Well, I will question your last characterizations. Rife with double standards? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Arab societies, plural, have their own standards. Some perhaps are close to be objectively double standards, others perhaps not. I can say on a personal level that people unfamiliar with the Arab world as it lives can easily take away too negative a view. E.g. women, it is easy when describing the situation, perhaps as I have done, to give too negative a sense, for it is difficult to convey the nuances, and the degree to which the emphasis on ‘human relations’ over abstract ones can soften things here.
Second, in re the commitment to eduction, again, I think this is a gross overgeneralization, for the overall literacy rates are truly beaten down by a few truly poor performers (e.g. Yemen, Egypt which has regressed, Morocco due to the policies of the old King) which swamp good performers such as Jordan and the Gulf, and before sanctions, Iraq, to take a few examples I know well.
In general, desire for and value of education is held highly in the Arab world. Access and quality, however, is often, even usually quite poor.
It strikes me you have at best a naive understanding of the issues here.
What works in one culture almost always needs to be changed to work somewhere else. Even in the case of Europe, just to take an example, cultural habits in re work forms and organization can vary in important manners. My old employers, wonderful Swiss Bastards (I say that with fondness) carefully studied work processes when setting up new facilities, even in different regions of Europe.
You’ve posed the false presumption that somehow Western standards are cookie cutter and we’re excusing Islamo-Arab differences. I don’t wish to do that at all, what I do wish to do is to draw attention to the extreme naivete of some who’ve written about this region with the foolish unstated presumption that everyone thinks just like them.
It is more than a question of existing power arrangements, it is a question of finding ways of doing things that mesh with, can be adapted to local ways of doing business/understandings of relationships. Beating one’s head against a wall assuming everything should always be X way is pure foolishness. I am sure, for example, China Guy would make very similar observations about doing business, and by extension achieving cultural change / political change in his part of the world. Mutual adaptation.
The perception is exageratted. Even wildly so.
First, the elites in general are fairly Westernized and I do not see them as working to consciously impede change, per se. Some portions do, some portions do not.
Resistance to change comes as much from the bottom as the top, and it strikes me you are committing the Marxist error in your analysis above.
??? I like Iran and have great hopes for it, but this picture is wildly idealized. I don’t have the time to go into a discourse about that, but you need to check this impression against some hard realities.
Really? Now pray tell what do you know of this, in hard statistical terms, and please do take a look at the long term evolution of that literacy rate.
Innocence Lost.
It is very touching that you have such innocent faith in our own Western self-image.
I get the impression from your confused first paragraph that you seem to think I am making some ‘White Man’s Burden’ argument. Nothing is farther from the truth. I am laying out certain facts – uncomfortable perhaps for those stuck in theory and in vague and unrealistic understandings of other cultures. I am also not a hierarchist, who thinks somehow ‘democracy’ is at the top of an evolutionary ladder of government. Different situations require different responses, democracy is the best system for certain conditions, others it is a pretty shitty form of government, not even arising to the bon mot about being a terrible form of government except all others.
I fully see democratic institutions as possible and desirable in the Arab world, and in the developing world generally. I also have learned, through long, on the ground experience, that this fantasy common among those who have grown up with western Liberal thought, that peoples are just waiting to be free and take up liberal democracy is just that, a fantasy. A deceptive fantasy that has led people to abstract away from the reality that democracy is not waiting to spring full blown out of the head of Zeus, but if I may use my analogy again, a plant that requires certain kinds of conditions.
I argued above, and you can see if you read some of the cites and links, that in the developing world traditional ideas of legitimate authority and power are not often democratic, in general they are hierarchical and authoritarian – but also often include seeds of habits that can become democratic habits. Consultation, for example. Let me be clear, I do not regard the hierarchical and authoritarian ideas as mere atavisms, throw backs, signs of myopia or stupidity – that in fact is Lib displaying his incomprehension of the realities of the world.
Such structures are functional and useful in many kinds of situations, they did not grow up out of nowhere, and can be said to be useful in building a society out of fractured parts, or where insecurity reigns. Claiming that preferences for a strong leader, moderately authoritarian rule and similar things is “myopia” or “stupidity” merely reflects the myopia of the writer who has not dealt with the on the ground challenges of limited resources and fractured social institutions. They are in fact highly rational (if perhaps sometimes mistaken) responses. An examination of the history of failed democracies should be instructive on these points. Including those in the Arab world, because, yes Virginia, our American armies are not the first to claim to be bringing such at the point of a gun.
