Mid East Madness-Heal Thyself, Islam

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HarrySchell

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More Middle East Madness
By Victor Davis Hanson

"The Palestinian people will never forgive the Hamas gangs for looting the home of the Palestinian people's great leader, Yasser Arafat." So Palestinian Authority spokesman Abdel Rahman recently exclaimed. "This crime will remain a stain of disgrace on the forehead of Hamas and its despicable gangs."

Looting? Crime? Despicable gangs?

Excuse me. For years, Palestinian Authority-sanctioned gangs shot and tortured dissidents, glorified suicide bombing against Israel and in general thwarted any hopes of various "peace processes."

Of course, this kind of behavior isn't limited to the Palestinian territories but is spread across the Middle East. The soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy in Iran is grotesque. Iraqis continue to discover innovative ways to extinguish each other. Syria assassinates democratic reformers in Lebanon. ABC News now reports that new teams of al-Qaida and Taliban suicide bombers have been ordered to the United States and Europe from Afghanistan.

Here's why much of the region is so unhinged - and it's not because of our policy in Palestine or our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

First, thanks to Western inventions and Chinese manufactured goods, Middle Easterners can now access the non-Muslim world cheaply and vicariously. To millions of Muslims, the planet appears - on the Internet, DVDs and satellite television - to be growing rich as most of their world stays poor.

Second, the Middle East either will not or cannot make the changes necessary to catch up with what they see in the rest of the world. Tribalism - loyalty only to kin rather than to society at large - impedes merit and thus progress. So does gender apartheid. Who knows how many would-be Margaret Thatchers or Sandra Day O'Connors remain veiled in the kitchen?

Religious fundamentalism translates into rote prayers in madrassas while those outside the Middle East master science and engineering. Without a transparent capitalist system - antithetical to both sharia (Muslim law) and state-run economies - initiative is never rewarded. Corruption is.

Meanwhile, mere discussion in much of the region of what is wrong can mean execution by a militia, government thug or religious vigilante.

So, Middle Easterners are left with the old frustration of wanting the good life of Western society but lacking either the ability or willingness to change the status quo to get it.

Instead, we get monotonous scapegoating. Blaming America or Israel - "Those sneaky Jews did it!" - has become a regional pastime.

And after the multifarious failures of Yasser Arafat, the Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and other corrupt autocrats, many have, predictably, retreated to fundamentalist extremism. Almost daily, some fundamentalist claims that the killing of Westerners is justified - because of a cartoon, a Papal paragraph or, most recently, British knighthood awarded to novelist Salman Rushdie. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban is as much about nihilist rage as it is about blackmailing Western governments to grant concessions.

Meanwhile, millions of others simply flee the mess, immigrating to either Europe or the United States.

These reactions to failure often lead to circumstances that can defy logic.

The poor terrorists of Arafat's old party, Fatah, seem to shriek that they have been out-terrorized by Hamas, and desperately con more Western aid to make up for what has been squandered or stolen.

Muslims flock to Europe to enjoy a level of freedom and opportunity long denied at home. But no sooner have many arrived than they castigate their adopted continent as decadent. The ungracious prefer intolerant sharia - denying to their own the very freedom of choice that was given to them by others.

Our response in America to this perennial Middle East temper tantrum?

In the last 20 years, we've sent billions in aid to the Arab world. We've saved Muslims from Bosnia to Kuwait. We've removed dangerous thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq, fostering democracies in their place. We've opened our borders to immigrants from the Middle East. We've paid billions of dollars in inflated oil prices. All the while, many in the West have wrongly blamed themselves for the conditions in the Middle East.

It's past time for Middle Easterners to fix their own self-inflicted mess. In the meantime, the U.S. and its allies should help as we can - but first protect ourselves from them as we must.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
 
Not every muslim resides in the Middle East and the biggest majority of Muslims are not Arabs. Its part of a process in Palestine. There are those who want peace with Israel and those who do not want peace. One side has to win and the other has to lose.
 
Is their a correlation between low post count and posting of the same old tiresome stuff we are bombarded with every day by the media?

WildandtherelevancetogunsiswhatAlaska
 
Which media?

VD hansen is rarely put up in MSM, and the idea that Arafat/Fatah did anything but seek peace, or retaliate against Israeli aggression is not a feature of most reporting I see.

It does come up that way on sites I frequent, but the LA Times, for example, would never admit the Palestinians have been brainwashed into such a violent culture.

