I would expect on purely rational grounds that Iran is working flat out to obtain the bomb for purely rational self-defense reasons.
Several of their neighbors have nuclear capacity, it has been clear that if you are not on the Bush Administration’s good side, a nuclear capacity is a nice little deterrent against Rumsfeldian adventurism… It seems likely they will be able to cherry pick some Iraqi scientists in the near term.
My guess on an economic-political level is that Iran will obtain nuclear capacity.
A war against Iran, if anything will be more disastrous than this one in political terms.
I might add, just as a piece of editorializing/speculation, if those bright boys in the State Department hadn’t seen fit to help orchestrate the overthrow of Mossadeq, we might never have seen the likes of Khomeini in power. I think Collounsbury is quite correct about letting societies dictate their own future and development. But Iran, a more sophisticated and internally stable country than most in the region at the time, was alrady moving in the direction of a liberal democracy, before it was crushed.
'course I could be wrong and hindsight is 20-20. But I still think it points out the potential danger of recklessly re-structuring from above.
I think that last aspect is not only the root of the lack of understanding by many in the US of the Iraqi, but also of most of the continental Europeans, who, unlike the British, almost all had foreign tanks roll through their streets, or at least in less recent history foreign troops march through, seizing property to quarter troops and stripping the locals of their sovereignty. It is precisely that experience, along with having one’s city reduced to rubble time and again, that, whether experienced directly or inherited and witnessed through the traces left in the shape and architecture of the city, fires a lot of the popular opposition to the war.
Being stripped of self-determination, whether real or perceived, is the ultimate offense to national honor, because it reduces the nation to an appendix of another (or a number of others). National consciousness does not have to run deep to oppose such an act, and for that reason, you can see Iraqi expats stream back to Iraq, rather willing to put up with Saddam a bit longer than seeing their family ruled by a non-Iraqi. For that reason, you see Shiites state that Saddam is theirs to topple and the US should have no part in it. And for that reason, USAID giving out contracts to US companies for the reconstruction effort, and the US government stating that the reconstruction will be paid for by the Iraqis only adds to the insult. Ironically enough, it’s the Brits with their history of reducing Iraq to an appendix of their nation which steer against such efforts. I leave to people in the area to report whether that will help their image in the eyes of the locals.
Well, I’m no expert and I can’t give a definitive answer to that question because it still leaves the question of proper motivation for the war open. I’d still need convincing.
But I will say that I would not be fundamentally opposed to removing Saddam Hussein under certain circumstances. For example a rock-solid link with terrorists that were striking the U.S. that was sufficiently iron-clad as to gather the support of much of the world.
Under those circumstances, if the diplomacy, pre-, during, and post-war was properly handled, I’d be in favor, yes.
I was in favor of the Afghanistan intervention, for example ( and I though Bush was doing okay at the time ).
Or I may add if the CIA had not thought the Baath were a better choice than the Communists… we might not have Sadaam.
However, at least the Baath issue was understandable in the 1960s, from a political choice perspective. The real question may be, with better information could better choices be made? I think so.
Agreed, it’s not all bad news necessarily – but in terms of actual progress it seems to me that the net sum is offset by the overall retrograde motion displayed by almost every Islamist setting. Look at Iran as it used to be, then look at the product that the devolutionaries tried and are still trying to force upon it: open versus closed, liberal versus restrictive, fairly tolerant versus rabidly fundamentalist. It is, IMO, a problem common to most solidly conservative approaches of most if not all cultures (and I consider Islamism a form of conservatism in almost all its occurrences).
It’s true that the Baywatch effect is not, in itself, transformative, but it can probably assist change if the conditions are right. I don’t put much stock in the effect myself, but I did mention the importance of agents more homegrown (or at least closer in origin) to the culture in question, i.e. the spate of young and attractive pop stars (actresses etc.) the Middle East has been producing, some of them with rather revolutionary tendencies. I refer to the women here, whose importance as role models or simply as women that all can look up to is relevant given the relative lack of prominent female figures in the ME – a lack that indirectly reinforces cultures of repression.
