He is proposing that the US has the "right" to go in and take whatever resources are being held by whatever countries....

because we can....

and

because they didn't do anything to create those resources in the first place.

What Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have in common is that they became rich because the West paid them for natural resources that the West could simply have taken from them at will, and without so much as a Thank You, if the West had been inclined to do so. They were, by one of the bitter paradoxes of history, the pre-eminent beneficiaries of the Western liberalism that they have pledged themselves to destroy.

Actually, Saddam doesn't appear to have a problem with the "West". Just with the USofA.

And even that only came AFTER we turned around our position on his invasion of Kuwait.

Or did Marlowe miss the picture of his current heros shaking hands with Saddam?

:D

All that really matters is the quite unintended consequence of the West's conduct: the prodigious funding of fantasists who are thereby enabled to pursue their demented agendas unencumbered by any realistic calculation of the risks or costs of their action...

Nice words.

:)

I notice that Osama is mentioned.

Does anyone really believe that a suicide does not know the cost of his actions?

:D

We must not set about trying to convert them in believing in our principles and accepting our values, however noble and lofty these values might be.

Recently, it has been found that the US tortures prisoners to death.

We also provided Saddam with the funds and technology for his chemical weapons program.

Did I mention that we sent him bio-weapon cultures?

How "noble and lofty" are our values?

We'll deal with ANYONE as long as we get what we want.

:)

Nor must we be seduced into believing that we are in a popularity contest, as if we were trying to sell Western values as if it were a consumer product. If it should happen to come about that these values make inroads in the Islamic world, fine and good. But it must not became our aim.

Bzzzzztttttt!!!!!

That should be our PRIMARY goal and the MAJORITY of our funding should go towards that goal.

Why have we NOT helped a SINGLE democracy to grow in the mid-east?

Our aim is simple. It is to make the Islamic fantasists respect the dictates of reality.

They understand reality.

If they wish to compete with us, if they wish even to be our enemies, we will accept that, as we accepted this situation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But they must be made to accept the basic rules of play - rules that are accepted by the rest of mankind, from the U.S. to Communist China.

And if they are your enemy and don't play by your "rules", what will you do?

Bomb them?

And if they are your enemy and DO play by your rules, what will you do?

Bomb them?

They understand reality.

And that is why, in order to achieve our end of heightening their grasp on reality, no means should be ruled out.

So, they are to be limited in what they are "allowed" to do....

but for us, "no means should be ruled out".

Until they are willing to play by our rules, we must be prepared to play by theirs.

Where are the "noble and lofty" values now?

Or is "values" a word that is not understood?

Every empire (and wannabe empire) has used some variation of that to "justify" themselves.

:D