What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Team America: World Police

So, last Thursday, there was this employee of the U.S. consulate in Lahore, a certain Raymond Davis, driving along minding his own business, when a couple of Pakistani youths on a motorbike pulled up alongside him.

Fearing, with some reason, it seems, that they might steal his mobile phone, car-jack him, or worse, Davis pulled out his (apparently unlicenced) gun and shot them both dead.

He then called for help to the consulate, which duly sent a "quick-reaction team" to his rescue. They never reached him, but, while racing the wrong way down a one-way street, they succeeded in running down and killing an innocent passerby.

Davis was arrested at the scene for murder by Pakistani police.

* * * * *

Now is this incident emblematic of American participation in Middle-Eastern affairs, or what?

Racing the wrong way down a one-way street.

Comments (21)

I don't think American stupidity is limited to the Middle-Eastern region. Americans are capable of that level of stupidity almost anywhere. Such as, in the Bonfire of the Vanities.

3 dead natives, repeat after me: "they hate us for our freedoms."

So, Raymond Davis will learn, like the legions of imperial agents that went before him, or the slew of dictators we have propped up over the years, the futility of depending on "quick reaction teams" to stave off the inevitable day of reckoning.

Davis should be grateful he isn't sent off on a "rendition", and pray his prison is unlike the ones that gave birth to the Moslem Brotherhood.

Oh, yes, the Muslim Brotherhood got started because America is so evil.

I am not buyin' it. But heeeere we go.

(Which is not to say that I disagree that America does a lot of stupid foreign policy things. But all of this idea that the evil Muslim jihadists who want to kill, kidnap, etc., Americans have been "given birth to" by American evil is just plain wrong. They were capturing our seamen and holding them to ransom in the late 1700's when America was doing nothing to nobody, and when asked why, said that it was in the Koran.)

Yes, we made a lot of mistakes in dealing with foreign cultures over the years, but this is a case of a man defending himself against some cheap thugs. If the wacky Paki's can't understand it, tough cookies!

Oh, yes, the Muslim Brotherhood got started because America is so evil.

Take a deep breath.

The MB is a response to many things endemic to the Arab world, such as; barbaric Egyptian prisons, gross social inequality, squalid living standards, and an internal crisis within its civilizational belief system, to name just a few.

Our government cannot expect a free pass while it sustains, over the course of 50 plus years, the very regimes responsible for the conditions that give rise to violent religious fundamentalists and armed revolutionists.

Our presence there is becoming as toxic and delusional as Mr. Davis' assumption that he could slay 2 menancing Pakistani's and receive a get out of jail free card if a US security detail whisked him from the scene of the crime fast enough.

You should hear New Yorkers scream over the unpaid parking tickets issued to foreign diplomats assigned to the U.N. to know how we might handle things if the situation in the Middle East were reversed.

A terrorist group is "a response to many things." No. A terrorist group is a group of evil men planning and committing murder and mayhem against the innocent. This terminally nonjudgmental "root causes" approach to Muslim terrorism makes me absolutely ill. It is an aspect of a certain type of so-called "conservatism" that shall remain nameless here for the nonce that I will not tolerate where I have sway (for example, my threads on this blog, my personal blog) and that I would not for one moment want anyone to think I have any sympathy for or any association with.

When the New Yorkers start suicide-bombing the innocent wives and children of the people who illegally park their cars, you can give another try at your little moral equivalence dance. Oh, another thing that makes me disgusted is this "we" talk. "Oh, dontcha know, if _we_ were treated the way _we_ treat them, _we_ would react the same way _they_ do" (you know, murder, torture, kidnap slaughter). Speak for yourself.

Our government cannot expect a free pass while it sustains, over the course of 50 plus years, the very regimes responsible for the conditions that give rise to violent religious fundamentalists and armed revolutionists.

Don, that makes no sense at all. The MB started long before we were "propping up" anything in the region. The barbaric Egyptian prisons were barbaric long before we were propping up anything in the region. The squalid living conditions were there long before...

So how in the world is it that our involvement with, for example, the government of Sadat, (which was a hell of a lot less barbaric than that of 100 years earlier) could have caused "reactions" like the MB when the MB started decades earlier than anything we did? That is totally irrational.

