How the Arab World Came Apart
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
CHUCK TODD:
All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look.
DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE):
That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of Eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds. And the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far.
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-...
To give backers of the war the benefit of the doubt, a whole lot of shit changed after that video. Hindsight is 20/20 and we can't back test strategies like the stock market. It would be nice if we could.
The initial "Shock and Awe" campaign in Baghdad killed an estimated 6,600+ civilians. [1]
It's stated purpose was to "impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on ... [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels."
That is to say, it was terrorism. And what's even more disgusting is that Americans watched it on TV like fireworks.
That's basically a textbook example of how to surgically destroy your enemy's warmaking capabilities with the least loss of noncombatant life.
I think it's acceptable to describe as terror that thing which kills you, wether you are someone in Bagdad 2003 who is too poor to flee to Jordan, wether you are a victim of ISIL or if you are a 16 year old male shepherd in Waziristan where there is a full legal procedure which in the end lawfully decides to kill you because you're you.
Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad.
Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.
Mark my words a vote for Hillary is a vote for war.[0]
[0]https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/04/01/19496/defense-con...
The politician will feel that she maintains neutrality, and is making decisions for herself (not influenced by money), but since she has only heard one side of the story, she is likely to choose in that direction.
Similarly, if someone says to you, "hey, I have a problem, can you help me?" then you will probably help them if it's not too much trouble. Politicians are the same, except it costs $400k to be able to tell them that. And then the politician feels good that they have helped someone.
[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460762853/how-hillary-clinton-... [1] http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/another-day-an...
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/07/politics/john-kasich-donald-tr...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/20/trump_repo...
You might reasonably expect that Pence was made a similar offer. If that's how it played out, you could probably expect a relatively vanilla foreign policy from Pence.
The problem is there's no guarantee that's how it would play out; Trump is narcissistic and unstable. He might actually intend to do that until Pence does something he doesn't like, and then Trump takes the reins back.
For the record I'm not a Trump fan either. I'd like to reform some stuff like patent law but Trump would burn most of it down.
I'm just saying that ~in theory~ Pence is an olive branch towards the middle. I don't think Trump will follow up on it in any way, nor will he be elected given the polls.
Maybe it has always been this way.
More from Republicans: Theodore Roosevelt, probably George Wallace and Ross Perot
More from Democrats: Henry Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Ralph Nader
Who knows: John Anderson.
I think that Roosevelt, Perot, and Nader all had strong effects, I don't think that Thurmond, either Wallace, or Anderson changed the outcome.
Alternately, to people who consider it the same as voting for Hillary, I blithely say, "No, because otherwise I would vote for Trump." Same lovely effect.
No, to all evidence, 1992 was a far stronger year for that; while things might change between now and November, for pretty much the entire election season then Perot alone was polling above the combined total (at the same point in the campaign) of all non-major-party candidates this year. (And, during the primary season, sometimes ahead of both of the major party frontrunners in head-to-head polls that year.)
In terms of the electoral votes, there's essentially no chance of a third party result this year more successful than 1836, 1892, or 1948, and little chance of either electoral or popular vote success of a third party candidate more than 1856 or 1924.
In the meantime, we have this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/toxic-gas-in-the-...
The series of wars in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq involve a lot more than that, and a Turkey-Syria-Russia alignment doesn't remove the basis for them (though it might reduce the level of violence in Syria while increasing it in Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan (and even moreso ex-Iraqi Kurdistan if the movement of that region to secede from Iraq progresses.)
Erdogan and Assad are hardly buddies, even after the attempted coup.
So the decision is not between war and peace in Syria. It is between one war and another. The alternative you describe might be shorter (or it might not be, depending on how Hillary would execute her plan to go after Assad, among numerous other factors), but it may also be worse in many other respects.
See the article and State Department testimony below, emphasis mine.
NYT, from 2013:
"Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.
The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons. The plan had risks, but it also offered the potential reward of creating Syrian allies with whom the United States could work, both during the conflict and ___after President Bashar al-Assad’s eventual removal___.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/in-behind-scen...
From 2011, testimony by Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, State Department:
"But we take the advent of the [Syrian National Council] very seriously, and we support the broader opposition’s efforts to focus on the critical task of expanding and consolidating its base of support within Syria by articulating a clear and common vision and ___developing a concrete and credible post-Assad transition plan.___"
http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Jeffrey_Feltman_...
At least to 2006, ten years ago, thanks to the US Embassy cable published by Wikileaks:
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html
Some coverage:
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/10/wikileaks-cabl...
"The cables also show that U.S. support for efforts to overthrow the Syrian government beginning in 2011 were not a response to the Assad government’s repression of protests but rather a continuation of a years-long strategy by more directly violent means."
Without that cable, this would be impossible to prove. Helps understanding why Manning who leaked that was 9 months in solitary confinement, stripped naked:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/11/stripped-naked...
Just a reminder, this is the presidential candidate in question:
Citation still needed. The material you provided is interesting and perhaps notable, and perhaps, if followed through, could be first steps in a campaign to remove Assad. But it's far from a direct call for regime change, as you are claiming.
Again, I'm probably more in agreement with your perspective than disagreement, but we all parties are best served if we make make more precise, evidence backed claims.
Hint: She and her husband are in bed with the House of Saud. Her (their) deep commitment to Israel is unquestionable. Never forget that she's a neocon and worships Henry Kissinger. It's just that she's joined at the waist to a democrat.
I suspect you would be surprised how much that sentence scares me.
Great plan, weren't there all these terrorists cutting of heads and stuff, making him look like an angel. Also there is this tiny problem of Russian troops fighting for Assad, which could interfere with the otherwise genius plan.
Citation please?
We would have to create infrastructure for AC-based indoor living in the entire region and beyond on a grand scale, or only for some and see the rest of the population live in a vegetative state during much of the year. If climate change and the predictions are real anything less is futile. Basically, the entire region is becoming Arizona - without AC for most people, much higher humidity directly at the Gulf, with even less freshwater and many more people who also are much poorer.
Just a dark thought: Maybe there simply is no solution. The climate problem is independent of all the human problems, so solving them, already seemingly impossible, would not even help much with this new issue growing stronger.
