I think Cole gets at the basis of the problem but not in the way he thinks. Though I don't refuse Cole's right to contradict an Arab on Arab Problems, I do take issue with his condescending way, the multi-culturalist way, of dismissing the introspective argument (it's our own fault) in favor of an argument which returns the blame back to the West (no we suck more).
At the moment someone says "Boy, do I stink" they can either start about the process of changing their drawers or they can believe that someone else crapped in their pants before they put them on. And that's the problem with crapping in your pants, everything starts smelling like crap. Soon you get used to the smell and just imagine that it's everyone else that stinks.
That terrorism or terrorist groups existed in the middle east is not odd. Europe and America have had their own bouts with native terrorists, led usually by people who felt crapped on. Resentment of being crapped on is the greatest national motivator, as pointed out by Liah Greenfield in the Five Roads to Nationalism. A pervasive sense of humiliation within a large society create great (or awful) moments in history, such as the American Revolution or, as a bad example, Nazism and it's sister movement, Baathism.
If the people are introspective, the humiliation can lead to a new national identity...and prosperity. Thus, british colonists became Americans. The Brits used to think of themselves as French until a little girl from Lorraine humiliated them (actually the French and Italians looked down on English Culture, especially madrigal singing). From the 15th Century on, the English developed their own identity. They didn't insist on blowing up French people (which they were very good at) to assuage their own humiliation. An interesting phenomenon is that the humiliation is almost always masked by some perceived grievance. Thus, "taxation" without representation is not really the issue (since the Americans themselves raised taxes even higher post revolution). And the Brits really didn't have a legitimate claim to the French Throne (French being the operative word). Likewise, the Arabs have the Palestian Crisis to hide behind, though Palestinians are typically treated as second class citizens across the Arab world.
An old friend of mine, Brian McCabe, used to say, if you have a problem with me, guess whose problem it is? People who feel humiliated have to look for the roots inside themselves and avoid blaming others. This internal conflict exists regardless of whether you deal with it and if you don't, it invariably leads to self-destructive violence against others.
Eric Hoffer, one of our greatest philosphers, explored the nature of the "True Believer" in his book by the same name. He specifically was looking for the roots of the Nazi movement but his conclusions are highly appropriate for the Arab culture.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence.
Thomas Friedman, probably one of the most prolific writers on the middle east and a NYT columnist, made a documentary that, I think, everyone should see called "The Roots to 9/11". He interviews an Egyptian writer, Ali Salem, who penned a telling missive called "An Apology From an Arab". Here is what Ali said in the last paragraph: But beneath their claims is a sadder truth: these extremists are pathologically jealous. They feel like dwarfs, which is why they search for towers and all those who tower mightily. We must admit that we failed to teach these people that life is worth living. These extremists exist now, and will exist forever, so the question before us must be, How can we defend both our lives and theirs? We in the Arab world love freedom and want the chance at a decent life. We are not different from you, as it sometimes seems. We may be just temporarily backward. Working together, our governments must decide how, with what culture and by what actions, they will combat the influence of those who hate life.Friedman shows in the documentary how the terrorists weren't really created in Arab lands but in Europe where they have to come realize how marginal their culture is.
I don't think Cole does any Arabs any favors by harping on some dubious connections of terrorisms roots in US policy (afterall, Osama killed the main Afghani leader the US funded). The US funded the French Resistance during WWII and you don't see them acting like jerks...okay, bad example. But the point is that just because the US or the Europeans make a mistake in a far off land, or the Israelis occupy a small patch of rocks, is no reason to go and start blowing up people who are even farther away. Especially when your own culture chops the heads off of homosexuals or allows fathers to strangle their daughters for allowing themselves to be raped.
Thomas Sowell said it better than me. You have to ask yourself at some point that if the United States didn't exist to hate, maybe the Arab Terrorists would have to hate themselves. Doesn't the Arab Terrorist need to destroy himself reek of this self-hatred?
Lastly, I have to take issue with Cole's assessment of the Kashmiri problem. The Kashmir treatment at the hands of the Indians pales in comparison to the treatment the unfortunate Kashmiris receive who live under Pak rule. Of course, you don't hear anything about the Pak mistreatment because they do not tolerate the free press. Having been to the region and talked to actual Kashmiris, they don't like either group and want to be left alone. Isn't it a bit ridiculous that we have to swallow self-serving arguments concerning conflicts in far flung lands to excuse the atrocities of terrorists on our own soil? Cole seems to say that terrorism will end when the bad ole west and their proxies the Indians stop transgressing against Muslims. I dare say, it is the other way arround. When Arab culture stops its self-destructive indulgence into victimhood, it will see the transgressions melt away. It's like a man pushing against a wall imagining that the wall is pushing against him.
