March 8, 2005
DESTABILIZATION IS THE POINT OF THE EXERCISE:
What Mideast ferment means for US: Moves toward more openness in several countries could put a check on extremists, but also may engender instability. (Howard LaFranchi, 3/08/05, CS Monitor)
The political and social effervescence suddenly sweeping the Middle East - from Baghdad to Beirut, from Cairo to Casablanca - is providing the United States and the rest of the world with both new opportunities and new risks.With pro-democracy demonstrations popping up in Lebanon and Egypt, and with modest but still unprecedented elections taking place in places like Saudi Arabia, Arabs and Muslims are expressing the same interest in self-determination they saw their brethren in Iraq and the Palestinian territories exercise just a few weeks ago.
The Western world especially is viewing the changes with almost giddy expectation. Certainly a more democratic and open region holds out the possibility of greater public satisfaction and therefore less attraction to extremist mobilization. But it could also expose a crucial arc of nations long governed with a strong hand to greater turmoil.
Notice how no one ever complains that FDR and Churchill destabilized the Nazi Empire? America is and always has been (at its best anyway) a force for instability in those portions of the worlkd without liberty. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2005 9:17 AM
The Left's god has never been upheval, despite the flamboyant rhetoric. It worships stability.
Posted by: Luciferous at March 8, 2005 4:35 PMEggs do not spontaneously become omelettes. Heck, they don't even evolve into omelettes.
Posted by: ghostcats at March 8, 2005 5:14 PMActually, no one complains about FDR and Churchill destabilizing the Nazi empire now. That was not the case in the 1930s when lots and lots of people criticized Churchill for attempting to do just that. (FDR did less in the '30s and early '40s but was criticized by Lindbergh and the America Firsters for even that.)
Even you are being inconsistent, inasmuch as you have criticized Vansittart, one of Churchill's few allies in attempting to destabilize Nazi Germany.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 9, 2005 2:16 PMHarry:
To the contrary, I criticize FDR and Vansitarrt for opposing the destabilization of Nazi Germany. They could have toppled it from within fairly easily but wanted to crush it militarily so they could enslave its people and make it some kind of loony agrarian experiment.
Posted by: oj at March 9, 2005 5:35 PMBy using those mythical German conservatives?
The ones who were scared off by Roosevelt's remarks in 1943?
But that doesn't explain why they didn't act in 1934 or 1938, does it?
They didn't act because they never existed.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 10, 2005 6:16 PMThey did act. They even sought help but were turned down because the Vansitartts, FDRs, Morgenthaus, etc. wanted to exercise vengeance not just get rid of Hitler. FDR used to go off on these demnented flights of fancy about how he'd seen the change come over the once fine German people while he lived there with his family...and how they'd need to be virtually enslaved and reduced to agrarianism for fifty years. It was all quite lunatic, but official policy.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2005 6:25 PM