|
The
Arabs are not as poor or as ignorant as you suggest, Ray. They listen to lots of
news programs, from all sources. Remember that these are countries that readily
receive the BBC, the French channels, USIA programs, Radio Moscow, etc., to say
nothing of their own channels. More newspapers are read per capita in the Middle
East than the US. Do you know who the single most politically astute
person was that I ever met outside Washington, DC? It was an illiterate
Moroccan Berber. He lived in a mud house with his wife and three children, and
had electricity. He had two appliances. One was a naked light bulb hanging from
his ceiling. The other was a short-wave radio. He listened all day, when he
wasn't roaming around southern Morocco, to many radio news broadcasts. It was at
the time that Dukakis was ruinning for the Presidency. He knew far more about US
primary politics than most Americans did. Muhammad al-Ahd, was his name
and we spent a week or so together. He had learned, in addition to Berber and
Arabic, French, English, German, and a smattering of Spanish and Russian.
I do not suggest he is typical, but he does shatter the stereotype of the
ignorant Arab. Arabs are just as smart as Americans. And they are no
dumber about Americans than Americans are about Arabs. In fact, Arabs
probably know more, because America has been a preoccupation to Arabs for
decades, whereas Americans generally have only bestirred themselves to learn
about Arabs and Islam since September 11. Can you guess what percentage of
Arabs know a passable English? And what percentage of Americans have a passable
Arabic? So rather than seek for the cause of Arab anti-American sentiment
in some shortcoming of the Arabs, let us seek it in America, and our attitudes
and our polices and our behavior: let us make sure that we ourselves are clean
before we go around trying to clean up others.
Arabs
dislike Israel not because Israel is rich, but because the Israelis seized
Palestine. Arabs (and many others) dislike the US more and more because of US
arrogance and bullying, not because they are ignorant about the US.
I am
not saying that poverty can't ever be a source of political revolution -- it has
at various times and places, like the French Revolution. But I don't believe
that it is a significant factor in anti-US or anti-Israeli sentiment, and it
would be a massive mistake and distraction for us to think
otherwise.
Cheers,
Lawry
I question that Lawry,
This is what I heard about the ideology of the
Communists States for years. I think their backwardness and
poverty based upon the fact that they were a peasant society less than 80
years before they fell was only held at bay by virtue of their lack of
information. As the West outspent and flooded the East
with information about choices and market plenty, those ideologies were
hard pressed to proved their ultimate success. Once the question
was asked the hole was in the dike and the ocean was not far
behind.
How much television from the West in Arabic is
there in the poorer Arab countries? It doesn't really matter
whether the censorship is from the KGB or the local religious organization,
ignorance is ignorance and if that ignorance keeps them in squalor it is not
long before change reasserts itself.
If you don't know that you are as poor
as American conservatives call "sinful" here, then you have little to be
angry about or at least to focus your anger on. I've been there
too. The expectation is what you have - where you
are. Once information flows into those countries in
Arabic with Western products, do you really believe it will not make a
difference? Especially if these are products that have to do
with illness, life and death and other ultimate
issues. Affluent Israel is an abomination to them
because the Palestinians don't realize that they are the poorest of the
poor and their elites have been flowing in and out of the West's stores and
businesses on the backs of their people's poverty. Am I
wrong? I can only tell you what I
see. I don't have good feelings about people who do such things
here either as is clear, I hope, by what I have said thus far on this
list. People who are my own relatives and who do it to me are the
most abhorrent of all.
If they are kept in ignorance by their
religion and their leaders then they don't know any
better. In fact there is a kind of childlike quality about
many of the people that I have been on panels with. They are
subtle, clever and as good - as any American minority ethnic
Neo-conservative - at Aristotilian argument tactics. But when they
are not allowed to set the parameters on the argument they are
not as sophisticated as America's laziest news junkies. I
would add that there are people of similar naivite's on the Israeli side as
well. People who would put their children and families
in a Wild West situation on the West Bank. That
Brooklynite that walked into the grave of Moses and started firing cared
little for his family IMHO. Such people often are
troublemakers and every group has them. Our version is urban
Indians who move back to a reservation and then try to "fix" the
locals. Our locals usually send them packing no matter
how much blood quantum they happen to have. I think the
Israelis believe that they can show the way for these people and that is a
kind of chauvinism as well. I believe it will have to
come from within and Israel may be able to help if they can get over their
anger and stop the tendency towards looking for a King that is a part of
their manual and was posted a couple of days ago in an
editorial from an Israeli Newspaper on this list.
But all you need to do is watch your child die
for want of medical attention that is available elsewhere.
