``OK, I'm trying to understand. The U.S. 'runs a political slum in the region,' which generates the preconditions for 9-11, but then attacks a part it didn't run, and which doesn't have Al Qaeda--except perhaps in the Kurdish -area--to clear up the slum?'' JBrown
``Hitchens point is that just as the Left argues that Al Quaeda is almost besides the point, since even if we destroyed them to a man, there are more where they came from, the neoconservative pro-warhawks can argue that the problem is the coddling of dictators throughout the Middle East regime. Democratize Iraq and it puts pressure on and weakens Saudi Arabia and Pakistan dictators...'' Nathan Newman
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If you re-read the first paragraph, then the second doesn't follow. Part of the reason is first of all, war on Iraq will hardly democratize it any more than war on Afghanistan democratized that mess. Long standing occupations may stabilize both---so what? More cops on the street---following the slum parallel. Well, in any case the current hot beds of terrorism are the Islamic fundies but Iraq already suppresses them internally---one of the regimes along with the PLO, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey who did.
As for the slum clearance argument itself, that is exactly what Islamic fundamentalists argue---the internalized religious police state imposition of shia law is Saudi Arabia's export answer to the poverty of the Islamic world. They are hardly interested in spreading their own wealth, so instead they exported their authoritarian socio-religious codes on the cheap under the pretext of Islamic humanitarian aid or charity---principally to Egypt and Pakistan---where lo and behold al Qaeda and others appeared.
And then there is the problem that the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey are the secular states or quasi-states that actually form the regional counterweights to the kind of Islamic fundamentalism that is at war with the US and the West. So it makes absolutely no sense at all to make war on Iraq and the Palestinians, which merely foments instability in Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. It does however help shore up the Israelis.
In any case, it doesn't matter ultimately either way, since war on Iraq is entirely senseless and has even less justification than bombing and occupying Afghanistan. These are just military stupidities and blunders committed in a foreign policy void.
As far as I can tell, the Europeans have nabbed more terrorists by running civilian police sweeps through their own Moslem neighborhoods and slums.
Chuck Grimes
PS sorry about the blank message. The second post was sendmail's fault log reacting to a power outage that happened just after the first post was sent, but before it was confirmed as sent.