I don't see "we suck" self-loathing in Cole's analysis that you do, or appear to do. I think it's pretty even-handed, and much more thought provoking than the typical "because they hate our freedom" you hear out of, say, the POTUS. You think that Usama bin Laden, after finding a copy of the Constitution left behind by one of his CIA cohorts after the end of Afghanistan v. SU, read it and said "Jeeeesus fuck my Pinto! That freedom is some bad shit! I think I'm going to fly a plane into the WTC and show those fuckers what's up with that freedom bullshit! Better yet, I'll get someone else to do, and I'll take the credit!" I think Cole's illumination of how Egyptian continual diddling with Muslim Brotherhood blew up in their face was especially interesting, and devoid of "we Imperialists suck".
In fact, I think Juan's Americana in Arabic Library Translation Project reflects a deep and abiding pride and faith in what you'd call the traditions and values of the West. I mean, if Rummys "just blow some shit up" is the solution to all the world's woes, fuck it, let's bomb all those goddamn tsunami fuckers back into prosperity and freedom. Maybe we could drop enough bombs on Africa to solve their AIDS problems. Why not bomb 1500 dead American soldiers and marines back to life, while we're at it!
As for occupation, and reaction to it, if some frat boy is parking by the keg (occupation) preventing your 6'4" Tennessee mountian maniac frame from acquiring the blessed fluid, you're not going to say "gee, I'm going to invoke the McCabe rule and say my problem with the frat boy blocking my way to the keg is really a problem with me. I think I'll settle for some kumbyeya and a pepsi..." No, I think that you'd show said frat boy Application of Monkey Steals the Peach! Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Well. The way I read Cole is that he attempts to explain Why Arabs Attack and he doesn't do it by saying they create their own problems. He does it by saying that their problems have roots in the way that the Europeans treated them, that they hate because the Americans aren't even handed with the Palestian/Israeli crisis and, ridiculously, that muslims are angry at Indian transgressions. His use of the Muslim Brotherhood and their treatment at the hands of whoever doesn't really persuade as well. Couldn't it be that the Muslim Brotherhood were not the righteous movement they are made out to be? Couldn't it be that they were the beginning of a sickness which has been nurtured and fed by the one group that Arabs would like to get respect from, the West?
From my experience, I think Cole is wrong. Dead wrong. If the US dropped support for Israel and India gave up Kashmir, it wouldn't change anything at all in the life of the average arab muslim in the streets of Cairo or Riyad, now would it? Their problems are not in some place they probably couldn't find on a map but rather in their own back yards.
I don't think Cole would say that the solution to Arab disaffectedness is to drop support for Israel or to tell India to do anything. The question is this: is there anything to be learned by understanding how the middle east got to be in such sorry shape? The US jumping in the sack with the Saudis and all of their baggage in the 40s while maybe not a mistake -- certainly from a "how'd we do over the next forty years" sense, certainly contributed to the rise of immensely wealthy corrupt monarchies in the region where there were, uh, none. Is it Americas fault that they didn't establish pluralistic progressive democracies? Of course not. Did the US facilitate the emergence of immensely wealthy corrupt monarchies? Undeniably. Just like we came across with the stingers and the dollars for Usama bin Laden, just like we hooked up Saddam with gas to kill Kurds and Iranians. Is it our fault that they bit the hand that fed them? No, but we certainly help put teeth into the bite.
So, with an eye toward fixing the mess -- regardless of who's responsible -- it might not be a bad idea to not repeat the mistakes of the past. One of these mistakes would be to believe that none of violence directed toward troops in Iraq is because they are seen as occupiers by people who consider themselves to be Iraqi patriots. But in saying that the West shouldn't repeat mistakes in no way says that the middle east doesn't need to get its act together.
I'm not sure I understand the need to put blame in the past, especially when you are dealing with people who have a cultural maturity of the middle ages, who seem to be trying to refight a hundred different lost battles. Arab Culture is..or really was...the least forward looking culture in the world. Why enable them?
Does it serve some purpose to look at the history of the region. Yes. To place blame. No. For one thing, that is not the point of history. I'm especially adverse to the Michael Moore type of pseudo-historical analysis which attempts to over simplify events (to the point of distortion) so you can hate who he hates. Isn't this what the terrorists have done, what Goebbels did to rouse the "true believers" to action.