Thats a huge amount of constant power and infrastructure, which is just not going to be built.
Easier to build an underground city with high ceilings and taking advantage of physics than managing to give AC to everyone in the region, which is to say both options are extremely difficult and require pre-existing infrastructure.
And this still doesn't solve the problem of what precisely people will do for work in the region
Ancient Iranian architecture was quite close to that, which you may be alluding to: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Architecture/wind.htm
What people will do? Well, same as everywhere else, everything from agriculture to software. It's more a question of how many of them the local agriculture can support. The number of people who've fled Syria is more than its entire population was in 1950. Similar applies to places like Yemen. Malthusianism may not apply globally, but it can certainly bite locally.
no wonder persians were called 'educated arabs' in the past.
It was "beautiful" because you were watching it on TV and marveling at how we manage to drop bombs from a distance through a building's smallest opening.
For the men, women and children of Iraq, it was hell. It was not fun, and, most definitely, was not beautiful.
War is not beautiful. The invasion was a revolting, unnecessary horror from conception to now, where it still has not ended and shows no sign of an end.
As far as Bush not listening to generals, etc. I don't believe Bush was anything more than a figurehead. Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. were the decision makers. They knew what they were doing, and they didn't have an exit strategy because exiting was never their goal.
I think we're still doing reasonably OK in Canada... :->
"The country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, fresh water, and hydropower. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) On a per-capita basis, Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East." (Wikipedia)
I agree that the invasion was stupid, but it was not "likely illegal," it _was_ illegal.
when a country like the U.S. chooses to initiate a war of aggression against a foreign population it is effectively just an assertion that there is no such thing as law when it comes to wielding geo-political power. in the case of the congressional vote to authorize force, that wasn't really an exercise of law. that was a public performance of assent to break the law. it was congress saying "we capitulate to your plans and will not attempt to interfere with the war".
When a country decides to break its agreements it is more useful to say that there is no strong rule of law in international relations, rather than that there is no law.
Military force was authorized by Public Law 107-243 AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 [2].
[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legal [2] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ243/html/PLAW-107p...
The interesting thing is that, when they were successful in 2007 (more troupes) it was completely accidental. They had no idea why it worked at first, and it took them a while to figure it out.
As everybody know, the US could not stay their with this much troupes forever and thus they could never credibly commit to long term stability and peace between the different sections. If you can not stay somewhere for 1-2 generations, don't go there in the first place.
But the real problems occurred in the disastrous power vacuum and complete lack of a plan that occurred after the war was won. That's what tore Iraq and the Middle East apart. I don't think the NYTimes has any responsibility for that.
I can't recommend this Frontline piece highly enough - "Losing Iraq". Its practically a case book study on the missteps that took place under the leadership of Paul Bremmer a Kissinger associate and who was chosen to lead the CPA - Coalition Provisional Authority(the transition government) after the US took Baghdad. Bremmer knew nothing of Iraqi politics and was only briefed on them on the flight to Baghdad. The largest mistake was his decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army, followed closely by the de-Baathification of the government in country that only has a single political party - the Baath Party. Bremmer had near autonomy in his decision making. This is perhaps one of the best pieces I have seen on the subject:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Baghdads...
No, the real problem was invading a country that posed no threat to us. That was the real crime. The power vacuum could not have happened without that illegal invasion.
Is there a way I can say both that the invasion was stupid AND that it could (not should!) have worked out ok afterwards if the US had a plan?
I think that it is worth noting all the things that went wrong, not just the stupidity of the invasion itself.
Except for never mentioning the fact or investigating what the consequences of the war they were propagandizing were likely to be.
New York, DC and London are responsible for the worlds problems?
I honestly have no idea what you are are talking about.
The authors of the book Superforecasting : The Science of Prediction have done research in this area. And a website [2]
Nate Silver also tells a similar story in his book. He proved it too, by turning pundit.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-P...
> The black swans are coming fast and thick.
"Therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord: Lamentation shall be in all the broad places, and they shall say in all the streets: 'Alas! alas!' and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and proclaim lamentation to such as are skilful of wailing." Amos 5.16
This piece may be fun to get through your flight, but it should offer a holistic perspective.
Is that how you view the political movements happening in the Arabic-speaking majority world - Sorry for the pedantry - from 2011 onward that we're consumed by resentment toward the West?
It's gotta be about you, right?
> "The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states"
I had no idea that these political movements and the resulting turmoil were about border disputes between states, and not primarily domestic political issues. The more you know ...
> "Until then, tyranny worked."
Could this explain your theory the perceived resentment in the Arabic speaking world towards the West?
At least now, it would be warranted and well earned since you wish on other people harm, maybe you should get paid for this in kind.
The US is likely to be able to dodge the Trump bullet and skirt falling into a populist authoritarian rule coming November but this doesn't preclude this from happening in the future.
Maybe you should get some taste for how tyranny can turn your life upside down and experience it firsthand before you could wish it onto others.
Anyhow, I still don't wish harm on innocent people but if they're full of hate toward others to the point of blinding them to fall into a trap this big and this wide, I wouldn't help them to avert it or save them.
I m not american. This is a cynical view from Europe. Believe it or not it's closer to the truth rather than believing that having elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria.
Because just taking your word for it won't cut it, sorry.
> "elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria"
I'd take ballot-box-only democracy and majoritarianism over tyrannical strongman rule or military dictatorships anytime of the day but this is just me, a Middle Eastern native who really cares for the future, prosperity and the welfare of people living there.
I think that I also have the right to express and strive to achieve these political goals without interference or the "guardianship" of outside players. Since I can't tell you how you should run your countries, I expect this to be reciprocated too when it comes to running ours, and I think that this is a small thing to ask for.
It's very intriguing that for "Arab Spring" skeptics to only focus on failures like Libya and not success stories like in Tunisia. It just detracts from their credibility and makes their viewpoints look very partisan.
It is not the fault of the countries in the Eastern part of the Arabic speaking world that they're surrounded by reactionary forces in the region like the oil sheikhdoms or nationalist-led Israel that they would do everything they can to undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments to protect their interests and save their thrones but this is the topic of another article.
