Cultural insensitivity

Chindit17 writes a guest post at Zero Hedge entitled We're Not in (Ar)Kansas Any More, Hillary. He or she points out that there are huge differences in the world. Religion, leadership, and political ideologies are among the most significant differences.

The West’s view of leadership operates on an entirely different spectrum, running from the Woefully Incompetent to the Assholishly Self-serving. It is this view, which the West refers to as “democracy”, that the US is intent on exporting to the rest of the world. It is clear why it presents problems, except, of course, to US Administrations. For them it always comes as a complete surprise when, for example, Palestinians choose Hamas, Iraqis choose a Sunni-hating Shi’ite who lives solely for revenge, or Egyptians choose the Moslem Brotherhood. It puzzles them further when the mob simply will not accept that “democracy” means majority rule (where majority is based on the collective net worth of Party voters and its willingness to drop some of that wealth into campaign coffers in exchange for a greater level of “equality” for the contributors), so that if enough people are angered by the majority’s decision, the angered can take the society back to Square One, aka Tahrir Square, and do it all again until the most aggressive can impose their own brand of democracy onto the majority.

The Obama Administration believes military action will send a powerful message. In that, they are correct. Where they are wrong is in what message it will send and in what way that message will elicit a response. In much of the world where people share the religion common to much of Syria, the message will be: America attacks yet another Moslem nation. In the rest of the world, where governments have already declined participation in any message-sending action (except for the one exhibiting the quintessential Napoleon Complex), the message will be: there they go again, doing something they would never want done to them, and demonstrating that they alone think they can decide what deaths constitute a moral obscenity and what constitute mere unfortunate collateral damage.

Thanks to Maggie's Farm for linking to Zero Hedge.