New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman believes that the terrorists in Iraq are fighting to prevent a more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic government in Iraq. He says politicians and intellectuals in the nearby Arab states are rooting against America in Iraq in order to maintain a belief that corrupt, ineffective autocracies are the best Arab societies can hope for. He wrote:
For this reason, he calls the current battle in Iraq “The Big One.”
Is that really what’s at stake for our enemies in Iraq? Are they really fighting to maintain corrupt, ineffective, intolerant political systems in their countries?
If he’s right, then our battle to create an open democracy in Iraq is not only for our own good, but for the good of all Arab people. If he’s right, then our enemies are acting for bad ends. Friedman’s POV implies that we shouldn’t hope to win our enemies over by being more tolerant. They’re fighting us precisely to maintain intolerance.
I agree with Friedman. If we can establish a western-style democracy in Iraq (a big If), I think it will lead to dramatically improved governments throughout the entire middle east region. Once Arabs in other countries see the example of a successful Iraq, they won’t stand for the kind of dreadful governance that currentlyexists in most of their countries.
BTW Friedman’s article criticizes Bush for not pursuing this goal vigorously enough. It doesn’t criticize others who don’t even share Bush’s goal. I’d like to stay away from the finger-pointing, and just debate whether Friedman’s view of the Iraq situation is the right way to look at things.
No, that’s not why they’re fighting at this point. Some are fighting at this time due to their connection with the former state as an attempt to reestrablish a Baathist-esque state. Some are Islamicists, attempting to “expel the infidels” and create an Islamic state. Finally, a growing number are just frustrated with the utter chaos that is Iraq right now, and want the Westerners out, feeling (correctly) that this is our fault, and thinking (incorrectly) things will improve if we leave.
None of this is because they PURPOSELY want a corrupt autocracy or whatever. They’re just fighting for specific ideals, or against the United States.
Oh yes… That is of course then the reason why so many intellectuals in these countries have so much trouble in being what they are: intellectuals = people who can reason and thus form some little remote danger to a government that doesn’t want people to have time to reason and come up with some weird ideas.
Completely logical thinking of the gifted journalist. I believe he even believes himself that he can reason.
Then he goes further with some US rethorics.
Actually: About every normally reasoning person outside the USA (and also inside the USA) interested a bit in the issue, knows extremely well that it is about oil. And people like me were very much aware of it years before others became aware of it.
Let’s look firther at his Great News:
“Helped by the UN”?
??
Does this person lives in a cave somewhere on a remote spot with no contact to the outside world?
Then he goes on with his rant about the good things the US comes to bring to the poor liberated Iraqis (That thousands of them are very deadly liberated he prefers not to know or consider. They are to be ignored completely uncounted neglected “collateral dammage”) and his optimistic pink couloured description of some religious and ethnical differences in Iraq gives further indication of his Enlightened Mind.
And of course he must refer to the Ba’ath party as the Source of All Evil. You can’t be American and not use that rethoric accusing other nations to completely overlook that fact. Only the US is the Beaken of Freedom and Enlightment. You can’t do with anything lesss writng for American audience.
Now we go further in our discovery of his clear insight in the country and region:
Speaking of demented visions…
And as further sign of his brightness he states that the Iraqis themselves need desperately the criminal invasion and the slaughtering by the “You ain’t seen nothing yet” criminal cowardly “Shock and Awe”… in order to feel alive.
Right. Extremely logical.
I can already hear the conversations:
Iraqi to US’er: Where do I have to knock on the door for some bombs on my house mister?
Us’er: Why do you need some bombs on our house?
Iraqi: Because you see, without them I can’t be a demented lunatic. Please come and drop them because back in the USA some demented journalist is waiting to write a column about me.
OK. The bombs were dropped and the journalist writes his column… let’s explore it further:
Now he goes on about a supposed conversation he had in Bagdad with a person he describes as a professor in literature who according to him has spend his lifetime in studying the interactions between East and West.
The prof:
That is something the Americans could take a lesson from.
