{"id":1691,"date":"2001-11-24T15:10:46","date_gmt":"2001-11-24T20:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2001-11-24T15:10:46","modified_gmt":"2001-11-24T20:10:46","slug":"so_maybe_we_are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/11\/24\/so_maybe_we_are.html","title":{"rendered":"So maybe we are the good guys after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

The joy in Kabul indicates that even the Muslim world may like US values of freedom and choice — or at least show that the apparent popularity of bin Laden and Islamic fundamentalism is not as universal as its proponents would claim.<\/p>\n

There is, in fact, reason to believe that the aspirations of the Muslim world deeply resemble our own. One reason Americans don’t believe it is that we often use protest marches as our barometers of Muslim public opinion. And there have been quite a few marches on bin Laden’s behalf since September 11. But protest marches don’t measure popular support as much as they measure commitment and organizational skill. If you were to use mass demonstrations as your guide to what Americans believe, you might assume that the two most popular forces in American politics are the anti-abortion movement and the anti-globalization movement. In fact, both are unpopular; what they share is a dedicated core of supporters and a network able to get them to a given place at a given time.
\nMuch the same is true in a country like Pakistan. Militant Islamic groups can send thousands into the streets of Quetta and Peshawar because their supporters are politically fervent, and because their mosques and madrassas<\/i> give them a formidable organizational infrastructure. But at the polls, they do abysmally every time.
\nThe second problem with using protests as a guide to public opinion is that even those people who do chant bin Laden’s name might not want him running their country. To take another American analogy, few of the anti-Vietnam protesters who chanted Ho Chi Minh’s name wanted him as their president. Praising him was simply another way of saying, “I hate Lyndon Johnson.” Similarly, chanting bin Laden’s name in Cairo is a way of saying, “I hate Hosni Mubarak.” After all, many of the same people who cheered bin Laden cheered Saddam Hussein a decade ago–even though the former is a theocrat and the latter a militant secularist. Neither man’s appeal was his vision of how to govern a country, but rather his challenge to a deeply unpopular status quo. <\/p>\n

The New Republic <\/i>article<\/a> by Peter Beinart goes on to note how, when given a choice, most Muslim nations end up electing either secularists or those who are much more tolerant of alternative faiths and views than the Taliban and bin Laden.<\/p>\n

(Via InstaPundit<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The joy in Kabul indicates that even the Muslim world may like US values of freedom and choice — or at least show that the apparent popularity of bin Laden…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3561,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/27\/if.html","url_meta":{"origin":1691,"position":0},"title":"If","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 27-Oct-02 1:07pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If Israeli troops dragged a suspected Palestinian collaborator into the street and gunned her down, I'd expected blistering headlines in the NY Times, protest marches in London, temple-burnings in Paris,...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3834,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/23\/psychopaths_for.html","url_meta":{"origin":1691,"position":1},"title":"Psychopaths for Peace","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 23-Mar-03 1:29pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Anti-War movement has made a lot of subtle moves to try and distance themselves from ANSWER, though it still continues to participate and organize \"peace\" marches. 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