Pakistan goes ape - Page 5 - PhillyBlog

jizay · #41 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 10:12 AM

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Originally Posted by DrGoogle

IInstead of bombing Pakistan back in 2001, we are now using financial and military incentives to sway their military leader. The bribes havent worked. Instead, democracy has been trampled upon (see Supreme Court Justices jailed) and terror cells are thriving.

Spreading democracy is a nice ideal, but democracy in Pakistan right now would be a disaster. Certainly you, a self-proclaimed smarter American, have seen the polls that show the enormous popular support in Pakistan for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden? What do you think would happen if they held a popular election right now? They would likely vote in a pro-jihad Islamic government. We have already seen that scenario in the elections in the Palestinian Authority, where they elected a terror group who keeps among its stated goals the establishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

Musharraf plays a double game with us and has his problems, but he is actually the best option for suppressing that kind of craziness right now. And he has actually led Pakistan to remarkable economic growth. I was surprised to learn, but they are seeing an annual growth rate of something like 6% over the last 5 years or so. In the long run, alleviating poverty and opening up trade will be the best medicine; they won't be so quick to turn over the government to a terrorist as the costs of doing so go up.

QVNewcomer · #42 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jizay

Spreading democracy is a nice ideal, but democracy in Pakistan right now would be a disaster. Certainly you, a self-proclaimed smarter American, have seen the polls that show the enormous popular support in Pakistan for Al Qaeda and Bin Laden? What do you think would happen if they held a popular election right now? They would likely vote in a pro-jihad Islamic government. We have already seen that scenario in the elections in the Palestinian Authority, where they elected a terror group who keeps among its stated goals the establishment of a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

Musharraf plays a double game with us and has his problems, but he is actually the best option for suppressing that kind of craziness right now. And he has actually led Pakistan to remarkable economic growth. I was surprised to learn, but they are seeing an annual growth rate of something like 6% over the last 5 years or so. In the long run, alleviating poverty and opening up trade will be the best medicine; they won't be so quick to turn over the government to a terrorist as the costs of doing so go up.

You pretty well just summed up American foreign policy. Spreading democracy ... until we don't like who that democracy elects.

jizay · #43 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 12:35 PM

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Originally Posted by QVNewcomer

You pretty well just summed up American foreign policy. Spreading democracy ... until we don't like who that democracy elects.

Maybe, but I'm just saying what I think is intelligent and pragmatic policy in this case. If that's the thinking behind our policy, kudos to us IMO. Also, saying "until we don't like" sounds a little too much like a moral relativist. It's not just that we don't like jihadists. It's that they are a threat to the civilized world. With all the bad-mouthing of religious fundamentalists you've done on the boards, I would think you knew that. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in the hands of religious zealots who, by their own words, want to deliver the world to Allah is a disaster.

Edit: I would add that we haven't gone nearly far enough in this regard. The constitutions of both Afghanistan and Iraq have provisions against laws contradicting Sharia law. We spread democracy there, but not in the way we should want it and there will be dire consequences.

QVNewcomer · #44 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 02:17 PM

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Originally Posted by jizay

Maybe, but I'm just saying what I think is intelligent and pragmatic policy in this case. If that's the thinking behind our policy, kudos to us IMO. Also, saying "until we don't like" sounds a little too much like a moral relativist. It's not just that we don't like jihadists. It's that they are a threat to the civilized world. With all the bad-mouthing of religious fundamentalists you've done on the boards, I would think you knew that. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in the hands of religious zealots who, by their own words, want to deliver the world to Allah is a disaster.

Edit: I would add that we haven't gone nearly far enough in this regard. The constitutions of both Afghanistan and Iraq have provisions against laws contradicting Sharia law. We spread democracy there, but not in the way we should want it and there will be dire consequences.

Well, then maybe Our Vaunted Leader should stop going around acting like democracy for democracy's sake is the bee's knees.

phillyaggie · #45 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 02:53 PM

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Originally Posted by jizay

Well, modern capitalism, banking, and democracy are the greatest things to have happened to humanity (particularly the first two). Your post, then, could be said to buttress Tanny's argument. These concepts were allowed to fluorish in Western, Christian nations which are now the best places to live. It's no use in pointing out this or that particular Christian country that isn't successful; there is a large correlation between the influence of Christianity on a country's intellectual heritage and the allowance of modernity in that country. If you can't see that, you are blind and probably willfully so. I can admit these things and I am not, nor was I raised, a Christian. Kudos to the Arabs for the cool numbers (they got most of it from the Hindus), but there's something to be said for being able to make some good from them.

