1998 - Ralph Peters

A CASE FOR WAR will not attempt to explain the reasons for attacking Iraq because Iraq is part of a bigger picture, and the attack there will be one battle in a much longer war. Trying to understand one particular battle without the context of the larger war is an exercise in futility. (By analogy: what excuse is there in 1942 for the US to attack Vichy France in Morocco? Vichy France wasn't our enemy; Germany and Italy were. Taken out of the context of the larger war, the Torch landings in Africa make little sense. It's only when you look at the bigger picture of the whole war that you can understand them.)

We must attack Iraq. We must totally conquer the nation. Saddam must be removed from power, and killed if possible, and the Baath party must be shattered.

But Saddam isn't our enemy. bin Laden (may he burn in hell) is not our enemy. Iraq isn't our enemy. al Qaeda isn't our enemy. The Taliban weren't our enemies. They are merely symptoms of decay.

In most wars, there's a government or core organization which you can identify as the enemy. It isn't always a single person; in World War II it was Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, but it wasn't Tojo in Japan. Tojo was deposed in 1944, but the war went on. It also wasn't Hirohito; he mostly kept his hands off of policy. Still, it was the Japanese government, and that could still be understood. But in this war there is no single government or small group of them, no man, no organization. Our enemy is a culture which is deeply diseased.

It's really difficult to exactly delineate who our enemies are, but they number in millions. They're Arab and Muslim, but not every Arab is among them, and most Muslims are not. But even to discuss it in these terms is to cross the boundaries of political correctness. Not that I care, but it isn't politically possible for our leaders to say things like these, which makes the political wrangling all the more difficult. I think that they know what I'm about to say, and I at least am free to say what I believe whether others find it offensive or racist.

Islam is larger than greater Arabia, and the majority of Muslims are not Arab. But in the beginning, Islam was both a religion and a political movement. The Qur'an is a source of moral teachings for everyday life, telling people how to live and how to act towards one another. But it's also a manual for conquest, describing how to face enemies, how to fight, how to treat those who have been conquered, how to treat prisoners, how to treat enemy soldiers.

It lays a dual obligation on Muslims: to live a good life and to spread Islam to the entire world, by any means necessary. All successful widespread religions are evangelistic to a greater or lesser extent (with Judaism being the notable exception), but I know of no other major religion whose holy teachings include instructions for how to go to war to spread the faith.

Until Mohammed, the Arab tribes were divided and spent most of their time fighting one another. The great achievement of Mohammed was to unite the Arabs and face them outwards, strengthened and given will by his new religion. And for two hundred years, nothing could stand in their way; they created one of the great empires in the history of the world which was bounded on the south by the Sahara, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by Christendom, and on the east by the Hindu nations.

Extending from Spain to Iran, from Turkey to Egypt it was much larger and more powerful than was the Roman Empire before it, and it lasted longer. Within its borders art and science and poetry and architecture flourished. But like all empires, it eventually fell. Unlike other empires, this was against the word of God, for the Qur'an says that Islam will eventually dominate the entire world. In reality, it's been in retreat for more than three hundred years, and its decline became far more precipitous with the collapse of the Ottomans. Once-great Arab nations became little more than colonies for heathen Europeans, or economic dependents of America.

Our enemy is those who inherit the culture and heritage of that empire. Not everyone within the empire's physical realm now partakes of that culture, but many do. I am having a difficult time coming up with a pithy term for our enemy. It's hard. It isn't really greater Arabia. It certainly isn't Islam. Islamic fundamentalism is a symptom of it, not the core. Arab nationalism and imperialism is also a symptom of it, not the core. Each of those can and does exist without the other, but they're both expressions of the real enemy we face, something deeper than that.

To refer to it as Arab nostalgia is wrong, for many of those within the body of our enemy inherit the beliefs and dogma which make them our enemies without knowing where they came from. They aren't necessarily traditionalists, for the same reason, though that's perhaps closer. I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the partly-fallacious term "Arab culture", accepting that not all Arab culture is our enemy and not all Arabs are among our enemies.

Our enemy holds to a traditional belief, a traditional culture. Islam is a core piece of that, but it isn't the whole thing, and not everyone who believes in Islam is part of the enemy. Our enemy is the majority of the people who live in what we think of as the large Arab nations, plus certain other groups. Our enemy is concentrated in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, plus the Palestinians are part of it. There are lesser concentrations of our enemy in Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Oman and (non-Arab) Pakistan. And Iran is, as usual, a complicated aspect of it. While not being Arab, it is closer culturally to the Arabs, and to a great extent our enemy also holds sway there. The traditionalists and theocrats in Iran are part of our enemy, even though not being Arab, because Persian Iran was a key part of the original Arab/Islamic empire, and still retains much of that culture.