Fanatacism can carry you so far but reality is a great teacher especially if
you realize that those who claim to be your friends, relatives and fellow
citizens are playing you for the fool. The psychology of the
bombers could have been predicted when the great peacenik Rabin started
breaking peoples bones for playing David and throwing
rocks. There is something about situations like this that
makes people incompetant.
They have trouble with "Wannabee" issues
that are the same as trap Indian people here. What needs to
be remembered is that Jews will not forget that Israel is the birthplace
of their relgion and that the other two groups grew out of the Jewish
Genesis. It would be easy to do away with these three group
myths being propogated. Just have an Internationla
scientific body come in and dig up the countries and tell the truth about what
they find. But that won't happen because all three
groups have told lies about the past. The Christians about
their lineage and their selective choice of which rules they follow, the
Moslems about their lineage and who gave birth to whom, as if the prophet
didn't appear centuries after the death of Jesus and the Jews about their
treatment of women in their male oriented and canonized
texts.
Every religion does what it
must to survive but there comes an accounting and which myths would each
of these groups be willing to give up in order to achieve
peace? They should all remember the root of the word
"sacred" in English. Sacrifice and unless there is a serious
willingness on people of truth and good will are willing to accept what is
found then we will continue to have Christians praying for the end of the
world and helping the Israelis to do that. Have
Moslems who use their texts to create old governments that don't work and are
incapable of International cooperation and Jews who tramp into shared
sacred places as if they were the only people in the world that
mattered. That is the opposite of the meaning of the English word
"Sacred." There is no sacrifice, just arrogance and
insensitivity.
This is complicated but that is no
excuse. America is about to blow one of the world cultural
treasures off of the face of the earth. Children have been
murdered in the hoarding of medicine and for political purposes on both sides
and the sacrifices of our gallant soldiers covered with the same spent uranium
shit that still haunts the countries where it was used for economic and
expediant reasons. It is time that we grow up and tell the
truth. When did the concept of social justice become a curse
word and a person who wishes to see both sides of an argument in order to make
a wise judgment become a disloyal "liberal."
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 4:34
PM
Subject: [Futurework] RE: Towards a
sustainable balance
Greetings, Ed,
I
think you are essentially correct in your assessment that a US attack on
Iraq will aggravate the situation in he Middle East, and create a greater
impetus for action against the US.
Westerners sometimes make the mistake of assuming
that poverty and its alleviation are the keys to reducing anti-US sentiment.
To the extent we are seen as imposing poverty on people, then, yes, the US
is held accountable. But the terrorism with which we have become preoccupied
is not motivated by poverty, it is motivated by our political policies and
actions in the Middle East. Friedman would have us follow the red herring of
poverty, when the cause of anti-US sentiment is much more proximate to US
behavior toward the Middle East.
Cheers,
L
With all due respect to Thomas Friedman, the situation is a little
more complicated than that. Yes, indeed, the Middle East is replete
with young people who are willing to turn themselves into missiles rather
than tolerate life as it is. However, how many regimes throughout
the region will have to be taken out, and how many countries democratized,
before conditions are improved to the point where young people see life on
earth, not in paradise, as their best hope? It is just possible,
more likely probable, that Saddam Hussein is something of a hero to the
non-Iraqi young because, unlike their regimes, he has stood up to the
Americans. The Egyptian government receives $2 billion a year in
civil and military assistance from the US as a good-behaviour reward for
having signed a peace treaty with Israel. How much of this money
goes to alleviating the staggering poverty of the country versus the
pockets of the rich? The House of Saud has grown enormously wealthy
by pumping oil to the west and, even though it has done little for Saudi
Arabia's ordinary citizens, it is well able to meet its historic
obligations to the Wahhabist movement, one of the world's most potent
generators of terrorism. Kuwait is seen as totally under the
American thumb while Jordan, which lies immediately east of Israel, is
supposedly an American ally, but with its large,
impoverished Palestinian population, it is a potential powder
keg. How will any of this be solved by taking out Saddam? It is far
more likely that it will be greatly aggravated.
Ed
Ed Weick
577 Melbourne Ave.
Ottawa, ON, K2A
1W7
Canada
Phone (613) 728 4630
Fax
(613) 728 9382
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003
12:46 PM
Subject: Towards a sustainable
balance
Greetings from the Pacific
Northwest, where the East winds have abated and
we are socked in with gentle rain.
Everyone is trying to get their two
cents in print before the President’s speech writers are finished with
the final copy of the State of the Union speech, hoping to influence the
thinking and presentation of an important, time-sensitive public policy
moment that will be gleaned for the smallest details between the lines.