Intellectuals, cognizance are not the bloody issue, as I think I made clear. Rather, patriotism, nationalism, particularism and indigenous ideas what such fine little abstractions as “democracy” and “legitimate rule” actually mean.
See, if one decides to confront the cognitive dissonance, one can get something of a view of how this region actually works. That means not automatically presuming your standards and guidelines for reactions are like Iraqi ones.
Primo: I believe I was clear on two points: (a) popular understanding of “democracy” in the Arab world is filtered through their ideas of what constitutes ‘legitimacy’ – not yours. The idea of popular sovereignty, in the sense of the way in which Americans think of it, is fairly alien to the region. This does not indicate that Arabs are “incapable” of understanding democracy
And what makes you think I said Iraqis do not understand Sadaam’s failures? By the way, illiteracy rates are not bad in Iraq, although the post 1990 generation is not well-educated, Iraq has fairly widespread literacy. Programs that stemmed, drumroll, from Sadaam’s early years. More on this thought in a moment.
However, apportioning the blame for the situation does not necessarily fall in the manner in which you think it should fall. For all that many Iraqis blame Sadaam for Iraq’s current state, they also, equally or more so, blame the United States. You can spare me the argument that they should not, that it is Sadaam’s fault, etc. That is what most Iraqis, from up and down the social scale, that I have spoken with, indicate. The United States gets no small portion of the blame in their mind.
Further, of course, Iraqis recall with fondness the period from roughly 1960 to 1980 or even through 1990, when Sadaam, for all his brutality, built the country. And he did. One can draw direct and productive parallels to Stalin. Eva Luna might profitably help expand on how even today, with Stalin’s crimes well-known, more or less, many Russians still look at Stalin with respect, even those that hated him. A mixture of fear, hatred and pride always characterizes Iraqi comments (ex-the super political) on Sadaam. He’s a bastard, but he was/is their bastard, a guy who in many senses made Iraq out of nothing. National pride enters into people’s thoughts and reactions. Sadaam, in many respects, with the Baath party helped create the nationalism that exists in Iraq today, out of the confusion of tribes and ethnicities. An incomplete work that many fear will blow apart without someone like him. And they are right, without a strong central government, Iraq may very well blow apart.
So, if you lay aside the easy and uninformed presumptions about what Iraqis should think according to some comfortable Western world view, then one gets a complicated picture.
Aware of Sadaam getting rich? Perhaps, although again, the acceptance of some graft, of the leader taking and redistributing wealth via his networks runs deep in the Arab world. Old habits from yore that creep unconsciously into modern forms. This is nothing unique to the Arab world, the issues of patronage and the like crop up everywhere, they, in my opinion, are old and deep human habits. In the West, over a very long time indeed, we have built up institutions that channel and divert and even suppress primordial patronage instincts. Think Tammany Hall, Europeans can look to the long struggle to build the state, and in Europe it was often bloody as well.
So, once again, resentments may be there, but they are also mixed with a certain legitimacy for much of the population, so long as it’s not too much. Further, again, many Iraqis strongly believe that the Western powers and companies are robbing them more than Sadaam. Given the history of colonial exploitation, histories that are lively and real in the Arab world, this is not entirely irrational. So once more, your comments hoist themselves on the problem that you presume that events are passing through your lens of interpretation. They are not, they pass through the local lens, which is not myopic nor stupid. It is, however, very different.
Woo hoo. The Kurds, the despised minority. Yes, but again, Kurdish positions are somewhat unique. Kurds want their own state and want no part of an Iraqi nation. That is not the same as the Arab populations, and indeed plays directly into Sadaam’s hands. For however much the Shiites and the Sunnis may not love and even in the former case, hate Sadaam, they are attached to the idea of an Arab state, an Arab Iraqi state. The very fact everyone knows very well the Kurds want out is a threat to their (Arab) national aspirations. You can argue it should not be and so on, but if you want to understand the drivers and what frames opinion, you had bloody better well understand the local point of view.
You find it surprising because you have a naïve sense that somehow the manner in which Iraqis are looking at the situation matches yours. That they trust Anglo-American assurances on the matter of bringing democracy, that they believe that the Anglo-American forces are liberators. They do not.
