Setanta wrote:
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.
Setanta certainly writes engaging prose. Moreover he provides ample detail and interesting argument. The problem is he looks for dispute where none is present, and twists the question under discussion and the arguments of others as needed to support his naturally contentious impulses. The section above os a good example.
The Cold War had much in common with the earlier rivalries of European powers including Englamd vs. France and England vs. Russia, among others. The point is often made that the competition for influence and sometimes power in third world countries between the U.S. (and all the allied western powers) and the USSR during the Cold war was the exact equivalent of the colonial wars among European powers that preceeded it,. I believe this is a great misinterpretation of events, one based on false premises, that ignores salient facts and features of the Cold War, and one that leads to numerous fallacies, such as those so lavishly offered by Setanta.
The USSR was actively promoting socialist revolutions throughout the world, through political, financial, and often violent means. They had openly declared their intent to support such socialist revolutionary movements wherever they occurred, and they did indeed act ion that declaration. While we were opposed to the continuation of European colonialism, we also did not wish to see more of the world fall into the embrace of the backward and tyrannical Soviet system that history has shown, did so much damage to the political and economic development of all its victims. This was qualitatively different from the narrow, selfish interests of the players of the "great game" of European imperialism to which Setanta so blithely equates it/
It is true that we made no move to interfere with any moslem states before the 1950s as Setanta says. (Odd isn't it that he then argues with exactly this point when I made it.) We did indeed interfere with the government of Mossadech in Iran and play the central role in restoring the Phalevi Shah to power. However Setanta should note that just two years earlier we had finally gotten the Soviet occupation army out of Iran after their WWII incursion. We had excellent reasons to fear continues political actions by the Soviets. No doubt wwe made many errors, but we did not establish any colonies.
Setants asserts thst it was a thirst for oil that drove our policy. There is truth in this but the point as Setanta makes it is a distortion of reality. WWII was fought by the Allies with U.S. oil. We depleted huge domestic reserves supplying our own forces and those of our allies during that war. After WWII the world desperately needed new oil supplies to meet the needs of economic recovery and sustained growth in the post war era. At the time the U.S. had more than enough petroleum to meet our own needs, but all projections of worldwide demand showed the need for the development of the rich supply of Middle eastern oil -- something that was accomplished by U.S. British, Dutch, and French petroleum companies with the willing cooperation of the Middle eastern states. In nearly every case the sovereign Middle eastern states demanded and got substantial ownership of both the producing facilities and the oil so produced (in addition to fixed royalties on total production), even though they contributed none of the capital for its development. This is not at all like the economic models applied by colonial powers in their real empires.
The facts remain that the seeds for today's conflict between an aroused and backward Moslem World and the West were all planted during the era of European colonialism and misrule priior to and following WWI.
