Ragged Clown

It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing…


Oct
20
2008

Trying out my new blogging software

Obsidian Wings on the pitfalls of basing your grand strategy for spreading freedom and democracy throughout the Muslim world on an appeal to morality (when your base doesn’t seem to like muslims very much)

However, there are underlying contradictions that limit the effectiveness of using this facade of idealism and, in the end, the rhetoric itself can serve to box-in its purveyors and/or accentuate the hypocrisy. Take, for example, the pervasive anti-Muslim bigotry amongst the population that Bush draws his support from – a demographic reality that co-exists, uncomfortably, with the fact that Bush’s policies are sold, at least publicly, on the basis of bestowing the gifts of freedom and democracy on various Muslim nations at great cost to the American people.

Along these lines, Neoconservatives seem to have a tough time deciding if Muslims are uncivilized brutes, congenitally incapable of embracing democracy, or if, to the contrary, they are so ready for American-style governance that simply conducting airstrikes on Muslim nations will cause pro-American democracy to spring up organically like shoots through bomb-tilled soil.