Where do you see this kind of analysis? Interested.
 
He makes some decent points but he also appears to acquit our foreign policy of any culpability. Regardless of our intentions, we have done a lot to aggravate situations that were better left alone. Instead of buiding bases in Saudia Arabia we should have concentrated on our borders, etc, etc.
 
Pakistani traders put £80,000 bounty on Rushdie's head
Published: 23 June 2007

A group of Pakistani businessmen have offered a reward to anyone who beheads Salman Rushdie as worldwide protests against the author's knighthood increased.

The leader of the Islamabad Traders Association, Ajmal Baloch, offered a bounty of more than £82,000. During a rally in Islamabad's central Aabpara market, Mr Baloch called on Islamic countries to boycott British goods and announced: "We will give 10m rupees to anyone who beheads Rushdie."
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/will let that speak for itself. :rolleyes:

Is their a correlation between low post count and posting of the same old tiresome stuff we are bombarded with every day by the media?
Click to expand...

Personally, the "same old tiresome stuff" from the media I see every day is the appeasement and pleas for willing dhimmitude, along with excuses for inexcusible behavior and self-flagellation for letting slip some free speech now and again. If it makes the screaming beards throw a riot, there's immediate apologies.

They don't need to defeat us, we're laying down a red carpet for them.
 
Harry,

Excellent posting.
Mr. Hanson is always right on in his writings. He's a true conservative, with good values, and he is of the highest intellect too.
I posted something similar on another forum a couple of weeks ago; that it's high time for the Palestinians to take responsibility for their own pathetic situation, and become self sufficient, and become a good neighbor to not only Israel, but Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
The Palestinians are running a racket. They con other countries into giving them money with lots of different ploys, and never change for the better. They have nothing that they can produce to make money. They are dependant on others for money, so they can live. They have no infrastructure for anything worthwhile. Most of them are 14th century barbarians who only have one agenda in life. That is kill Israelis, or anyone else that they don't like.
As long as we who give them money continue, nothing will change, ever.
I spent 9 years living and working in the Middle East, read write and speak Arabic, and know the culture well.
And, I have a low post count!!!!!!! That's for those in Alaska who think post count and intellect are related.

Martyn
 
The problem the author ignores is

Of course, oil.

So long as our economy is dependent on the stuff, the Middle East will be an area of vital national interest for the United States. I'd even argue that access to crude is our only strategic interest there.

So I have a very simple, very pragmatic approach to dealing with the region: If you have oil, we'll buy it from you, because you've got it and we need it. If you don't have any, you get nothing. If your country does not affect a vital interest of the United States, I don't care whether your government survives or not. It's not my problem.

Neither Israel not Palestine have any oil. Nor does Lebanon, Egypt, or Syria. They all go under the bus. The nuclear aspirations of Iran cease to be our problem. As soon as they have the bomb, MAD applies. They now it, and they're not dumb enough to risk that. We can do business with them too. In Iraq, we deal with the winners, and we don't need to care who they are. Start with the Kurds, since they have lots of rotting dinosaurs and would probably give us a pretty good deal. They'll have their own country within 5 years anyway, might as well get our deals done now.

We've tried everything to guide, control, fix, and shape this part of the world, and none of it has worked. These people are going to have to create their societies for themselves, and they will. So long as we can get from them the only thing they have that we need, I no longer care how they do that.

In the meantime, we need to get our economy off petroleum as completely as possible. Do that, and we can ignore that part of the world completely.

--Shannon
 
We've removed dangerous thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq, fostering democracies in their place.
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How wonderful. Almost as wonderful as it is incomplete.

We supported Saddam for years, because we wanted a Sunni ruler to control the oil in a majority Shiite region, as a counterbalance to Iranian Shiites. The ruling Sunnis didn't consider him a dangerous thug, and neither did we, until his attack on Kuwait and subsequent UN sanctions began to interrupt and redirect the oil. Now we have turned that area over to the Shiites, which does not strike me as a particularly good idea from our perspective, whatever the Shiite majority may think of the idea.
 
There is oil in any number of countries, including ours. Our "dependence" on Middle Eastern oil has been mainly because it was CHEAPER than anywhere else. OPEC is a monopoly, but you don't see anyone discussing that. It's always that the "need for oil" drives our foreign policy. So what? The need for water drives others foreign policies, as does the need for various minerals and ores. How does that somehow become worse for us than anyone else?

