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Arthur, just how did the UN 'seize'
Palestine?
And,
if it or any other body seized Palestine, would that not be cause for Arab and
Palestinian resistance?
What
do you mean by a UN 'settlement' in 48? What
'settlement'?
L
Lawry,
Arabs dislike Israel not because Israel is rich, but
because the Israelis seized Palestine
arthur
As Pres. Reagan would
have said, "there you go again." Funny I thought the UN settlement
in 48 did that.
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
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