History just isn't that simple. It's so complicated that single events almost never exist without influences that stretch centuries. Especially in the middle east. Further, it actually serves the terrorists to continually harp on just the bad events of the West or the US, as Moore does repeatedly. Afterall, Mohammed Atta wasn't created by a US Stinger Missle. He was created by writings that painted a one-sided story, a distorted story. Examples...
The Crusades. Yes, we continually hear how Arabs are sensitive to Christians coming into their land, and they all know the story of Saladin. But their text books never mention how those same Muslims wiped out cultures that had existed peacefully with the west for centuries. The Druze in Lebanon, the Copts in Egypt (and yes the Jews of Israel) are survivors of a rampage that killed and destroyed for single purpose from Spain to Central India to the Balkans. Worse, the west's own history books serve as apologists, distorting the events lest the West be supplanted as the worst evil in the world. We have only to look at the Muslim accounts at the time and to the fact that where ever Arab Muslims were able to hold, the local culture disappeared, not peacefully but through repression.
A more recent distortion is how the CIA created Osama. Once again, Osama's own writings make clear that he received no help from the CIA. During the Afghan/Soviet war, OBL was a shadowy figure. Certainly, he could have gotten his hands on stingers, but you have to look at the whole picture. We helped a lot of groups in an effort to turn soviet dominance in the region around. Some turned out to be bad, some turned out to be friends. (Let's not forget that OBL had our main guy in Afghanistan killed). Similarly, some of the people we didn't help turned out to bad.
I think when you take a look at leaders in the middle east, you quickly come to conclusion that their culture just tends to produce bad leaders. But bad just because we have modern sensibilities. These guys fully fit in with the medieval culture that stifles the middle east. Couldn't we say that the US helped create Hitler? Didn't we help the Nazis before the war? Similarly, Saddam used some of the technology we sold him to bad use. But to our credit, we quickly stopped supporting him when he turned out to be an asshole, unlike the French, Russians and Germans who continued to sell arms ad nauseum.
Which brings me to a good point. Much of our struggles in the middle east are really with the Europeans. I heard a speech by an adivsor to GB1 who said that one of their big concerns with Saddam taking over Kuwait was not what he would do, but rather with what the French and Germans would give him to get that oil. In my book, they are the real bastards in all of this because, as much as we'd like to blame the US for all problems in the world, I dare say the Middle East would be even more of a mess without US influence and left to the Europeans.
Finally, I would consider it the biggest mistake to oversell the "freedom fighter" aspect of insurgents in Iraq. Many of their leaders aren't even Iraqi. And when their targets seem to focus on stirring up sectarian hatred, it's pretty clear who they are.
Blame? Who cares? I wish that nanny-nanny-boo-boo didn't play the role that it unfortunately does when we look a what's happened and what's happening. The question is, is there anything we can do to help the middle east get their act together? Can we, with history as a look at some previous experiments more than a definitive guide, figure out what actions to take that aren't going to blow up in our face. The one thing that seems very likely is that absent of a crushing military defeat that threatens the existence of every man, woman, child, and dog in the mind of the defeated (as the defeats of the Germans and Japanese most certainly did), the thought that an effective solution involves long term military occupation seems dubious. Half measures are often much more counter-productive than no measures at all. Where has long term occupation worked? Where people have been willing to eradicate the the people and culture of the people who's land is occupied. It hasn't worked anywhere else, to my knowledge.
Since we can probably take genocide off of the table might I suggest some incentive based approaches. We fork out 1.3 billion to Egypt every year and get... yeah. Had a great opportunity to talk conditions with some major fuck-up-the-middle-east players with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Kuwaitis are now fucking with the US with their insistence that Iraq pay the ludicrous punitive reparations designed more to punish Saddam than compensate Kuwait for any losses they incurred. You can seriously mess with some people for 300 billion dollars. That's more than Saudi Arabia's entire GDP in 2003, around 60% of Iran's, and on par with Egypt's. What hasn't worked with these hard-assed autocratic regimes: punitive sanctions and half-assed military intervention.
Check Steven Cook's The Right Way to Promote Arab Reform in the recent Foreign Affairs 84:2. He sums up the incentive based approach pretty well with full understanding that many the problems in the middle east are old, deep, and structural -- and would be there if the West meddled or not. Some might not be had the West meddled differently. Let's make sure the West meddles productively from here forward.
