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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: broadstbull who wrote (8690)	4/6/2003 4:50:29 PM
From: broadstbull	Respond to of 21614

Matthew, more....... WTF do they need western engineers to pump their oil? Think about that. Tell me they are not 100% azz backwards. They have this incredibly rich commodity and they are either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to produce it without western help. That fact is telling.....

To: broadstbull who wrote (8690)	4/6/2003 5:03:48 PM
From: matthew (Hijacked)	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21614

I do reflect on what you say and agree with most of it. "Because their governments are ALL either dictatorships, royalty, or fundamentalists." Unfortunately, our so-called free and democratic government should also be held accountable for keeping these regimes in power with its hypocritical foreign policy. Why have they not bombed Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? Are men and women in those countries anymore free than the men and women of Iraq? Our government supports these dictatorships because it serves their purpose. Rather than declaring wars in which innocent ignorant civilians are killed, we should maybe boycott oil that comes from these countries. Maybe then change will take place and peace and harmony will be achieved.

To: broadstbull who wrote (8690)	4/6/2003 5:14:54 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

No one, apparently not even the well known scholar Bernard Lewis, has been able to explain why Muslim countries have so much difficulty in modernizing. The reasons you offer as an explanation are merely symptoms, not causes. The latest attempt by Bernard Lewis, in his recently published book "The Crisis of Islam--Holy War and Unholy Terror," doesn't answer the question. And if he doesn't know the answer, then you and everyone else will have to dig deeper. I think one of the reasons the question hasn't been answered is that people in the West tend to analyze the problems of Arab or Muslim countries by drawing parallels with western history and western tyrants in particular (e.g., Hitler, Stalin). I don't think this is a very fruitful way to get at the problem. In asserting that Arab (Muslim?) governments are "ALL either dictatorships, royalty, or fundamentalists," you apparently don't find a place either for Egypt or Turkey, both of which have made a great deal of progress with parliamentary government and elected representatives. It's too easy to paint every Arab country as if it is inferior to the West, and in particular to the form of democracy practiced in the U.S. Some people, even in the West, would disagree. Art