Americans being stupid does not explain (i.e. does not justify) intentional, premeditated murder of innocent people, anyway. Raymond Davis is going to pay a stiff price for being either (a) dumb and in the wrong place at the wrong time (Darwinian selection), or (b) really idiotic in making a bad situation worse, or (c) deciding to do a dangerous job in a dangerous place where he should have known that this kind of thing can happen. But even at the worst possible interpretation of his actions, that would not justify Pakistanis going over to India, finding some American schoolteacher and murdering her.

The MB is said to have the following of about a third of Egypt's population. Clearly not all are terrorists, and just as clearly, the message of MB gathers traction as result of real-world conditions that we have helped create.

And, I assume you think torture is evil even when it is outsourced.

So please, when, doing your Tom Paine impression next July 4th, try to say with a straight-face; "I can't possibly imagine responding to the siren call of the home-grown demagogue against a foreign power installing an oppressive puppet in order to extract our most lucrative natural resource. No sir, not me."

Ideas have conseguences. And our foreign policy has been rife with some very bad ones, especially in the Middle East.

Once the new rulers of Egypt inherit the poisoned chalice, your meta-narrative will hold how an entire nation is but a swamp of murderous Islamic fanatics, programmed since birth to seek our destruction.

On and on it goes.

The MB is said to have the following of about a third of Egypt's population. Clearly not all are terrorists, and just as clearly, the message of MB gathers traction as result of real-world conditions that we have helped create.

It took a smaller percentage of the US to get rid of the British. It's not numbers. It's who is in charge. We've had less to do with the conditions of Egypt than the Egyptians themselves. And when the MB gets in charge, it will probably be Iran all over again.

So please, when, doing your Tom Paine impression next July 4th, try to say with a straight-face; "I can't possibly imagine responding to the siren call of the home-grown demagogue against a foreign power installing an oppressive puppet in order to extract our most lucrative natural resource. No sir, not me."

Egypt really doesn't have any oil. It really doesn't have much of any natural resources. We've been basically paying Egypt 1.5 million for the past 30 years to keep the peace with Israel.

Once the new rulers of Egypt inherit the poisoned chalice, your meta-narrative will hold how an entire nation is but a swamp of murderous Islamic fanatics, programmed since birth to seek our destruction.

You're basically arguing the illogical, "Not every Muslim is a terrorist" line. Not every German was a Nazi but Germany did a lot of damage before it was stopped. Not every Japanese was a Shinto fanatic, but again they weren't the ones in charge. A country is who is in charge, not what some dissidents in that country think.

And, I assume you think torture is evil even when it is outsourced.

I think rendition is evil, but I don't think equate torture with just any pain or discomfort that could not be used with citizens. Proportionality is the rule, and there are lines of human dignity we shouldn't cross in any case. Bottom line is that the term torture has way to much emotional freight when those who argue against it most vigorously never wish to say what it is.

Ideas have conseguences. And our foreign policy has been rife with some very bad ones, especially in the Middle East.

Well this is true to an extent but this is true of almost all nations foreign policies, and the most cynical can be the worst. Surely you realize that the debate between foreign policy "realists" (realpolitic or power politics of the Kissinger, Brzezinski and Scowcroft variety) and the anti-"realist" conservatives is over whether or not morality is a question that foreign policy should consider.

There is no monolithic US foreign policy. The defense department and CIA are often at war with the president and actively subvert presidential policies. And as I said, the strongest critics of US foreign policy that make the type of moralist claims you are making tend to be "realists" who argue that dealing with brutal strongmen is the best way to conduct foreign policy. It has often been said of Jimmy Carter that he "never saw a dictator he didn't like."

You're basically arguing the illogical, "Not every Muslim is a terrorist" line. Not every German was a Nazi but Germany did a lot of damage before it was stopped. Not every Japanese was a Shinto fanatic, but again they weren't the ones in charge. A country is who is in charge, not what some dissidents in that country think.

I agree, but I'd add is that many that have sympathy with those doing evil support and enable it even if they don't act. Those that say "Oh 9/11 was terrible crime but you know it was inevitable because of US foreign policy" are soldiers in the cause. They want to maintain some squishy middle ground on evil that is was somehow justified. This truth is active from the playground to the national politics.