The problem with our enemy's culture is that in the 20th century it was revealed as being an abject failure. By any rational calculation, it could not compete, and not simply because the deck was stacked against it. The problem was more fundamental; the culture itself contained the elements of its own failure. The only Arab nations which have prospered have done so entirely because of the accident of mineral wealth. Using money from export of oil, they imported a high tech infrastructure. They drive western cars. They use western cell phones. They built western high-rise steel frame buildings. They created superhighways and in every way implemented the trappings of western prosperity. Or rather, they paid westerners to create all those things for them.

They didn't build or create any of it themselves. It's all parasitic. And they also buy the technical skill to keep it running. The technological infrastructure of Saudi Arabia (to take an example) is run by a small army of western engineers and technicians and managers who are paid well, and who live in isolation, and who keep it all working. If they all leave, the infrastructure will collapse. Saudi Arabia does not have the technical skill to run it, or the ability to produce the replacement parts which would be needed. It's all a sham, and they know it. Everything they have which looks like modern culture was purchased. They themselves do not have the ability to produce, or even to operate, any of it.

The diseased culture of our enemy suffers from all seven of the deep flaws Ralph Peters identifies as condemning nations to failure in the modern world. Peters makes a convincing case that there is a correlation approaching unity between the extent to which a nation or culture suffers from these flaws and its inability to succeed in the 21st century. He lists them as follows: Restrictions on the free flow of information. The subjugation of women. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization. Domination by a restrictive religion. A low valuation of education. Low prestige assigned to work. And carrying all seven of these, our enemy is trying to compete in the 21st century footrace with both feet cast into buckets of concrete. They are profoundly handicapped by the very values that they hold most dear and that they believe make them what they are.

The nations and the peoples within the zone of our enemy's culture are complete failures. Their economies are disasters. They make no contribution to the advance of science or engineering. They make no contribution to art or culture. They have no important diplomatic power. They are not respected. Most of their people are impoverished and miserable and filled with resentment, and those who are not impoverished are living a lie. They hate us. They hate us because our culture is everything theirs is not.

Our culture is vibrant and fecund; our economies are successful. Our achievements are magnificent. Our engineering and science are advancing at breathtaking speed. Our people are fat and happy (relatively speaking). We are influential, we are powerful, we are wealthy. "We" are the western democracies, but in particular "we" are the United States, which is the most successful of the western democracies by a long margin. America is the most successful nation in the history of the world, economically and technologically and militarily and even culturally.

Our culture as exported is condemned as being lowbrow in many places, but it's hard to deny how pervasive and influential it is. Baywatch was total dreck, but it was also the most successful syndicated television program around the world in history, racking up truly massive audiences each week. Our culture is seductive on every level; those elsewhere who are exposed to it find it attractive. It isn't always "high culture"; but some of it is, and with the world revolution in telecommunications it's impossible for anyone in the world to avoid seeing it and being exposed to it.

Nor can anyone ignore our technology, which is definitely not lowbrow, nor our scientific achievements. We're everything that they think they should be, everything they once were, and by our power and success we throw their modern failure into stark contrast, especially because we've gotten to where we are by doing everything their religion says is wrong. We've deeply sinned, and yet we've won. They are forced to compare their own accomplishments to ours because we are the standard of success, and in every important way they come up badly short. In most of the contests it's not just that our score is higher, it's that their score is zero. They have nothing whatever they can point to that can save face and preserve their egos. In every practical objective way we are better than they are, and they know it.

And since this is a "face" culture, one driven by pride and shame, that is intolerable. Nor is it something we can easily redress. The oft-proposed idea of increasing aid and attempting to eliminate poverty may well help in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, but it will not defuse the hatred of our Arab/Islamic enemies, for it is our success that they hate, not the fruits of that success.

It isn't that they also want to be rich. Indeed, the majority of the most militant members of al Qaeda came from Saudi Arabia, out of comfortable existence. What they want is to stay with their traditional culture and for it to be successful, and that isn't possible. We can make them rich through aid, but we can't make them successful because their failure is not caused by us, but by the deep flaws in their culture. Their culture cannot succeed. It is too deeply and fundamentally crippled.

Everything they think they know says that they should be successful. They once were successful, creating and ruling a great empire, with a rich culture. God says they will be successful; it's right there in the Qur'an. God lays on them the duty to dominate the world, but they can't even dominate their own lands any longer. They face a profound crisis of faith, and it can only resolve one of three ways.

First, the status quo can continue. They can continue to fail, sit in their nations, and accept their plight. By clinging to their culture and their religion they may be ideologically pure, but they will have to continue to live with the shame of being totally unable to compete.