Conditions change, and so do people. We had treaties with France a couple of hundred years ago, and we don't today. We fought the Germans, Japanese, and Italians not too long ago. The Russians were our "allies" during that time period, even though they started out as allies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Where is the "righteous wrath" that came from our not allowing the Germans to defeat them?

As the world develops, other products or raw materials will become vital. In those times, a country's foreign policy will be driven to secure the new materials. Instead of knee-jerk stupidity, perhaps some thought should be put into how the foreign policy of a country would be disastrous if the future of the country didn't drive it.

Palestine is an atrocity, perpetrated by the governments of the old Pan-Arab League. How else could you explain that fact that "refugee camps" still exist sixty years after the creation of Isreal? The Palestinians are the Arab's "junk-yard dogs", cordoned off from the mainstream of Arab life, and allowed only to develop a rabid hatred of whatever currently annoys that Arab mainstream.

The United States did nothing that caused Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. His own megalomania, and his instinct that he could pull it off, were all that was necessary. He made a mistake, and he paid for it. Instead of learning his lesson, he violated the Surrender documents that he had signed, and placed himself back in a state of war with the Coalition members. America needed no excuse to invade Iraq, and replace Saddam. Only the most uneducated could be convinced that we had no right to do what we did. While the truth may be embarrassing to the corrupt, it remains the truth.

There is a lot of truth in the original article, and my post count is high enough to avoid that pitfall. The ability to see the rest of the world, but not participate in it, is causing problems in ALL totalitarian regimes. You certainly won't be hearing that on the MSM, unless they can figure a way to spin it to America's disadvantage.

This is a group of people who constantly proclaim that they do not believe that the MSM is correct, honest, or capable of actually reporting factually. Yet, we surely do seem to be pretty sensitive to articles that purport to portray information that doesn't agree with the MSM.

I've also begun to wonder just what post count and intelligence or ability have to do with anything? There are quite a few multi-thousand posters here who couldn't buy a clue with a hundred dollar bill as far as history, mathematics, and mechanical training are concerned. Wikipedia seems to be their Bible, and most discussions are rife with mis-stated information, as is wont with Wikipedia. How could the new people do any worse?
 
If this was intended as a response to my post above, please re-read it. You will not find there to be any moralizing with respect to oil's influence on American policy in the Middle East. Quite the opposite, in fact. Since I can see no other vital American interest in the region, I see no other basis for any US policy there.

It's the only thing they have that we need. Neither Israel nor Palestine have any of it, so I don't see how anything that happens there has any bearing on US interests. I'd like to see Israel survive, and so long as they have nuclear weapons, they will, but if they vanished tonight, I don't think it would affect us much. I'd also like to see the Palestinians living under a government of their own choosing, with a society built along lines that they want, but if the Israelis wiped them all out, again, it wouldn't affect us much.

I do think that it would be best for us if we didn't need what the Middle East has, but that won't happen overnight, and until it does, we've got to deal with the folks who have it. So long as we can get what we need at a price we can pay, nothing else really matters. In any contest between American interests and the interests of Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Iraqis, or anyone else, I'll take America, and be damned to everyone else.

I've spent every cent of emotional capital on that part of the world that I care to. So long as we get what we need, I just don't care anymore. If the people there want to live under oppression, or if it's just easier for them to go along to get along, that's their problem. I wouldn't spend a single drop of American blood, nor a dime of American money, to change what they seem unwilling or unable to change for themselves. And once we no longer need them, let them find their own path to hell or heaven, as they choose. Until then, every dollar we send over there should result in oil coming back. Cash and carry.

Selfish? You bet. Amoral? Probably. But it's the only way out that I can see. When it comes to the Middle East, I've been reduced to a hard-nosed, America-first pragmatism. If it helps us, I'm for it. If not, I'm against it. It's really kind of sad, but there it is.

--Shannon
 
These rules make sense, especially number 10.


15 rules for understanding the Middle East


First published: Wednesday, December 20, 2006
For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I'd like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they'll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.

Rule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn't count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: "Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?" If you answer yes, you can't go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany -- not Iraq.

Rule 3: If you can't explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all -- they won't believe it.

Rule 4: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasser Arafat, I could paper my walls.

Rule 5: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning's paper.

Rule 6: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.

Rule 7: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab pols is: "We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for being so stupid."

Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas -- like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It's the South vs. the South.

