From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 06:58:29 MDT
On Sunday, April 07, 2002 1:36 AM Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
sentience@pobox.com wrote:
> Why take the side of the Palestinians? I know more about this issue
than I
> really want to, thanks to my parentage, and you can take it from me
that
> both sides are raving nuts. There isn't a "right side" here. The
colonial
> powers treated Arab land like a turkey to be carved up, the Jews
decided to
> establish their glorious homeland on the most fought-over piece of
land in
> Earth's history because God told them to do it, the Palestinians
raised
> their hate as high as it would go because God told *them* to do it and
> declared war on the civilians, and Israel decided to hate back. The
Jews
> aren't going to move to Canada and the Palestinians aren't going to
build a
> liberal democracy and become software engineers. They're just going
to go
> on killing and hating. End of story. There isn't a single thing you
can do
> about it except unleash the Singularity. So why argue? Why spread
the
> hate?
There is a single thing that can be done now by the US government that
would not need a Singularity and would have an positive impact in the
region. This would be to disengage totally. No more taxpayers' money
for Israel. No more taxpayers' money for the Arabs (Palestinians,
Egyptians, etc.) and Turks. No more loan guarantees for the Saudis to
buy F-16s. Etc. No more bases or troops in the region. No more naval
task forces. No more Pentagon-pushed arms sales to the various actors.
I would even recall the embassies AND send the ambassadors and missions
of those groups home.
This way, if they want to kill each other, they can do it on their own
nickel and no side could depend on an outside broker to deal with their
excesses. They would have to learn to get along with each other.
BTW, as a general fact or factoid, I've read that the US only gets about
10% or 15% of its oil from the Middle East. This is hardly a big
dependency. If you bought 15% of your gas from Big Al's Gas 'n Go would
you think you were held hostage by Big Al's political context?
My two cents!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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