Woh, woh, woh, what on Earth does Israel have to do with this? Israelis haven't done anything to undermine the "democratic experiments" in any of its neighbouring states. In fact, Israel is the only regional country to consistently support Kurdish democracy, which it has done for decades.
If so, I don't see that there's any point of arguing over facts like these.
It's OK to have reservations about the democratic experiments in the region but if you could call "Talibani vs Barazani" a democracy, then I think it's fair that I get to call what happened in Egypt or Tunisia a democratic experiment.
Speaking of Kurdish democracy, I believe that opening channels with other players in the region is good strategy to secure the interests of the Kurdish people or elite, but excessive pandering to one particular player at the expense of others in the region would be very shortsighted move esp if you're planning to stay in this neighborhood for long time.
A balanced and well thought-out approach to foreign policy in the region would be a better alternative to the Kurdish people for whom I wish good luck for their legitimate political aspirations.
Yes. That's a ridiculous assertion. To think that Israel (population: 7 million) has the power, influence, or will to "undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments" of a country like Egypt (population: 82 million), is ludicrous enough. To assert such a ludicrous statement as fact, without any supporting evidence is a wild conspiracy theory.
Your last three paragraphs have virtually nothing to do with the argument at-hand.
Conspiracist much?
The usual overt basis for complaints that elections are insufficient is that they don't end up as ballot-box-only democracy, but that they instead they often end up as one person, one vote, one time -- followed by tyrannical strongman rule.
OTOH, that's clearly not generally worse than just leaving existing tyrannical strongmen in place. I think the real concern is that locally popular strongmen buoyed by such a one-time election, in the short term, are more likely to have the domestic support to cause problems for neighbors and outsiders, while the often-unpopular existing strongmen are frequently hobbled in their ability to cause external problems by the needs to deal -- whether through active repression or ongoing negotiation and mollification -- with unruly internal factions. (Another is that external elites often have connections and established ways of working with the existing strongmen.)
The chance of making progress toward real democracy is often not seen as worth the risk for external parties (especially external elites); locals, of course, may have different calculus.
That's a very true observation but that doesn't mean that elites will always get their way and prevail over the masses.
The masses can sometimes secure victories at their expense, albeit short-lived in most cases, and force them to change their mind and adopt their ideas.
In general, the Arabs were happy subjects of the Ottoman Empire until around 1900-1914, when the CUP's political program attempted to marginalize the Arabs; even then, the Arab Revolt was a very narrow revolt with support almost exclusively from the Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia in modern terms) Prior to that, the Ottoman Empire was generally very supportive of the Arab cultural expression. While the governors of the Syrian and Egyptian provinces tended to be problematic from the point of view of the Sultan, the populations of those provinces were far less prone to revolt than Anatolia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
We'll stop meddling and making things worse. The leaders of those countries won't be able to substitute oil wealth for popular support or funnel money into pushing Wahhabism.
It's the best thing that could happen to them.
... In the long term.
In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed, as the sole source of foreign exchange goes away and the ordinary folks find themselves abandoned in a climate-change-drought-crippled land that has become populated well above its agricultural carrying capacity, and the elite jets off to enjoy their stolen wealth in Switzerland.
There was a recent HN article about Israel's progress with desalination[1]. Obvious funding issues aside, I wonder if that approach could ease some of the water issues?
Perhaps that kind of investment would be a good use for the oil income, whilst they've still got it.
It's not like they would not see it coming. Petrol is eventually going to become too expensive at some point, and they should invest accordingly. But numerous past examples of countries relying on raw resources have shown they usually don't adapt and plan, so I don't have too much hope in their case either.
The rulers are doing fine -- they've got armies and secret police and offshore investments so that when things turn to shit they can just jet off into exile like the Shah of Iran.
The ordinary folks don't have the money and they don't have the oil, they stay quiet for now because they don't want to be imprisoned or executed and because the rulers spend a small chunk of their surplus on social security.
In other words, the people with money to invest don't care, and the folks who might care are in no position to take action.
It was made a mess before and after WW2 and it never was allowed to self correct. If anything the powers that be kept trying to keep it bottled up until a few set pieces fell and the house came tumbling down. This isn't to say that going into Iraq didn't cause part of the problem, that simply revealed just how force the Saddam regime was applying to keep it all together.
Letting Libya fall like everyone did was likely the real issue. That whole country went without anyone trying to step in and allowed groups to assemble. Then the misguided interference with Syria by the US just sent the whole region to hell. You would have thought Libya would have given the administration a hint what would go wrong, let alone an Administration so hell bent on reminding people of Iraq repeated that mess twice if not worse.
The region has to reshape itself. What the West must do is try to minimize the civilian cost. This does not mean going in a setting new borders, but mostly protecting those who get out and making sure they have safe exit points.
Even with the fault of European colonialism, they were doing just fine until we decided to get rid of Saddam.
Yes, it's ~43000 words and at 250wpm, it would be a 3 hour read!
I think I'll wait to collect some more opinions/tldrs like yours before reading it myself. Three hours would be a terrible waste of time on a substandard article. Open question: Are there better articles on the topic that use that would use that finite reading time better?
I tried Safari's 'Export as PDF' but the formatting is too mangled. Safari can also save as a single 'web archive' file but I can't get that file to open on my ipad.
Firefox has a save option of 'Web page, complete', but you end up with lots of files, impractical to move around to other devices. Printing as a PDF also mangles the format.
I'm guessing those who lost their families and homes at gunpoint would disagree with that being "right". Each intervention creates more victims, it's just that some are more easily written out of history.
One nit:
" Much as the United States Army and white settlers did with Indian tribes in the conquest of the American West, so the British and French and Italians proved adept at pitting these groups against one another, bestowing favors — weapons or food or sinecures — to one faction in return for fighting another. The great difference, of course, is that in the American West, the settlers stayed and the tribal system was essentially destroyed."
I think it's a mistake to only back up to the end up WWI and start running the tape there. The Arab world has a rich and nuanced history full of the exact kinds of tribal tensions we see now going back hundreds of years. There's a reason the Ottomans were the way they were -- and it has nothing to do with Colonialism. There are also great parallels between what's happening with the Arab spring and what happened when other great powers consolidated their hold over the Arabs and then left. Just citing one example seems like a tremendous disservice to the history. Also the meme of "It was the Sykes–Picot Agreement" has some truth but is extremely easy to lean too much on. With this amount of verbiage being produced, I'm expecting some alternative lines of reasoning to be explored.
