[ExI] riots again

[Charlie Stross]

On 24 Sep 2012, at 14:55, Joshua Job <nanite1018 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The simple fact is that, whatever the historical reasons, the culture of the West is better in terms of supporting human flourishing than that of Muslim countries. I do not think the historical causes are important at this point,

You may not think history is important, but everybody else does.

(This is a perennial problem in US relations with the rest of the world -- Americans seem to think that there's a magic reset button they can hit, and after they hit it everything will be all right going forward.)

Firstly, you're talking about cultures that take blood feuds seriously. Who bushwacked whose great-great-grandad is a matter of continuing and ongoing grievance a century later. You may write this off as a side-effect of weak state-level institutions such as an impartial legal system and an effective rule of law -- and you'd be right -- but it's the mind-set everyone is steeped in, and it's going to take a human life span to move past it. Minimum. Remember, your own culture isn't so far past that stage ...

Secondly, there is a *recent* and *on-going* source of grievance in the shape of on-going killer robot strikes on funerals and wedding parties (never mind the actual targets: "collateral damage" is *terrible* public relations). There is a *recent* source of grievance in the shape of two invasions and huge consequential civilian casualties. American media always minimize the death toll in any war; to this day, most USAns think the Vietnam War only killed around 60,000 people (the number of US war dead). (The actual death toll was measured in the millions.) What's been going on in the middle east since 9/11 is worse than most people recognize, by a very long way.

> except insofar as we can stop stirring the hornets nest by minding our own business in our foreign policy. Why they are religious extremists doesn't matter; what matters is that they are, and radical Islam now poses a threat to Western civilization.

Nonsense. Radical Islam doesn't have strategic bombers and ICBMs. To the extent that there are radical islamists living in western nations and plotting mayhem, the solution is a task for intelligence-led policing initiatives. The post-9/11 over-reaction resembles anaphylactic shock -- yes, Al Qaida got lucky. But it's about the last stroke of luck they'd ever have had, if not for the idiotic decision to invade Iraq and de-emphasize reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, however, the damage we've permitted our governments to do in our collective name over the past century is going to take another century to heal. Because if the neighbourhood gangster stops kicking you in the head and announces, "I've decided to go straight", it takes you a bit longer than 30 seconds to decide to trust him again.


-- Charlie