That’s a chilling statement.
Do you think peace in the Middle East requires the extermination of the indigenous people?
If we want to see it in our grandchildren’s lifetime, yes.
However, I do think that bringing both Syria and Iran to the table, giving up on our secularizing wet dream and encouraging Muslim democracies can bring a level of stability. We should start dealing with middle-eastern nations more as what they are, rather than what we wish them to be. That would make the middle-east More Peaceful, if not at peace.
If Israel disappeared tomorrow, the Middle East would still be a violent region due to the dozens of other conflicts there that have nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. And I’m pretty sure they’d fight those conflicts with F-16s not muskets as well.
The ME seems pretty peaceful to me – as peaceful as any other cluster of dictatorships and theocracies, anyway. The body counts of the Arab-Israeli conflict are pretty low and the results mostly insignificant. As long as the world continues to extract its oil and no terrorist faction acquires nuclear material I’m not seeing a problem. Let the kids hate America – it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
That’s the realpolitik answer, anyway. I’m sure the ME will reach a ‘peaceful’ ‘secular’ state like the West someday, but it’ll be in a world that isn’t recognizable to us, mostly because we’ll all have been dead and buried for a long, long time.
By the way, should we (both the U.S. and the entire West, really) be the ones asking this question as if there were no irony? It seems like the pot asking when the kettle will stop being black…
Funny how the poor Arabs complain when the Israeli army uses non-lethal rubber bullets.
When they start using non-lethal rubber bombs for their terrorist attacks, we might be on the road to peace…
Well if Bangor and Kittery can ever get over their deep resentment of Portland, and Augusta coul really begin to flex its political muscle, I could see some reconciliation, but I’m sure you’ll still always find small pockets of resistance in Caribou and T16 R09 township…
Oh, The ME,…
…Sorry. 
Did I blame Israel for the strife in the Middle East? Of course not. I am just saying that they are contributing to the problem rather than trying to ameliorate it.
Thanks.
- Honesty
- Honesty
In political reform movements, there’s a model called “The Bicycle”. If forward progess is not maintained, the process will fall over.
During the Oslo process, as Palestinians were given autonomy over parts of Gaza and the West Bank, there were relatively few terrorist attacks. They expected the process to continue until they had gotten back the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem, and the “right of return”.
I don’t blame the Israelis for refusing to concede the latter 2, but because they balked at removing any their settlments from the West Bank, the peace process collapsed.
I predict it will be discussed, under the guise of an “acceptable” euphamism, 5 to 10 years after the last Holocaust survivor in Israel dies.
It will come faster, if that last survivor was killed by terrorism. Big irony, there.
This–
–will likely be cited as precedent.
I know, what are those little kids thinking. They should be thankful that it only took their eye! It could’ve taken their whole brain if it was metal!
If you were 9 and an APC rode into the square where you were hanging out and they started shooting rubber bullets at you and your friends, you were knocked down and had the wind taken from you with welts all over your body how would you react? Would you say, “Wow I am so glad those bullets were only rubber?” or would you say something colorful about your level of affection for the Israelis?
Having a secular state in the middle-east is a wet dream. They don’t want it. They have an overwhelming majority of one religion and want to run their countries with that religion governing it. Why can’t we just allow that and do business with them? Let them govern themselves however they want domestically.
This month’s economist has an article about how Turkey might soon be faced with a choice between Democracy and Secularism. If an Islamist is elected President, the military might foment a coup.
I think that the Isamic nations are now about where Europe was in the 12th century. That’s about 11 or 1200 years after the founding of the Roman church. Things didn’t improve until in the 18th or 19th century when the political power of the church was broken.
So hang on. We’ve got another 6 to 700 years or so of this nonsense.
The political Power of the Church was broken by Charles V in 1525.
Sort of a bad example though, because there isn’t a unified Islamic bureaucracy akin to Holy Mother Church.
I think expecting Islam to secularize is an arrogant western conceit. I do not think that they will follow the same pattern that Europe did just because Europe did it that way.
Honesty and mswas, I agree that Israel is not a perfect country. But I look at what’s been happening and what is happening, and what I see is that everything Israel has ever done wrong was done to them first and much worse. So the Palestinians and their supporters need to take at least as much responsibility as the Israelis and offer at least as much amends and concessions. (And I mean real concessions, not just issues that have been rendered moot by the Israelis rendering the Palestinians incapable of doing them.)
Well, we can and will do business with them and I agree, they should have their government set up the way the majority of the population wishes to see it. However, I think we can all agree that a secular democracy (supported by the will of the population) would be the best end goal, even if it has no chance of happening for a really long time.
Really? When was that, exactly?
Looking only at the Israel/Palestine mess for a moment, peace will come to that particular part of the ME when there is a stable and economically viable Palestinian state. Basic prerequisites for that are that Israel evacuate most of the territory captured in 1967 (the “Occupied Territories”) and that the Palestianian majority accept the existence of Israel and unconditionally renounce terrorism, which includes actively working to capture and neutralize the minority which will not do these things.
At the current time, there is little evidence that either side is really interested in doing what it has to do. I would suggest that what those of us outside the ME can do is resist the urge to keep arguing that the party we sympathize with is less bad than the other, and therefore is really good. We need to stop accepting one side’s refusal to do the right thing as an excuse for the other side to do so. We need to use whatever influence we have to encourage the parties to act responsibly (In the US, this means encouraging our government to adopt a less one-sidedly pro-Israeli position and be prepared to adopt meaningful cuts in aid to Israel if settlement expansion is not stopped and reversed).
On a more abstract level, we need to encourage both sides to view the other as human being with legitimate fears, needs, and grievances, and not as faceless automatons governed by irrational hatred. Modeling this attitude ourselves is the best place to start.
(going from memory here) I believe that in the 90’s the Israeli’s offered to give up something like 95% of the OT’s to the Palestinian’s in return for a formal acceptance of the state of Israel an formally renouncing any and all terrorism against Israel…and the Palestinian’s turned it down. I don’t remember the specifics, but I know its been on the table and its always been the Palestinian’s who have shot themselves in the dick…repeatedly. Had they (and more importantly their friendly Arab neighbors) accepted the original UN partitioning they would have a state today.
-XT
Arrogant or not, I believe that individual freedom isn’t possible under a government in which religious dogma determines the rules for all. I don’t think a European style representative government is a requirement but a separation of church and state is. I think recent trends in Turkey, if continued, will demonstrate that for all to see.
There might not be a unified bureaucracy like that of the Roman Church, but there appears to be a unified idea, in the will of Allah, as expressed by his earthly, self identified representatives, determines all.
And no, the European model isn’t the only possible one, but it did work and why reinvent the wheel?
As for the 1525 date, surely you aren’t saying that one person broke the political power of the Church in one stroke, for all, and for all time.