You can hardly argue that one since there was such a cruel embargo put upon the lives of the Iraqis that even finding decent food was the work of a lifetime.
The rest of the interview he claims he has taken from an Iraqy professor talks about the US penetrating the Iraqy culture and that it can have some advantages, but that it can have disadvantages as well. You don’t see the man declaring that he wants Iraq to be turned into a US colony.
Yet it is clear that the author wants readers to gain that impression. As he proceeds:
And then once again the glorification of the USA
People defending their nation against invaders are terrrorists. That is an absolutely normal way of seeing things. However there is one thing needed to come to this clear vision: you need to be an American columnist.
And as he claims they must also be coming “from the outside”… and that has nothing to do with the US colonizing a nation but evertyhing with them wanting to be there because they are demented lunatics wanting to implement Taliban style governing in a country they aren’t even citizens.
OK, where is my coat and not to forget: my rusty kalashnikov. I’m going for the adventure in Iraq. After all: Taliban style has an advantage: I can finally rule my wives instead of being ruled by them. If I can set up that experiment in Iraq, why shouldn’t it in a sort of immediate shockwave travel all over the MENA region right into my own department? Logical thinking is all I need. I’m off. Bye…
Let’s however first further explore the columnist:
He finishes with attacking very dramatically the US president and government. Probably that is part of his usual style and it gives of course the advantage that readers will take his own rants about a country and region he has not the slightest idea about extremely serious.
Yes, the world need jokes now and then.
Now take my comments here above as a joke… Yet that doesn’t change the fact that they can’t even remotely come near to what this person thinks he has to say.
Well I read Friedman’s piece. Not to put to fine a point on it the man is an idiot engaged in his usual shifting rationalisations for a war that he has tied his colours to from the outset. I note he claims “they don’t believe their own propaganda”. To anyone other then the most bone-headed apologist such as him the evidence is that these militants flocking to Iraq do believe it and in fact believe it absolutely, so much so that they are prepared to die for it, to fly an aircraft into a skyscraper or to drive an explosive-packed truck into a building. People determined to die for a cause aren’t just going through the motions, they believe and they are in it for keeps. Whatever we think of their religion or politics its just crass intellectual dishonesty to deny their sincerity.
Why is that when islamic fundamentalists flocked to Afghanistan to drive out one hated invader. the Soviet Union, they were apparently sincere committed freedom fighters and wonderful guys, and when the same people do the same thing to drive out yet another hated invader, this time in Iraq, they are now apparently two-faced? Whether its dialectical materialism or capitalist democracy its the same to them, a bunch of arrogant meddling foreigners out to destroy their world. And from their perspective that is what we are trying to do isnt it? Break down their world, and remake it as we see fit? Isnt that really what ‘remaking the Middle East’ means? By crikey sometimes I think we wont be happy til there is porn on billboards in Mecca, a liquorstore on every corner, and til the Arabs have the right to form democratic governments that do only what we tell them to.
Lets be clear about this. We the westerners are the hypocrites here. They are consistent and if it had been say the Chinese that were the aggressors rather then us, we’d still be whooping and hollering and singing these fanatics’ praises just like we did when we paid for them to blow up Russians.
They do not fight us because they hate our ways, They fight us because we have repeatedly invaded muslim countries and by our own public admissions are intent on ‘remaking the region’ to our own satisfaction. We are now reaping the logical, obvious and predicted consequences of our silly half-baked invasion. Twist as Friedman may, the reality is the honey-coating has now come off George Bush’s shit-sandwich and we no longer like the taste.
Whoa, there! You have exceeded your monthly moral relativism allotment in that one statement.
The United States of America is a Good country. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not. As a matter of fact, they were Evil. Less so as time wore on, but evil still.
I would ask for a cite for a notable Western figure calling the mujahideen ‘wonderful guys’, but you and I know that such a cite doesn’t exist. They mujahideen were ‘usefull guys’, however. They were going to fight against the Soviets whether we helped them or not.
Have people already forgotten what a threat the USSR was?
