Beautiful compilation of examples of the scrambling of the West

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Apr 1, 2022 at 11:52

Dear Dr Pipes, your compilation of the West's confused reaction to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is excellent because it completely illustrates the problem. The West is confused about what exactly is wrong in this invasion and how to correct what is wrong. Is Putin bad or is Russia bad? Are the wars bad or Putin's war is bad? Is it enough to condemn the Russian aggression or we need to condemn Putin? On and on and on, the Western political and business leaders and people are confused.

Confusion occurs because we do not figure out what values we are trying to protect. We do not know we are protecting any given national interest or democracy or peace or people's rights to live with freedom and prosperity. We choose complex explanations over simpler ones. And, we regale at our power to analyze.

When a very small group of people wants to impose their decisions on very large groups of people, resorting to violence remains the only option.

Be it Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, or the Islamic theocrats the planet around, or Vladimir Putin, what is common between them is their desire to impose their views on all people. And, we, the people, fail to call this tendency bad. We keep on scrambling about what should we oppose and what we should let go.

When Russia, under Putin's guidance, poisoned Alexie Navalny during an international flight, was the day I gave up on Putin. When Jin Ping declared himself the leader of China for life, was the day he stopped being a leader for me. I have written about my views on Islamic theocracies often. There is no leadership in Islam for centuries. And, Jong-un is his crazy father's crazy son. Leadership is never inherited.

That these people/groups will act evil, is not a matter of "if", it is a matter of "when". We need to brace for their current or future attacks. We need to oppose these groups now because their attacks on us will definitely come. Some of these attacks are already happening.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".