Yulia Latynina: West Goes From Commanders to Cowards
[Yulia Latynina hosts a radio talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.]
Let me reveal a secret: The real reason the West is bombing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is to put al-Qaida in power. Take for example Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of Libya’s National Transitional Council. He defends radical Islam.
In my opinion, all of the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East is the natural consequence of recent decades in which the world’s open society has weakened militarily and morally to the same degree that it has become stronger economically.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the West had no qualms about letting everyone know who was the boss. When Sudanese dervishes cut down General Charles George Gordon’s troops, they were ruthlessly massacred by Field Marshal Horatio Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. When Ethiopian Emperor Theodore took several British citizens hostage, Sir Robert Napier crossed 390 kilometers of arid desert to wage a wholesale slaughter that liberated the hostages.
But in the 20th century, the West turned out to be cowards.
When Iranian revolutionaries took U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979, Washington was powerless to respond. When Gadhafi publicly sponsored terrorists of every stripe, the international community couldn’t do anything.
There is a simple economic reason for this impotence. In the modern world, war is no longer profitable. It is simpler and less costly for the open societies of the West to pay exorbitant prices for oil and gas than to teach the Middle East a neat little Kitchener-style lesson in good manners...
Read entire article at Moscow Times
Let me reveal a secret: The real reason the West is bombing Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is to put al-Qaida in power. Take for example Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of Libya’s National Transitional Council. He defends radical Islam.
In my opinion, all of the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East is the natural consequence of recent decades in which the world’s open society has weakened militarily and morally to the same degree that it has become stronger economically.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the West had no qualms about letting everyone know who was the boss. When Sudanese dervishes cut down General Charles George Gordon’s troops, they were ruthlessly massacred by Field Marshal Horatio Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. When Ethiopian Emperor Theodore took several British citizens hostage, Sir Robert Napier crossed 390 kilometers of arid desert to wage a wholesale slaughter that liberated the hostages.
But in the 20th century, the West turned out to be cowards.
When Iranian revolutionaries took U.S. diplomats hostage in 1979, Washington was powerless to respond. When Gadhafi publicly sponsored terrorists of every stripe, the international community couldn’t do anything.
There is a simple economic reason for this impotence. In the modern world, war is no longer profitable. It is simpler and less costly for the open societies of the West to pay exorbitant prices for oil and gas than to teach the Middle East a neat little Kitchener-style lesson in good manners...