They see Americans as potential new colonizers, who may be useful, maybe, in getting rid of Sadaam. Period. Now, if we are careful, this can be overcome, but it is a dangerous trap.
I listened to the NPR link provided. Funny, I vaguely know Chris Dickey. He’s well connected in the region, and although he does not speak Arabic very well, he’s built up relationships in the region, especially outside the little Westernized elites who so often purvey such distorted views to Western reporters.
I have not seen him since the start of the war, but I agree with his sentiments and his analysis, his comments on the reaction to the Iraqi expatriate community precisely match my observations.
Because both of you are naively trapped in a view that somehow Iraqis view things the way you do. They do not. And that is not “myopia” or stupidity, it is from a point of view shaped by local circumstances, histories and to be very frank, their far, far better understanding of the history of what “Liberators” coming from the West. Such naiveté bordering on gross incompetence and stupidity is what led this Administration into this fiasco.
See above, because they do not trust the English or the Americans, and based on the ** empirical ** evidence, they are right. This ain’t fucking Kansas, this is a hard neighborhood, which although it has major potential has deep fissures that will take time to heal, and must be healed in a long term manner.
Kaboul did, the North did. The south did not, and fighting continues. I direct readers to my predictions made that Fall regarding what would happen in Afghanistan. I note that my predictions were, to my recollection, almost 100% correct.
I wish to recommend this link – and may I add that Bowden’s book is brilliant in a manner the film is not. It brings out the Somali side of the war, and the quasi-nationalist reaction to the ham-handedness of the American military.
Another good article illustrating the issues.
And in regards to problems, nota bene, Afghanistan proves to be less and less clear as time goes on, despite the magical thinking of many of the uninformed have on this matter. Indeed speaking with my friends in IOM who have just come from Afghanistan, I heard nothing particularly encouraging about the areas outside of the city state of Kaboul:
And finally, this article on the dangerous situation where Anglo-American forces are seen as occupiers, not liberators, even if they are ridding people of the hated Sadaam:
Some of this is posing. Some is not. It reflects a situation far different than that which the Neo-Con clique that sold this war thought existed. Far, far different.
Very well, but I am not going to be kind either. People need to lose their illusions.
No, for they do not seem the issue in the terms you have framed this in.
In the Arab view, Israel started this, the Arabs were engaged in a long term war.
They would certainly dispute, sometimes with more factual support, sometimes with less, your characterization of the nature of the attacks (in fact I may add that Israel has engaged in ‘pre-emptive’ war etc.
On Israel, the general sense is one that Israel conducts total war on the Palestinians, such that there is no reason for Arabs to tie one hand behind their backs. However discussable, that is the view.
In regards to Kuwait: Shall we not refrain from lapping up propaganda? Primo, Kuwaiti reports themselves indicate it was an American missile gone astray. Looking around I found this NY Times article which repeats the same comments I saw on Arab TV: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29KUWA.html It hardly is likely that Iraq is deliberately targeting anything. They’re firing barely guided rockets with little ability to aim them. Second, of course, in terms of a lack of outrage the Kuwaitis are little loved in the region, period. One has but to see Arab films depicting real horrors inflicted by Kuwaitis on Arab guest workers, and the outrageous lies the Kuwaitis told in exaggerating real Iraqi military atrocities still rankles, above all as it was more the guest worker population that suffered than the Kuwaiti fat cats, guest workers who were expelled later for having the ‘wrong’ nationality.
In regards to human shields: again you assert as fact something which is unclear (I believe it is probably in part correct, but as likely to something that is being exaggerated as part of our own agitprop campaign). Insofar as there is almost zero credibility for US claims in this part of the world, fairly or unfairly, almost no Arabs believe our assertions.
Regardless, the answer is no. You can regard it as hypocrisy, but there is so much hypocrisy to go around that I believe the real point here is that in general Arab audiences have good reasons to discount American claims, in addition to the bad habit here to see everything in terms of plots and conspiracies. It takes time to unwind generations of poor information flow.
Yes, there is much talk of double standards, and as usual people are more sensitive to others double standards than to their own.
Is that not a bit of any empty question?