The only problem with this is that Christianity had little to do with it; things happened in spite of Christianity, not because of it. Which is where I and others bring up issues such as the Inquisition and such. If you look at early Islamic history, you will notice that Islam pursued and allowed for knowledge to blossom and even now, you'll find liberals and modernists among Muslims tell you that Muhammed himself proclaimed to his followers to gain knowledge, even if that meant they had to travel to China (reference to China being obviously because it was one of the best places on Earth at that time with most up-to-date knowledge) to get it. And democracy wasn't invented by the Christians either; as I recall, democracy worked in pagan Greece and Rome as well, to a certain degree. Just because the most recent advancements have occured in the West and thus human knowledge is at its peak in the West does not mean that the East and other non-Christians have done nothing, or that a Christian benevolent god is the reason why the West is the leader right now. Economists and thinkers are already noting that the East is ascendant again. Just because unfair economic policies and warfare led to European supremacy for a few hundred years does not mean that it is everlasting. That's the point that I'm trying to make, and that others have made in bits and pieces on this thread. And to top it off, its a very specious argument to even claim Western supremacy comes from Christian godhead... some of the best minds in the West were avowedly agnostic if not athiestic, and at least since the 19th century, a lot of the best thinkers and scientists of the West have been touched by Eastern religion and philosophy, once the Vedas and other holy texts got translated (however badly) into European languages. Emerson and Thoreau were both Transandentalists; Twain had quite a few things to say about India and its people and religion; Shopenhaur got his ideas partly from his reading of Indian books; and even the worst things of the West had Indian connections-- where do you think the Nazis got their weird and wrong ideas of who or what an Arya is supposed to be?-- and why would they even pick the Swastika, a decidedly Hindu symbol...and even call it by its Sanskrit name. Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagvad Gita at the sight of the first nuclear test at Alamogordo, about the shear physical energy of it. Where do you think yoga comes from?

And all this, after having been subjected to a slave status for more than 1000 years by Muslims and then Europeans. If the East is really that bad, it is still able to impress the best of Western minds. Is it a wonder that they all wanted to find new and fast routes to India and the East when they were themselves poorer?!

phillyaggie · #46 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jizay

Maybe, but I'm just saying what I think is intelligent and pragmatic policy in this case. If that's the thinking behind our policy, kudos to us IMO. Also, saying "until we don't like" sounds a little too much like a moral relativist. It's not just that we don't like jihadists. It's that they are a threat to the civilized world. With all the bad-mouthing of religious fundamentalists you've done on the boards, I would think you knew that. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in the hands of religious zealots who, by their own words, want to deliver the world to Allah is a disaster.

Edit: I would add that we haven't gone nearly far enough in this regard. The constitutions of both Afghanistan and Iraq have provisions against laws contradicting Sharia law. We spread democracy there, but not in the way we should want it and there will be dire consequences.

I would think an even bigger disaster is happening at the hands of Christian zealots who think they have to use of the world's resources (since "God" gave them domain over it all) in order to ensure that Jesus Christ comes back to Earth to rule over it, as written (or at least mininterpreted) by these people. And the Christian zealots are more powerful.

If Pakistani Muslim zealots got their hands on the nukes, who do you think they'll target first? India, which they see as a heaten state and an everpresent danger, or America, some place far far away? And what do you think will happen after they unleast the first nuke? Will there even exist a Pakistan after that, considering that India has about twice as many nukes, 7 times the landmass, 5+ times the population, 3+ times the military, etc.?

Don't you think its a bit too screwed to be talking about nukes, even for some crazed Islamist country like Pakistan? I know, because I have dissected thru the whole India-Pakistan history and the wars they have gone thru, and while it may all sound very apocalyptic to people in the West, I highly doubt there is anyone in Pakistan who really wants to nuke someone. Lose nukes are an issue, because a country might not do anything, but non-state actors are the ones to be worried about... but America didn't do anything about these guys for a long time and in fact offered them military support when they were the rabid dogs attacking FSU in Afghanistan...now they are biting at the hand that fed them to begin with. Recoil action? yeah. Oh, and guess what-- it was considered "pragmatic policy" even then too. Lesson here would be that if you talk about democracy in the world, then your actions should do the talking, not just your lips. Why is the U.S. not pushing Egypt to have more democracy?-- Probably because the going assumption in the State Dept is that any free elections would sweep into power some Islamist party, and they don't want that, so they continue supporting Hozni Mubarak, who is essentially a military dictator. How do you think the Egyptians feel about this moral double standards of America? Now multiply this all around the world where America has firmly sided with the easiest petty local "leader" it could buy-out.

You are likely to find lose nukes in the FSU more so than in Pakistan. Howcome I don't find too many conservative hawks worried about that? Does this have to do with their perception of white Russians being better in command of their nukes, while the slimey brown mullahs of Pakistan can go berserk anytime? I don't know.

jizay · #47 (**permalink**) 01-03-2008, 05:18 PM

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