Re: some disagreement

"My experience is that many, perhaps most Muslims in the Middle East want change, but they do not like it to be imposed. It makes only a little difference whether western ideas are imposed firsthand by the American army or secondhand by native leaders strongarmed into making the changes."

I agree that some don't want things to be imposed by the US, but I would think they prefer that to whatever the traditional policy-makers are imposing on them.

"While the situation is complicated, it should also be remembered that most forms of Islam have traditionally been reasonably tolerant - certainly more tolerant than the Wahhabi version. I'm sure that volumes have been filled with speculation, but I think it is fair to say that the modern West has played a role in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism - but not so much the Western part as the modern part. A similar phenomenon occurred in the United States, where people confronted with modernity often flocked to Christian Fundamentalism in an effort to deal with new things they did not understand. Oddly enough, some televangelists like Jerry Falwell actually exerted a modernizing effect on these subgroups, by allowing them to understand and accept new technologies and ideas on their own terms."

That's a good point, but it's almost like you're indirectly saying that the responsibility of all the deaths that resulted from Islamic terrorism somehow lies on Westerners--I think it's best for the individuals whom are directly responsible for those crimes to face up to their responsibility.

"Of course, Islam has never been as tolerant as most Muslims believe it has been - for instance, many Islamic rulers taxed Christians and Jews in order to pressure them to change their faith, or enslaved young Christian boys and removed them from their homes to train them as soldiers (janissaries). Likewise, there was a famous incident in which a Libyan ambassador in Paris told Thomas Jefferson that the Koran justified Libyan pirates attacking American ships and enslaving American sailors. (That did not go over well with the man largely responsible for Freedom of Religion in America, and led directly to America's first foreign intervention - an attack on Tripoli.) But these things are not stressed in modern schools in Islamic nations, any more than the dominance of Yankees in the Slave Trade or in the Chinese Opium Trade has been stressed in American public schools, and the average person in these Islamic nations is unaware of this part of their history."

The Opium Wars were stressed pretty satisfactorily in my schools, but I don't know how other US schools deal with that issue.

That's the evil thing about conservatism, IMO--if forces young people who have no say in the way things are to accept those things, and it leaves them essentially powerless to change the said things. This is one reason why I think the traditional Islamic regimes must end, although I don't think that alone justifies the level of intervention that we're seeing taking place.

"My point in all this is that it is by no means clear which side is more at fault, but it is still natural to resent being forced by outsiders to change one's culture, even if these changes are in the direction that the people would like to go. Sometimes it is best to allow people and nations room to grow for themselves."

It would appear that these folks are unable to overthrow the current regimes without our help--this is partly why I think that we're there.