I think I have described the roots of Middle Eastern resentment here, there are many threads to this. Imperialism, sense of humiliation. Listen to Dickey’s interview. It is good. I agree with Dickey on almost all points. Listen to the whole thing carefully, he is giving an excellent reportage on local views at the least.
Precisely, which again has been my point all along. Those who have been pimping this idea of a democratic transformation, a positive domino effect, from this war had and have NO understanding of the socio-political dynamics here.
Well, the Palestinian issue must be addressed in an aggressive manner, and however much Israeli opinion may or may not like this, if we are to repair the larger issues, the West Bank settlements have to go. I have noted many times in the past, the Palestinians are positively obsessed by land. Indeed inheritance issues in the classic Arab world are even fraught with extreme conflict within families—so the idea I heard from an Israeli official that the Palestinians “will just have to” give up parts of the West Bank in my mind is a non-starter. Getting them to let go of the pre-1967 lands is the biggest step, but in my read, just about 100% of the population is willing to keep on fighting and dying for their last little scraps of land in the West Bank. Given the scanty benefits that come from getting a few more hectares (ex-ideological ones) for the Israelis, this is a small sacrifice on their part.
Now, of course this has to come with security guarantees, but even there it has to go both ways. I believe any neutral outsider could see that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were working entirely in good faith up to 2000, and I lay a great deal of blame on the Netanyahu government for poisoning the atmosphere.
It’s hard to regain lost trust, very hard. Of course this is a two way street, but clearly realistic goals need to be set and acted upon soon. The Bush plan that sets goals for 2005 is nothing but a disaster which will breed longer term resentment. Action needs to be soon and visible.
Your question literally makes no sense. No Arab believes that the claim the US is there to liberate Iraq is true. The open hypocrisy of such claims are part of the problem, for the very lie reinforces the idea that the Americans (a) are not to be trusted (b) there to impose colonial rule for their benefit and for the benefit of Israel, and to the detriment of the Arabs and what little self-respect and power they have.
Read the bloody arguments to date and do so more reflecting.
First, the beneficial effect is to at least have some fig leaf of respectability and thiqa in the region. It does no good to lose 100% of the Arabs, some small percentage do support the US, to turn them against us, and deepen dislike to real hatred makes things worse, not better. The same with our now tattered global reputation, the more we do to reinforce the idea that we are sparing our soldiers at the expense of Iraqi non-combatants, the more this war feeds a rising anti-Americanism and the more there will be negative consequences, including terrorism and lost lives. In short, sparing soldiers’ lives now at the expense of Iraqi civilians is deferring more violence and loss of life into the future, in perhaps less defendable circumstances.
Second, in terms of the post-war, the more believable our claims to have done our utmost in avoiding civilian deaths, the better in terms of stability and avoidance of a post-Sadaam insurrection against the occupation. In my mind, this is a serious risk – all the more so for the fact that after Sadaam’s fall you are likely to see celebrations and the like among the groups that opposed him, which is just as likely to lead the usual suspects in the West to jump to the conclusion that Western forces are being welcomed.
Third, in terms of anti-Americanism in Iraq, which is running high, it will be helpful to avoid generating further hatreds, mere dislike is manageable, hatred and the consideration of some clans that they have blood feuds with Americans for the deaths of their people will generate “post-War” incidents, resistance and guerrilla warfare (I am sure we will label it “terrorism” which will sell in the States but few other places). Everyone with a dead relative may be a potential resistance fighter, there is no need to generate more.
Fourth, in the near term the more death and destruction that is visited upon the civilians, the more Sadaam or at least the resistance to the invasion gets supporters and volunteers, thus again getting into a negative cycle.
The overwhelming superiority of American forces is well-known. The Administration harped upon this for months, and set up a set of expectations that perhaps are not achievable. However much comfortable Americans sitting at home shrug off the collateral damage as something that happens, it is clearly enraging people who see it possibly happening to themselves, and who have an almost Hollywoodesque vision of how American forces can fight ‘cleanly’ with our fancy gear, etc. Because of this, the expectation globally is that the US has an obligation to spare civilians, and if somehow we do not, then obviously it is because we don’t care.
This is not to make an argument that we should not fight wisely or that I desire to see high casualties on the American side, but only to reiterate that having framed the war in the manner we did, and with existing low credibility on a global basis, there is a strong political imperative to fight it in a certain way. And this is right and proper, we fight wars to achieve ** political goals **, military achievements in this day and age are only worth the political results they achieve.