Tony is right. The Muslim Brotherhood was conceived long before the U.S. was such a factor in foreign policy. Despotism and injustice are a tradition in most Muslim countries primarily because they do not protect freedom to worship which in turn would allow Christianity to be considered, which in turn would provide a fertile soil for the seed of a representative government.

Islam itself is at the root of most of the Muslim world's poverty. At its zenith it managed to acquire some scholarship and make some scientific discoveries, but none of what they learned was passed to the general population and certainly their development came to a halt because there is only so much a culture can accomplish when it is enslaved by a false religion.

As for the Muslim Brotherhood, I would by sympathetic to their cause if their goal was Liberty and Justice for all, but their only end game is to be despots in the name of Allah. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

BTW - in doing a little research on polygamy in Utah and the Supreme Court decision to ban the Mormon pracice (Reynolds vs. the U.S.), I came across testimony from historian/sociologists of the time who, in counseling the government, pointed out that wherever polygamy is practiced, there is only despotism and never democracy. Just a thought.

Steve,

I do think your original story tells an important tale, although unlike Don, I don't think it necessarily has to be that way -- as you may or may not know, I'm something of a fan of high British imperialism and MM has turned me on to Lord Cromer, who knew how to run Egypt (and at the turn of the 20th Century, the British could be more broadly said to know how to run the Middle-East).

Don "Mind-Reader" Colacho,

Do you watch a lot of Al-Jazeera? Do you read post-colonial theorists as if they had something relevant to say about the world? I'm curious, because I wonder how you explain where you get the data for wild statement like "just as clearly, the message of MB gathers traction as result of real-world conditions that we have helped create." Did you do some polling? You didn't? Yoo bad, because Pew did do some polling and the results are fascinating:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/02/egypt-vs-indonesia-in-attitudes/#more-9631

I'm sure our Coptic brothers and sisters are reassured by the fact that if American foreign policy changes, 84% of Egyptians support the dealth penalty for apostates!

"I can't possibly imagine responding to the siren call of the home-grown demagogue against a foreign power installing an oppressive puppet in order to extract our most lucrative natural resource. No sir, not me."

Don, appropriate words to put in our mouths would be "I can't possibly imagine responding to the siren call of the home-grown demagogue against a foreign power installing an oppressive puppet in order to extract our most lucrative natural resource by intentionally targeting and murdering innocent women and children, even those of the evil foreign power. No sir, not me."

As for the rest, there is nobody here who is saying the US foreign policy has been perfect, and free of moral taint. It hasn't been, and we would indeed see it change to one that is free of moral evil.

Interestingly, the people who seem most upset about the evils that come to be in a number of 3rd world countries, some but not all Muslim, alongside of American actions during certain administrations are, at the same time, the people who seem to be most stridently in favor of our using "involvement" and "intermingling" and even "cooperation", with many non-Western powers even though those actions can been seen by the poor as supporting or "propping up" the current regimes in those countries. We get it both ways: if we think "involvement" is reasonable, then we will be charged with operating "puppet regimes". If we reject "involvement", then we will be seen as ignoring their poor, and even shunning that country.

In point of fact, the US has been providing over a billion in aid to Egypt annually since 1979, some military and some economic. A lot of the military aid goes to things like jets and tanks. Aid to Egyptian police and riot-control forces, which amounted to about $1 million last year, is minuscule by comparison. It doesn't take jets to suppress political unrest among the population, and tanks can have only a limited role. Besides, Egyptian pride in their military, especially tank corp (stemming from their strong showing against Israel in 1973) is real. This is one expression of the attitude out there:

Meanwhile, troops in tanks fanned out across Egypt to work with residents in chasing down marauding bands of knife-wielding thugs and to impose some semblance of order after the nearly complete disappearance of uniformed police. The arrival of tanks and troops in Cairo's streets seemed to calm a tense situation, suggesting the military will play a key role as the country navigates its way out of the current crisis. Soldiers seemed largely to sympathize with the throngs of protesters Saturday. Some demonstrators expressed hope the military would oust Mubarak and seize control of the government, replacing the Interior Ministry's widely unpopular police force.