The effect of various cultural influences overall is a cumulative one predominant among the younger generations as Truth Seeker pointed out (though I’m not sure I agree with his conclusion). These influences are spread via a variety of media in a scale unprecedented – particularly with the spread of satellite TV and Internet access, both of which are still growing. Politically speaking, the impetus resulting from these extra-cultural influences may be weak but it does exist, it is fairly constant, and it is part of a complex mosaic of influences (much stronger influences, unfortunately, include the execrable diplomatic idiocies of Bush over the last two years, which have poisoned attitudes across the region as little else ever has).
I think we’re in fairly murky territory here. I agree with the above statement, except that I would avoid the use of the word “only”. There is no doubt that, when it comes to instituting change in a society, internal vicissitudes are the most relevant, deep, and durable of all. Extraneous cultural influences, however, may be ideally suited to establishing some common ground among their audiences, paving the way for everything from interest to acceptance and understanding (not that this happens in every case by any means). Also, in many cases indigenous change is a long, long time coming owing to multiple factors, including repression by the ruling elite as we see, e.g., especially in Saudi Arabia over a broad set of issues.
In the case of the latter, a few weeks ago I was fascinated to see some Saudi girls on TV talking dreamily about the first lady of Qatar, the highly elegant and poised Sheikha Mozah Nasser Al Misnad. Likewise it’s fascinating to see and hear the impressions of Arabs exposed to al-Jazeera’s coverage, which is so unlike the state-run media of most ME states because it actually airs vigorous debate, the views of dissenters, etc.
The above two examples don’t deserve the appellation of “Baywatch Effect” by any means, but the concept is similar at least in theory: exogenous concepts conveyed to the population of a state through a variety of media, and obviously appealing to a sizeable enough group to make an impact. An important contributor to stimulating (rather than imposing) change, I maintain.
Very clever! I suppose though, one could argue the administration does not believe they are increasing terrorist ranks or, even if they are, they are reducing the number of WMD available to them.
And OliverH that is an interesting point. Within living memory, the American experience of war is for the most part very different from the European. Americans usually play the role of liberators, not defenders or victims. I suppose there are some different emotions at work when it is your home and family in the battleground.
I agree with Collounsbury, Boo Boo Foo. We have a similar philosophy to Australia of “leaving your conflicts at the door” with varying degrees of success. Sometimes second generation Canadians will even joke about these things with their old ethnic rivals. But, it is much easier for this to occur when you can be separated from the place of conflict. The world becomes larger and old emnities begin to look small and provincial.
I have some counter obs to Truth and Abe but I am afraid I have to make a trip so may be away for several days. Please keep up, and I will catch up ASAP.
Two observations I want to throw in this discussion.
After the fall of the wall and East Germany was re-united with West Germany, for a while there was a feeling that the oppressors had been defeated and the dictator was gone. Very quickly reality caught up with every German. Fact is that almost all dictatorships are run almost like a family business. The leadership at the core is a small group of people and the tendency is to believe that once that core group is removed everything can and will change. East Germany shows that is not the case.
Processes, personal relationships on the lowest level (low as in local), personal rivalries, and memories stay in place for a long time. It is disingenious to believe that people that have, voluntarily or not, supported a regime can change their frame of minds overnight.
Fact is, that Germany is still digesting in a financial, behavioural, and philosophical way the fall of the wall. And that is with a sound financial and economical base, as well as with a sound educational base. People in Germany will tell you that the reunification process will take at least one full generation.
Imagine how diffcult this is for a ‘underdeveloped’ nation (please bare with me using this term, I use it in the most positive fashion).
Secondly, I spent much time growing up in Latin America. I can very much relate and appreciate the reaction of the Arab world to the US activities. I can also see many direct similarities between the two areas of the world, Latin America and Middle East.
For better or worse, Being in LA I had come to the conclusion that there are absolutely no quick fixes to: the economic situation, the hate of the ‘gringo’, the dichotomy of tribes and rural live and the attraction to the ‘industrial’ way of living. The reasons for LA to be in the situation are long and relate to many factors, from Catholism and the continued mission work of Christians to exploitation of the masses by few locals.
