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Trotskyâs idea clearly similar to forced democracy upon Muslim World
Indymedia may be down, but never under-estimate the ability of an Islamist to find a propaganda outlet, in this case The Jakarta Post. Essentially Amirâs brain fart boils down to this: Islam is a Religion Of Peace, who only want to live in peace with the US. (Yes forget about Sept 11 and all those other nasty incidents. Reasonable people can sit down and work through these issues) No, the main problem is a "cabal", yes a "cabal" of Joos who control the US Government, and are working in the interest of Israel to bring "democracy" to Muslim countries, whether they want it or not.
Or something like that I think?. Trotsky also gets a look in
Amir Butler, Executive Director, Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC), Melbourne, abutler@muslimaffairs.com.au
On Nov. 6, George W. Bush announced that America, through itâs interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan was leading a "global democratic revolution". That he should have made such remarks on the eve of Leon Trotskyâs birthday â the architect of "global socialist revolution" â was of course just coincidence.
| It was Trotsky's birthday? Damn. I forgot to get him something... |
However, the similarities between Trotskyâs idea that socialism should be spread at the barrel of a gun and the idea that democracy can be forced upon the Muslim world through violent occupation and threat of invasion are obvious.
| Oh, sure. Who could miss them? |
Contemporary American foreign policy is Trotskyâs revenge. The neoconservative movement that holds Washington in its thrall is itself merely a warmed-up version of Trotskyâs Fourth International. As Michael Lind wrote in Britainâs The New Statesman (April 7, 2003), the neocons are "products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history."
| Y'see, they grew up going to these Little Red Schoolhouses, learning all that Marxist-Trotskyite cant and the techniques of red revolution. Then they discovered that the Marxist-Trotskyite cant was all baloney, but they were left with the techniques â same language, just a different dialectic. Dontcha hate it when that happens? |
If the neoconservative vision of a "democratic revolution" in the Muslim world mirrors Trotskyâs equally flawed vision of a permanent socialist revolution, then will Americaâs reaction to democracy in Iraq mirror Brezhnevâs doctrine of "limited sovereignty"? In early 1968, the Czech Communist Party under Alexander Dubcek attempted to introduce a series of reforms. In May of that same year, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev invaded Czechoslovakia, justifying the invasion by claiming that "Czechoslovakiaâs detachment from the socialist community would have come into conflict with itâs own vital interests and would have been detrimental to other socialist states". In other words, the invasion was to protect socialism as an ideology. Once a nation chose socialism, the soviet state could never allow it to turn back. A nationâs sovereignty was limited by a tight ideological straitjacket.
| It's kind of like becoming a Muslim, isn't it? You get enticed into signing up, then discover that if you don't like it you're an apostate, who has to be killed... |
As America attempts to extricate herself from the Iraqi disaster, it has promised a free election next year. If the Iraqi people are given a true democracy, then America must face the bitter prospect that, finally able to choose their political destiny, Iraq may choose a government that is not malleable to American interests. As both Shiite and Sunni Iraqis mobilize politically, it seems certain that the government ushered to power will actually reflect more the wishes and aspirations of Baghdad and Basrah, than the Beltway. If that happens, will America accept that the people have spoken â albeit with a possibly anti-American and anti-Israeli voice â or will America invoke its own Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty and demand Iraqis adopt America's export-grade democracy.
| Probably we'll be patient with them, just as we are with Jordan, where they're trying to implement something that looks like democracy, just as we are with some of the Gulf States where they're trying to do the same. We recognize that democracy per se will be good for them â we over-simplify it, in fact, using "democracy" as shorthand for a system which allows and nurtures individual liberty. If the Iraqis do manage to implement a system of individual liberty, to include freedom of religion, then they won't be able to turn back, because the Iraqi people won't want to give up those liberties to another man on horseback, nor to a cabal — I can use the word, too — of bearded mullahs who are against singing, dancing, flying kites, looking at pretty girls, or anything else that's remotely enjoyable. If it's a facade democracy, like Pakland has, then there's a problem. The more we rush into returning sovreignty to them, the more likely the facade democracy becomes, which is why my undies bunch at all the back-seat drivers who want to turn things over to the Iraqis last week. |
Yet seeking to prevent terrorism and promote democracy by vetoing the peopleâs democratic aspirations is, like the strengthening of the Westâs totalitarian "allies" in the region, a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed, ex-President Herbert Hoover warned that as long as America continues "putting pins in rattlesnakes" it is only natural that one day those rattlesnakes would bite. 19 of those rattlesnakes attacked America on Sept. 11; these same rattlesnakes kill and attack American soldiers every day in Iraq.
| To me, that just means we have to kill the rattlesnakes when we find them, and then we have to go after their nests. |
As the neoconservatives push America towards war, they charge those who argue for realism in American foreign policy with "appeasement". Yet, it is not appeasement to recognize that oneâs actions and policies are counter-productive to oneâs stated objectives: Fighting terror. There are one billion Muslims in the world who adhere to a religion that has withstood a thousand years of attack by ideological and military opponents. It will take more than the demands of a cabal of intellectuals in Washington to transform the Muslim world.
| The writer is obviously a Muslim, since Islam's been under attack all that while. Us infidels describe it differently: a religion that started out aggressively, spread with the sword, fire, and rapine; that displaced and destroyed older, more mature cultures, reached a brief apogee of civilization, then began to slowly and linearly deteriorate as stagnation set in. The original Arabian culture that spread Islam was a warrior culture, and warrior cultures are always supported by serfs and tributaries. They're wealth-consuming societies, rather than wealth-producers, as bourgeouis societies are. |
A secure and prosperous future for America will not be found in "permanent democratic revolution"; "benevolent hegemony"; "creative destruction" or any of the other neocon code-words for empire. Since World War II, the United States has intervened in over twenty countries, with no democracies resulting.
| Japan, Germany, and Italy don't count. Each is chopped liver. Neither does Greece, which is likewise patÚ South Korea is a bloody-handed autocracy, pretty near... |
The solution lies in a return to the foreign doctrine articulated by Thomas Jefferson in his farewell address. The United States should seek, "peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none". Likewise, John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States articulated, Americas "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own".
| Until they wipe out 3000 of her citizens on a September morning. Then all bets are off. In my opinion, our vengeance hasn't been terrible. But I understand why we extend the presumption of civilization to nations that patently aren't... |
It is these "entangling alliances" that have led to so much hostility against America in the Muslim world; particularly Americaâs alliance with Israel and its interference in Muslim societies. Rather than seeking honest friendship with the Islamic World, the American administration has entered into Faustian pacts with the totalitarian governments of the region in the interests of "regional security" and has attempted to forcefully spread its export-version of democracy to a people who just want to be left alone. America fails to see where the real battle for security must be fought. Fighting off the hordes of rattlesnakes is not the answer; nor is "liberating" Kabul or Baghdad. Rather America must liberate Washington from those who are, through their self-destructive idealism and zeal for democratic revolutions, perpetually sticking pins in the tails of these rattlesnakes. Americaâs foreign policy should once again be the shield of the Republic, and not the sword of Empire.
| I'm actually pretty happy with the neocons, despite the exaggeration of their power. Had I been in power on September 11th, 2001, there would have been a great weeping and gnashing of teeth among our domestic turbanry, and more than a few necks stretched. |
Posted by: tipper 2003-12-29 |
