"What this Man Says About the Middle East Will Scare You."

[jeanarrett]

A must read: very informative

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8917

[Lerkfish]

1. wow a fascinating read. thanks for the link.

I only wish the Bush administration would read it and understand it.

[jeanarrett]

5. I only wish it was required reading for every American

This:

I think that most Americans have no idea what a hellhole Iraq really is at this moment. Baghdad is being starved for fuel and electricity. A fourth of the country lives there. It's the capital. That's not a good situation. In about half of the country there's substantial insecurity, bombs going off, assassinations. It's not everywhere all the time. It's every once in a while in some places. But, over time, it disrupts things. It disrupts the economy; it disrupts people's lives. It makes people more nervous about even going out. I think most Americans just can't imagine that situation. And they're not being given a contextual account of how it's happening in Iraq. I did a piece in September of 2004 where I imagined what the United States would be like if it were like Iraq. That was probably the most popular thing I've ever written.

Excerpt: "Violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll."

Edited to add the excerpt.

It would have been over long ago, if these things were occurring on American soil.

[Punkingal]

2. He certainly seems to know his stuff...

" The United States has decided it doesn't like Arab socialism, and so Iraq should be privatized. Iraqis didn't decide that, the United States has decided that, and it is being dictated to them at the point of a gun."

These two sentences really sum up the mess we have created.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

3. That was a great article n/t

[CJCRANE]

4. This is excellent - sums everything up

about Iraq, Islamofascism (i.e. it's nonexistent), The War on Terror.

The final paragraph sums it up for me:

"To tell you the truth I think it's like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the curtain is lifted. I think that much of the war on terror is an illusion. I think what you've really got is 4,000 or 5,000 jihadis that you should be tracking down through local cooperation and Interpol and the FBI, on the one hand. And you've got the Sunni Arab guerrillas of Iraq who are sore that we overthrew the Baath government on the other hand. And you have some tensions with Syria and Iran. But I don't see how this makes for a coherent enemy. I think Washington misses the Cold War, and the great tragedy is that the Muslims are just not going to be providing the analogy. We can talk as though they do, but they don't, and eventually this whole smoke-and-mirrors thing is going to collapse."

[Arkansas Granny]

6. Very good article. Juan Cole also has a blog that is very

informative. http://www.juancole.com/

[kineneb]

7. good article

I was aware of most of its content, since I lived in Iran for a year, and still have relatives there. The first thing the US has to understand is the fact that they do not think like us.

[KittyWampus]

9. If you get the chance, would you elaborate on "they do not think like us"

it sounds like you could give some key insights, especially since you have familiarity with both worlds. :)

[kineneb]

11. sure

..working on first cup of coffee, here, so this will be a list...

1. History: The people in the ME live in the awareness of their place in a very long, documented history, as well as the traditions handed down through generations. The US disdains history and its lessons, we are a people without a past.

2. Family and Tribe: Throughout the ME, the influence of family and tribe often outweigh allegience to nation-states. The whole idea of a democratic nation-state is completely alien to many groups in the ME.

3. Islam: The emotional development of Islam as a religion halted in the 14th century with the consolidation of the Ottoman Empire. Before that, Islamic culture was far more advanced than western Christian culture. Islam supported advances in the sciences and mathmatics, such as the spred of the use of the zero (as opposed to the Roman system which lacked the concept). The culture supported the arts, literature and music.

But all of that stopped. For the Christian-influenced world, it would be as if there never had been the Reformation, or the Enlightenment, and the mental world looked like it did in 1300. Thus, many of the common people still live in the equalivant of a medieval "head space", and their reactions to western modernism is a reaction to a world they do not understand. Imagine a person from 14th century Europe suddenly dropped into the modern world, with exposure to all the garbage on TV, pop culture, technology, etc. Much of what the person would expierence would be opposed to their belief system and the rigidity of thought to which they were accustomed.

Not all followers of Islam have stayed in the past. In my family, they still follow the basic tennents, but realize that many of the dictates were designed for a different time and place. My step-father has been known to occasionally eat bacon, but he maintians that the pork prohibition was because Mohammad was addressing thosed that lived in the desert ("We have a microwave!". Pork could not be cooked well enough to kill the parasites that killed people, so the Prophet forbade his followers to eat unhealthy foods.

...sorry, brain just called out for more coffee, hope this helps...

[enough]

8. K&R for this very interesting interview with Juan Cole.

[mike_c]

10. WOW! That was EXCELLENT! A must read interview!

I wish I could kick and recommend it AGAIN!

[The Stranger]

12. Kicked and recommended.