Looking forward to more of the series!
(Apologies -- looks like the entire thing is here? Wow! I've heard of long-format writing before, but this is kindle material. Tremendous amount of work here.)
More likely a better explanation lies in the importation of the Western idea of a nation-state (that a country should be coterminus with cultural boundaries), which tends to strongly reject the idea that countries can have multiple countries, combined with the failure of the Ottoman Empire to synthesize a durable Ottoman culture. The latter failure is arguably due in large part to, you guessed it, European meddling: the Ottoman state had largely functioned, and kept peace among fractious religious sects, by keeping its Islamic nature as a core of its identity (basically being a dual Turkish-Arab state). One aspect of this was the basis that most obligations of civic duty (particularly military duty) was borne solely by Muslims, with the non-Muslims (predominantly Christians) paying an extra tax, an arrangement generally accepted by both groups. European powers considered this intolerant [1], and forced a series of capitulations on the Ottomans in part to guarantee the security of Christians (which basically leads to the Armenian Genocide).
With the idea of a state centered on Islamic identity increasingly a failure, the Young Turks instead focused on a narrow, Turkish-based state, which alienated pretty much all minorities (including the Arabs) save the Kurds (their bid for nationalism started mostly post-WWI). After the Armenian Genocide, many Arabs suspected that similar treatment awaited them, but they largely kept to showing support for the regime during the exigencies of WWI. The Iraqis in occupied Mesopotamia didn't cooperate with the British (not that it saved them from retribution), for example. The Bedouin did offer support to both sides, but they were not reliable allies to either side. Only the Hashemites (who controlled Mecca and Medina) revolted, successful only due to the aid of the British, who gave them Jordan and Iraq as victory spoils (their original Kingdom of the Hejaz was conquered by the Saudis, another British ally, in the interwar period).
[1] Side note: the Ottomans generally forbade the Muslims from proselytizing to the Christian groups, whereas the capitulations generally forced the Ottomans to accept Christian missionaries attempting to convert Muslims.
This rabbit hole goes down deep. Too much for HN. There's a lot of ground to cover: gates of Vienna, and the fall of Constantinople, the Second Crusade, and so on.
As one can imagine, depending on where you choose to focus, you can fall back on western meddling or not. Sadly, this is the case for most arguments in the Mideast. Some things never change.
Suffice it to say that we could continue. For some time. It's a mixed bag, and nobody is either entirely innocent or entirely culpable. Simplifications -- even those in comment threads like ours -- invariably give the wrong impression.
Also NY Times has so much *to answer for in their coverage of the events that it kind of make sense that they are avoiding any real analysis of the issues.
1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
> According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled
Granted, this was in the less religious parts of Turkey, but it's grossly unfair to the moderates to paint everyone with the fundamentalist brush. There's a billion Muslims out there.
The majority of Christians do not believe that the Earth was created 10000 years ago!
I strongly recommend the comic book Persepolis to anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the Middle East (or at least, Iran).
Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. He explicitly introduced the constitution to Turkey which declared the state to be secular, that is, independent of any religious influence! He effectively banned headscarves (hijabs, nijabs, whatever) in all public institutions (being religious attire, therefore to be separated from state), including schools and universities.
The West however wasn't so smart recently, forgetting how much fights and sacrifices were needed to achieve the freedoms we have now (but will we keep them depends on our readiness to stand for them, more than up to now).
Erdogan now pulls Turkey back to the pre-20th century state. And unfortunately, there are enough of those who support him and his Islamic "revival."
---
The comics Persepolis that you mention, among some personal stories, also covers the moment of "Islamic revolution" in Iran, which, among many other things, destroyed women freedoms. Before:
http://www.parstimes.com/fashion/pre_revolution/
Now:
http://www.aquila-style.com/focus-points/iranian-women-campa...
Watch and weep. Or consider whom you support.
From the book Why Nations Fail. http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-why-nations-fail/chapanal...
PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/31/economics-...
I have seen US and England held up as other examples, Germany may be a counter example.
I don't think this line of research hold up very well, specially not cross country over long timeframes.
Take a look at total GDP per capita, the northeast is way ahead. Different metric, different results, still not caused by religion.
PS: Bavaria is only nominally 51 Cathlic vs the average of 30 for the entire country. Further, you can break things down to a much lower level. https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/07/18/germany-mass-go...
Max Weber was a smart guy, but he died 100 years ago. I hope we have better things to correlate with prosperity than just one strain of a particular religion.
Compared to the US, where political actions are sorely based on facts and the bible and religion are completely irrelevant. /s
It's not really an issue only in Islam, people make a lot of actions because of an even older book - the bible - as well.
I fail to see how prayer affects anyone's potential in a negative way.
I've spent more time getting to the break room at work than she has on afternoon prayer. So I fail to see the connection between the 2-3 scheduled daily prayer times and production. If that is the case, coffee, cigarettes, lunch, and bathroom breaks are equal contributors.
Ah huh.
That's not to belittle the contributions of actual Mohammedans (e.g. Avicenna, who really did do more than just repeat his Classical forebears), but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken. Like Anglo-Saxons building their mead-halls over Roman mosaics, they enjoyed the products of a higher civilisation but were unable to match them (the Umma being rather larger than the Heptarchy, they had a much bigger base from which to decline, and a correspondingly-longer period of relative comfort).
... really? many of them ? can you please write "many" more from "non Islamic extraction"
"El-Khwarizmi, who was from a Zoroastrian family and may have converted out of economic or political expediency"
...So one particular scholar is not really a "muslim", soo it must that everything else worthy must be from non-muslim people
"but on the whole the Islamic Golden Age was what one would expect when a supremely wealthy but weak empire (the Eastern Romans) is conquered by poor but strong barbarians: the conquerors are rich & happy for decades, living off of the wealth they have taken."
...So they were just plunderers?
This is textbook western self-propaganda.
