Having lived in North America for over 20 years; almost half of my life thus far, with 99% of it during what is often referred to as the most influential period of an individual. Therefore, I am familiar with the “western believes” and “western culture”.
Today New York Times published an article about an “U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan“. It is not that I do not believe that these people who conducted the study believe in what they’ve found, but I do believe that some times one cannot impose ones believe onto others.
Has the American government, in part representing the American people, done enough to impose the “American Principals” onto others. The “democracy way of life” may be very suitable for many of the Western countries like: Canada (where I also call home), United States, United Kingdom, etc., but to many others in the East, Asia and the Middle East they have a total different believe and principals.
One cannot use their own principals to judge the welfare of others in their own country with different cultures, religions and believes.
If the American government study why people are willing to go to extreme to kill Americans, they will understand that they are fighting an un-winnable war. When their [USA} enemies declare a Jehad on them, these people who believes in the cause will not stop and will use every means to succeed. This is not the type of war that one can win by common sense and reasoning.
SImilarly the incident with TOM-Skype on October 1, 2008, where Citizen Lab released a report, Breaching Trust, that traffic on the TOM-Skype platform is monitored by the Chinese government.
The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
China is one of those countries I mentioned above. They have a different political system, religion believe and social norm compared to most Western countries. What may be seen as wrong by the West may also be a common practice in China. Whether it is wrong is not for us to judge, but for Chinese citizen to decide.
Some may say, the above type of view points, are from someone who is naive. To my critics I beg their pardon. I do call myself a proud Chinese Canadian who returned to live in Hong Kong for the past 10+ years. My influential part of my live was brought up in Canada, and anyone who knows me know that I have more of a Western way of thinking than Chinese. In the past 10 years I had worked in Asia professionally, dealing with businesses from various Asian culture and methods of doing businesses.
I do not necessary believe that what the Chinese government does is right, but I also do not think that anyone outside of China who had not lived in China should be the judge of this right or wrong either.
So, if we all keep our principals, religions and believes to ourselves, learn to live with our fellow citizens of Earth across the national borders, we may be happier and more productive. There are just too many things wrong with our Earth to be dwelling on the differences among the nations and their respective leaders/governments.