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I think we (the Western world) will be happy when the Arab world stops exporting its problems to us, in the form of terrorism. Until then, we must act in our own best interests, which just so happen to coincide with what is best for your average Arab.
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No, ‘we the Westerners’ are not being hypocrites here. You are. You are all for the Arab terrorists doing what is in their own best interests, but shit a brick when it comes to the Western powers doing what is in their own best interests.
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No, they fight us because they are all hopped-up on Islamist propaganda.
From, um, your perspective. From others, probably less so. Think of certain places in Latin America, for example and what happened there. The USSR certainly weren’t nice, but we can hardly unabashedly proclaim moral superiority like you so blithely do.
Uh-huh. You have yet to give a good reason that the rebels in Afghanistan are somehow better than the rebels in Iraq, except that it’s us instead of the Soviet Union there. That difference alone is NOT going to be enough, especially from there perspective.
Of course not. That doesn’t somehow make our own actions sancosanct.
Uh-huh. You have yet to give a good reason that the rebels in Afghanistan are somehow better than the rebels in Iraq, except that it’s us instead of the Soviet Union there. That difference alone is NOT going to be enough, especially from there perspective.
I think the Arabian world will be happy when we stop exporting our ideals of what we think they should do, and demand they do it. I bet when that happens, the terrorism will go down dramatically, at least against us.
Are the terrorists good people, or justified in what they’re doing? No. But this certainly does not mean that they are completely unprovoked in their dislike of the United States. Seeing what we imported into Iraq, it isn’t difficult to understand why.
Um, how exactly? We aren’t really doing something in ANYBODY’S interest right now. So far we’re hemhorraging money into two countries progressively getting worse, making everyone mad at us, increasing anti-western sentiment everywhere, and doing a pathetic job of reconstruction! This freaking course benefits nobody. If we want to actually act in SOMEONE’S interests, we need to start seriously reexamining these reconstruction strategies, and start pumping some serious money into them, and putting aside political pressures and idealogy when decided what will work best. Otherwise we’re not even getting oil out of this mess.
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I have yet to see that what the United States has done so far is at all in their own best interests. And were you not taking a moralist standpoint earlier?
I do not the poster is for what the Arabs are currently doing, he (or she) is just trying to find some reason BEHIND what they’re doing beyond “they’re bad”.
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This is just heartbreaking. Are you saying that Americans supported the war in Iraq in a cool levelheaded rational cost-benefit analysis, not swayed the least by media portrayals or what politicians said?
And are you saying that it’s all Islamist propaganda what a mess our reconstruction is at this point? And that they all have the same idealogy and reasons behind their actions?
Let’s give a little list of what the USA is very good in:
The USA is good in terrorism executed by their state supported terrorist organisation CIA.
Good in spending US citizens tax money in development, fabrication and use of the most evil deadly weapons the world has ever seen.
Good in the most lunatic arrogance the world witnesses.
Good in the greatest hypocrisy the world witnesses.
Good in the lunatic belief that they can “reshape” countries, regions, the whole world into what they would like it to be.
Good in the lunaticism that makes the above described belief possible to pop up in a persons mind in the first place.
Good in thinking they own all resources of the world: natural resources, human capital, you name it: the USA covets it all.
Good in murdering thousands of people while invading a sovereign nation while violating the International Law.
What is the USA not good in:
Not good in coping with reactions to all their extreme goodness.
Ah The Great Myth that is now lost… The Great Trick to keep the population in fear. Now they have created the Myth of the Raghead Lunatic Arab. Which is good to make people buy duct tape under Orange Alert while applauding a mass murdering president and government.
Extgremely good in order to keep the weapon industry going and the population sheeply being driven into the illusion of Good Nation that doesn’t kill one single person on the globe. Because everyone knows: “colateral dammage” in no matter which nation if it is not the USA, **Is Worth IT. **
Ah, The Expert On What I Need: please can you give a more explicite description? Thank you.
And by the way: Thank you also for promoting exporting your problems in the form of State endorsed, State trained , State funded and State controlled terrorism and criminal murdering invasions to us.
Until this stops, I think we should act in our own interests.