The dialog becomes impossible because of many other important reasons, too, including,
a. the opposition by liberals/leftists/Islamists to bring forward any critical review of some extremely troubling vicious aspects of Islam and Islamic scriptures (Quran and Hadiths) under the phony reasons of islamophobia
b. the reluctance of Islamists to accept the notion of freedom of expression even if it means some of the expression offends the Muslims (e.g. discussion regarding pedophilia of Muhammad or someone drawing cartoons of Muhammad)
These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [1], [2], [3]
In fact, the freedom of opinion is under attack because of Islam, even in the free western world to a large extent.
The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. The USA and the west now must also invest similar (if not more) efforts and resources to fight this vicious ideology as those that they invested to fight another vicious ideology called communism.
It should however be noted that there are many people who have been Muslims just by birth and they do not necessarily follow the vicious ideology to its core.
So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY
In conflict between group X and group Y, if you ask X it's because Y does (insert list of offenses here). The same from the opposing side. Nobody wants to acknowledge that both sides have issues, and if they work towards fixing said issues the world will be a better place.
Your whole diatribe about "liberals/leftist/Islamist" is the exact same crap that extremist on the other side preach, just projected through your (the way I view it) conservative lense.
The biggest problem is that nobody is willing to step outside of their comfort zone, to see how the other half lives, in order to move forward. That goes for both the "liberals/leftist/Islamist" left and the "conservative/anti-pc/nobody-deserves-to-be-comfortable-except-me" right
> So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
If you understand what Islam is, and what a muslim is, this statement makes no sense.
If you mean to say that "Islam and Muslims are the same" I beg to differ. Islam is a religion not person and Muslims are persons.
Let me clarify, Islam is a religion/ideology whereas Muslim is a person who is either practicing Islam (religion/ideology) or who is labeled as Muslim because he/she is born within a family who practices Islam.
By "the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se", I mean the fight must against the ideology/religion and must not necessarily against all Muslim population.
So it was a big mistake by USA to attack Iraq as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks on USA, instead the military attack (only small surgical level) should have been restricted to Taliban/Osama in Afghanistan and then along with that small military surgical attack, the USA should have actually opened a war against the vicious ideology of Islam.
The Iraq was not a big threat to USA. Millions of innocent lives could have been saved in Iraq and elsewhere, if the USA had realized that this is an ideological war and must be fought on the ideological war-front. This can and must be done by supporting liberal minded humanists (like, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins) who are exposing the viciousness of the ideology of Islam and upholding the modern humanist values like freedom of expression and separation of 'mosque and state'.
Regardless, OP said Muslims couldn't thrive praying 5 times a day, the Islamic Golden Age (as big or as small as you think it was) still proves otherwise.
Last I checked we were discussing history..
You can take out a mortgage in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Morocco.. They were the first four I checked.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194633/Luxury-high-...
It has consequence for enormous part of a life. For example, I was traveling using metro in Dubai. I had 5 dirham on my travel card and the trip I wanted to take costs 3 dirham. I couldn't enter the train, because the maximum charge is 8 dirham, so I could have negative balance.
Furthermore, I think maximizing for "human potential" is a red herring -- the inevitable end-result is exercising control over a given population to exploit their human potential and TBH that sounds revolting. We should be given the freedom to live our lives out regardless of someone else's small and personal ambitions, including dedicating our lives to practicing Islam.
When faced with impending death, pessimists might commit suicide. Optimists might struggle on. People with under-developed personalities might just listen to the first person they run into.
But whatever the case, their choices will be broadcast through their religious and cultural values. Those committing suicide could self-terminate. Or they could be suicide bombers. Those deciding to carry on could become artists or prophets. Or they might open a house of worship.
In addition, the definition of "impending doom" changes depending on your philosophy of life and worldview.
It's a red herring to blame everything on religion. People are people. But it's also a red herring to refuse to accept the role of religion in determining how well cultures thrive. Whatever myths you choose to believe in has a profound impact on how you see the world around you and how you react to it.
Culture shock happens and when it happens on a massive scale then there will obviously be issues, and I think that is what we are witnessing now. It may take a generation but I am hopeful that Western society will co-exist with Islam peacefully, regardless of the negative interpretations some people have.
You could do the same with a billion and a half people anywhere -- give them a unifying identity, tell them to live in every nation on Earth, and make most of the poor and uneducated. There will be a central global point that people call home, there will be culture clashes, and there will be demagogues taking advantage of the situation.
Yes, there's a huge culture shock happening. Christianity has been quite flexible over the years. People still think that if aliens land that Christians will freak out. These are people who don't know their history. Whatever kind of weirdness comes along, somehow Christians absorb it into whatever they believe. Then they'll insist that this was what they believed all along :) To adherents, this is probably both a bug and a feature.
The jury is still out with Islam. With so many adherents, it's bound to morph into something. The pressure is certainly high. But I have no idea what the characteristics of that thing is or how much traction it will have in the community. Like I do all people, I wish them the best. Belief systems based on tribal forms of society aren't going to go far in a internet-connected world without a lot of change. Just ask the Judaism folks.
Thanks for the reply!
Islam is a religion, an ideology and a culture all blended into one. Parts of it are bad.
But I don't think it's any of that. I think it's something simpler: there is nothing in the desert. It's really hard to build a civilization of nothing. Absent civilization, even if there is Oil in the ground ... the surpluses won't be managed effectively or fairly.
I think that were the Arab world to be green and lush, it would be a better place, because civilization and power would have developed from an agrarian base ... which is more distributed, then higher level civic institutions can come into place etc.
With desert+oil, basic and important institutions don't get a chance to form, and you have a Fedual system which depends on the intelligence and benevolence of the Feudal Lords, aka House of Saud, Qatari 'royal' family etc.
We are going to enter a similar situation in the developed countries as the workforce will be replaced by automation. Work has been a great "distributor" of wealth, each person being in charge of his own work potential. But after automation, people will have nothing to trade for. Regular people will become like "muslims in barren countries", dependants upon the state and wealthy. And the riches will collect in the hands of big corporations who operate the robotic fleets.
