Ranting to /dev/null

Reconsiderations

I'm starting to think that a lot of the things I was saying last semester about the state of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world may have been off. Recent events are pushing me towards the idea that the Arab street isn't really what we're fighting against, but against the tyranny and autocracy embedded in the majority of Islamic states.

The past few weeks have seen change of the sort that I wouldn't have believed possible, and I'm glad to have been wrong. But this only encourages me to be even more hawkish in my sentiments towards the Middle East. The solution now is to assist in the liberation of these oppressed peoples as best we can, whether that be military intervention as in Iraq or more subtle means, as is now occurring in Lebanon and - perhaps - Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Islam may not be a religion of peace, but it seems that Muslims will take it where they can get it, and that the much vaunted hatred of the West by Muslims may be slightly more resident in the leaders and media than in the average guy on the street. So, I say we take the bastards down and let the people do their thing. And what makes this more compelling for me is that all we're really doing is cleaning up messes that we left by Western invervention in the last few centuries, Iraq and Afghanistan particularly. We essentially created these failed states, shouldn't we have some role to play in restarting them afresh, even militarily if need be? Does anyone really want to argue that the sovereignty of dictatoral states outweighs both the security concerns of the United States and the humanitarian concerns of oppressed peoples?