Friedman puts a lot of
things into perspective we can understand while raising some contentious
issues that need to be aired.
We are discussing consequences here,
not just morality about preemptive force. Conservatives used to have a
strong voice on the intended and unintended consequences of government.
Today, with this White
House, they have lost that edge.
Karen Watters
Cole
The earlier column is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/opinion/22FRIE.html I urge you to read it also if
this subject is important to you.
Excerpt
from that:
“What
liberals fail to recognize is that regime change in Iraq is not some
distraction from the war on Al Qaeda. That is a bogus argument. And
simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq doesn't make it illegitimate
either. Some things are right to do, even if Big Oil
benefits.
Although President Bush has cast the
war in Iraq as being about disarmament — and that is legitimate —
disarmament is not the most important prize there. Regime change is the
prize. Regime transformation in Iraq could make a valuable contribution
to the war on terrorism, whether Saddam is ousted or enticed into
exile.”
Thinking
About Iraq (II)
By Thomas L. Friedman, NYT, 01.26.03
@ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
In
my column on Wednesday I laid out why I believe that liberals
underestimate
how ousting Saddam Hussein could help
spur positive political change
in the Arab world. Today's
column explores why conservative
advocates of ousting Saddam underestimate the risks,
and where we should strike the balance.
Let's
start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been sealed
shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the late 1960's.
Therefore, one needs to
have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what sorts of
bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the lid.
Think of it this way: If
and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope inside.
It will tell us what we
have won and it will say one of two things.
It
could say, "Congratulations!
You've just won the Arab Germany
— a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural resources, but
with an evil dictator, whom you've just removed. Now, just add a little water, a
spoonful of democracy and stir, and this will be a normal nation very
soon."
Or
the envelope could say, "You've
just won the Arab Yugoslavia —
an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis,
Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can only be
held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations, you're the
new Saddam."
In
the first scenario, Iraq is the way it is today because Saddam is the
way he is. In the second
scenario, Saddam is the way he is because Iraq is what it is. Those are two very different
problems. And we will know
which we've won only when we take off the lid. The conservatives and neo-cons,
who have been pounding the table for war, should be a lot more humble
about this question, because they don't know
either.
Does
that mean we should rule out war? No. But it does mean that we must do
it right. To begin with,
the president must level with the American people that we may indeed be
buying the Arab Yugoslavia, which will take a great deal of time and
effort to heal into a self-sustaining, progressive, accountable Arab
government. And, therefore,
any nation-building in Iraq will be a multiyear marathon, not a
multiweek sprint.
Because
it will be a marathon,
we must undertake this war with the maximum amount of international
legitimacy and U.N. backing we can possibly muster. Otherwise we will not have an
American
public willing
to run this marathon, and we will not have allies ready to help us once
we're inside (look at all the local police and administrators Europeans
now contribute in Bosnia and Kosovo). We'll
also become a huge target
if we're the sole occupiers of Iraq.
In
short, we can oust Saddam Hussein all by ourselves. But
we cannot successfully rebuild Iraq all by ourselves.
And the real prize here is
a new Iraq that would be a progressive model for the whole region. That, for me, is the only morally
and strategically justifiable reason to support this war. The Bush team dare
not invade Iraq simply to install a more friendly dictator to pump us
oil.
And it dare
not simply disarm Iraq and then walk away from the nation-building
task.
Unfortunately,
when it comes to enlisting allies, the Bush team is its own worst
enemy.
It has sneered at many
issues the world cares about: the Kyoto accords, the World Court, arms
control treaties. The Bush
team had legitimate arguments on some of these issues, but the
gratuitous way it dismissed them has fueled anti-Americanism. No, I have no illusions that if
the Bush team had only embraced Kyoto the French wouldn't still be
trying to obstruct America in Iraq. The French are the French. But unfortunately, now the
Germans are the French, the Koreans are the French, and many Brits are
becoming French.
Things
could be better, but here is where we are — so here is where I am: My
gut tells me we should continue the troop buildup, continue the
inspections and do everything we can for as long as we can to produce
either a coup or the sort of evidence that will give us the broadest
coalition possible, so we can do the best nation-building job
possible.
But
if war turns out to be the only option, then war it will have to be —
because I believe that our kids will have a better chance of growing up
in a safer world if we help put Iraq on a more progressive path and
stimulate some real change in an Arab world that is badly in need of
reform. Such a war would
indeed be a shock to this region, but, if we do it right, there is a
decent chance that it would be shock therapy.
Outgoing mail scanned by NAV
2002
|