There are poisonous conclusions that will find fertile grounds to breed radicalism and in general increase insecurity.
Now something of a personal aside. This past Saturday my housekeeper came to my door in tears. An Iraqi and a Shiite, I’ve long known she was bitterly opposed to an American intervention. We have conversed on that, in family and individually. Now with Basra, from whence her husband comes, surrounded and her own village / city about to be invaded, she was unbelievably upset. I sat through, contrary to my habit, a good hour lecture from her on the subject of the invasion. It adds little to what I have written here, other than perhaps a personal angle.
Among the points which strike me as important to understand is the degree of deep-seated resentment someone like this, with few if any reasons to love the regime, has towards the Anglo-American invasion. She literally was wishing death upon the “Coalition” soldiers. But most importantly the bitterness which the seizure of Iraqi assets to pay for reconstruction engendered. Symbolic of this Administration’s apparent complete tone-deafness, quite clearly these measures, in combination with statements that Iraqi oil will pay for reconstruction are feeding a sense among the Iraqis that they are being asked to pay for the very destruction they feel the Americans are visiting upon them in their name, but without their approval. It strikes me that once more my comments were spot on: among the requisite acts the USA has to take post-war is not to seem like a cheap-ass bully willing to break the furniture but unwilling to pay for it. This will only reinforce resentments, and breed resentment among those who do not already resent us. To be clear, the world is not black and white, and neither are resentments and dislike all of a piece – some are superficial and can be allayed with good will and even better, good actions. Others can not. Our present communications policy is driving us deeper and deeper in to the blackest realms of resentment, towards hatred.
I am well aware that no small number of Americans and perhaps others may respond that “they” already hate “us” – simplistic crap.
Certainly some Muslims and Arabs (including Christians mind you) do indeed hate “us” – although this is often Western governmental policies more than Westerners per se. It is rather more accurate to say of the majority that many resent rather than hate the West, for what they view as the injustices visited upon them by what can be fairly termed often hypocritical policies of preaching democracy but supporting repressive regimes when they play ball with us. Bitterness and resentment, however, are things which can be turned around, or they can deepen into hatred.
In my considered opinion a policy both protecting American interests and working intelligently to assuage ‘middle ground opinion’ such that resentment does not descend into hatred is eminently possible. A real Israel-Palestinian policy vigorously pursued and with some view to balance, a program in Iraq that does not aim to create an “Egypt on the Euphrates” but a truly viable Iraqi entity along the lines of my prior comments. Further, a real financial commitment by the world’s richest economy to assisting Iraq, without also engaging in petty, juvenile reprisals against those nations companies that thought this war is a grave error, would go a long way to assisting in this. This in addition sticking to a war plan that has tried to minimize as much as possible Iraqi non-combatant losses. We do not want to engage in Russian behaviour, and end up with Grozny and Tchetchenia.
No, not at all, my argument has been the manner of execution matters, and the mere fact a leader has committed atrocities obviously is not a sufficient condition, as we have happily supported such in the past, and indeed presently. The stink of hypocrisy should not be quite so obvious and strong if one wants to have a successful foreign policy.
Frankly the question does not make any sense. Perhaps you meant unilateralism, which more or less describes the policy to date.
However, in the absence of a solid international coalition with backing from the UN and/or some clear and substantial support from ‘first tier nations’ ex-the UK, which clearly does not obtain today, containment would have been the preferable option until a good case for war or some alternative muscular solution was mustered.
Otherwise we end up with the pious nonsense and clear hypocrisy of the current argument.
No, I clearly did not say that. I have laid out a number of policies and options, while clearly warning it is very easy to fuck this thing up even more than it is already fucked up. The Administration, and uninformed American public little prepared to understand the issues involved, has gotten itself into something of a corner, and unnecessarily so.
Much of the world condemns the present Bush Administration’s policies at present and the present war has provoked real anger against the US.
This was entirely unnecessary as but a modicum of more skill in execution (such as was done in re Afghanistan or better by James Baker with our first Gulf War).
That is a complete misreading of my comments to date.
It is not a matter of the pejorative “all they need and understand” it is a matter of historical and cultural expectations being radically different than yours.
Nothing in this war will result in the destruction of the USA, anyone who claims such is a yammering fool. Such claims by anti-war people are every bit as bad as the overselling of the war itself.