In cas you understand this, which I’m not certain of: Thank you for noticing that Arabs also can think and also have interests from which you have no clue since you think the USA owns the globe.
Now we come to the core of your nice declaration here:
Tell me, what are the “interests” of the USA in, let’s say: the MENA region?
Sorry? What do you “need” to “defend” there as if you are there on your own territory?
Care to elaborate a bit on the fundation of your incredible arrogance and self-righthous patronizing colonial disease?
Thank you.
Wrong. They do what they do because what the poster you attacked said. Because you know: despite the fact that I wouldn’t use some of his words: he is dead on with most parts of his analyzing.
Salaam.
Aldebaran.
Arab desperately in need of you in order to gain knowledge about what is in his best interest.
In your dreams, that is.
Some were, some were not. Irrelevant. I really didn’t care what the reason d’jour was for invading Iraq; I just know that we should have done so since '91.
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Not only that, but that Islamist propaganda is at the root of the Middle East’s problems. From Palestinians thinking that Bin Laden is the world’s greatest leader, to some wickedly misguided Iraqis launching attacks on the very powers that are trying to help them.
You can lay these problems, and more, at the feet of the Islamists (markedly different from generic ‘Muslims’, mind you) and their propaganda.
Brutus , rogue states launch aggressive wars in defiance of international law, the UN charter and world opinion, ‘good’ ones do not. But lets sum up. George Bush’s War has fractured NATO, caused colossal and perhaps irreversible damage to the UN, squandered post-S11 goodwill towards the US and replaced it with global contempt, given renewed impetus and recruits to terrorist causes and done all of this on the basis of fabricated threats and deliberate deceit. Its pre-war planning was an ideologically driven farce, and its post-war management a penny-pinching shambles. Even leaving aside the dead and those still to die, its legacy is divided nations and a distrust of leaders and global institutions. That is not acting in western interests, that is incompetence and if nothing else George Bush is incompetent. When I see a competent plan that actually serves western interests then I will support it. A good start would be less arrogant chestbeating, and a good premise would be that wacking a hornet’s nest with a stick and then being surprised when you get stung isn’t smart.
As for a cite about the afghan freedom fighters being apparently wonderful guys that’s not a literal quote but an overall impression. Perhaps you weren’t around in the 1980s but I was and the afghan resistance got drooling press in the west especially in the US. I still have at home some fading copies of Soldier of Fortune magazine from that period (hey I was a strange teenager) and you would think they were the founding fathers from the coverage they got in that rag. For more mainstream press coverage you may want to look here:
trying might be the right word as these powers are obviously unable to help the Iraqis - actually they have not the slightest idea what to do. Neither did they have any plan for post-war iraq when they started the whole mess.
Then again I’m not sure, they are trying to help anyone - apart from their own interests!
A part of the NYT piece that December did not quote:
So in this piece of quiet Iraq, an American soldier has been killed, there is rioting and the local clerics are calling for resistance and the establishment of a theocracy.
Sort of changes the picture when the above extract and Squink’s above are added.
I had nothing against Friedman until this Iraq debacle; two of his books (*From Beirut to Jerusalem[/]i and The Lexus and the Olive Tree) are sitting on my shelf right now.
I will say, though, he is at his best when he is a) telling war stories of his career, or b) tossing around semi-abstract ideas, without any particular goal in mind. As a policymaker, he would suck. I’m glad he’s just sitting on the sidelines, pontificating.
And oh, Brutus? Could your initial post in this thread have been any more simplistic? “We - Good. They - Evil.” Do you realize you sound like the political equivalent of Tarzan?
Friedman’s article also depicted what he called “the big one” as a battle between good and evil. He says our enemies are fighting to “prevent a more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic government in Iraq.” Sound like a James Bond’s nemesis SMERSH, doesn’t it? Except, that Friedman’ POV ins;t fiction.
How would posters feel if America really is fighting an enemy so clearly wrong that we’re the good guys? Would you be happy to know that we’re on the side of righteousness? Would you be upset to have your world view be not applicable?