Solution one: they can stagnate.

The second thing they can do is to accept that their culture and their religion are actually the problem. They can recognize that they will have to liberalize their culture in order to begin to achieve. They can embrace the modern world, and embrace western ways at least in part. They can break the hold of Islamic teachings; discard Sharia; liberate their women; start to teach science and engineering in their schools instead of the study of the Qur'an; and secularize their societies.

Solution two: they can reform.

Some Arab nations have begun to do this, and to the extent that they have they have also started to succeed. But this is unacceptable to the majority; it is literally sinful. It is heresy. What good does it do to succeed in the world if, by so doing, you condemn your soul to hell? Which leaves only one other way: become relatively competitive by destroying all other cultures which are more capable. You level the playing field by tearing down all the mountains rather than filling in the valleys; you make yourself the tallest by shooting everyone taller than you are.

Solution three: they can lash out, fight back.

It's vitally important to understand that this is the reason they're fighting back. It's not to gain revenge for some specific action in the past on our part. It isn't an attempt to influence our foreign policy. Their goal is our destruction, because they can't keep hold on what they have and still think of themselves as being successful as long as we exist and continue to outperform them. al Qaeda grew out of this deepening resentment and frustration within the failed Arab culture. It is the first manifestation of solution three, but as long as the deep disease continues in the culture of our enemy, it won't be the last. Its initial demands to the US were a bit surprising, and not very well known. (And obscured by the fact that as their struggle continued recently, they kept changing their stated demands in hopes of attracting allies from elsewhere in the Arab sphere.) The original demand was for a complete cessation of contact between America and Arabia. Not just a pullout of our soldiers from holy Arab soil, but total isolation so that the people of greater Arabia would no longer be exposed in any way to us or our culture or our values. No television, no radio, no music, no magazines and books, no movies. No internet. And that isn't possible; you can't go backward that way. But it's interesting that this shows their real concern. If they're no longer exposed to us, they are no longer shamed by comparing their failure to our success, and no longer seduced by it and tempted to discard their own culture and adopt ours.

Solution three manifests, and will continue to manifest, in many ways.

Another way it manifests is in a new Arab imperialism, an ambition in some quarters to recreate the Arab empire and by so doing to regain political greatness. Arab nationalism doesn't directly spring from Islam, but it does spring from this deep frustration and resentment caused by the abject failure of the enemy culture, and it's most prominent practitioner is Saddam Hussein.

Both al Qaeda's terrorist attacks, and Saddam's attempts to incorporate other Arab nations into Iraq, spring from the same deep cause. But when I say that al Qaeda and Saddam are not the real enemy, it's because they both arise due to a deeper cause which is the true enemy. If we were to stamp out al Qaeda as a viable organization and reduce it to an occasional annoyance, and remove Saddam's WMDs no matter how, by conquest or inspections, someone else somewhere else would spring up and we would again be in peril. We cannot end this war by only treating the symptoms of al Qaeda and Saddam, though they must be dealt with as part of that process.

This war is actually a war between the modern age and traditional Arab culture, and as long as they stagnated and felt resentment quietly, it wasn't our war. It became our war when al Qaeda started bringing it to our nation. With a series of successively more deadly attacks culminating in the attacks in NYC and Washington last year, it became clear that we in the United States could no longer ignore it, and had to start working actively to remove the danger to us. We didn't pick this war, it picked us, but we can't turn away from it. If we ignore it, it will keep happening.

But the danger isn't al Qaeda as such, though that's the short term manifestation of the danger. This war will continue until the traditional crippled Arab culture is shattered. It won't end until they embrace reform or have it forced on them. Until a year ago, we were willing to be patient and let them embrace it slowly. Now we have no choice: we have to force them to reform because we cannot be safe until they do. And by reform I mean culturally and not politically. The reform isn't just abjuration of weapons of mass destruction. It isn't just promising not to attack any longer. What they're going to have to do is to fix all seven of Ralph Peters' problems, and once they've done so, their nations won't be recognizable.

First, they will seem much more western. Second, they'll start to succeed, for as Peters notes, nations which fix these problems do become competitive. What he's describing isn't symptoms, its deep causes. We're facing a 14th century culture engaged in a 14th century war against us. The problem is that they are armed with 20th century weapons, which may eventually include nuclear weapons. And they embrace a culture which honors dying in a good cause, which means that deterrence can't be relied on if they get nuclear weapons. Why is it that the US is concerned about Iraq getting nukes when we don't seem to be as concerned about Pakistan or India or Israel? Why are we willing to invade Iraq to prevent it from getting nukes, but not Pakistan to seize the ones it developed? It's because those nations don't embrace a warrior culture where suicide in a good cause, even mass death in a good cause, is considered acceptable. (Those kinds of things are present in Pakistan but don't rule there as yet.)