Rule 9: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, "I'm weak, how can I compromise?" And when it's strong, it will tell you, "I'm strong, why should I compromise?"

Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don't want to play that role, Iraq's civil war will end with A or B.

Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel's mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can't understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera's editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: "It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."

Rule 12: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs' first priority is "justice." The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq's long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.

Rule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: "Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes."

Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can't want it more than they do.
 
For some excellent insights on the underlying philosophy and functional realities of Islam check out the website prophetofdoom.net
Most people in the West Have little or no understanding of the history and motives involved.
 
Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel's mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can't understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera's editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: "It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."
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I would say that this is closer to the reality of the problem than number 10. It isn't Isreal that's the root cause, they're just close. It's the fact that the Arab world, and much of the world of Islam has a "hurt ego" at the remainder of the planet. They have a "superior religion", they once "lead the world in science and mathematics" (with the help of the Greeks, Romans, and Phonecians) and can't quite figure out how they stopped moving forward after the 13th Century. It isn't the Palestinian Problem that's in their genes, it's more of a cultural jealousy abetted by a thousand years of religious promises that have failed to materialize. Islam even perpetuates this to other regions of the world. If "we're God's Chosen", why is it that all of those non-believers are living longer, healthier lives? The answer supplied by their Sharia, and the Immans who define it, is that EVERYBODY else has somehow "stolen it from them." This has become so ingrained that they don't feel the slightest bit suspicious when their leaders board private jets, and fly to yet another sumptuous palace, from which they will blame the Western World's peoples for the plight of the Arab/Muslim. You'll note that, when a religious leader gets sick, no expense is spared in treatment, often in the reviled West, by those same non-believers that they would condemn to eternal damnation.

I believe that is why the ability to access the Internet is having such an insidious effect on the strict fundamentalist's world. The pictures that the "faithful" find on the computer are at odds with what their Immans portray. If we can hold out long enough, they will destroy themselves from the inside out. In the meantime, anything that we can do to portay the West in a different light can only help. That, and the conspicuous removal of the more radical religious leadership.:)
 
Good thoughts, here...

It was, in part, the slow effects of exposure to Western culture and life that helped to create the popular movements that brought down Communism. Those same forces are at work now in the Middle East. But there's not much that outsiders (us, for example) can do to help. It's an organic process, that happens one conversation at a time, as people see and share the differences between what they see and what they're told. It unfolds at it's own slow pace.

Even killing off some of the extremist leaders doesn't work. So long as the cultural environment remains the same, a new zealot will always arise to replace the dead one. Heck, the Catholic Church tried this for centuries, and the Reformation and Enlightenment happened anyway. All they managed to do was increase the body count. What cannot be stopped, cannot be stopped. The Israelis have been doing it for years, and they're no closer to controlling the Occupied Territories than they were in 1967.

The "man-in-the-Muslim-street" is starting to see the differences between their lives and those of their leaders. If you've ever been to Bahrain, or Dubai, or Las Vegas, you know what I'm talking about. Saudi royalty drinking, gambling, and wenching their hearts out, and then going back and telling their citizens to obey them because God told them to.

It can't last, and it won't.

It's a long, slow, painful process. It's easy to forget just how long and bloody it was in the West. It took over 500 years, from Martin Luther to WWII. How can we expect them to have any easier of a time with it than we did? The best we can hope for is that the Middle East learns from some of our mistakes, rather than repeating all of them.

--Shannon
 
The actual purpose that removing current leaders presents is that many of these people are one-man shows. They distrust those around them, and, accordingly, keep many contacts and sources private to themselves. Thus, removing them, while allowing others to figurehead a movement, robs them of the experience and knowledge of the movers and shakers, as well as keeping their co-ordination to a minimum. Note that this is in regards to the actual leadership, and not the posturing fools that these leaders use to present a face to the world.

Don't kid yourself that the Arabs, or any other Muslim run area of the world, won't make the same exact mistakes everyone else has. After all, they KNOW that they're right.:)
 
So basically what you are saying Tub ee is that education and exposure will change the Middle East.

Do you believe that thier exposure to "real life Americans" in the form of soldiers will change thier opinion of Americans (for good or for bad, is the second part of the question).

If American creates or assist the Iraqis in creating a "hard" or "soft" barrier between the tribes of Iraqis how will that effect the Middle East as a whole.

(Very good thread, love the articles about understanding the Middle Eastern mindset).
 
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