The only solution I see is to open source and democratize AI and robotics so it doesn't concentrate wealth like it happened with operating systems (Microsoft), search (Google), social networks (FB) and oil (arab countries). People need to be independent from now on. If corporations are to function without hiring people, then people need to function without needing said corporations. We need to focus on agriculture, 3D printing, solar and open source AI. We need to be self sufficient.
We also used to say statistics is what people should study (in the early 1970s? iirc). Not everyone has the inclination or bandwidth.
This is a problem that will only be solved by figuring out tools to help the human component.
And Unfortunately any tool created has immense scope of being misused. The power no man should have.
For example, a tool which can identify the intent of a speaker online by studying the sum total of all conversations they have ever had, would be vastly useful in in helping people build bridges with each other. IT would solve immense problems with law keeping, justice, and even mundane things like moderation on a forum.
At the same time knowing intent would be the scariest thing to see abused by an unscrupulous third party.
Education curriculum, fairness, equality, social justice, civic duty, personal accountability -- all of these things are similarly as present in Islam as they are anywhere else.
Also, governance by royal decree is one of the most un-Islamic things possible. This is not lost on the Gulf monarchies so they are forced into a submissive position when confronted by the relevant Sunni Islamic authority.
The problem is which form they take. Women are clearly not men's equal in the Koran. The Koran talks about all these subjects, it doesn't mean it promotes these. According the to Koran(and the Bible) , slavery is acceptable, the Koran even tells how Muslims should treat their slaves. Is that the fairness,equality and social justice you are talking about ? Or are you twisting the meaning of these words at first place ?
You can argue the Koran is a product of its time,which it totally is. Saying that is a good way to invalidate the fact that it should be taken as "the final, perfect word of \"God\" " if it should be read in context. But it's forbidden for Muslims to criticize the Koran at first place... so back to square one.
That said, women are most definitely treated differently under Islamic rule as outlined by Islamic law, and there is no point of view that can deny this. Some would argue that women and men are inherently different and that it would be imprudent to ignore this, and this line of reasoning leads us to unpleasant situations like women being denied the same opportunities to achieve success as men are.
Millions of Muslims in the West find slavery to be barbaric and none of them own slaves, and not only that but one of the central tenets of Islam is donation to make slavery unnecessary. This is evidence of fairness, equality, and social justice not only being compatible with Islam, but encouraged.
That said, slavery is permissible in Islam under certain circumstances, and the primary basis for this permission is the profound lack of protection afforded to non-Muslims outlined in Islamic teachings. This is intentional and personally I hope it falls by the wayside.
Finally, criticism of the Quran is a touchy subject. The study of mathematics was regarded as being unable to bring perfection to the human soul, but many Muslims studied it nevertheless and humanity advanced in indescribable ways. Death was similarly regarded as an act of God regardless of the cause of death, but the study of medicine was defended as not being un-Islamic.
My friend, no, they are not, and there is not a single nation on Earth where Islam is the prevailing religion where this is the case.
Now - I'm not saying that Islam is compatible with these things, and I agree that my comments are directed towards the 'Arabic and Arabic influenced world' - and that Islam in Indonesia is obviously something altogether different - nevertheless, your comment does not hold.
I'll also point out that Hammurabi was likely speaking an Afro-Asiatic language (of which Arabic is the most widely-spoken in modern times), so ancient Mesopotamia is as close to the modern Iraq ethnolinguistically as ancient Greece is to modern Western Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilization," is in Iraq. Keep in mind that it is just one of many, it is nevertheless an area that is green and not an endless sandy expanse.
That said, I continue to assert that your arguments are red herrings -- attempts to indirectly answer one question with another's answer. Fixing the issues you brought up are unrelated to removing Islam's influence on the people of the world, unless you feel that Islam's binding influence on large populations is prohibitively restrictive to the point that is an impediment to any social program of any scale on Earth. If that is the case then the natural progression will lead us to war, and many nations around the world have already been lead to this conclusion.
The fact that when given a chance to re-envision their society and culture, revolutionaries in these countries such as the Muslim Brotherhood keep choosing Sharia and other forms of theocracy means I think they will remain in a society strangled by the yoke of fundamentalist religion for the foreseeable future.
People in the Arab world aren't patients - they are agents, and have the power to change their circumstances.
But, IMHO, what you are describing is universal. Autocrats have been taking advantage of cultural clash since time immemorial, it's just that the Middle East has been largely uneducated and weak while being led by opportunists.
Anyways, I am completely open to admitting that you are correct. Demonstrating the value of Western culture most definitely results in migration away from Islamic fundamentalism.
Also, it's easy to say that people in the Arab world are afforded agency, but what you are advocating requires people in the Arab world to be educated. The former is useless without the latter.
Simply allowing them to participate in Western society is enough to sufficiently "address" those issues, as many will naturally gravitate towards more progressive and liberal lifestyles.
I have seen many Muslim women driving, walking outside, and showing their faces without incident, but I think it's important to point out that there are plenty of non-Muslim cultures that punish unmarried women for public displays of affection (including simply being present with a non-relative male).
It boils down to the simple question whether value diffusion is faster than they breed and escape possible upcoming droughts and whether there really is potential for a major cultural clash. Some people say it's obvious in one way or the other. I really don't know. I am also not convinced by anything I'm writing, I am just trying to get some confirmation or disconfirmation of these sort of ideas.
[1] http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=21
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10635510/Women-...
Saying that is ignoring the hadiths and the sharia which describe in great details all the aspects of the life of a Muslim. There is no such thing with Christianity. There are no "christian tribunals" describe by the bible. Islam is closer to Judaism in that aspect. The bible doesn't cover in great details all the aspects of life of a christian. Furthermore the new testament is clearly a new covenant incompatible in many aspects with the first one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)
---
1) but still, regretfully, threatening with the "hell" for ever and ever for the "sinners," judgement day and the stuff
It was surprising.
From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.)
If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".
Or maybe I am too liberal in assuming every culture will walk the same path as us. I doubt it. Until someone comes up with something that works better, liberal [edit: and ~ capitalist] democracy is the least bad alternative.
That's not the most pleasant blueprint to follow...
Those wars scared everybody who'd grown up in the affected territories off religious absolutism for a very long time -- at least, off religious absolutism by the standards of the time: things were still grim by modern standards -- and created an environment in which philosophers could develop the ideas and concepts of the enlightenment without being burned at the stake for heresy.
