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ept. 16, p8

To euphemize America'€™s colonization in the Philippines, Rudyard Kipling, a British writer, '€œjustified'€ it as the white man'€™s burden to spread his superior civilization. Certainly, the true motive of colonization is self-serving. After centuries, the burden is still undertaken '€” America and its Western allies still force their interests on the rest of the world, but now with the backfire of the migrant crisis in Europe.

The recent news is rife with the heart-rending stories of Syrian refugees. Prolonged civil war and Islamic State (IS) movement savagery force them to leave their homes. The root of the problem is partly the West'€™s interference in the conflict in Syria (and Middle East in general). But this takes place under the cloak of spreading democracy and defending human rights.

The Arab Spring '€” the demand for democracy '€” engulfed the Middle East and North Africa a few years ago. But it turns out the West'€™s own geopolitical and economic profit takes precedence over democracy. The unintended consequence of Western intervention in the Middle East is the rise of IS.

Moreover, this group would have never existed without support from Gulf countries and Turkey, the allies of the West. The West and its allies have helped create a monster that they now fear.

 
Your comments:

Why doesn'€™t Indonesia treat the few refugees it has properly? It is disgusting how Indonesia doesn'€™t fulfill its responsibilities. The brown man'€™s burden, if we'€™re being racist.

My proposition is simple: If the West doesn'€™t take sides by militarily supporting the rebels so that the Assad regime can easily squelch the rebel, then there will be no refugees from Syria. I think this logic is also true if the West doesn'€™t intervene in Iraq or Libya and let Iraqis and Libyans slowly change.

Sometimes, a dictatorial government is better than a weak democratic government. Preventing bad things is better than action to do good.

If the West is concerned much about democracy and human rights, they have also to intervene in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. From what has happened, we know there is a two-faced policy. They will intervene only when the economic and geopolitical benefits are clearly at hand.

Erwin Wirawan

Please, put the blame on the West for the mismanagement of lands and the people who occupy them. The truth about Iraq is that it took a madman to control all the various Islamic sects and tribes that made up Iraq. The same could be said for Syria and Libya.

One of the most interesting things that happened after the US invasion of Iraq was that 8 million voters risked their lives and waited hours in line to cast their ballots. It represented a belief in democracy by the Iraqis people and that the country could in time become a safe place to live, work and raise children.

Unfortunately, US President Obama pulled the military out of Iraq against the advice of his military advisors who said that the Iraqi military and police were not ready to be left on their own.

The void left by the US departure gave an opportunity for IS to fill as they violently carved out their caliphate with seized territory. IS has committed terrible atrocities including genocide of Christians, and by the way I have never witnessed any protest in the Islamic World denouncing this inhumane slaughter and bullying of innocent people.

It is the very same with the resettlement of the refugees, why aren'€™t the Muslim-dominated countries offering to take in the bulk of these displaced people? Are they offering to feed them or offering shelter, clothes or medicine? No the almost 1 billion other Muslims sit by silently and watch as they continuously voice that it'€™s the West'€™s fault.

Dick Tracy

The problem with this attitude is it assumes that the people of these countries are mere pawns in a much greater game for which they lack either the power or intelligence to resist being manipulated, which is of course as patronizing as it is false.

Putting aside historical interference for a moment, Syria is very much a home-grown uprising against a local despot who lacked the ability to run his country properly (a common trait among rulers in the Middle East, regardless of how they got into that position of power in the first place or who their allies are), which really is how the entire Arab Spring can be described.

The finger-pointing against the West is generally a self-serving gesture applied by people who lack the moral integrity to examine their own culpability in world problems. The West took sides, of course, as did everybody else, but the unspeakably violent sectarianism that erupted was very much a product of people who time and time again have shown a pathological inability to compromise or cooperate (and which no small amount of Indonesians have been more than happy to participate in).

This is not a Western problem, Erwin, it is clearly now a global problem, and unless Indonesia and certain Muslim countries are prepared to offer some degree of humane assistance as well, then you have absolutely no right going around telling Europe or anybody else what they should and shouldn'€™t do.

Devanagari

General Wesley Clark, one of the most highly decorated generals of the US military, openly admits that there has been '€œa policy coup'€ in the US government.  

He explains that he was told, back in 1991, that the US would actively invade and destabilize countries across the Middle East to take control of the region.  

These are not the words of an outsider conspiracy theorist, but the man who did this job for the US government.  

Of the list Clark was shown, only Syria is left standing, and the US and UK have all but declared war on Syria this week.

Joko