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Politics : Middle East Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (1149)	2/22/2002 1:20:58 PM
From: Math Junkie	Respond to of 6945

It is not necessary for people to be in desperate straights in order to act out of desperation. It is enough if they believe they are. "The cause was not desperation, unless you want to count Arafat's inability to accept Israel's existence, confront the hard-liners or run a state as legitimate causes for desperation." The causes of desperation are neither legitimate nor illegitimate. People feel what they feel, for whatever reason. I'm not saying that any of this justifies anything. As for Osama bin Laden, depending on which story you believe, he was either POed at us for having our troops in his sacred Saudi Arabia, or he was POed at us for dumping him like a hot potato after the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan. Take your pick, or come up with your own estimate of his motivations. The point is, he believed he had a problem, whatever it was. "Sometimes they are self-inflicted and objective judgement must take this into account." How do you achieve "objective judgement"? It's a contradiction in terms. The best we can hope for is to prevent our own biases from getting in the way of perceiving verifiable facts, and to try to live our lives according to just principles. "neither side wants to be called desperate. " Well, when I said that no one objected to being called desperate, neither side in this thread had yet objected to it. Now you say the Israelis aren't. But it is obvious that both sides want the other side to be seen as evil, at least. I submit that the Israelis elected a hard-liner because they were desperate to find someone who could protect them from attacks, that Sharon is setting up his buffer zones because he is desperate to find some way of protecting his people, and that the people who have been supporting the settlement policies have been doing so because they think it is necessary for Israel to survive, which is a pretty desperate strategy, considering the consequences. Arafat, judging by your own description, is desperate to find a way to stay alive and in power. I still don't see how teaching children to become suicide bombers can be anything other than a desperate strategy. If people in the Middle East are not acting out of desperation, they are sure giving a good imitation of it.