The Arab world looks to be on the skids heading towards its own equivalent of the Thirty Years War right now. I just hope the eventual outcome is positive, and that they get to it faster and with less bloodshed.
Around when we were doing the 30 year war et al in Western Europe, the East Europeans of the area were writing edicts about religious tolerance. (Yes yes, a deplorable lack of fashion sense.)
That example sadly seems unlikely right now. But since soon all minority groups are thrown out of the Middle East, there won't be anyone left to hate (except for those that move to Western Europe).
When will the West do that ?
(assuming you live in the Western world.)
many of the dictators are either dead or crippled, and the world is awash in more terrorism than ever before.
Besides that, it is a regime, and really, a nation, that is entirely predicated on petro-dollars. They have been fighting a price war against US/Canadian oil production, burning foreign currency reserves, in the hopes of setting back the clock. Unfortunately, the break-even point in the North Dakota and shale oil fields keeps going down[1].
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/02/29/the-break-eve...
There was a HN article[1] a few months ago, on the efforts to move Saudi Arabia away from reliance on oil income. Although who can say how successful that effort will be.
The Saudis will be fine for a long time.
Not really; while they've spent a lot of money of hardware to use as the stick, they House of Saud lacks the loyalty of enough of the population for the stick to be the primary control -- they need a lot of carrot to even keep the trigger fingers that would apply the stick on their side, which is a lot of the reason for all the accommodation the regime makes with religious extremists.
http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...
The West needs much more energy that what they have. They have industry and without energy their society will collapse.
Anything else is secondary. Most of those places are desert, and have not enough technology to protect themselves from Western (or Eastern)plundering.
Those countries can only life in peace as protectorates from powerful industrialized countries, like Saudi Arabia(de facto protectorate of USA, its oil can only be paid in USD), or Iran(protectorate of Russia and China) or Syria(Russia).
Libya itself had a lot of Chinese civilian presence, but not military. So UK, USA and France thought it was going to be easy to take the country by force, like they did.
They also tried with Syria, but Russia had an army there. They tried hard, remember Assad having chemical weapons so the West needed to "save" and "free" the country? Putin reacted fast to that. The need of creating a fly exclusion zone(prior to the invasion, like in Libya), again Putin reacted faster sending his own airplanes.
Your reduction of the middle east countries as simple 'protectorates' is also completely false. These are countries with their own opinions and politics and they are far, far more then just outposts of the more powerful nations. Seeing everything as a global power struggle will not lead to understanding of the situations.
> The West needs much more energy that what they have. They have industry and without energy their society will collapse.
Thats also completely false. Any analysis of this will show that even in a worst case of a huge war in the middle east, the changes in oil prices would not collapse the first world. It might cause a slight slowdown in growth, and that only in the short term.
There is a great relationship between having huge resources and war, violence and crime.
The countries in Africa with less resources are the richest ones, because they had peace for a long time. War destroys any wealth people have and give it to a few guys. It also destroys al civilization and social structures.
Don't see any of them in a rush to give up their 'curse'.
Though not required by the syntax of any language, paragraphs are usually an expected part of formal writing, used to organize longer prose.
The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever.
All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'.
Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries.
Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'.
The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) under the thumb, after that the Europeans tried to maintain some degree of balance, now the Americans.
The most recent and damaging decision by the US was Obama's withdrawl of troops in Iraq. Of course, invading in the first place - but Obama simply by virtue of having 10K soldiers sitting on a base 'behind the wire' doing nothing, could have kept forcing Malaki to play nice with the Sunnis. The moment Obama withdrew, Malaki purged Iraq of Sunnis, and the Sunni tribes decided that ISIS was 'less worse' than their own government and there you have it.
As far as Syria ... this is a function of the 'Arab Spring' more than anything, and I don't think anyone can say anyone else is directly responsible for that. Other than the standard: Assad, Saudis, Iran etc...
Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down.
That said, I agree, the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a huge mistake. The horrible handling of the early occupation was a total disaster. I also agree that the withdrawal of the last troupes was a problem, however its understandable because the population in the US wanted out, and its not clear for how many more years they would have to stay, possible a 1-2 generations.
As far as Syria, its true that the 'Arab Spring' was the initiator but its also true that the insertion of ISIS into Syria made the hole conflict a hole lot more complicated (and ISIS could only exist in post Saddam world). Syria is now the most complicated war I have ever seen, you have multiple local, regional and global powers all actively fighting against some other party that is also fighting.
With regards to Syria their is absolutely no change of some kind of resolution, except if some side manages to carry the field militarily. I fear that the war just has to burn itself out. This process will radically change the middle east. I would not be surprised if the Kurds had their own state in the end.
OT, but do you see this happening soon? The only way it seems that Syria can stabilize is for the regime to retake control. That's beginning to look like the most likely outcome. Could there ever be a path back to pre-Spring peace? Anything is better than what they have now :(
However local powers, Turks, Saudis, Iranians are not that flexible. Iran really needs Assad in power, they really want to crush ISIS. The Turks don't want the Kurds to form their own country. The Saudis want Assad gone and don't want ISIS completely destroyed.
I think they also would do, what they did to the "arab world" to Russia or China if they could.
The parts of the world that advance faster can dictate more rules, so everyone needs to get ahead. One way to ensure that this is the case is to slow other parts down.
The instability we see is definitely not a function of design. If you have studied any of it you will quickly realise that this is situation that has many actors that act based on their own interest and absolutely nobody has control over it. Those that attempt to control it usually end up creating a hole host of unintended consequences even if they sometimes manage to achieve their main goal.
Its however true, that in some limited cases, creating more chaos can potentially help you. Such cases definitely exist but they are not the majority of strategies used. Syria releasing of Jihadist to split the rebels is a interesting example of such a strategy. It usually is a strategy of the weak, not the strong. The strong prefer control, not chaos.
The idea that it would be best to throw everything in chaos is completely wrong and even the leaders of the super powers understand that. Only if you assume that their is some sinister conspiracy that has completely different values thats operating under our institutions, could such a policy be explained. I see 0 evidence for such a conspiracy.
