- #36
russ_watters
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While I agree with most of that, I disagree with it being cyclical. Development is not cyclical, it is parabolic. On average, the world does not go backwards, over timeframes of decades or longer. The world is, in general, a much more peaceful place than it was 50, 100, 200, 500 years ago. What is cyclical is the cycle of violence in a failed society; the violence feeds on the religious extremism, which feeds on the violence.WWGD said:The countries where Islam is a majority religion are mostly broken down at this point. This is a cyclical thing in history; it can and does happen to all countries, cultural groups and religion at different points in their respective evolutions. Christianity has had its ugly days too, with crusades, the inquisition, it was used as an excuse to enslave people and colonize and exploit countries , etc. I think if one takes a longer-term view of Islam and history, this reveals that recent behavior is not so much intrinsic to Islam, but more a result of a culture that is currently broken down.
However, yes, the failure of many parts of the world to develop into stable, peaceful civilizations is the root of the problem, regardless of how it connects to religion. There are many areas of the world that have failed to develop (much of Africa, for example). Religion is often a component of that (and indeed, in the Crusades, christians exported their violence to the Middle East), and just because other religions have in the past had violent tendencies does not mean we should be ignoring the religious component here. Islam is a key fuel that powers the war.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I do know that we in the West have been falling-down on the job for decades, and Europe more than the US. Europe has gotten a pass mostly because the US absorbed most of the terrorism, but ISIS appears less picky than al Qaeda.
We all, in the West though, have chosen the worst possible course of action. A minor bombing campaign feels clean and easy, but it is like gently poking a wasp's-nest with a stick: It doesn't solve the problem and it pisses off the wasps. We must either totally pull-out of the ME and be ok with letting it be an anarchic cesspool, or we must fully commit to locking-it down with half a million ground troops.