Our New Improved Middle East

[regular.joe]

My observation is that Americans, as a group, are hugely culturally biased about who and what the rest of the world is. On top of that, we don't as a people understand or know about our cultural bias. On top of that, we wade into the rest of the word with our bias and expect everyone to march to the tune of our drum, because we don't even know about our bias we can't understand and are genuinely baffled as to why no one is marching to the beat of our drum. It really doesn't matter if it's ISIS, Russia, China, or any other place that's not within our boundaries. Most of the people I now will read that article and begin to formulate ways to get in there and change what's going on...in our best interest of course. Maybe if we spend just a little more money, or maybe if we just keep troops on the ground a little longer, or maybe if we just engage long enough for them to see the error of their ways.

I say all of this to get to this point. The local culture is where this movement has grown. The local culture is where this movement must be addressed. It will take some very different, long term engagement for us in the middle east, North Africa, and Asia to assist in overcoming movements like ISIS. That is only if our assistance is wanted and asked for. I'll end with something the Brits discovered in Afghanistan long ago, most local nationals loyalties cannot be purchased. They can be rented, of course, for short indeterminate periods of time. That in my opinion is all we have been doing with our last 10+ years of engagements with the Middle East and Afghanistan. Renting for short periods of time, some ones loyalty. In the end the local culture is always going to be loyal to the local culture. There ain't dick we can do about that unless we want to set up shop and start having congressmen elected from Iraq.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

My observation is that Americans, as a group, are hugely culturally biased about who and what the rest of the world is.

So what?

On top of that, we don't as a people understand or know about our cultural bias.

So what?

On top of that, we wade into the rest of the word with our bias and expect everyone to march to the tune of our drum, because we don't even know about our bias we can't understand and are genuinely baffled as to why no one is marching to the beat of our drum.

As the man said when the waiter asked where the spoon was, Ah Ha!

Agree 100%, we followed the example of previous empires in bullying weaker nations into submission. Lots of bluff and bluster then if that fails, send the Marines. When United Fruit said the natives are revolting, an incredulous Congress said, they certainly are.
Before communications shrunk the world, and definitely before the internet, we could often convince the second and third world everyone else obeyed us. No more