Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: WATCH: IDF Soldier Screams At Israeli Activists: 'You Are Worse Than The Arabs' [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Germany didn't need Western occupation to "create" democracy after the war. The anti-democratic elements had already been crushed. All that was needed was to let the democratic exiles come back and have their chance. But that would have meant taking the risk of electing a Left government, and the U.S. was committed to preventing that above all else, because the U.S. even when led by FDR(a figure I admire in many ways)still saw ALL forms of the Left as "Communist".
And the U.S. effectively STOPPED democratic renewal in Japan in the early 1950's, by inventing the "Liberal Democratic Party" and letting the old aristocratic classes regain power as corporate leaders. Japan hasn't had a real election or anything close to democracy since 1955.
Thus, Germany and Japan are irrelevant as examples for the modern world, and no comparable examples appeared in Palestine during the 1980's occupation(no democratic forces ever grew as a result of Israeli troops being there, and the handful of people you mentioned as alternative leaders, while nice folks, were never going to supersede the PLO, because those people has no armed supporters.)
It is impossible to get Palestine to be democratic and secular by perpetuating the Occupation. If that were possible, then why hasn't Netanyahu's reinstitution of the Occupation in the early 2000's caused new elections to be held? Why hasn't it led to improvements in human rights? Why hasn't it made the place MORE secular, rather than far less? All of those points prove that "democracy" can't be imposed by outside force anymore. The Palestinians are never going to be moved by being told by your side "listen to your betters".
This is why your "practical" program is totally impractical.
And you haven't illustrated any possible scenario whereby the Occupation can cause peace, OR lead to people with different values co-existing. Co-existence also can't be made to happen by force, because if force is involved, what you have clearly ISN'T co-existence. If it hasn't, after being reinstituted for ten years now(and never really being all that de-instituted in terms of the West Bank), how could it ever do so in the future? And how can you seriously argue that it helped secular forces in Gaza when, sadly, no such forces ever emerged there at the time? Hamas won Gaza because it took care of the poor. No seculars anywhere in Palestine were even thinking about offering to do that. That is the reason there is no significant secular force in Gaza...not because the people are religious crazyheads, but because the religious actually offered something TO them. If the seculars had set up their own social service network, had they reached out to the poor, things would be a lot different.
You issue a great insult to most of the human race by calling me an elitist. You imply that most of them are living under dictatorships because they are personally willfully evil, that they collectively CHOSE that somehow. And you imply that I see myself as above them. I don't, and I don't see myself as above you. Why isn't it enough for you to just accept that a person can disagree with you on the merits of the situation, and on a clear-headed analysis of reality? YOUR "lesser evil" isn't achieving anything. Reality proves that.
Your view reminds me of a story a relative told me about an encounter with an Israeli. When asked about the situation with the Pals, the Israeli in question said "we're going to BEAT them into liking us". That seems to encapsulate your view. Am I wrong about that?
And I do know what is happening with the Arab Spring(which isn't over). It's just that you and I disagree about it. Nothing that has happened yet has proved that it would have been better for the Spring not to have happened(clearly the Spring didn't happen because those people wanted to be MORE repressed)and we both know it couldn't have been stopped by people in the West collectively dismissing it. The regimes that fell were doomed to fall by then...and the U.S. couldn't have saved them. And, since you reference Libya, are you now saying you'd have preferred to see Qadaffi STAY in power? What good would that have done even if it had been possible?
You're still, in the end, arguing that the U.S. should have sent in the Marines to save the Shah. That would have morally killed my country for the rest of eternity and made it impossible for my country to ever have done anything positive in the world again. Same for trying to save the Tsar in 1917(Kerensky was unsalvageable).
And you're still arguing that Arabs and Muslims can only be democratic if someone MAKES them be, when the truth is that trying to MAKE them be is the best way to prevent them from being. Iraq, once again, proves that, being a country where democracy is a meaningless sham and armed resisters still blow things up on a daily basis.
So stop acting like you have to silence me. You don't. I am not your enemy. I just disagree with you. Why can't you accept that there's no more here than that? I want YOU to live in peace and justice and freedom. And your wife and kids. And your buddy the general down the street that you're so touchy about(the guy's been in the army for years...you think he doesn't hear worse than what I wrote every day of the week in the command meetings?) All I am is an ordinary, fallible, rather plain-looking guy that simply doesn't buy into your view. You must hear far more confrontational things and more radically different things than I say from folks at the coffee shop or maybe the guy at the falafel stand most days. Do you obsess about silencing them the way you do about me?
We just see things differently. You don't need to discredit me. You don't need to silence me. Just accept that I can disagree with you without being "religious" or a moral snob. I'm as messed-up and fallible as anybody else and proud to admit it.