Big fucking surprise.
Apr. 9th, 2006 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytThis is a rather disheartening article about the failure of attempts to democratize the Middle East.
I kind of get the sense that our government has taken a "white man's burden" attitude towards the Middle East. Yes, I know that term isn't accurate, but it's better than the other catchall, "Arab world," because a lot of the people who live there aren't Arabs (the Iranians, for instance) and would not like being called such. And not understanding that is part of the problem.
We're really just mucking things up all the more by being there, or at least being there in the particular way that we are. We can't impose democracy on anyone from the outside, not really. In fact, the idea of imposing democracy from the outside defeats democracy itself. It is the people of those countries, not us, who will change things, when and how they choose to - and our spectacular failure in Iraq isn't encouraging anyone to change, except for the worse.
If we look down on the Muslim world and don't try to understand them, how can we possibly expect them to understand - or respect - us?
I kind of get the sense that our government has taken a "white man's burden" attitude towards the Middle East. Yes, I know that term isn't accurate, but it's better than the other catchall, "Arab world," because a lot of the people who live there aren't Arabs (the Iranians, for instance) and would not like being called such. And not understanding that is part of the problem.
We're really just mucking things up all the more by being there, or at least being there in the particular way that we are. We can't impose democracy on anyone from the outside, not really. In fact, the idea of imposing democracy from the outside defeats democracy itself. It is the people of those countries, not us, who will change things, when and how they choose to - and our spectacular failure in Iraq isn't encouraging anyone to change, except for the worse.
If we look down on the Muslim world and don't try to understand them, how can we possibly expect them to understand - or respect - us?