6 comments:
I think Cole gets at the basis of the problem but not in the way he thinks. Though I don't refuse Cole's right to contradict an Arab on Arab Problems, I do take issue with his condescending way, the multi-culturalist way, of dismissing the introspective argument (it's our own fault) in favor of an argument which returns the blame back to the West (no we suck more).
At the moment someone says "Boy, do I stink" they can either start about the process of changing their drawers or they can believe that someone else crapped in their pants before they put them on. And that's the problem with crapping in your pants, everything starts smelling like crap. Soon you get used to the smell and just imagine that it's everyone else that stinks.
That terrorism or terrorist groups existed in the middle east is not odd. Europe and America have had their own bouts with native terrorists, led usually by people who felt crapped on. Resentment of being crapped on is the greatest national motivator, as pointed out by Liah Greenfield in the Five Roads to Nationalism. A pervasive sense of humiliation within a large society create great (or awful) moments in history, such as the American Revolution or, as a bad example, Nazism and it's sister movement, Baathism.
If the people are introspective, the humiliation can lead to a new national identity...and prosperity. Thus, british colonists became Americans. The Brits used to think of themselves as French until a little girl from Lorraine humiliated them (actually the French and Italians looked down on English Culture, especially madrigal singing). From the 15th Century on, the English developed their own identity. They didn't insist on blowing up French people (which they were very good at) to assuage their own humiliation. An interesting phenomenon is that the humiliation is almost always masked by some perceived grievance. Thus, "taxation" without representation is not really the issue (since the Americans themselves raised taxes even higher post revolution). And the Brits really didn't have a legitimate claim to the French Throne (French being the operative word). Likewise, the Arabs have the Palestian Crisis to hide behind, though Palestinians are typically treated as second class citizens across the Arab world.
An old friend of mine, Brian McCabe, used to say, if you have a problem with me, guess whose problem it is? People who feel humiliated have to look for the roots inside themselves and avoid blaming others. This internal conflict exists regardless of whether you deal with it and if you don't, it invariably leads to self-destructive violence against others.
Eric Hoffer, one of our greatest philosphers, explored the nature of the "True Believer" in his book by the same name. He specifically was looking for the roots of the Nazi movement but his conclusions are highly appropriate for the Arab culture.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence.
Thomas Friedman, probably one of the most prolific writers on the middle east and a NYT columnist, made a documentary that, I think, everyone should see called "The Roots to 9/11". He interviews an Egyptian writer, Ali Salem, who penned a telling missive called "An Apology From an Arab". Here is what Ali said in the last paragraph:
But beneath their claims is a sadder truth: these extremists are pathologically jealous. They feel like dwarfs, which is why they search for towers and all those who tower mightily. We must admit that we failed to teach these people that life is worth living. These extremists exist now, and will exist forever, so the question before us must be, How can we defend both our lives and theirs? We in the Arab world love freedom and want the chance at a decent life. We are not different from you, as it sometimes seems. We may be just temporarily backward. Working together, our governments must decide how, with what culture and by what actions, they will combat the influence of those who hate life.Friedman shows in the documentary how the terrorists weren't really created in Arab lands but in Europe where they have to come realize how marginal their culture is.
I don't think Cole does any Arabs any favors by harping on some dubious connections of terrorisms roots in US policy (afterall, Osama killed the main Afghani leader the US funded). The US funded the French Resistance during WWII and you don't see them acting like jerks...okay, bad example. But the point is that just because the US or the Europeans make a mistake in a far off land, or the Israelis occupy a small patch of rocks, is no reason to go and start blowing up people who are even farther away. Especially when your own culture chops the heads off of homosexuals or allows fathers to strangle their daughters for allowing themselves to be raped.
Thomas Sowell said it better than me. You have to ask yourself at some point that if the United States didn't exist to hate, maybe the Arab Terrorists would have to hate themselves. Doesn't the Arab Terrorist need to destroy himself reek of this self-hatred?
Lastly, I have to take issue with Cole's assessment of the Kashmiri problem. The Kashmir treatment at the hands of the Indians pales in comparison to the treatment the unfortunate Kashmiris receive who live under Pak rule. Of course, you don't hear anything about the Pak mistreatment because they do not tolerate the free press. Having been to the region and talked to actual Kashmiris, they don't like either group and want to be left alone. Isn't it a bit ridiculous that we have to swallow self-serving arguments concerning conflicts in far flung lands to excuse the atrocities of terrorists on our own soil? Cole seems to say that terrorism will end when the bad ole west and their proxies the Indians stop transgressing against Muslims. I dare say, it is the other way arround. When Arab culture stops its self-destructive indulgence into victimhood, it will see the transgressions melt away. It's like a man pushing against a wall imagining that the wall is pushing against him.
