21 August 2005
Arab World’s Need for Intervention
Michael Young’s OpEd essay in the 19 August 2005 Wall Street Journal makes the point that thinking people in the Arab Middle East should admit their region’s dependence on the intervention of hubristic Western governments for correction of their tendency to bow to dictators. It exposes his French education’s bias in favor of the democratic form of participatory rule, and perhaps it accurately gauges the goals of Arab “intellectuals.”
Young could be an effective shill for Washington’s neocons with “intellectuals” in the U.S., too. As long as America’s taxpayers and, more importantly, its volunteer military are willing to absorb the sacrifice and heartbreak of pursuing a “neocolonialist” foreign policy, this and subsequent administrations will have the freedom to impose a Western concept of order on other cultures, like the Islamic Middle East.
It is presumptuous of Western liberals to act on the basis that liberal democracy is the answer to all of humanity’s problems. Westernized “intellectuals” in the Arab Middle East, indeed, could have done nothing better to advance their agenda than to accept U.S. intervention in Iraq to foster change in the region. But just as Communism won’t be the solution to the striving of the Chinese people for greater control of their personal welfare, liberal democracy has not shown itself to be one successful way to pursue liberty from oppressive government in the World of Islam.
Michael Young’s OpEd essay in the 19 August 2005 Wall Street Journal makes the point that thinking people in the Arab Middle East should admit their region’s dependence on the intervention of hubristic Western governments for correction of their tendency to bow to dictators. It exposes his French education’s bias in favor of the democratic form of participatory rule, and perhaps it accurately gauges the goals of Arab “intellectuals.”
Young could be an effective shill for Washington’s neocons with “intellectuals” in the U.S., too. As long as America’s taxpayers and, more importantly, its volunteer military are willing to absorb the sacrifice and heartbreak of pursuing a “neocolonialist” foreign policy, this and subsequent administrations will have the freedom to impose a Western concept of order on other cultures, like the Islamic Middle East.
It is presumptuous of Western liberals to act on the basis that liberal democracy is the answer to all of humanity’s problems. Westernized “intellectuals” in the Arab Middle East, indeed, could have done nothing better to advance their agenda than to accept U.S. intervention in Iraq to foster change in the region. But just as Communism won’t be the solution to the striving of the Chinese people for greater control of their personal welfare, liberal democracy has not shown itself to be one successful way to pursue liberty from oppressive government in the World of Islam.
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