xerxes xerxes:
It's a LOT of people's fault spread out over the span of a century.
Correct.
And the mistakes continue to be made because Westerners (liberal and conservative both) are both blind and arrogant to the fact that Islam is wholly incompatible with Western views on liberty and personal rights.
We keep wanting to depose the dictators in the Islamic countries in the mistaken idea that if only the average Muslim were free then they'd vote for a democracy/republic like what we have. Except that every time such a vote is actually held the people want to vote in a more despotic and repressive regime than what we'd removed.
The fact of the matter is that it's been the dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Khaddafy, and Assad who have done the most to modernize their countries while also keeping the dogs of fundamentalist Islam on a leash.
When we go into these countries to 'free' people we don't realize that what we're freeing is a monster.
The reality that we don't want to see or accept is that you won't ever have a liberal Islamic state. It simply can't happen.
But, yeah, let's screw with these people for another century and try to make a square peg fit in a round hole.