I don't see "we suck" self-loathing in Cole's analysis that you do, or appear to do. I think it's pretty even-handed, and much more thought provoking than the typical "because they hate our freedom" you hear out of, say, the POTUS. You think that Usama bin Laden, after finding a copy of the Constitution left behind by one of his CIA cohorts after the end of Afghanistan v. SU, read it and said "Jeeeesus fuck my Pinto! That freedom is some bad shit! I think I'm going to fly a plane into the WTC and show those fuckers what's up with that freedom bullshit! Better yet, I'll get someone else to do, and I'll take the credit!" I think Cole's illumination of how Egyptian continual diddling with Muslim Brotherhood blew up in their face was especially interesting, and devoid of "we Imperialists suck".
In fact, I think Juan's Americana in Arabic Library Translation Project reflects a deep and abiding pride and faith in what you'd call the traditions and values of the West. I mean, if Rummys "just blow some shit up" is the solution to all the world's woes, fuck it, let's bomb all those goddamn tsunami fuckers back into prosperity and freedom. Maybe we could drop enough bombs on Africa to solve their AIDS problems. Why not bomb 1500 dead American soldiers and marines back to life, while we're at it!
As for occupation, and reaction to it, if some frat boy is parking by the keg (occupation) preventing your 6'4" Tennessee mountian maniac frame from acquiring the blessed fluid, you're not going to say "gee, I'm going to invoke the McCabe rule and say my problem with the frat boy blocking my way to the keg is really a problem with me. I think I'll settle for some kumbyeya and a pepsi..." No, I think that you'd show said frat boy Application of Monkey Steals the Peach! Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Well. The way I read Cole is that he attempts to explain Why Arabs Attack and he doesn't do it by saying they create their own problems. He does it by saying that their problems have roots in the way that the Europeans treated them, that they hate because the Americans aren't even handed with the Palestian/Israeli crisis and, ridiculously, that muslims are angry at Indian transgressions. His use of the Muslim Brotherhood and their treatment at the hands of whoever doesn't really persuade as well. Couldn't it be that the Muslim Brotherhood were not the righteous movement they are made out to be? Couldn't it be that they were the beginning of a sickness which has been nurtured and fed by the one group that Arabs would like to get respect from, the West?
From my experience, I think Cole is wrong. Dead wrong. If the US dropped support for Israel and India gave up Kashmir, it wouldn't change anything at all in the life of the average arab muslim in the streets of Cairo or Riyad, now would it? Their problems are not in some place they probably couldn't find on a map but rather in their own back yards.
I don't think Cole would say that the solution to Arab disaffectedness is to drop support for Israel or to tell India to do anything. The question is this: is there anything to be learned by understanding how the middle east got to be in such sorry shape? The US jumping in the sack with the Saudis and all of their baggage in the 40s while maybe not a mistake -- certainly from a "how'd we do over the next forty years" sense, certainly contributed to the rise of immensely wealthy corrupt monarchies in the region where there were, uh, none. Is it Americas fault that they didn't establish pluralistic progressive democracies? Of course not. Did the US facilitate the emergence of immensely wealthy corrupt monarchies? Undeniably. Just like we came across with the stingers and the dollars for Usama bin Laden, just like we hooked up Saddam with gas to kill Kurds and Iranians. Is it our fault that they bit the hand that fed them? No, but we certainly help put teeth into the bite.
So, with an eye toward fixing the mess -- regardless of who's responsible -- it might not be a bad idea to not repeat the mistakes of the past. One of these mistakes would be to believe that none of violence directed toward troops in Iraq is because they are seen as occupiers by people who consider themselves to be Iraqi patriots. But in saying that the West shouldn't repeat mistakes in no way says that the middle east doesn't need to get its act together.
I'm not sure I understand the need to put blame in the past, especially when you are dealing with people who have a cultural maturity of the middle ages, who seem to be trying to refight a hundred different lost battles. Arab Culture is..or really was...the least forward looking culture in the world. Why enable them?
Does it serve some purpose to look at the history of the region. Yes. To place blame. No. For one thing, that is not the point of history. I'm especially adverse to the Michael Moore type of pseudo-historical analysis which attempts to over simplify events (to the point of distortion) so you can hate who he hates. Isn't this what the terrorists have done, what Goebbels did to rouse the "true believers" to action.
