Me: > But - as I've argued repeatedly - the Middle East isn't filled > with people who believe that when you are nice to them they should > compromise with you. Arafat, Hussein, and the Iranian theocrats think > that appeasing them is a sign of weakness.
I've heard the same thing, and while it may be true, I've only seen hearsay supporting it. What evidence convinced you of this viewpoint? -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.com/ Me again: Behavior, partly. Take a look at, say, the Israel-Palestinian dispute. After the Gulf War and its remarkably display of American (and, by extension, Israeli) power, Israel was in an excellent situation. It promptly began a series of negotiations with the Palestinians in which it made a large number of extraordinary concessions, leading up to the Oslo Accords. We all know how that turned out. Concessions were - as Arafat himself said - always viewed by the Palestinians as one more step on the road to their final goal of the destruction of Israel. They were just never thought of as a sign of bargaining in good faith. Another example is the suicide bombers themselves. If you read the writings they've left behind (Atta's, for example), one thing you'll see is that the common explanation for their behavior - desperation - is entirely unconvincing. _They think they're winning_. They do this exuberantly, not out of some last gasp of fear and rage. Even Bin Laden believes it, ironically enough. During his video tape, what did he say? Something along the lines of "If you give people a choice between a strong horse and a weak horse, they'll always pick the strong horse." Bin Laden has (unfortunately) quite effectively demonstrated his skill at understanding the psychology of the Middle East, just as he has shown his total _lack_ of understanding of the psychology of the United States. Some other stuff, too. I've spoken to some friends of mine who worked in Israeli intelligence, and this was an argument that they made very strongly and from considerable experience. Bernard Lewis (the pre-eminent scholar of Arab history anywhere, not just in the West) made an argument similarly in a phenomenal article in _The Atlantic_ "The Roots of Muslim Rage." If you only read _one_ thing about the motivations of our enemies, read this article. Particularly becuase it was published in 1990. The URL is http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm. Finally, just talking to various people who've worked and studied in the Middle East here at Harvard. A lot of them (not all, of course, but a lot) kept making this argument and giving examples of it in their personal lives over and over again. Gautam
