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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (13755)	12/13/2001 1:46:32 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am almost finished with From Beirut to Jerusalem. It is marvelously written. I loved the detail. Lots of good citations to original material (for example military oral history). I pushed all my friends to read this book, and most of them are. I'm still working on the ones who say it looks boring. Because it most certainly is not.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (13755)	12/13/2001 2:36:59 AM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Friedman and Safire remain on my must-read list. Even in the analysis of Islamic peoples on this thread, I think we sometimes forget that there's always a difference between a people and its government, and while too much blame is applied to the religious zealots, not enough blame is placed on backward, repressive regimes who hide beneath the robes of the clerics, swinging from their repressed genitalia. It is not just the unholy alliance of terrorist masterminds, wayward generals & scientists, and dispossessed orphan boys that causes us grief. There is a more insidious psychologically dysfunctional alliance caused by puritanical taboos about sex/chastity/virginity/gender-equality advanced by religious wackos who offer shelter to leaders of governments designed badly, to control, instead of liberating their populations with economic opportunity and modern norms of civility. It used to be verboten to discuss sex, politics and religion, as a loss of amicable debate could result. Yet in our discussions of the Middle East, not only do all three require exploration, but we should be openly denouncing the repression and hatefulness visible in all three and challenge Islam to move past the 15th century superstitions about matters of sex and gender into an acceptance of Biology 101. It's not the first major religion to screw up in this regard, but like the others, we should not back off out of 'cultural sensitivity'. If religion refuses to grow up with the benefit of scientific advance, and we don't challenge that, how can we expect to ever enter serious discussions with folks who think the sun revolves around a flat earth? Friedman is one of the very few who challenges government leaders when he calls them what they are. Let's hope others join in and awaken a healthy debate about religion and sex/gender in the Middle East as well. Because until all three topics of the hatefully-repressed-alliance get a full public debate, little will change, and repressive men will prey upon the institutionalized superstitions of the ignorant.