You are 100% right

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Jun 24, 2012 at 14:29

Dear Dr Pipes,

Your plea that western governments should stay out of Syria and Turkey's most recent brotherly exchanges is right on the dot. The NATO doctrine certainly says that an attack on one NATO member should be considered an attack on all of them but in that case Turkey should not be a member of NATO.

Mutual violent fighting with no justifiable cause is a routine way of life among the Islamic nations. Have we not seen it happen between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh (the then East Pakistan), Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait and throughout the history. It is a sad affair but you can not understand Islamic root causes by analysing them with western/free tools of analysis.

When a regime --any regime-- uses non-ethical/extra-ethical means to stay in power, mistrust is a natural outcome. So shooting of a little plane in the sky between Turkey and Syria is a very minor outcome of a very deep problem. If your goal is to promote freedom and democracy, distrust will reduce. If your goal is to promote Islamism (at the expense of free thought) distrust will increase. It is the Islamic people and nations who should understand this simple fact. No amount of western intervention will make a difference.

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