To make a long story short, I came to the conclusion that help from the outside can never be deliverd as such. It has to come in small doses, always appearing that it came from the inside. Any dramatic involvement in LA always had a direct negative effect.
Sometimes, during high levels of frustration, I thought: Why don’t all foreigners (including me) leave and leave it to the locals to work it out?
Unfortunately, this is not done easily because the current problems in these nations have their origin in our involvement int he first place.
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It’s true that the infamous 100 families had a lock on the levers of power in Iran but I don’t think you can really identify them all that closely with the Iranian expat community. Certainly, many of the members of the 100 families left Iran immediately after the revolution, but they still made up a relatively small fraction of the Iranian diaspora. Many Iranians living abroad do so out of economic rather than political dissatisifaction. My understanding is that there is now even a sort of reverse baby boom mini immigration surge developing in the United States. A number of Iranians married other Iranians while attending graduate school in the U.S. They had children and returned to Iran. Some of these children are now, in their turn, returning to the U.S. to attend graduate school. Since they are American citizens, they are sponsoring their parents, now in their forties and fifties, for green cards.
It’s hard to overestimate the number of Iranian students who studied abroad. In 1979 alone, there were about 50,000 Iranian university students just in the United States. Shariati himself studied in France in the early 1960s. As part of his modernization drive, the Shah really pushed education abroad and offered a number of incentives, including government scholarships and preferential foreign exchange rates.
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True, to an extent. One extremely big difference between Iran and much of the rest of the middle east is that Iran is a proper country with a proper history and culture that goes back thousands of years. Regardless of their ethnicity, Iranians are able to think of themselves as Iranians. Even Islam yields somewhat to Persian iconography. This gives the average Iranian a certain self-confidence when dealing with the outside world and an expectation that Iran will be on the be a player in world culture.
One of the avowed goals of the revolution was to turn back the cultural clock. This has, of course, been spectaculary unsuccesful. One reason is that Iran, as noted above, has a long tradition of involvement with the world at large. But another reason is that too many Iranians have subscriptions to the forbidden fruit of the month club in the form of exposure to western education and westernized role models. They are familiar with western culture, they see that it works, they know how it works, and they see no reason that they can’t make it work in Iran.
So yes, it’s true that Iran was a “westernized” culture before the revolution and that its present state is the result of a long historical evolution. But it acquired its western bias (if you can really call it that) in large part because it has ongoing, vibrant ties with the west. These ties are no accident but the result of a long-term government policy of encouraging these cultural ties from the ground up.
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Ah yes, the Prime Directive. I can’t say I agree. While it shouldn’t be done lightly, sometimes it needs to be done. The planet is just too small to let some societies stew in their own juices. As attractive as it would be to build a big wall around, say, the Balkans and refuse to open the gate until the noise stops, we can’t really afford to do that.
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Perhaps not. But I suspect Sadaam would have flourished just as well under a communist regime. He’s always had an eye for the main chance.
Well, I admit I am coming from an area of educational bias - My professor of Islamic history was one of the above university students and he has ( or had ) a rather low opinion of a sizeable segment of the Iranian ex-pat community. I believe ‘mental masturbators’ was the preferred term ;). He’s from a secular, middle-class family of professionals from Teheran and his comments were referring to what might loosely be called the ‘pro-Shah’ folks, which at least by his description describes a not inconsiderable section of ex-pats in the U.S. ( of course that may reflect his own age bias and not refer to the younger, naturalized generations ). Remember a majority ( by no means all ) of those studying abroad would have been from the moneyied class that could most easily afford it and that the phrase “100 families” is a misnomer. More like extended clans. The old royal family of the Qajars alone numbers in the multiple thousands.
However I don’t want to oversell that argument. I have no doubt you are correct in part. I just thought you were overselling by just a bit the ex-pat influence vs. pre-existing tendencies towards modernism in Iran. A difference in degree, not kind :).
Well, I don’t want to oversell this either ;). My comment wasn’t meant to be so bald. Like I said, I’m not an isolationist. Intervention has its place, but in terms of societal re-structuring the preferred schema, when at all appropriate, should be as organic to that society as possible.
