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

To: LindyBill who wrote (38558)	4/8/2004 8:00:42 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793914

We have circled around it here trying to define it, and got nowhere. Oh, that's easy. It's the lying. Even when it isn't needed. Incessantly. With the protestations of honesty, "I swear on the virtue of my mother and the heads of my children." The Iraqi Information Minister was typical of the mentality. Cutting corners, taking bribes, lackadaisicallity, are not significantly worse than many another Third World shit hole pretending to be something that it's not. The grandeur that was Babylon, built out of mud bricks. Unfired mud bricks, at that. We just have a hard time, culturally, dealing with the lies. I don't know if they're pulling stunts like putting suicide bombers in ambulances yet, but that's the type of low grade mentality that drives us up the wall, too.

To: LindyBill who wrote (38558)	4/8/2004 8:37:35 PM
From: NightOwl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793914

The constant refrain I am reading, overt and covert, is that the individual ME people can be great, but as a society they stink. People go over there with good intentions and come back "racists." It is difficult to get a reading on this because it goes to "Folk wisdom" vs "PC." I don't know LB. I've never been there and certainly won't be going there, but from my distant perch it appears obvious to me that Arabs, Japanese and no doubt a substantial number of other cultures outside the Western Hemisphere are "exclusionary" in so far as people from other cultures are concerned. In the west we may have a thread of Spartan isolationism running through our cultures. But by and large we have developed an addiction to the Athenian approach: "If it moves, grab it, shake it and if something of value falls out pick it up and take it home or sell it to the folks next door." "Racism," as I understand it can afflict either the "exclusionary" or the "inclusive" cultures to one degree or another. But the exclusionary world view is far more likely to produce suicidal conduct by its members. I have no evidence other than the US of A for the proposition that racism is a weaker force, but an "exclusionary" world view appears to be a true killer to me. For me the ME, whether Arab or Pashtun or Jewish or whatever, breeds exclusionary cultures and it's that exclusionary strain, not racism, that has to be broken, IMHO. Clearly, many Iraqi's choose to die or live under cretinous Hussein types, rather than to embrace an Athenian, outward directed world view. Jews were forced to adopt an inclusive perception centuries ago. The door to Japan was broken down only recently by comparison. But the desire to exclude the "evil" outsiders is strong. Sparta fought it to the bitter end, and they aren't the only ones. History is full of cultures that are no more because they failed to master the multi-cultural game. There may yet be more such extinctions. I say there are too many "stupid" people in the mid-east simply because despite the age of its cultures, it's prior record of producing expansive outwards looking regimes, and the clearly failed history of exclusionary, noncompeting cultures... there are far too many there who still choose to die rather than alter their perceptions. From my owlish perspective, we are literally dealing with a flock of "Dodo's." Of course I could be wrong, but frankly it looks to me as though somebody needs to beat some sense into their heads before they wind up stuffed on a museum shelf some where. 0\|0 P.S. Has anyone said "Roemer is an idiot!" today? If not, please let me be the first.

To: LindyBill who wrote (38558)	4/9/2004 1:40:45 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

"Getting a reading on this: The constant refrain I am reading, overt and covert, is that the individual ME people can be great, but as a society they stink. People go over there with good intentions and come back "racists." It is difficult to get a reading on this because it goes to "Folk wisdom" vs "PC." History. They are stuck in unmodern practises and it's not easy to get out of them. The Ottoman empire, under which the three provinces which now make up Iraq languished, was a swamp of corruption and tax farming, and the regimes which replaced them continued the practises - the British did not establish a 'Raj' there - and finally reached its nadir under Hussein. No real civil structures existed by the time Coalition forces rolled up to the border. All government organizations were the private fiefdom of the Hussein family and its dependents. In it's own way Iraq under Hussein was medieval. Medieval society is shame based - European medieval society was, also, and where it broke down (usually) due to war it produced regimes an awful lot like Hussein's. To varying degrees and only very few exception this is the situation prevailing in the ME. I've been meaning to point out for some while that an awful lot of people in the ME don't buy into it. Hussein had to kill an awful lot of people to sustain his institutional robbery. The Iranian mullahs have to murder and torture lots of folk to maintain their corruption. When the US cut off Iraqi Kurds from Hussein it took them only four years and some coaching from the US State Department to get beyond their tribalism to a more modern position of reason and self rule. Without outside interference the disfunction can easily roll on for a hundred years. Seriously dedicated outside interference can change it mighty quickly - see Iraqi Kurds. Same thing with greater Iraq. Since the Coalition arrival business practises have cleaned up and the mordita quotient is way down. Judges and lawyers who couldn't do their jobs under Hussein, but kept their heads down and survived, have opened the courts which, from the reports I've read, are doing a lot of honest business. Problems in Iraq are exactly what one might expect in a society which is making this transition from medieval to modern. Resistance coming from those who are losing privilege (monopoly on robbery), and from those who see destruction of social and religious tradition, and from those who would establish their own secular or theocratic monopoly on robbery. There are too many elaborate schemes of explanation for the unhealthy situation in the Middle East. It's unhealthy because its unmodern and based on robbery, shame, unreason and rulers. How to start undoing it? Do away with the robbery and rulers. Best place to start? Iraq. Because it had the nastiest situation. Next best place to start? Iran. After that or concurrently? Palestine. If modern folk go to the ME with the social worker attitude they will be chewed alive by folk who are used to robbery and caprice as the norm. It's too late to think in terms of persuasion without force to back up requirement for decent procedure. Given the events of 9/11 and previous, and European demographics, there is huge inevitable disaster in leaving the place to fester.