To intervene or not Part 1

http://tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=121207A (hat tip Instapundit)

'We may agree with Ron Paul that our interventionist policy in the Middle East has led to unintended negative consequences, including even 9/11, but this admission offers us absolutely no insight into what unintended consequences his preferred policy of non-intervention would have exposed us to. It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.'

Further to this point, anti-Americanism in the middle east is VERY VERY NEW. Way back in 1997, Usama Bin Laden caused great consternation within the top echelons of Al Qaeda by indicating that America was the number one enemy. This was very new, and not very welcome news to most elements of his group. For the Egyptians, a very large part of his group, the Egyptian government, and maybe Britain as the former colonial power, were by far the main enemies. By extension, so were the 'apostate' governments of various other 'muslim' countries, even including Saudi Arabia (for allowing US troops onto the sacred earth of the land of the two holy places). But for most violent muslims, the Americans were the good guys. They had no colonial baggage, and had provided huge material support to the jihad against the soviets in Afghanistan. The last thing they wanted to do was go to war with America. Many were not stupid either, and understood the enormous weight of military power and non-military resources that America could bring to bear against them. Why screw with them at all?

It it really a trick of history: the combination of the anal and sexually repressed Sayyid Qutb's weird response to his time at Uni in the US, and Osama Bin Ladens hatred of Christianity that led Al Qaeda up such a weird path.

All the lefty tropes about the Arabs hating America because they deposed Mossadegh and replaced him with the Shah- try to understand this leftards!!! Persians are not Arabs, Arabs are not Persians. The Arabs did not give two rat turds about the CIA deposing Mossadegh. Really. They did (and do) care about US help for Israel, but that has never generated the kind of extreme hatred that Al Qaeda evidence. In fact, the left and Al Qaeda have had to invent a fictional past to reframe America as a colonial power to get around the unfortunate reality that it isn't one, and has only ever been so for a few years at the beginning of the 20th century under the first Roosevelt. In fact, America can be seen in many ways as the hammer of empires, the perennial stumbling block for the building of uber-empires on the part of Europeans, the Russians and the Japanese. The left and Al Qaeda have also had to take up the fascist fantasy about the Jews running the world and especially America to give their unwarranted hatred some traction amongst the poor and ignorant of the Levant and the Maghreb.

Ths complicity of the left in this paranoid delusionary fantasy is beyond doubt. It is a sign of their desperation, and a warning for the future as they become more desparate and ever less likely to gain power through the ballot box. The larger point, that it was nothing that America DID which brought it into the cross-hairs of Al Qaeda is proven by the written words of Sayyed Qutb and the reported words of Usama Bin Laden. America is the last bastion (in the wierdo world of Usama) of power which Islam must destroy before it can RULE THE WORLD. Bin Laden, being detached from reality in most crucial respects, thinks that once the US has collapsed, Islam will just walk through the rest of the world, imposing the Ummah on everybody whether they like it or not. Laughable but true.

The debate between Americans as to whether they are likely to cause more damage by intervening or not intervening in the wider world tells you everything you need to know about American 'Imperialism'. If America were an empire, they would not debate this piffling issue. Causing more or less damage would be a trifling concern compared to the one of how to best advance America's interests. Why not just depose the Sauds and steal their oil without paying for it? Because America isn't an empire.