"Getting a reading on this:
The constant refrain I am reading, overt and covert, is that the individual ME people can be great, but as a society they stink. People go over there with good intentions and come back "racists." It is difficult to get a reading on this because it goes to "Folk wisdom" vs "PC."
History. They are stuck in unmodern practises and it's not easy to get out of them.
The Ottoman empire, under which the three provinces which now make up Iraq languished, was a swamp of corruption and tax farming, and the regimes which replaced them continued the practises - the British did not establish a 'Raj' there - and finally reached its nadir under Hussein.
No real civil structures existed by the time Coalition forces rolled up to the border. All government organizations were the private fiefdom of the Hussein family and its dependents.
In it's own way Iraq under Hussein was medieval. Medieval society is shame based - European medieval society was, also, and where it broke down (usually) due to war it produced regimes an awful lot like Hussein's.
To varying degrees and only very few exception this is the situation prevailing in the ME.
I've been meaning to point out for some while that an awful lot of people in the ME don't buy into it. Hussein had to kill an awful lot of people to sustain his institutional robbery. The Iranian mullahs have to murder and torture lots of folk to maintain their corruption.
When the US cut off Iraqi Kurds from Hussein it took them only four years and some coaching from the US State Department to get beyond their tribalism to a more modern position of reason and self rule.
Without outside interference the disfunction can easily roll on for a hundred years. Seriously dedicated outside interference can change it mighty quickly - see Iraqi Kurds.
Same thing with greater Iraq. Since the Coalition arrival business practises have cleaned up and the mordita quotient is way down. Judges and lawyers who couldn't do their jobs under Hussein, but kept their heads down and survived, have opened the courts which, from the reports I've read, are doing a lot of honest business.
Problems in Iraq are exactly what one might expect in a society which is making this transition from medieval to modern. Resistance coming from those who are losing privilege (monopoly on robbery), and from those who see destruction of social and religious tradition, and from those who would establish their own secular or theocratic monopoly on robbery.
There are too many elaborate schemes of explanation for the unhealthy situation in the Middle East. It's unhealthy because its unmodern and based on robbery, shame, unreason and rulers.
How to start undoing it? Do away with the robbery and rulers. Best place to start? Iraq. Because it had the nastiest situation. Next best place to start? Iran. After that or concurrently? Palestine.
If modern folk go to the ME with the social worker attitude they will be chewed alive by folk who are used to robbery and caprice as the norm.
It's too late to think in terms of persuasion without force to back up requirement for decent procedure. Given the events of 9/11 and previous, and European demographics, there is huge inevitable disaster in leaving the place to fester. |
