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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (37965)	4/5/2004 2:30:56 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

Nadine, just what is it about Arab culture that makes their reaction to our occupation different? You mentioned ingratitude. Is that a prominent characteristic of Arab culture or is that just the manifestation of the salient characteristic? The salient characteristic of Arab culture, which is more true the more tribal the local culture, is the honor-shame dynamic as the main driver of actions. Getting honor and avoiding shame, not just personally but on the family/clan/tribal level, are the main drivers of action. Add to that a proud history and the knowledge, literally from Allah via the Koran, that Arabs ought to be ruling everybody else because they brought the true religion to the world. Now chuck these feelings into the modern geo-political situation, adding profound ignorance of the actual workings of the modern world, and you get an explosive mix, with injured pride and conspiracy thinking driving many self-destructive acts. (It is also btw, why so much terrible reporting comes out from Baghdad, because the first answer to any stranger's question is going to be the shame-avoiding answer, not the true one. You have to dig below first answers. John Burns does; most other reporters don't bother) The reason I say that you can't expect gratitude from Arabs (not that any civilization would be grateful for long; the Arabs are just a more extreme example) is that the injured pride/shame-avoidance driver is so strong that it will quickly pop back to the surface and drown out other feelings like gratitude. I think Americans would react quite differently; while we might feel bad about an occupation, but would study the occupiers to try to read their intentions, try to work with them, and would obey our political leaders, because we do have a history of working political institutions and not just tribes. In short, we would think about our political goals, not our family honor.

To: Lane3 who wrote (37965)	4/6/2004 1:53:49 AM
From: david	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793964

""Now you literally CANNOT notice how a an Arab Muslim population might react differently to the same stimuli, the same occupation, as say, an Assyrian Christian population."" ""Nadine, just what is it about Arab culture that makes their reaction to our occupation different? You mentioned ingratitude. Is that a prominent characteristic of Arab culture or is that just the manifestation of the salient characteristic?"" I think that dismembering buddies is a bit different, the western fighter would be abale to an act like 9/11 or the Spanish trains, what I understand from the Arabic-Muslim-Fundamentalist culture is that they are bred in the Monarchic Feudal system, and the religious fanatism with a lack of respect for human life.. The west will hardly bring democracy to those countries and less control it, we miss the ruthless lack of consideration for human life and the guts needed to use mass murder and torture, those countries are ruled by the strength of the security apparatus and the ruthless executions, abductions, tortures and when needed mass killing as an example for the population not to revolt. You can have an example of this in the Murder of tens of thousands opponents to Sirias Assad, when he bombed and killed a whole town of his own people just as an example : Migdale Shams. Same could be seen with Sadams murder of whole villages and thousands of Curds with Nerve gases, as well as the war between Iraq and Iran with mass killings, Same thing happened with the western educated King Huseein of Jordan when he wanted to get rid of the Palestinians in the Black september, he just went on a rampage and killed thousands of combatants and civilians. If we are talking about fighting against an invader, please explain what drove the destruction of Lebanon? Lebanon was the only Half Democracy in the middle east, there was a balance between Christians and Muslims, it was the Switzerland and the Riviera of the middle east, but it was enough that the Palestinians came in , got strong with the help of the Muslim population in order to get rid of the christians, The Lebanese muslims turned against their fellow Christian citizens and like the Scorpion destroyed their country, Were was the national interest? were was the FIGHT against the invader, the Sectarian radicalism was stronger then the national interest and standard of living. Sorry to say so but Islam will never accept non muslims to be equals among them, and they will do what ever needed to conquest the west, be it by war or be it by slow immigration and population growth.