Oh for sure Balduran! Inarguably you’re correct. And further, Collounsbury was also correct to make his comments regarding my post… and I paraphrase here… “That old enemies can live peacefully in new surrounds is an irrelevant observation because there’s no way we’re gonna remove 250 million odd people out of the Middle East…”
And I agree totally on that… and yet… our observations are worthy - very worthy nonetheless. Both the Canadian and Australian immigration experience shows conclusively that people can change, if their circumstances change. Unfortunately, my last question in that post got a bit lost… so I’ll offer it once more for Coll’s edification…
Ok, I’ll gladly concede that I’ve possibly overemphasised the word “education” in my posts thus far. May I ask instead that we intersperse the word “worldliness” instead? My point being… when you’re in the thick of a shitfight, it seems as though the dust goes on forever - but if you can finally step outside the picture and see things in perspective, the things which USED to be so incredibly important tend to diminish somewhat…
And that’s what I’m getting at… the Middle East strikes me as being a region which truly desires to hamper the ability of it’s citizens (in many cases, but by no means all cases) to be “worldly”. I bet you a squillion dollars that if just 25% of the Arab World had full and unfettered access to a messageboard like this one, then things would change drastically in just 5 years.
As much as Collounsbury would have us believe that the current disconnect between the Arab World and the Western World is the West’s fault primarily, I would argue the exact opposite. My understanding is that less than 10% of the world’s population in 2003 has access to a telephone - which by extension means that even fewer people have access to quality messageboards such as the Straight Dope Message Board. But this trend is obviously not the case in the Western World. We here in the West have almost unlimited access to travel and to mingle and to communicate with one another.
I would argue that the disconnect is PRIMARILY due to the Arab World’s poor efforts in opening their societies to the rest of the globe. It reminds me of my travels through Iron Block countries in the late 1970’s - I would speak to folks in Hungary or East Germany or Yugoslavia and their answers regarding their beliefs as to how things “were” in America (and ipso facto the entire Western World) were so astonsishingly skewered. This convinced me for eternity that when it comes to mutual misconceptions, the side with with the manipulated communications base is ALWAYS the side with the poorer understanding.
This MB has been here for four years. It was on AOL for several years before that. And, despite our justifiable pride in maintaining some semblance of thought around here, we are in no way unique on the internet.
Have you seen a noticeable upsurge in worldliness among America’s youth? (Or even America’s internet community?)
Last Minday, MPR’s Marketplace had an interesting look at trade in that region. They did note the insularity and protectionism that the countries have exhibited, but also noted that few serious efforts have been launched from Europe, the U.S., or the Pacific Rim to encourage those countires to reconsider their positions: Scroll down to Muslim trade to listen to the article.
The wooly mammoth relaxed, and considered the situation. The black ooze of the tarpit bubbled around his ankles, inching slowly, slowly towards his knees. He was pleased with his decision. He had considered wading into the tar pit, but worried he might not get deep enough before he was stuck. After careful planning, he took a bold gamble. He went back about half a mile, got a running start and leapt nimbly into the tar, landing squarely on all four feet.
Certainly Tom, one of the things that I take pride in is that I can stand corrected when need be.
I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that the Straight Dope Message Board, in isolation, is capable of solving the world’s problems - not for a nanosecond. Nonetheless, I would contend that any means which can promote understanding between cultures - howsoever minimal - is better than none at all. And that’s my issue here… I would love nothing more right now than to have 20 or 30 Iraqi citizens - typical folks from all walks of life - buying into this thread. As fantastic as Collounsbury’s insights are, still, they are one step removed from what Iraqi citizens, or Middle East citizens in general, are actually thinking.
Just as an aside to your question earlier regarding “worldliness”, the “internet” and America’s youth… I would make the following observations… I’ve spent a lot of time on various music websites over the last few years and my belief is that teenagers, by default the world over, are dreadfully self absorbed creatures - regardless of where they come from. However! I’ve noted that in the narrow context of music alone, certainly American teenagers are totally open to absorbing the input of OTHER teenagers the world over regarding where quality music is coming from. THey might not trust us “old fogeys”, but they’ll trust each other - and from there - a common bond develops - and from there, a reciprocal respect develops which allows them to offer, and receive, opinions on things other than just music. The internet rocks on that score, no doubts about it.
