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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: asenna1 who wrote (181657)	9/15/2001 3:17:33 AM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

You are full of assenashit.

To: asenna1 who wrote (181657)	9/15/2001 4:01:31 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The heart of the matter is pride, say Mideast scholars, the pride of Muslim peoples who know from their religion, history and traditions they were once a dominant civilization but who now feel subjugated by an American superpower they regard as culturally shallow and by what they see as its warship, Israel. Many Arabs and Muslims feel the normal ways societies pick themselves up -- developing their economies, renewing their governments -- aren't available to them, again because the U.S. has propped up oppressive regimes. At some point you have to ask why the Arab world spent the 20th century looking backwards, blaming others, and resenting their loss of hegemony. Was the West also responsible for their failure to develop modern civil societies or political systems that could match the West during the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the 20th? You also have to notice how the illegitimate Arab governments have propped themselves up by directing their people's animosity towards external enemies and away from internal grievances. Look at how the simple fact of Israel's existence has never been accepted (or just barely by governments who gave up on destroying it openly and now fight by proxy), how the Palestinians, alone among the millions of refugees of the late 40's, have been kept in refugee camps as pawns and weapons (did you know that the refugees in Gaza during '48-67 never even got Egyptian work permits, let alone citizenship?), how the Arab governments have worked, even during the so-called "Oslo peace process" to prevent any solution from being reached. They would be in deep doo-doo if the Palestinians ever became prosperous. How have the majority of the people in the Arab countries reacted to this blatant attempt to keep their attention focussed on external enemies, and away from the problems with their own governments? A: They have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. They can't help it, we are told. It's an "identity thing". I think it's high time that the Arab world stopped blaming everybody else for their problems and started looking in a mirror.