The cradle of civilization
: The Messopotamian, Baghdad’s newest blogger, has insightful observations about what’s really happening in his neighborhood:
Jolted and shocked by the events of September 11, the United States of America, the greatest and most powerful politico-economic power that humanity has ever known has realised that the advanced and rich western world can no longer ignore the plight of the poorer and underdeveloped world. Those “nation states”, who have totally failed the test of self determination and self goverment, and degenerated into obscurantism, sectarianism, tribalism, and all the other isms of hell, pose a mortal danger, both to the people unfortunate to live there and to the Western civilisation itself….
So Action was decided upon… to bring the values and standards enjoyed by the prosperous world to these places, by force if necessary, by example preferably….
The old style of european imperialism, which aimed at exploitation, cheap raw materials, and keeping people backward and in a state of peasant low existance, has gone and is no longer suitable for the world. A globalised world where every body can enjoy the freedoms and benefits taken for granted by the “advanced” world. This is liberal neo-imperialism.
Years ago, in my earlier youth, had I heard somebody talking like this, my hair would have stood on end, I would have been thrown into a fit of rage enough to give me heart attack. But years of suffering, years ground to dust and wasted living under a system which had hardly anything right in it, atavism which took us back to a moral state comparable to that that existed even before the reforms of Islam fifteen centuries ago, have finally brought me to this forlorn conclusion: that perhaps it is better this way – perhaps that really, salvation lies herein.
Caution to the wind. Consider this: if the U.S. tommorrow announces that anybody willing to come to its land would be given the “Green Card” immediately with no further question, how many people do you think would stand in line? Answer this question if you dare ? Why if Western values are so bad and so terrible would you find Muslim, Hindu, Buddist, and every colour and every breed standing in that hypothetical line, in their billions ?
But America cannot take in the entire humanity, so america decides to go to them instead.
See the Democracy Doctrine, below. This is about making the world safe for its citizens. This is about setting a standard for human rights in the modern age that includes the rights of freedom and self-determination. And, as this post so wisely points out, this is also a matter of self-defense for the democratic against the tyrants.
: I had suspected it but only saw today that, indeed, the author of the Messopotamian, Alaa, is a friend of Zeyad’s and Zeyad convinced him to blog. Bravo, my friend. The more the better.
Hoder started two years ago with just one Iranian blog and now there are as many as 100,000 new voices silent no longer. Yes, the more the better — in the service of democracy.