I mean, yes these people are now uncontrollable, but they also in a state of chaos that prevents them from getting so advanced that they would be a real problem for first world countries on a global scale.
Also I don't know what advanced threads you think they could become? Other then becoming nuclear powers, they can not pose such a thread. Non of the countries that the US attacked is anywhere close to that level.
The only country that is, Iran, was not attacked by the US and are voluntary not building a nuke.
Also the chaos the created is totally against their interest, now china is a major player in Iraqi oil. Russia and Iran are drawing together more over the Syria issue. They are running into a huge conflict of interest regarding the Turks and the Kurds. That's just the beginning this strategic disaster.
Its far easier to deal with stable regimes and when you want to take one down, you should always have a successor in mind. You can go threw history and look at all the great conqueror in history, they are always trying to set up puppet regimes that they control, and not throw everything into chaos.
Clicking "Simplify Page" on the google chrome printing dialog makes this a fantastic formatted PDF. I'm impressed (be it Chrome's doing or NYT's).
There was once briefly a concept of Pan-Arabism but that died when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970.
Does a Muslim Arabic speaker from Morocco really have any sense of kinship with an Arabic Christian(a Coptic) from Egypt? I am going to say probably not. Probably not any more than two Slavic language speakers in different parts of Europe do. Have the Saudis taken in any Arab refugee "brothers" from Syria and Iraq? No. Have the Arab Emirates? Again no.
So what is this "Arab World" that the NYTimes and the rest of the media are so fond of using as a point of reference? Countries carved up as part of the Sykes Picot agreement? Can they not come up with a more meaningful distinction? This matters.
Arabs (Arabic: عرب, ‘arab) are a panethnicity of peoples native to the Arab world.
They primarily inhabit Western Asia, North Africa, and parts of the Horn of Africa.
In modern usage Arab refers to a heterogeneous collection of Arabic-speaking peoples
in Western Asia and North Africa. The ties that bind Arabs are linguistic,
cultural, political, and ethnic, with Arabized Arabs displaying genetic admixture
from the Arabian peninsula as well as indigenous elements.
As such, Arab identity is based on one or more of genealogical, linguistic or
cultural grounds, although with competing identities often taking a more prominent
role, based on considerations including regional, national, clan, kin, sect,
and tribe affiliations and relationships. Not all people who could be considered
Arab identify as such. If the Arab pan-ethnicity is regarded as a single
population, then it constitutes the world's second largest group of people
after the Han Chinese.
Every single country profiled in the piece is majority Arab (ethnically), majority Arab (linguistically), and majority Muslim (religiously).
what more meaningful distinction would you make that clarifies things? "Middle Eastern countries currently on fire"? They are certainly all countries that can be fairly described as Arab.
And no you can't just say "Middle Eastern counties, the countries of the Mahgreb are "on fire" and they are not geographically part of the Middle East.
So according to you the meaningful distinction is that its "currently on fire"? What happens if its not on fire or stabilizes politically? Does its status change?
How about Mauritania, the Comoros, and Morocco. Majority Arab and Muslim and generally not front page news.
Why does this matter? Because it's incredibly reductionist. There are tribal dynamics at work in all of the countries mentioned in this article that extremely difficult for a casual observer to understand. These are tribal affiliations that predate Islam. And there is no analog for them in the Western world from which the term "Arab World" springs. It's very hand wavy to just say "The Arab World" and this propagation of an Arab singularity is itself a source of problems.
The main reason the US kept on Saddam was his stated intention of Pan-Arabia
>'We don't look on this piece of land here in Iraq as the ultimate limit of our struggle,'' he told a group of visiting Iraqi ambassadors in 1975. ''It is part of a larger area and broader aims: the area of the Arab homeland and the aims of the Arab struggle.''
After a coup attempt against him five years later, he called Iraq's political struggle a ''revolution which aims to destroy the bases of imperialism, to shine over the whole Arab world to make it a new power on the world scene.''
And only a few months before Mr. Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, Mr. Hussein unveiled an ambitious pan-Arab charter for the decade, rejecting any superpower military presence in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean and charting a course of regional nonalignment. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/05/international/05HUSS.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0802/02011.html >In their view a confrontation with the West - at least a political one - was unavoidable, in light of Saddam's attempt to lead the Arab world. Saddam's pan-Arab ambitions have been clear since the late 1970s, when Iraq led the so-called rejectionist front against Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Iraq also controlled many Baathist organizations in Arab countries and saw itself as the capital of Arab revolution against "pro-Western reactionary regimes." But the war with Iran forced Iraq to seek money and political support from Arab nations and put a stop to supporting opposition parties in other states. After the war, however, the Iraqi leadership renewed its bid to lead the Arab world.
Nasser was a credible leader and Pan-Arabism was a state policy under him . This is not the same thing as a delusional dictator invoking Pan-Arabism and invading his Arab neighbors. Quadafi also invoked Pan-Arabism at time, that did not make alive and well or a credible movement either. It was just a convenient ruse for another delusional dictator. These are not the same as Nasser at all.
Pan-Arabism largely lost momentum after 1967 Six Day War with Israel in which Egypt was defeated. Nasser died a few years later which is why I said it died with him. Anwar Sadat made no mention of it subsequently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arab_Mind
I will nevertheless read it.
Funny thing - given how easy it is to get an "racist" label these days, I'd treat this as a signal that the book may be touching on some controversial topics or reaching unpopular conclusions.
"Race" does not explain anything - although, many people would love it to because that would make it easier to comprehend the world. There is very dark history of this in european pseudoscience. There is far more genetic variation in average within population groups of same 'race' as there are between 'races'.
There are cultures with obviously harmful practices - take female circumsision for example - but to the way to respond to those is to make it clear it is not acceptable, and not to use it as an example of the barbarism of individuals belonging to the culture in question.
There are wide variations in cultural sensibilities, and actual painpoints between interactions of populations. There are well known, and actually difficult problems to solve. Adding crackpot theories to the mix based on opinion and imagination does not really help the world to evolve.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/24/worlddispatch....
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast...
For some more resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)#Criticism
Real life is far more complex than your average geopolitical wannabe-strategist gives the slightest credit for.