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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (57799)	11/19/2002 3:25:00 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

I didn’t deny his [Rubin's] arguments, I pointed out that his conclusions seem not to be based on his arguments. What Arab leaders want the Arab world to believe is not what the Arab world needs to believe. It’s what the leaders need their followers to believe. They need their people to believe that they are threatened by a voracious and amoral enemy that wants to steal their resources and stamp out their faith. That belief is the only thing keeping our enemy alive. Do we want to fuel that belief or undermine it? First, I don't quite agree that the Arab leaders want their people to believe "that they are threatened by a voracious and amoral enemy that wants to steal their resources and stamp out their faith". They are more concerned to believe that a "Zionist world conspiracy" is the true reason for their failures to either stamp out Israel or achieve proper dominance in the world. This idea is based on a certain reality -- they have failed to stamp out Israel and they are economic and military also-rans. It's hard even for the Arabs to come up with examples of how the West wants to stamp out Islam. Rubin's argument is that we cannot undermine this false belief just at present; the Arab leaders and people are too busy believing it in the middle of a nest of self-confirming conspiracy theories. Even when we try to undermine it by pursuing pro-Muslim or pro-Arab policies, we get zero credit for it. A whole culture that believes that the Mossad destroyed the WTC, even after Osama bin Laden takes credit for it, and hails Osama a hero, is somewhat impervious to normal rules of evidence.