it. Collectively, they accept it.

Besides, that is a larger question than we are dealing with here. The question here is simply, "Are the pirates at fault for their actions?" And the answer is always, "yes, provided they are sane."

I seriously look at that mess and can't see a way to cure the cause or handle the symptom effectively.

I don't think there is any short term way. I think that it would take nearly a century (three or four full generations) to actually 'fix' the problem. And that would be under ideal conditions. Full co-operation by the population and the government, a school system that reaches nearly all the population, no internal warfare between factions. The less these conditions are met, the longer (by generations) will the fix take.

Things are more stable in Iraq right now.

That is a debatable statement. Under Saddam, there was no fighting in the streets, no terrorist training camps, no personal militias, no IEDs. A person could drive from one city to another and expect to complete and survive the trip. Could shop in the bazaar and not expect to be blown to bits.

It's a mess, and I don't see any damn answer. Fixing Somalia doesn't even solve the issue as there are other countries there that will just cause issues as well.

I think you are right, there is no way to fix these problems from the outside unless we're willing to conquer those countries, govern them for the decades necessary to build their infrastructure and educate their population and eradicate their tribal hatreds. The quick fix doesn't work. And I don't think the West is willing to take on that burden. And, probably, morally shouldn't.

But we can do something about the symptoms, whether they be piracy, kidnapping, or terrorism. We can make the cost of those actions so high that no one, no matter how extreme, will support them. But do we have the stomach for it?

--Pete

[Kevin]

Things are more stable in Iraq right now.

That is a debatable statement. Under Saddam, there was no fighting in the streets, no terrorist training camps, no personal militias, no IEDs. A person could drive from one city to another and expect to complete and survive the trip. Could shop in the bazaar and not expect to be blown to bits.

I've got more I'll come back on but I was actually comparing Iraq to Somalia though I realize that the comparison was not done clearly. Basically I was saying that as messed up as stuff was in Iraq right now, that Iraq is more stable than Somalia. It was not an argument supporting the actions in Iraq. Figured I'd clear that one up now so that my arguments and questions stay clear, but I'll jump back in the discourse when I've got more time. :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . .

Really, really simple answer. The Greek concepts of individual dignity, of democracy, of freedom of action, etc.

The Greeks gave them a lot of lip service, observed them somewhat.

The 'West' gives them a lot of lip service. Observes them somewhat more in some places and somewhat less in others than did the Greeks. They are part of our culture in principle if not in practice.

Islam neither gives them lip service as ideals nor embraces them in practice.

--Pete

30

[kandrathe]

First can you point me to some success stories? I'd like to broaden my knowledge.

The Malayan Emergency come to mind for the Brits, and the US has had mixed results in South and Central America usually helping some military dictator repel a Marxist insurgency. For failed states, I would look at the examples of post WWII occupations, where the US administered some various countries, and eventually backed out once the state was revitalized. In some cases, like the Philippines or Okinawa, we should have left a decade earlier.

I'm not a huge fan of the US meddling in the politics of other nations, nor the US taxpayer funding the destroy and rebuild missions. The alternatives might be worse however.

And how do you get them to agree?

You don't need them to like it, just understand that interfering is not in their best interest. In most cases, occupations are tolerated for a short term.

As you mentioned who pays for that transitional force even if they agree? Isn't what Ethiopia tried essentially that but now they can't pay so they pull out and there is a big vacuum again which just breeds more of the same. Where are the safeguards on that?

The best approach, as was done in Afghanistan, is to find the best of the strongmen. Then, swallow hard, and support their dominance of the country. It is tricky, because you don't want it to be seen as a puppet regime.

So you say we don't want to go in there, I agree, but then should we be blowing up the pirates? I want the piracy to stop but what good is treating the symptom going to do. It might buy a few years of peace but it won't stop it.

It is not an all or nothing proposition. You need to address the symptoms, until you can address the cause. Just as you must deal with crime, until you root out the underlaying causes of crime.

If I were writing the UN play book... The UN should call for a naval blockade of Somalia, this will help to stop the flow of arms and Islamic insurgents from Yeman. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti are eager for the malaise of Somalia to end and so should be a part of the UN coalition for peace in Somalia. This is a case where you need to force the bandit lords in Somalia to capitulate, to bring them into a negotiation for a lasting peaceful solution. The African Union Peace and Security Council might be able to supply troops to create secure enclaves where the refugees can get food and shelter. Once you have the warlords attention, you can move from region to region trading out their military weapons, and control for security, food, shelter and a place in the future government. After the last botched attempt by Clinton, I would see the US on the ground role as minimal. We have plenty of Navy to apply to the problem, if we are done blustering around North Korea and Iran. As was said earlier, its not that the US couldn't handle this problem, we just lack the political will to do much about it at this time.

[kandrathe]

I suppose perhaps some clarity is in order: My argument is not that the West is worse than the rest. My argument is that "we" have no good reason for self-congratulation when it comes to violence. It's just been done differently. However, the numbers still speak plenty loud.

Thanks. That is clearer, and I agree with you. Times change, and so do attitudes and prejudices. The crux of it is that in the past century, the industrialization of war moved peoples attitudes from a noble game of honor and glory, into a horrific and brutal plague. I hope we are at a time where war, or at least total war, is a thing of the past. But as George Santayana said in his 1924 Soliloquies, "Yet the poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war."

[Jester]

And that's a fine enough answer, but at this point, the Greeks are vestigal to the argument. Individual rights becomes what defines the West.

-Jester