Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: SirRealist who wrote (17603)	1/30/2002 12:00:31 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Sr, First of all, my prognosis, such as it was, concerned our problem in the Mideast: we have lost respect. Thus our goal is simple: we must re-acquire it. I don't have a clear prognosis as to how. Signals from the Bush administration have persuaded me that we are going into Iraq this year. I certainly did not suggest that we take a big stick and run around bullying this country and that, so please let's not set up a straw horse to argue about! OBL doesn't represent a majority, but he is playing to the majority, tapping responsive chords. And he's finding them. If he weren't, you wouldn't find this blanket denial, which Tom Friedman reports, that he did 9/11. People want to defend him; he's their Robin Hood. soft-headed me thinks a sizable number of Arab folks can sort out the cows from the cowpies too Unfortunately, there are several reasons I doubt this. First, most Arabs are fed a ludicrous diet of lies and distortions about the West by government presses that play towards their sense of victimhood and wounded pride. Most Arabs really believe that the US supports Israel because a Jewish conspiracy controls the US media and government. They believe it because their newspaper and TV tells them so daily. Second, Arab politics is highly emotional at the best of times and is now led by emotions of shame and wounded pride. People can make really stupid decisions in the grip of such feelings. The autocratic governments are usually too weak to oppose such feelings; they just try to point them at external agents and surf the wave. Arafat is a bit actor who is dangerous, but can't threaten much of anyone outside the 'hood'. He doesn't have the guns, thank heaven. But he's making up for it by doing his level best to drag the entire 'hood into war. But my major objection to what you wrote was about the notion that we 'earned' or 'deserved' the 911 attacks Heaven forbid I should say that we deserved them. But something made OBL think that he could do them and survive our response. That something was our response to all the previous attacks. An 'all-compassion-all-the-time' approach would be weak, but compassion, in my mind, is a strength You can't forget the stick part of the carrot and the stick approach, and that's just what we've done. We have given the Arab rulers a free pass on virulent anti-Americanism. We have looked soft. You can't afford this with Arabs. Honor and face rule that part of the world. But I'm still not convinced - based on what I observed throughout the Middle East in the wake of 911 - that even that's true. I don't know what you observed. What I observed was that most of the Arab countries cheered as if their team had just scored a great soccer goal. Government officials put on sad faces.