2015-09-27 22:55 GMT+02:00 Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net>:
Common sense also dictates that you do not intervene in
highly complex societies with thousands of years of tradition and lore
intricately mixed up in a myriad of ethnic and religious mosaics
cemented together by a Governing body that understands where the point
of equilibrium is to be found and which is kept in its position by the
players in the society which it governs.

Ah, but it is exactly why we must invade.

Tradition, lore, ethnicity, religion, these things fracture markets. A homogeneous market is easier to sell to, easier to maintain. So too does democracy create a neat field for the economic game.

It is too offensive to simply do away with these things. More tolerable is creating meta-culture, culture that must be observed within other culture. These meta cultures allow people to coexist in a way that's offensive to everyone, but no so offensive as to cause people to go out-of-bounds.

We've gone and crushed their existing systems. We must now wait for chaos to consume the resilient. At the same time we must prevent all roads to order, except that road that leads to maximum economic exploitability; a privatized free market in a tolerant elections based democratic government. Aside from making the country impossible to steer, the representative democratic system is also the most sensitive to (foreign) propaganda, and still subject to every form of bribery and corruption. I struggle to envision a system that's more readily exploited.

I do find it peculiar that these places do not readily organize into neat democracies. I am not the expert of such matters, to me it mostly seems that people do as they please. Perhaps the children will not struggle quite so much. Certainly, until they give in, there will be no order. This can be made sure of.

Ok, so, either the above, or, you know, these places were a mess before, then NATO went in, and it was still a mess.

Can women in Saudi Arabia use forks when they eat? No, because it is
considered improper for a woman to put four long and hard prongs in
her mouth at the same time because when a man sees this, it gives him
unclean thoughts. For those western policy-makers chortling in mirth
as they read this, let us now come back to the point of this article,
the failed Western policy in Iraq, in Libya and in Syria.
 
Can I get a fork with penis heads on the prongs? Or maybe just a single fork like that in a set that's otherwise just like it?

In NL we've succeeded at eliminating most of this sort of culture. Girls may wear their ridiculous hair-hiding self-incriminating headpieces, and they often do. I just love it when they also do makeup; thick eyeshadow, bronze powered cheeks, vibrant warm lipstick. When they finish up with form-fitted T's or sweaters and nice leather boots, well, that's even lovelier. And when you've gone that far, why not wear those gorgeous form-giving 50% denim, 50% stretchyester pants. You know, the kind that has you show off from calf to hip and everything in between? Not even rabbis will avert their eyes from those curves!

Okay, so, satire aside, the author does not enter into specifics. Should NATO have left the dictators, kings, etc to it? Should we have seen overmuch of our wealth flow whence the oil comes? There's also throwing around words like "war criminals" which is just propaganda, as the word is unde(rde)fined. There's a good grasp of world-leader-geography, but little of anything else. There's no real point made, except "it's a mess where NATO went".

Ultimately, I think given the same axioms people should end up making the same conclusions. It's pretty rare for people to unify their own arguments correctly, so this is not always true. I can confidently say that men can maintain a level of composure even when a woman uses a fork, and that most religions keep out-of-date notions of cleanliness. (dear all, we can reliably sterilize pork now. It's no worse than other foods.) (dear all, we can reliably combat sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy without abstaining. By now abstinence is causing far more harm than it is solving) (dear all, besides alcohol, there's a range of safe-enough recreational potions) (dear all, heavy punishment may not be the best way to deal with crime. Heavier punishment may be completely ineffective, depending on the crime and its motivations.)


I keep thinking back on Bitnation and wondering whether something like it would be of any help. The situation is so complex, the technology, the people, the ideologies, the status quo, I cannot say.