Applied Epistemology

The parallel is not exact. There's no linear model of religious development over time, of course. I could make reference to pop treatments of the "acceleration" of history, a la Gleick's Speed, but easy counter-examples such as Turkey, new religions such as Scientology and the LDS, quick-to-modernize nations such as Japan, India, and China, etc. suffice to make the point. Islam will "catch up" with the West (by becoming a functionally secular civilization) in a lot less than 600 years.

The principal stumbling block is the legacy of imperialism. Whereas Japan, Turkey, India, and China have all successfully used nationalism as the ideological justification for westernization, the radical wings of Islam appeal to religion as the basis for their rejection of westernization. Nationalism generally trumps religion, but nationalism is a weak sell when the "nations" in question are artefacts of 19th-century European line-drawing.

Simultaneously, the leadership of the West has been content to continue the policies of imperialism by supporting despotic and monarchic governments throughout the Islamic world. There you have another failure of the realist paradigm in international relations: surprise -- people view cynical policies very cynically! It's worth remembering that the prime recruits for the Salafi extremism of Al-Qaeda (such as the 9/11 hijackers) are highly westernized Arab men. The wedge used here is that the West is decadent, two-faced, and anti-Arab. The West has to walk its talk and stop backing despots, vigorously denounce and punish torture in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc., and broker a lasting and fair peace in Israel/Palestine. This is where the President's repeated insistence that Al-Qaeda will hate us and try to kill us no matter what we do is highly misleading. Yes, Osama bin Laden will hate us and try to kill us regardless of changes in U.S. policy. But we're not trying to persuade Osama. We need to persuade the youth of the Arab world not to join Osama, or regard him as a credible perspective on the modern world. And to do that, we need to stop pursuing policies that antagonize the Islamic world, and instead encourage the integration of Islam into the modern, secular world-system. Satellite TV alone can't do it.

We have officially reached Page Rank 5 on the opening page. This is due to the fact that Thalasar Ventures got a Page Rank of 7 this last update. PR 7 is really hard to get out the gate and Thalasar.com got it in less than one year. congrats Thalasar team.

Well since satellite TV alone won't do it (Are the Internets required?) I suspect that the Bush doctrine of "Democratization" is actually going to be his greatest contribution as President. Despite the piss poor implementation we have seen in Iraq, it's apparent that the realist paradigm serves to further feed the flames of furious terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. I think you hit the nail on the head. OBL and his ilk are always going to hate America. We need to win the war of the minds of today's Arab youth. if we lose that war we will be creating a whole new generation people who may not be terrorist but will sympathize with their grievances and goals, thus providing the indirect support network that all terrorist use for fundraising. safe houses and the like.

Yes, that's why, despite my many disagreements with W., I can't hope for failure in Iraq. If secular Iraq fails, it will be a major victory for Osama bin Laden, his one-legged lackey Zarqawi, and fundamentalist nutballs everywhere.

The difficulty is that you can't win hearts and minds with the barrel of a gun any more than you can force people to be free. You'd think Vietnam would've taught us that. We need to restore infrastructure (to put an end to Iraqis waxing nostalgic about Saddam) and get the hell out. Only a semi-stable, self-policed Iraq will end the insurgency.

You mean to tell me we cannot catch a one legged Jihadist? That sounds like the punch line to some sort of joke.

Very little is known with certainty about Zarqawi, especially since he became Iraq's Blofeld. A fair number of people believe he's been dead for a while. But his one-legged status, though founded on little more than rumors from Afghani and Kurdish enemies, played a key role in Dick Cheney's repeated asseverations that there was an Al-Qaeda-Iraq connection: the amputation was alleged to have taken place in Baghdad, ergo, Saddam = 9/11, believe it or go fuck yourself!