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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41432)	4/29/2004 5:00:45 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

Al-Jazeera is doing the work of a thousand rocket propelled grenades. It is really an active enemy combatant. Not just AJ, another weapon is the propensity in the ME to think the worst of The Other because he is not One Of Us, facts be damned. This is a potent cultural impediment to the perception of facts that cannot be disputed. I've always wondered how many actually believed Baghdad Bob--I bet there were a lot more than would care to admit. The inability to perceive facts, to be led by the nose by outfits like AJ and by people like Baghdad Bob, along with the inability to enter into rational compromises, coupled to the surprising, to me, anyway, ability to gladly allow oneself to be subjugated to the wills of thugs and criminals, are a few of the other non-explosive weapons in the insurgents' hands. How can people be so damned dumb? AJ is only part of the enemy. The other is a culture that seems impenetrably dense to me. C2@endofrant.com

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41432)	4/29/2004 10:23:12 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

At the end of the day, all you can say is, well, the Kurds are not Arabs. You can help the Kurds, and given a chance, they can help themselves. Absurd. The Kurds cooperate with us because they see us as the only thing standing between them and domination by either the Turks or whoever emerges on top of the inevitable thrashout to the south. Self-interest, pure and simple, and the cooperation will last only as long as the self-interest lasts. The people who see us as saviours cooperate. The people who see us as occupiers don't. Is this a surprise? If the coalition really did a Spanish retreat now, and things went downhill fast, the US would be accused of betraying the Iraqis. Iraq is going to go through a period of near anarchy before any stable government emerges. That is a given. No force exists with the capacity to govern the country, and we do not have the ability to create such a force. We can stay in and be accused of creating the anarchy - and eventually be forced out by popular demand - or bail out and be accused of betrayal. Lovely choice, no?