Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 11:24:50 -0500
From: Malini Schueller <mschuell-AT-english.ufl.edu>
Subject: Articles calling for colonialism 


If anyone has come across post sept 11 articles calling for a new
colonialism, could they please post them on the list?
Thanks in advance
Malini 








At 10:55 AM 10/11/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Sad to see Fukuyama unable to offer something better
>than the they-must-be-jealous-of-us theory:
>
>This broader dislike and hatred would seem to
>represent something much deeper than mere opposition
>to American policies like support for Israel,
>encompassing a hatred of the underlying society.
>Perhaps, as many commentators have speculated, the
>hatred is born out of a resentment of Western success
>and Muslim failure.
>
>Fukuyama is unable to comprehend the psychological
>damage that decades of reading about and watching the
>suffering of the Palestinians has had on Arab psyche.
>The list of American action or intervention in the
>region of course does not stop with Israel. However,
>rather than make a long list, I would also like to
>point out a further problem that is hardly referred to
>in the press (US press at least). There is a gulf
>between the rulers of Arab countries (dictators and
>kings) and the people they govern. The United States
>is not only overtly hated for actions such as the Gulf
>war but it is also covertly hated for supporting the
>despotic rulers. In this context, this covert hatred
>can be seen as a protest against the rulers
>themselves. The hatred of the United States therefore
>is a complex phenomenon that has many layers and ought
>not to be dismissed simply as a product of Muslim
>failure. 
>
>Fukuyama is unable to explain for example why there
>are many moderate Muslims who have embraced technology
>and western science yet nevertheless remain deeply
>critical of American foreign policy in the region.
>
>It seems to me that many of the analysts and
>commentators are trying desperately to take any
>theoretical route other than the obvious one. No one
>wants to acknowledge the contribution of American
>foreign policy in the region towards the attack. Once
>you make that a no-go area, the only action
>remaining is to shrug your shoulders and say they
>must be jealous of us.
>
>
>--- Marwan Dalal <dmarwan-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The Independent
>> 11 October 2001
>>
>http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=98776
>> 
>> 
>> Francis Fukuyama: We remain at the end of history
>> 
>> 'I remain right: modernity is a very powerful
>> freight
>> train that will not be derailed by recent events,
>> however painful'
>> 
>> 
>> A stream of commentators has been asserting that the
>> tragedy of 11 September proves that I was utterly
>> wrong to have said more than a decade ago that we
>> had
>> reached the end of history. The chorus began almost
>> immediately, with George Will asserting that history
>> had returned from vacation, and Fareed Zakaria
>> declaring the end of the end of history.
>> 
>> It is, on the face of it, nonsensical and insulting
>> to
>> the memory of those who died on 11 September  as
>> well
>> as to those who are now participating in military
>> raids over Afghanistan  to declare that this
>> unprecedented attack did not rise to the level of a
>> historical event. But the way in which I used the
>> word
>> "history" was different. It referred to the progress
>> of mankind over the centuries toward modernity,
>> which
>> is characterised by institutions like liberal
>> democracy and capitalism.
>> 
>> My observation, made back in 1989 on the eve of the
>> collapse of communism, was that this evolutionary
>> process did seem to be bringing ever larger parts of
>> the world toward modernity. And if we looked beyond
>> liberal democracy and markets, there was nothing
>> else
>> towards which we could expect to evolve. Hence the
>> end
>> of history. While there were retrograde areas that
>> resisted that process, it was hard to imagine an
>> alternative civilisation in which people would
>> genuinely want to live  particularly after
>> socialism,
>> monarchy, fascism, and other varieties of
>> authoritarian rule had been discredited.
>> 
>> This view has been challenged by many people, and
>> perhaps most articulately by Samuel Huntington. He
>> argued that rather than progressing toward a single
>> global system, the world remained mired in a "clash
>> of
>> civilisations" where six or seven large cultural
>> groups coexist without converging and constitute the
>> new fracture lines of global conflict. Since the
>> successful attack on the centre of global capitalism
>> was evidently perpetrated by Islamic extremists
>> unhappy with the very existence of Western
>> civilisation, observers have been handicapping the
>> Huntington "clash" view over my own "end of history"
>> hypothesis rather heavily.
>> 
>> I believe that in the end I remain right. Modernity
>> is
>> a very powerful freight train that will not be
>> derailed by recent events, however painful and
>> unprecedented. Democracy and free markets will
>> continue to expand over time as the dominant
>> organising principles for much of the world. But it
>> is
>> worthwhile thinking about what the true scope of the
>> present challenge is.
