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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (119040)	11/9/2003 6:01:16 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Arab Liberal Writer: Blames Arab Media for Hatred of the U.S. November 7, 2003 No.605 ...." "Abd Al-Bari Atwan is part of the problem… and our problem is that it is not only America that we hate. Our Arab societies are societies of hate; we were raised to hate each other even before we hated others… The Arab societies are… also failed societies. "..... ..." In contrast, after the events of September 11 the Americans realized… that extremism and backwardness do not distinguish between Arab and American, Indian or Brazilian. The danger is enveloping all and uprooting it is an obligation incumbent upon all peoples of the world… "What is great about the Americans is that they learn from experience and amend their policy in accordance with the new reality. Luckily for the Arab people, the neo-conservatives are in power in the U.S. It seems that they grasped that the U.S.'s former policy led to the strengthening of the extremists and the destruction of the enlightened forces in the Arab world, and therefore they undertook to amend the previous policy… If the Arab nationalists or socialists would look around them, they would realize that the danger comes not from the U.S., and not from the neo-conservatives, but from those amongst them..." Full article >>>> memri.org

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (119040)	11/9/2003 10:48:49 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "So you think that the course of human events cannot be influenced, right?" Some outcomes can be achieved, some cannot. For example, I was in favor of the Afghan intervention, but not the Iraq one. Re: "Things just don't happen in a vacuum Carl. And to believe that we should just abdicate our ability to influence events to other powers SEEKING TO DO THE EXACT THING is just insane." My gripe is that Bush's war is influencing events in a manner that is against our interests. And the former head of the Israeli Mossad (as well as a lot of good solid Republicans and military officers) agrees with me, not you: Mossad chief: invasion has created a holy war news.independent.co.uk Re: "Further proof that you're just plain nuts. Carl, there are nearly 100M Arabic speakers in Egypt alone." Thanks for the polite correction. Let's make it around 250 million Arabs. But all that does is make my point stronger. Let me repeat it for you, with the corrected figures: (b) The losing population is fairly large compared to the winners. (There are about 250M Arabic speakers, 400M English speakers.) This factor tends to give the resistance the impression that they have enough numbers to win eventually. Unfortunately for Bush's war, the larger Arab population just makes the pacification of Iraq that much harder. And it also makes it harder for you to find an example of a pacification that is at all similar to the one that Bush tried. Re: "And since the Koran is written in Arabic, all muslims who read/recite the Koran speak at least some semblance of Arabic." The majority of non Arabs who recite the Koran don't have the slightest idea what they're saying. They just pronounce the words, they don't understand their meaning. Here's an example website: easyrecitearabic.org ... Recitation: One can recite a language, which one may not even know or understand well. Arabic Recitation is reproducing, phonetically correct pronunciation from a given text, not necessarily with comprehension or understanding of the text. Arabic Recitation is the systematic and rhythmic rendering of phonetics (called letters) under given controls (called diacritics). ... easyrecitearabic.org You can learn to pronounce written Latin (or Spanish) in a few minutes. From this, you can recite various texts without having the slightest idea what the meaning is. But the point really doesn't matter. If you want to replace "Arab speakers" with "Arab people", then do so, my argument stands. All you're doing is nitpicking. Go do some research and come back with an example of an occupation like Iraq that succeeded. You are still avoiding my single and only point, which is that the occupation of Iraq is doomed. -- Carl