However, a real Pandora’s Box has been opened by a bunch of clowns who did not think through the issues very carefully.
I have made clear I do see ways out, but they require no small degree of skill to hedge ongoing damage to American interests in the short and medium terms. I will not bother to repeat what should be clear enough already.
Ignoring the pejorative phrasing, there is no matter of ‘waiting’ for the Middle East, North Africa or any other part of the developing world to become like us (the clear meaning I would suppose of ‘world level’). Rather it is a matter of proper policies, looking to both American interests (security and economic wise) and local views for a long term program.
Very well comrades.
It took me rather too long to run through this. I shall have to neglect this thread for a bit. I hope I have addressed enough points to be useful. I would ask that to the extent it is interesting that we keep this thread going, although I shall have to scale back my replies.
Let me confess that for all my briliance (this line for my “fans” who like to psychoanalyze me) this came from a brainstorming session here and I do not believe I was the originator.
Some of the people involved are well enough placed to pass the idea along, if the Bush Admin, should they decide to listen to expert advice from State.
We begin well, but I disagree with your conclusions.
Well, let me note that our communication strategy has to begin to speak to Arab modes of communication, and rhetorical styles, rather than our own. Our military officers… well they are not well versed in speaking in ways that are not terribly blunt and Western. Arab rhetoric abhors bluntness, when one is trying to be polite.
Clearly, in my mind, we desperately need to begin to communicate with the Arab world in its own style, not shouting at them. Rumsfeld is a clear example of a rhetorical style that I know many Americans love, but grates on foreigners nerves, esp. in this region.
And Christian.
A very fair assessment of the local view, which while itself not wholly fair to the West must be dealt with (and does indeed contain large kernels of truth).
Well, I think I have argued consistently that a policy responsive to the local situation and communicted in a manner that speaks to them (not to ourselves in the naive assumption everyone just a little American waiting to get out) would be terribly helpful.
Well the terrorism part makes no sense given Iraqis do not play a large role as of yet in the al-Qaeda type networks.
Pressure cooker, likely, but in many senses.
Belief is nice.
However the problem which poses, which I have been hammering at, is that assuming democratic institutions and norms will drop nicely into place, in situations where ideas about legitimacy and authority, and even the rules of the political game in terms of accomodating the loser and the outgroup are fundamentally different, well that to my mind and to my experience is dangerously naive.
Hopefully. I rather hate to have policies based on such, but for those going to reconstruct, at least they have flack jackets.
Yes, this is a hope, and it can be done, if done right. However, it can easily be done wrong, with an Iraq torn apart by desultory warfare and the like.
Finally on the benefits of a free society, I am not at all sure they are so apparent. The visions here of what Western society is are… fun house mirror visions. People like and dislike them. Freedom is desired in some areas, feared and disliked in others (e.g. the family, and social relations). No, they are not “too apparent” for they arenot all that apparent per se. Baywatch society is apprarent, but is it “free”?
I believe you are largely correct, but I wish to warn against having an exageratted idea of ‘free society’ in Iran or even the degree to which local understandings match what you might consider to be ‘free society.’
A process, I do not wish to be negative, I wish to caution against too idealized pictures.
Thanks for your responses to my post Collounsbury.
Much appreciated. I feel for you in some respects, in so far as this thread must make you feel as though you’re having a Question and Answer session with the entire world, and more than just a little bit of it wants to argue with you while you’re at it.
In my own defence, please note that I made a supreme effort to innately appreciate the individual stimulii and cultural influences which are at work in each country in the region, and in some instances, which are ALSO at work within each ethnic group within some of those countries. Which is why my post related more to the issues of literacy, cronyism, nepotism and de facto power arrangements rather than concentrating on the more obvious targets of “tribalism etc”.
With your blessing, I’ll wait until you’re ready for further inter-active posting again before continuing with my theories on “literacy rates and quality education” directly influencing a given society’s ability to be manipulated… I watched your posts come in over the last 3 hours and it’s obvious that they take a long time to write - given their quality and the enormous breadth of topics involved.
Please let me say that argument is good. If my argument is not convincing, then challenge it.
As I noted, I’m a bit short tempered to begin with, and in writing quickly I sometimes forge to polish off the edges. E.g. in re calculus, I thought I had removed a snarky comment in a long ass reply.
