georgeob1 wrote:The United States was not a party to British imperial policy " 80+" years ago. On the contrary, we were rather inward-looking at the time. We did not support British colonialism.
George gets a failing mark in history, once again. No, the United States was not involved in the imperialistic policies of England
and France in the beginning of the 20th century. We had petroleum of our own at home, and blacks and "wet backs" aplenty to exploit.
But the United States
was involved in the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran, which the Persians remember very well. We
were involved in the failed effort to set up a NATO-like treaty organization based on Egypt, Syria and Iraq. We
were involved in tryting to prop up a western-puppet King in Afghanistan, which failed, leading to a civil war which has raged in that poor, blighted nation for more than 40 years.
Quote:What created "political Islam". It is a fact that "80+" years ago most of the Moslems in the world lived under the colonial rule of Britain, France or the Netherlands; and that their historical political and religious governing institutions (including the Caliphate) were forcibly overthrown by Britain and France. Is there any possibility that these facts just might have been very significant contributing causes?
You're unjustifiably slandering the Dutch. They were only colonial masters of large numbers of Muslim coincidentally because of the Dutch East Indies, which they abandoned after the Second World War out of necessity, long before militant Islam arrived in what is now Indonesia. The Caliphate was made irrelevant by the Seljuk Turks, long before the Great War and the defeat of the Osmanli Turks, before, even the arrival of "Franj" crusaders in the middle east. In fact, the petroleum greed of England thanks to Winston Churchill, Jackie Fisher and the Royal Navy is the single most proximate cause of alienating the middle east from western nations, because they originally saw the English as liberators who would free them of Turkish rule. The religious institutions of the Muslims of the middle east were untouched by the English. Authority in the Muslim world always stemmed from the ability to provide a safe pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. When the Seljuks made figureheads of the Caliphs, they stepped into the breech. When the Kurd dynasty of the Ayyubids briefly reigned supreme in the middle east, they took up the torch. After the catastrophe of the Mongol invasion, the Osmanli Turks stepped into the political vacuum, and took up the duty themselves of assuring a safe pilgrimage. When the British toppled the Young Turks, they cut a deal with the Ibn Saud clan, who had centuries before made a devils bargain with the Wahabbis to establish their Muslim credentials, and who duly took up the duty of make Mecca and Medina safe for pilgrims.
Eisenhower was clever enough to keep aloof from the Franco-British fiasco during the Suez crisis--but earlier, he had not been clever enough to keep aloof from the plot against Mosedegh in Iran, and he was latter insufficiently clever to avoid the attempt to set up a constitutional monarchy in Afghanistan. Once the English played "the Great Game" against Russian hegemony in central Asia, which lead to debacles like Elphinstone's march into Afghanistan. After the Second World War, the United States took possession of "the Great Game" in the form of the "Cold War." Like so many other nations in the world, the Muslim states became pawns on the cynical chessboard laid between the United States and the Soviet Union. We were all for the exportation of democratic government, just look at our notable successes: Singhman Rhee, Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet. The poor benighted savages, however, usually failed to read the fine print on the western-style democracy contract: You are entitled to democratic institutions as long as you elect govenments favorable to our interests, sell us your petroleum on a favored nation basis, refrain from instituting Islamic governments and refrain from supporting revolutionary movements in other nations.
Once the Royal Navy thirsted for petroleum--but the Royal Navy is no longer the Monarch of the Seas, and their modest demands can be met from the North Sea. The United States became the new Great Satan because we treated other nations as playthings in a deadly game with the Soviet Union, and lusted after petroleum in our turn.
Wow, thats wild! I did no such thing, of course... 
