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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Sun Tzu who wrote (91664)4/9/2003 11:35:37 PM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
The point here is that we are dealing with a region that mistrusts us immensely. And whether it is out of mistrust or for their own ulterior motives, any mistakes we make will be looked at in the worst possible light. Convincing them otherwise is a difficult act, but it is not impossible.

We can and should take reasonable precautions against such mistakes, but I stress "reasonable". Not the precautions that various Arab commentators demand, because they cannot be satisfied. Like Lileks said, whatever.

Even great precautions will ensure that the Arabs begin to get real and extract themselves from the cocoon of lies that they have wrapped themselves up in. In fact,it is not constructive to bend over backwards or deny plain facts to try to please anybody. We are not colonizing Iraq but we will be keeping order in it for the immediate future. Somebody must put down the farhouds before Iraq goes up in flames, and it is better if everybody knows who.

The war was a walkover (Johnny Apple's quagmire "news analysis" of a week ago will make a good pair for his Afghanistan quagmire piece of October 2001). Arab armies are perfectly useless against any competent Western army, particularly ours, the best in the world. If it takes shocks to get any plain facts absorbed through the "poetic reality" that Arabs prefer to plain reality, then let there be shocks. The region will never improve until the Arabs stop telling themselves so many lies. At least in the Soviet block, people had the excuse that it was the government telling the people so many lies. The Arabs do it to themselves, by choice.
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