In addition, WikiLeaks cables disclose long running efforts by American administrations to push for democratic reforms in Egypt, as well as deep contacts with major opposition groups. It is unreasonable to conclude that American aid has been "propping up" Mubarak against his own people while turning a blind eye to the problems. Don, your narrative suffers from a disconnect with reality.

your meta-narrative will hold how an entire nation is but a swamp of murderous Islamic fanatics, programmed since birth to seek our destruction.

There may be a few folks out there who think this. Not most of the people here, though. Don, you are casting generalizations around like plague locusts. It won't do. Even if only 1% of the population of Egypt were active extremists (of which terrorism would be one form), that would still be 700,000 people avowedly out to get us. If only 5% are complicit as helpers or cooperators with the extremists, you are still talking 3.5 MILLION people who are willing enough to see our demise to take actions that support it. If those 4.2 million people are engaged enough, and are vocal enough, and are organized enough, they can easily be the tipping point for controlling national policy and/or foreign policy.

It doesn't take the entirety of a 77 million-person country to turn the country from a sort-of-peaceful tourist haven into a dangerous, radical, violence-driven nuisance to neighbors near and far.

The only criticism Don makes that is even sort of reasonable is of our directly immoral practices like torture, and the less direct but still wrongful stuff that exists under the covers like allowing private security forces to operate without having to abide by law. We should never have descended to that level, and we WILL regret it. But those, too, do not have much support from the folks blogging here.

I'm sure our Coptic brothers and sisters are reassured by the fact that if American foreign policy changes, 84% of Egyptians support the dealth penalty for apostates!

A Jeff Singer zinger. Hah!

There is no monolithic US foreign policy.

I'm sure you will point out the difference between "bi-partisan" and "monolithic" by delineating the many profound differences between the Bush and Obama versions of statecraft.

They want to maintain some squishy middle ground on evil that is was somehow justified.

Yep, moral relativists like to rationalize "pre-emptive wars" and air attacks against civilians by inventing hair-raising ficitions, wrapping themselves up in the flag and positing the enemy de jure as an existential threat.

Tony is right. The Muslim Brotherhood was conceived long before the U.S. was such a factor in foreign policy.

It had none of the cache it enjoys now, nor the burgeoning following. Does American Exceptionalism mean our government is exempt from the rules of cause and effect, action and reaction the rest of the human race is subject to? MB owes our foreign policy establishment a cut of their membership fees.

Islam itself is at the root of most of the Muslim world's poverty.

No kidding. But we are talking about American foreign policy as seen through Christian lenses, not the many, massive failings of Islam.

Don "Mind-Reader" Colacho, Do you watch a lot of Al-Jazeera?

No Jeff, I read the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, National Review and New Republic to prevent the pain of an original thought from intruding and leading me outside the broad consensus as defined by Tom Friedman, Bill Kristol and the like. It clearly works for you.

Don, appropriate words to put in our mouths would be "I can't possibly imagine responding to the siren call of the home-grown demagogue against a foreign power installing an oppressive puppet in order to extract our most lucrative natural resource by intentionally targeting and murdering innocent women and children, even those of the evil foreign power. No sir, not me."

I know, we would never kill innocent women and children. Guilty ones? Well, that's another story. They become collateral damage and the losers in a strange, utilitarian moral calculus.

We get it both ways: if we think "involvement" is reasonable, then we will be charged with operating "puppet regimes". If we reject "involvement", then we will be seen as ignoring their poor, and even shunning that country.

Perhaps, Tony human affairs are such that all the ideological schools of thought; interventionism, isolationism, realism, et al are all doomed to failure. Yet, the comments here suggest holding our policies up to the same scrutiny that comes with a good examination of conscience would be too traumatic for many. Better to stifle any pangs and unease with a War of the Worlds, fight to the finish, saga.

As for the rest, there is nobody here who is saying the US foreign policy has been perfect, and free of moral taint.

Please elaborate. And when done applying the moral test, please screen for new results with cold, dispassionate geopolitical criteria, and see how our policies fare.

It is unreasonable to conclude that American aid has been "propping up" Mubarak against his own people while turning a blind eye to the problems.

We've seen this play before. We keep "our guy" in power until he becomes expendable, and then hope in the chaotic aftermath, the officer corps we've been financing and cultivating, can throw up uet another reliable replacement.

We should never have descended to that level, and we WILL regret it.

I fear our regrets will be more than we can imagine.

