Except Islamofascism. No question about whether it exists or not - it does - or whether it's good or bad - it's bad. Questioning these conclusions makes you naive or dangerous. Just ask an Open Democrat. Doug
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(Hope, you're half joking...)
Yeahbutt, that's not the question. Sure, I have no interest or intention of living under or supporting other people's governments, good or bad, whether they are constructed around some fundamentalist Islamic vision or any other god damned vision. I sure as hell have no intention of living under a Christian fundamentalist government here either. If it ever comes that, then I am with the armed opposition in civil war mode. Well, and guess what? That's what's going on all over the world.
The question is, since when is it up to the US government to unilaterally define what constitutes Islamofascism and decide on the actions to be taken against it?
The automatic presumption that US should assume that role, is itself the ground of imperialism.
Another quick and predictable answer is since the 9/11 attack. Okay, let's go back over that and how it should have been handled. My vote was for the way most of the other western countries handled their occasional terrorists attacks---through national and international police forces and serious and mostly covert diplomatic pressures. Those methods have put far more terrorists behind bars and produced more postive results than these idiot wars. And most of these terrorists have turned out to second generation immigrants with an identity crisis, i.e. the children of imperialism.
So, I say, if you want to stop terrorism, you stop the imperial policies that produce it. You don't conduct imperialist wars to make more terrorists.
If we hadn't been up to our necks since WWI in imperialistic manipulations in the Muslim world, it seems probable to me the Muslim world in some collective fashion or other would have come to their own terms with any rise to power of fundamentalisms in their societies. After all these groups theaten the Muslim world's governments far more ominously than they threaten those in the West. In fact, from what I can tell by reading histories, the whole motivation for such religious fundamentalist groups arises directly out of the ground of western colonialism and imperialism. In this reading, Saudi Arabia and Wahabbe Islam was the direct product of the British empire and its great war hero and liberal, Sir Lawrence.
I say keep your imperial war liberals home this year if you don't want to find a wild eyed Islamofascist under your bed, next year!
CG