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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27135)	4/26/2002 10:56:40 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 281500

Aside from the final conclusion (which is defensible but hardly a slam-dunk), I think that editorial is actually pretty much on target. I was chatting yesterday with a friend who just got back from a trip to the Gulf. This very knowledgeable oberserver of the Mideast over the last several decades said that he hadn't fully realized until now just how great a revolution the whole cable-tv thing had meant in terms of the ability to mobilize popular opinion in the Arab world... Those who pooh-pooh the "Arab street" based on historical comparisons don't know what they're talking about, he said--the rulers are really really running scared, and the general outrage and anti-Americanism is higher than he's ever seen it before. He thinks that the craziness of the WTC attack and the success of the Afghan war opened up a possibility for the good guys (secular, more liberal) to gain some strength in the region, but that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is eating away at that and radicalizing things unbelievably. I still find it hard to believe that anything like a US-Saudi "divorce" is coming, but it would be interesting to explore just what that would involve in practical terms. The lead story in the WSJ today is a good start on that, I think... tb@stormwarning.com PS god, I really really hate these *&^%$#! flashing ads on SI! They give a giant headache. If SI doesn't eliminate them soon, they are soon going to lose a hell of a lot of people--and with numbers down, I don't think they can afford that...