I’m constantly impressed by the level of articulate insightfulness that teenagers the world over express on political opinions (amongst themselves) on music postboards. It’s just that as a matter of principle, they refuse to let us “old codgers” know about it! They’d rather let us live on in the myth that they haven’t progressed beyond MTV…
I fully agree with this statement. I am simply a bit more cynical regarding your belief that simply having the access to a board like this would actually change large portions of the populations.
Look at the any of the several threads in GD or the Pit in which mouth-foaming anti-Arab or anti-Muslim diatribes are launched. Then look at the registration dates and numbers of posts of some of the worst offenders. (I am not lodging this charge against every person who, for whatever reason, has come to the conclusion that the current war was necessary. I specifically refer to people who make idiotic proclamations about “all” Muslims or Arabs or whomever: Islam is at war wit’ America, Muslims eat their young and want to eat your young, as well–that sort of thing.)
Exposing more people to more information and more perspectives can only be a good thing, in the long run. It should not, however, be confused with a panacea that will cure all the world’s ills. The Protestants and Catholics of Northen Ireland and the Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim citizens of Sarajevo all had a pretty good understanding of the lives and beliefs of the people who were “not like” them; it did not prevent bloody murders and vendettas that went on for years.
Very good points there Tom - regarding Ireland and Sarajevo in particular. And yet, if you look at Serbia’s transformation in just the last 23 years it’s amazing. I was in Yugoslavia when Tito died. I’m of Austrian descent myself, but somehow my family and I were in Split when he died. It was the end of an era in terms of pure Communism, but there was no sign whatsoever that things were going to change in any way. It was still a totalitarian state - and troubles were brewing - even in 1980.
But now, just 23 years later, Serbia it would seem is forcefully committed to the 5 Golden Ideals of Stable Society as I like to refer to them - and this is just what, 4 years after the Kosovo era? So things can turn around mightily quickly if the circumstances are right - which harks back to my original question which I addressed to Collounsbury - what pivotal circumstances in the Middle East need to change first before such a diametric shift in ideals will manifest themselves?
And you know… I’ve been thinking about Ireland too… I mean, how, in the face of such stiff opposition, did peace ever break out in Ireland? And honestly, I purely put it down to this - a new generation arrived on the scene who were simply sick of the shit - on both sides. Maybe, that new generation first started soaking up information as eary as 1973 and then, 30 years later, enough of that generation were in positions of influence to actually make changes from the inside outwards. It’s not an unreasonable theory, for sure.
And analoguously, I rather think you’ve hit a good example actually Tom. There were aspects to Ireland, as there are aspects of the Middle East, which were simply beyond rational explantion to those of us who live peaceful prosperous lives. This gives me hope that things could change rather quickly in the Middle East - perhaps in 15 years we’ll see a real quantum shift if enough people want to make it happen.
Except that it’s widely recognised that the leadership of the Irish republican movement is more pro-peace than the grassroots, and the leadership is not of the “new generation”, while many of the grassroots are.
Your evidence does, however, not support your conclusion. Having the means is not equivalent to using them. Just because few people have access to message boards doesn’t mean those people are not aware what’s going on. Likewise, having access to message boards does not equate to using them, or if using them, taking some benefits out of them. Having the means to interact with other cultures does not mean someone actually does so, and it also doesn’t mean he accepts the other culture as another culture, rather than expecting the others to be like him. Americans surely have unlimited access to travel, but what percentage of them has ever been in as much as a different country, except during a stint in the armed forces?
I can’t say I agree. While it shouldn’t be done lightly, sometimes it needs to be done. The planet is just too small to let some societies stew in their own juices. As attractive as it would be to build a big wall around, say, the Balkans and refuse to open the gate until the noise stops, we can’t really afford to do that.
They’d rather let us live on in the myth that they haven’t progressed beyond MTV…