>> 
>> It has always been my belief that modernity has a
>> cultural basis. Liberal democracy and free markets
>> do
>> not work at all times and everywhere. They work best
>> in societies with certain values, whose origins may
>> not be entirely rational. It is not an accident that
>> modern liberal democracy emerged first in the
>> Christian West, since the universalism of democratic
>> rights can be seen in many ways as a secular form of
>> Christian universalism.
>> 
>> The central question raised by Mr. Huntington is
>> whether institutions of modernity will work only in
>> the West, or whether there is something broader in
>> their appeal that will allow them to make headway in
>> non-Western societies. I believe there is. The proof
>> lies in the progress that democracy and free markets
>> have made in regions like East Asia, Latin America,
>> Orthodox Europe and South Asia. Proof is also
>> offered
>> by the millions of Third World immigrants who vote
>> with their feet every year to live in Western
>> societies and eventually assimilate to Western
>> values.
>> 
>> But there does seem to be something about Islam, or
>> at
>> least fundamentalist Islam, that makes Muslim
>> societies particularly resistant to modernity. Of
>> all
>> contemporary cultural systems, the Islamic world has
>> the fewest democracies (Turkey alone qualifies), and
>> contains no countries that have made the transition
>> from Third to First World status in the manner of
>> South Korea or Singapore.
>> 
>> There are plenty of non-Westerners who prefer the
>> economic and technological part of modernity and
>> hope
>> to have it without having to accept democratic
>> politics or Western cultural values as well (for
>> example, China or Singapore). There are others who
>> like both the economic and political versions, but
>> just can't figure out how to make it happen (Russia
>> is
>> an example). For them, transition to modernity may
>> be
>> long and painful. But there are no insuperable
>> cultural barriers likely to prevent them from
>> getting
>> there.
>> 
>> Islam, by contrast, is the only cultural system that
>> regularly seems to produce people, like Osama bin
>> Laden or the Taliban, who reject modernity lock,
>> stock
>> and barrel. This raises the question of how
>> representative such people are of the larger Muslim
>> community. The answer that politicians East and West
>> have been putting out since 11 September is that
>> those
>> sympathetic with the terrorists are a "tiny
>> minority"
>> of Muslims. It is important for them to say this, to
>> prevent Muslims as a group from becoming targets of
>> hatred. The problem is that dislike and hatred of
>> America and what it stands for are clearly much more
>> widespread than that.
>> 
>> Certainly the number of people willing to go on
>> suicide missions and actively conspire against the
>> US
>> is tiny. But sympathy for them  feelings of
>> schadenfreude at collapsing towers, an immediate
>> sense
>> of satisfaction that the US was getting what it
>> deserved, to be followed only later by pro forma
>> expressions of disapproval  is characteristic of
>> much
>> more than a "tiny minority" of Muslims. It extends
>> from the middle classes in countries like Egypt to
>> immigrants in the West.
>> 
>> This broader dislike and hatred would seem to
>> represent something much deeper than mere opposition
>> to American policies like support for Israel,
>> encompassing a hatred of the underlying society.
>> Perhaps, as many commentators have speculated, the
>> hatred is born out of a resentment of Western
>> success
>> and Muslim failure. But rather than psychologise the
>> Muslim world, it makes more sense to ask whether
>> radical Islam constitutes a serious alternative to
>> Western liberal democracy.
>> 
>> Even for Muslims themselves, political Islam has
>> proven much more appealing in the abstract than in
>> reality. After 23 years of rule by fundamentalist
>> clerics, most Iranians, in particular nearly
>> everyone
>> under 30, would like to live in a far more liberal
>> society.
>> 
>> All of the anti-American hatred that has been
>> drummed
>> up does not translate into a viable political
>> programme that Muslim societies will be able to
>> follow
>> in the years ahead.
>> 
>> We remain at the end of history because there is
>> only
>> one system that will continue to dominate world
>> politics  that of the liberal-democratic West. This
>> does not imply a world free of conflict, or the
>> disappearance of culture as a distinguishing
>> characteristic of societies. But the struggle we
>> face
>> is not the clash of several distinct and equal
>> cultures struggling amongst one another like the
>> great
>> powers of 19th-century Europe. The clash consists of
>> a
>> 
>=== message truncated ==>
>
>====>"All the wolves in the wolf factory paused at noon, 
>for a moment of silence."
>........from laughing Gravy by John Ashbery.
>---------------------------------------------------------
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