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Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US


From: Pierce T . Wetter III
Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 13:25:29 -0700



PS: Pierce could you make me a favor and choose one subject where you think that the US is not doing the right thing and give us your opinion of how
and what should be done. It's too easy for me to point the things you
"obviously" want to miss. I'm actually more interested in what USians want
to do about it.

I wrote a long list of mistakes I'd thought we'd made, then I reread what you wrote and realized you wanted to know about a single current mistake. Well, here goes.

Something where we're not doing the right thing:

In Afghanistan, we haven't involved enough of the other Afghan tribes in the main government, so those tribes see it as mostly a Pushtun government, rather then a pan-Afghan government.

I think that's because we have a cultural blind spot about the power clans/tribes/family groups can wield in a society, but I can't seem to explain it well enough to keep everyone from jumping down my throat about that not being true. I think there is a difference between thing that you inately understand and things that have to constantly be explained to you. People who grow up with stronger inter-family, inter-clan, inter-tribe ties will understand that in a way that most Americans never will.

We're also buying off the warlords instead of deposing them. So in a way, we're just creating safe havens for future problems by trying to "fix" Afghanistan in a quick and dirty fashion. Afghanistan probably needs _more_ attention then Iraq, not less.

 Pierce

P.S.

In general, I'd like to see our foreign policy more Wilsonian (Woodrow Wilson like, which means pushing for freedom and self-determination for all peoples) and less realpolitik (no more, well, he's an evil dictator, but he's _our_ evil dictator sort of thinking.

How to do that in the real world, I have no idea. Wilson himself was an abysmal failure at obtaining his own principles. If he'd been willing to compromise even a little, the Middle East would already have lots of democracies, instead of lots of tyrannies.




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