I know, we would never kill innocent women and children. Guilty ones? Well, that's another story. They become collateral damage and the losers in a strange, utilitarian moral calculus.

I hope you are not suggesting that there is a moral equivalence between intentionally targeting innocent children for the terror value, and intentionally targeting a war depot in a combat zone even if it has some civilians in it. Or that we ought to put our outrage at having innocent children targeted under the same perspective as some Afghans' outrage at the deaths of civilians who we have killed in spite of trying to target only belligerents.

When we intentionally include innocents in our sights, though, that's another matter. Or torturing detainees, even the guilty. And many Americans are outraged at our government doing that.

We keep "our guy" in power

Repeat after me: He doesn't become "our guy" merely because we deal with him. Rinse. Repeat.

No. A terrorist group is a group of evil men planning and committing murder and mayhem against the innocent.

That was a practice of the Hagana,Irgun,and Stern Gangs in Israel; with the added bonus that Moshe Sneh, (Hagana) was a Commie.

Israel was born in terror and it used terrorism to impose itself in the dumbest-ass place on the Planet for a Jewish State to choose to seat itself - right in the middle of its ancient enemies.

And there are nine Americans who know that Israel came into being through a campaign of public lies in the light of day and terror directed against innocents under the cover of darkness and those nine are called antisemitic because they possess knowledge of unapproved facts.

"Facts" in America are the official lies - such as the lie that The King David Hotel was warned prior to the attack - or history that is sempiternally entombed.

And history must remain buried if the Confused Christian Chiliast, who contributes so much cash into the coffers of Israel, is to continue to be counted upon to bankroll those who reject He whom the Christians accept as The Saviour of the World.

I mean history of the Jews (Hagana Terrorist Gang) swarming into Jerusalem in May 1948 and then desecrating and destroying Consecrated Churches and then having Jewish Men and women dancing in the desecrated Christian Sanctuaries.

Anglican Archbishop of York in 1949 charged the Jews as being guilty of- many convents and churches have been desecrated, their pictures and images destroyed, and the figures of Christ torn from crosses and defiled.

It must be said that the Zionist Agitprop has been wildly successful at pulling the wool over the eyes of an uncountable number of Christian Lambs and it is not helpful when useful dupes, like Mr Auster, are among the first to label as antisemitic any individual who looks at Israel with a gimlet eye.

But, American and Israel are inseparable, aren't they?

Christian America is like the Ecclesiastical Alcoholic who steals a votive candle to peer into the gas tank of an Israeli M38A1 Jeep.

And no matter if the thing blows-up in his face and kills him, another Ecclesiastical Alcoholic is back at Church the next day seeking another Blessed Votive Candle....

VC, I'm happy to see you, but please exercise due rhetorical caution. I don't want Paul to have to close down another thread.

Dear Mr. Burton. Thanks for the greeting and advice.

I have to write that Flannery O'Connor is one of my favorite authors and in "Mystery and Manners" she explains the reason she wrote as she did - (paraphrase from memory) to the hard of hearing you yell and to the nearly blind you paint with bold bright colors.

When I post I have to admit that much of what I write is written with that motive in mind - and, to be candid - it is just a lot more fun to write that way.

I am sure you your own self will write something and then think - it'd be really cool to write that same thing this way - and then you rewrite it to please your own sensibilities and, hopefully, make others wake-up, sit-up, and take notice.

But you are wise to send-out these warnings about particular subjects even as we all silently acknowledge that such warnings are required only when writing about a certain religion and a particular Country.

I mean, nobody is warned to exercise caution when writing about Christianity, Buddhism, or Mormonism or about America, or France (a million times greater a country than Israel could ever hope to be), or Spain...

But, I read ya. Thanks

I hope you are not suggesting that there is a moral equivalence between intentionally targeting innocent children for the terror value, and intentionally targeting a war depot in a combat zone even if it has some civilians in it.

Does "war depot" mean a civilian center, like city or village? Nice wordsmithing there. I'll leave it to the moral theologians to parcel out the degrees of guilt that exist when we wage an unjust war or employ unjust methods.

Repeat after me: He doesn't become "our guy" merely because we deal with him.

We didn't just "deal" with Muburak, we sponsored and sustained him, before cutting him loose. He was our guy.

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.