American Purposes valid.
Reader comment on item: [Samuel Huntington and] American Purposes In Iraq

Submitted by Kirk Bertino (United States), Apr 28, 2004 at 10:13

American purposes in Iraq are valid. America is reshaping Iraqi society. It's not going to happen overnight. Maybe strategically it could have been handled differently, but the purpose is valid still the same. The U.S. has reshaped many of the empires of the modern world directly or indirectly. The U.S.S.R., Japan and Germany, are the obvious ones. Many countries and peoples do not appreciate the changes we are attempting to make, but historically great social change rarely occurred in a manner that was welcomed with open arms by dissidents. The people we are fighting against in Iraq are driven by personal desires for power, even the islamacists.

The U.S., by taking the powerful yet more humanitarian role shows magnanimity. The show of power reverberates through out the Middle East. The Arab societies want to see America fail purely because they want to see Arabs in a powerful role. It's a petty position on the part of the Arabs. The U.S. position is more mature and broader in it's scope. The U.S. is not defining itself by "look how much damage we can do". The U.S. is defining itself by "look how much we can rebuild". The articles here as of late have been decidely negative to our presence in Iraq, but our presence reshapes the world for the better.

For Iraq to have an open society where freeedom of thought and opinion can be versed and spoken will reshape that area of the world. Of course you are going to have the militsnts doing what they have always done. They wll condemn any one who do not share their views. Such has always been the way that totalitarianism has been spread. By quitting the opposition and by the ignorance of the population. The French and Russian revolutions were driven as much as anything by the ignorance of their populations. However, the greatest social change has been driven through the spead of ideas. Balanced ideas. An islamicists ideas might sound great to an individual who ideas are soley based on the Quaran, but what happens when critical though enters the picture? The islamic and arab world is defined by it's insularity. Its lack of exposure to the ideas of others.

The 9/11 islamicists were well educated in the sense that they were engineers and came from well to do back grounds, but their philosophy, their breadth of ideas was limited, unexposed.

Muslims live in societies where they try to quit all criticism. External or internal. Only by waking them up and forcing them to realise the validity of the criticism, whether it be against pious closed mindedness to new ideas and other beliefs or inhumane attitudes towards other persons, will they be brought into the modern world. If they have to be brought kicking and screaming so be it. They will have to confront the rest of us in the world. Frankly I would rather it be after we have given them healthy doses of the free market of ideas.

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