In any case, I also understand it is very difficult in a brief message to encapsulate the detials and vareity.
Collunsbury, thanks very much for this thread. I understand your time is critically valuable right now, and appreciate that you’ve put as much time and thought into this as you have.
I’m curious as to your take on Rumsfeld’s warnings to Syria and Iran. How will they be perceived in the region, and particularly by those two nations? What chace do you see of other nations getting involved in this war? Or, more specifically, how long do you think the war can go on before another nation gets involved?
Also, given the long history of animosity between Kurds and Iraqis, is our support of the Kurds in this conflict making it even less likely that the Iraqis will see us favorably?
This was posted by somebody I know on another board. It’s taken as a straight copy/paste. He was responding to someone named “foodbiz”, but it could just as easilly apply to anyone who thinks this war is an outrage.
How can anybody who knows what happens/happned in Iraq under Saddam’s rule think that it’s better to let it CONTINUE to happen than possibly risk inflaming public opinion afterwards? How can you possibly feel a carefully planned war targeting the leadership and executed to minimize vicilian casualities at the risk of our own soldiers’ lives in order to liberate these people from this hell is the greater of two evils?
May I suggest you read the thread in its entirety, rather than wasting my time with cheap outrage? I might also suggest looking into American support of regimes quite close in nastiness, and reflect on the issues raised in this thread in regards to long term blow back.
There is an international Arab media, e.g. al-Jazeera, which for all the simple-minded outrage I see here about its reporting, is in fact a fairly decent and free news outlet, ex.-Qatar coverage. It has its biases, but in many respects they are not that much worse than CNN. A bit, and they tend towards a Sky News level of sensationalism from time to time.
The new channels al-Arabiyah and Abu Dhabi seem to be doing a decent job.
Quite a lot, for those who have foreign langauge, satellite dishes are common and decoder piracy common.
However, people are really turning to al-Jazeera and its cousins, for they are frank, fairly free, and speak the right idiom.
There are, of course, the Arabic radio services of the Europeans that are fairly popular, and US Radio Sawa, which is popular for its music but I get the sense too obviously American biased to convince.
State medias, nah, no one even watches them anymore. The new ones, and al-Jazeera. Well their credibility has gone up immensely.
Blue Tin Cans is slang reference to the enormous blue armored trucks that Egyptian state security organs use.
Nothing like seeing one roll by with the hands of the damned sticking out from the barred windows high up on the trucks, and heavily armed police guarding the back door.
Rephrasing my last question (the edit button here doesn’t work, odd), I mean to say-what does America’s support of crappy regimes have to do with kicking out one of them and replacing with a democratic regime?
I cannot appreciate enough the time and effort you are investing in composing these long replies, Coll
Re: your reply to my post, I must confess to changing my mind after I wrote that. In a later post I wrote of how I was indeed beginning to understand why the fear that US/UK will control their destiny can cause deep mistrust of and resentment against the coalition forces and inspire Iraqi soldiers/paramilitary and even civilians to fight. In fact, you have espoused this idea often in this thread.
The Washington Post article you cited was interesting. It gave the impression that at least some Iraqi villagers believed in the idea that the entry of US/UK forces could improve their lives. It was after the treatment they received at their hands that they are considering fighting them.
Let me ask you something. What are the chances of a noble-intentioned grassroots movement, possibly leaderless in the initial stages, but acquiring a few natural leaders as it progresses, which seeks to seize the “opportunity” and use US/UK troops as “tools” to depose Saddam’s regime and take bulk of the political responsibility of a post-Saddam Iraq. You could think of this as mental masturbation but this could be the substantial change from within that Iraq needs. Of course, there ought to be at least a few well-intentioned leaders with enough passion, zeal, and public reach to get a movement of this scale rolling. Do you see this happening, at least on a smaller scale? What would happen if, say, you and like-minded people around you wish to make it happen?
Because they largely see Israel as the aggressor, ipso facto. This in part derives from the partly correct view that Israel was enabled or grew out of British colonial policy (given a sinister spin in Arab discourse) and that the US has used Israel as a spike in the “Arab homeland.”
One can critique the validity of some of these views, although they are not entirely devoid of truth, but they are what they are. In large part the wars are seen as one large war.
Reread the thread, I discussed this in some detial.