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

To: TimF who wrote (101763)	6/16/2003 7:13:26 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Palestinians have a strong nationalism but there has never been a country called Palestine and even the term Palestinian was not in frequent use until the 20th century. Even then, the term "Palestinian" referred to the Zionists for the first half of the 20th century.

To: TimF who wrote (101763)	6/27/2003 10:58:30 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi twfowler; Re: "Ireland had a national Irish identity long before 1922. People where calling themselves Irish for many hundreds of years. Iraq does not have a similar long term identity." If our only problem were "Iraq", then your observation would be very accurate and cogent. Unfortunately, we are not taking on just the Iraqis. Our problem is with the Arab peoples, not just the "Iraqis". For that matter, a large part of England's problem in Ireland was that Irish who had moved to the US kept supporting the rebellion back home with financial aid. This despite the fact that there is no "Irish" state in the United States. Hell, the Israelis have been saying the same thing about the Palestinians (that there is no such thing as "Palestine") for 50+ years but they're still fighting. You just can't look at the terror / guerilla war / Israeli vs. Palestinian problem as separate issues. These are issues that polarize us versus the Arab peoples. If a country (like German in 1938) beats up on an Anglo country (like England), eventually the other Anglo countries will get involved, and they'll probably eventually get involved, and get involved on the Anglo side. This is just the way that humans work. People trust people largely according to how similar they are, and people who share a similar language, ethnic background, religious belief, etc., are more similar than people who do not. There is no way in hell that we can support the Israelis in their military occupation of Palestine without upsetting the other Arab states. And there is no way in hell that we can cut Iraq off from the other Arab states and expect that we can restrict our attentions to just that one area. Birds of a feather flock together, and people are no different. We did not sign up for an "Iraqi" problem, but instead Bush signed us up for an "Arab" problem. -- Carl