History just isn't that simple. It's so complicated that single events almost never exist without influences that stretch centuries. Especially in the middle east. Further, it actually serves the terrorists to continually harp on just the bad events of the West or the US, as Moore does repeatedly. Afterall, Mohammed Atta wasn't created by a US Stinger Missle. He was created by writings that painted a one-sided story, a distorted story. Examples...
The Crusades. Yes, we continually hear how Arabs are sensitive to Christians coming into their land, and they all know the story of Saladin. But their text books never mention how those same Muslims wiped out cultures that had existed peacefully with the west for centuries. The Druze in Lebanon, the Copts in Egypt (and yes the Jews of Israel) are survivors of a rampage that killed and destroyed for single purpose from Spain to Central India to the Balkans. Worse, the west's own history books serve as apologists, distorting the events lest the West be supplanted as the worst evil in the world. We have only to look at the Muslim accounts at the time and to the fact that where ever Arab Muslims were able to hold, the local culture disappeared, not peacefully but through repression.
A more recent distortion is how the CIA created Osama. Once again, Osama's own writings make clear that he received no help from the CIA. During the Afghan/Soviet war, OBL was a shadowy figure. Certainly, he could have gotten his hands on stingers, but you have to look at the whole picture. We helped a lot of groups in an effort to turn soviet dominance in the region around. Some turned out to be bad, some turned out to be friends. (Let's not forget that OBL had our main guy in Afghanistan killed). Similarly, some of the people we didn't help turned out to bad.
I think when you take a look at leaders in the middle east, you quickly come to conclusion that their culture just tends to produce bad leaders. But bad just because we have modern sensibilities. These guys fully fit in with the medieval culture that stifles the middle east. Couldn't we say that the US helped create Hitler? Didn't we help the Nazis before the war? Similarly, Saddam used some of the technology we sold him to bad use. But to our credit, we quickly stopped supporting him when he turned out to be an asshole, unlike the French, Russians and Germans who continued to sell arms ad nauseum.
Which brings me to a good point. Much of our struggles in the middle east are really with the Europeans. I heard a speech by an adivsor to GB1 who said that one of their big concerns with Saddam taking over Kuwait was not what he would do, but rather with what the French and Germans would give him to get that oil. In my book, they are the real bastards in all of this because, as much as we'd like to blame the US for all problems in the world, I dare say the Middle East would be even more of a mess without US influence and left to the Europeans.
Finally, I would consider it the biggest mistake to oversell the "freedom fighter" aspect of insurgents in Iraq. Many of their leaders aren't even Iraqi. And when their targets seem to focus on stirring up sectarian hatred, it's pretty clear who they are.
Blame? Who cares? I wish that nanny-nanny-boo-boo didn't play the role that it unfortunately does when we look a what's happened and what's happening. The question is, is there anything we can do to help the middle east get their act together? Can we, with history as a look at some previous experiments more than a definitive guide, figure out what actions to take that aren't going to blow up in our face. The one thing that seems very likely is that absent of a crushing military defeat that threatens the existence of every man, woman, child, and dog in the mind of the defeated (as the defeats of the Germans and Japanese most certainly did), the thought that an effective solution involves long term military occupation seems dubious. Half measures are often much more counter-productive than no measures at all. Where has long term occupation worked? Where people have been willing to eradicate the the people and culture of the people who's land is occupied. It hasn't worked anywhere else, to my knowledge.
Since we can probably take genocide off of the table might I suggest some incentive based approaches. We fork out 1.3 billion to Egypt every year and get... yeah. Had a great opportunity to talk conditions with some major fuck-up-the-middle-east players with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Kuwaitis are now fucking with the US with their insistence that Iraq pay the ludicrous punitive reparations designed more to punish Saddam than compensate Kuwait for any losses they incurred. You can seriously mess with some people for 300 billion dollars. That's more than Saudi Arabia's entire GDP in 2003, around 60% of Iran's, and on par with Egypt's. What hasn't worked with these hard-assed autocratic regimes: punitive sanctions and half-assed military intervention.
Check Steven Cook's The Right Way to Promote Arab Reform in the recent Foreign Affairs 84:2. He sums up the incentive based approach pretty well with full understanding that many the problems in the middle east are old, deep, and structural -- and would be there if the West meddled or not. Some might not be had the West meddled differently. Let's make sure the West meddles productively from here forward.
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