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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (114713)	9/14/2003 3:15:56 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "The FACT is, Bilow, that globalization has been on-going throughout the world with little political effect on the mid-east. If anything, it has aggravated the alienation many people feel because any modernization has merely widened the gap between the elites and the population." (1) I don't know what "globalization" really means. It seems to mean free import and exports of jobs. If you will go through my posts you will find that I never mentioned the word "globalization" in terms of Iraq or the Middle East. This is another case of your failing to actually read anything I write. You keep putting up these strawmen, shooting holes in them, and then declaring that I haven't made a case. Well hell, since I never used the word "globalization", where did you come up with it? That's the kind of word that a neocon policy wonk would use to describe some essentially mercantilist policy that has nothing to do with Iraq at all. But I'll answer your mistatement replacing "globalization" with "westernization". Your statement is not a "FACT", it's your perception. The FACT is that the kids in Iran are practically in rebellion. Sure the Iranians could get them hepped up for a war with the US, but as long as we remain neutral, we became the ideal that they all want. Eventually they will take over the Iranian government just as happened in the Soviet Union. Re: "There is NO upward social mobility within the region, nor a structure that encourages it. For Arabs to obtain economic and political opportunity, they must travel to the west." These are more of your prejudices. You have zero evidence of this. People move to the US from all over the world. A lot of the Arabs who moved to Europe or America were not educated. But as I proved to you the other day, even Saudi Arabia does have real colleges where real students get real educations, and most of those guys stay in Saudi Arabia. Salam Pax is another example, a Baghdad educated architect with a buddy from Jordan who went to the same school in Iraq and now lives in Jordan. If there weren't any jobs for these guys, then how come they haven't moved to the US? Your prejudice is probably due to the fact that you haven't met any upwardly mobile Arabs who stayed in Iraq or Jordan, LOL, so you naturally assume that there aren't any. The truth is that economies in many of the Arab countries are growing like gang busters, and the fact that Iraq was not a part of this was due to sanctions that we enforced. Re: "Thus, the demography of the region is forcing more and more muslims to flee the region, emigrating to the west and creating social turmoil in western nations." Do you have numbers? How many is "more and more"? Can you compare the figures to, for example, Mexico? Or Canada? Fact is that I hear more about Turks in Germany than Arabs, and Turkey is not having any great problems. And France does have its share of Arabs, but they're associated with the Algerian war, not any inherent problems in all of the Arab countries. Re: "It may fail." I can't believe you said this. Surely you don't really think that a plan by the Bush administration could go wrong, LOL. Re: "We don't have the luxury of just waiting for the wheels of progress in the region to finally turn for the muslim world." Since we don't have any other realistic choices, that's our best bet. Look at the history of the region! The French wanted to keep Algeria. They had 500,000 men in country by 1956. Twenty-six thousand of them were killed. Oh, by the way, at that time, the population of the country was about 8.7 million. Scaling the figures up to Iraq, that suggests that we could put 1.5 million troops in country and still get beaten, but only after killing at least a million Iraqis and losing 78,000 of our own soldiers lives. No thanks! The Israeli situation in Palestine is similar, but less hostile (because they really aren't trying to keep Palestine under Israeli control) and longer lasting (because they are truly stuck where they are). Sure we could keep Iraq in a sort of permanent "gaza-strip" condition, but that wouldn't reduce terrorism, and it would still slowly eat away at our military as well. Surely it would prevent any other Republican from getting elected President until a good number of years went by. The FACT is that I have listed above two examples of modern failed attempts by Western states to pacify Arab states. You have listed ZERO examples of modern successful pacifications of Arab states by Western states. I have listed multiple examples of the advance of Arab countries in science, literacy, and student rebellion against religion. You have listed ZERO examples of modern Islamic militancy creating a military force that was able to conquer another country. You're not using FACTS, you're using PREJUDICES. It is a FACT that each year, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran all become a little more modern. You think they want nukes? Of course, they want to be like the US, and we have nukes. Do you think they're going to get nukes without scientists??? These countries are not stupid. What they want is to advance themselves and become like us. So that they don't have to put up with our warplanes flying in their airspace. -- Carl P.S. Hey, hey, LBJ! How many Iraqi policemen did you kill today?