And I live in the present Southeast Asia, and I think we also know what Islamisms are.
So, my question is: Does it, always and everywhere mean what you say it means? Or is there a range that's being drowned out in the hysteria?
>I realize that the instinctive leftie reaction is that
>all attacks against oppressive governments must have
>good-heartedness at their base, but it just isn't so.
No. The instinctive leftie reaction is that there's something that's brought this about, not that the response to oppression is always and everywhere "good".
>Islamism, in the Talibanist sense of the term, is the
>ideological basis for most Central Asian "liberation"
>movements. Do you really want these people to come to
>power?
And who might the "you" or "we" be? Or, maybe the question might be: Do you prefer to stick with the oppressive governments? In another guise and another time, should the left have supported the Shah of Iran?
There are events over which "you" or "we" can have little influence other than to be bystanders, unless "you" or "we" can stomach sticking with the powers-that-be. In instances where other, more palatable voices and, more importantly, social forces are available, then perhaps "you" or "we" can support them and work with them. But in instances where, because of the powers of the oppression, all other voices are stilled or assimilated to that which we all love to hate, then sanity suggests that "we" might just sit it out. The alternative is to do a Norman Geras or a Christopher Hitchens!
Incidentally, having lived in one of the hotspots of the former Cold War, may I suggest that the language being used is all too reminiscent of that of anti-communism? Then, too, there were powerful voices telling us that they knew what Communism meant, loud and clear, and that it too did not have good-heartedness at its base, as could be evidenced by the assassinations and the killings and the booby-traps and bombings and strikes, etc.; that Communism, too, was only a "liberation" movement; and did we really want them to come to power?. So it was that independent movements and voices of opposition were rolled up into Communism, all the better to be neutered in one fell swoop. And so it came to pass that Islamists are now the banner of "threats to national security". Thirty years ago, the detention centres were filled with "communists" and "communist terrorists" or CTs; today they are filled with "islamists" and "islamist terrorists". Should we pursue them as ruthlessly as we once did the communists?
kj khoo