"The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning," Again, you live in a world that's evenly divided between black and white. Since I'm not white you figure I must be black. To reiterate a point your world view does not seem prepared to understand, communism (like Whabism these days) is a fleeting ideological counter-pole to the perceived evils of America and capitalism. To make an analogy, let's say someone on the street tried to force-feed you the most healthy food in the world at gun point. There's a good chance that, after that, you will not eat that healthy food any longer because you perceive it to be "evil". Likewise with Imperliasm and free markets: The more we try to shove it down the throats of the Islamic world the more they will reject both us as well as whatever we're trying to give 'em. -TD

From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> To: cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:41:39 -0700

-- "R.A. Hettinga"

...

...

This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come "bourgeoisie" themselves.

John Kelsey

...

I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. [...]

The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about.

Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt with a bloody nose.

In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the Islamicists renewed hope.

So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their stronghold, as in Fallujah.

What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay our enemies.

Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in the way of this sort of deal.

--digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb

_________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/