It's certainly not the case that the majority of those in the culture which is our enemy would gladly die. But many of those who make the decisions would be willing to sacrifice millions of their own in exchange for millions of ours, especially the religious zealots. If such people get their hands on nuclear weapons, then our threat of retaliation won't prevent them from using them against us, or threatening to do so. Which is why we can't let it happen. The chance of Israeli or Pakistani or Indian nukes being used against us is acceptably small. If Arabs get them, then eventually one will be used against us. It's impossible to predict who will do it, or when, or where, or what the proximate reason will be, but it's inevitable that it will happen. The only way to prevent it is to keep Arabs from getting nukes, and that is why Iraq is now critically important and why time is running out.

It's wrong to say that this would be "irrational" on their part. It is a reasoned decision based on an entirely different set of axioms, leading to a result totally unacceptable to us. But they're not insane or irrational. Even though they're totally rational, deterrence ultimately can't stop them from using nuclear weapons against us. All major wars started by someone else, that you eventually come to win, start with a phase where you try to consolidate the situation, to stop the enemy's advance. Then you go onto the offensive, take the war to him, and finish it.

Afghanistan and Iraq are the two parts of the consolidation phase of this war. al Qaeda had to be crippled and Saddam has to be destroyed in order to gain us time and adequate safety to go onto the offensive, and to begin the process which will truly end this war: to destroy Wahhabism, to shatter Islamic fundamentalism, to completely break the will of the Arabs and to totally shame them. Because they are a shame/pride culture, that latter may seem paradoxical. But the reality is that we cannot win this by making them proud, for they are not a stupid people and they actually have nothing to be proud of. We can't make them proud because we can't give them anything to be proud of; they need accomplishments of their own for pride, and their culture prevents that. The only hope here is to make them so ashamed that they finally face and accept the thing they are trying to hide from in choosing to fight back: their culture is a failure, and the only way they can succeed is to discard it and change.

It may sound strange to say, but what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we've done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century, but that will be much easier. But they've got to accept their own failure, personally and nationally and culturally. That is the essential first step. They've got to accept that the cause of their failure is their own culture, and that we're not. And they've got to accept that the only way to succeed is to change. That will be a difficult fight, and it's going to take decades. Along the way it's going to be necessary to remove many governments which come to power and yet again try to embrace the past and become militant, nationalistic, fundamentalist, or again attempt to try to develop nuclear weapons.

Saddam has to go not merely because of his programs for development of WMDs. He also has to go because he manifests Arab nationalism and imperialism. Even if he actually consents to disarm, he and the Baathist party must be destroyed. The reason that Iraq's nuclear weapon program is critical is that it means we have to do so immediately; it makes it urgent.

But removing their program to develop nuclear weapons doesn't remove the deeper reason to destroy Saddam and the Baathists, for they are part of the deeper pathology which must be excised. After the consolidation phase of this war is complete, with the destruction of the Taliban and occupation and reform of Iraq, then we will go onto the offensive and begin to strike at the deeper core of the problem. Part of that will be to force reform on Saudi Arabia, through a combination of diplomacy, persuasion, subversion, propaganda and possibly even military force.

What this shows is just how deeply I disagree with many who oppose this war. I am forthrightly proposing what some might call cultural genocide. The existing Arab culture which is the source of this war is a total loss. It must be shattered, annihilated, leaving behind no more traces in the Arab lands than the Samurai left in Japan or the mounted knights left in Europe.

I am forthrightly stating that it will be necessary to destabilize the entire middle east, which puts me exactly counter to European foreign policy. No band-aid will do. It isn't possible to patch things up with diplomacy because the rot runs too deep. Diplomacy now would be treating the symptoms and not the true disease. I am forthrightly stating that no amount of aid to the poor will stop the aggression against us, which will anger liberals everywhere. It isn't our wealth they hate, it's our accomplishments. The only way we can appease them is to ourselves become failures, and that is a price I'm not willing to pay.

And I claim that the US bears essentially no blame for the fundamental source of their anger towards us. They don't hate us because of our foreign policy. They don't ultimately hate us because of past mistakes. They don't hate what we do or what we have done. They hate what we are, and what we show them that they are not. They hate our accomplishments and our capabilities because we force them to see their own lack of accomplishments and their incompetence and impotence. And I'm saying that the US must do this, with help or without, because the US will be the continuing target of Arab solution number 3 as long as this resentment continues to boil, which it will do as long as Arab culture is not shattered and reformed. We will accept help from others if it's truly helpful, but we'll do it alone if we have to. (Or we will try and fail.)

We will be the primary target because we're the most successful. It's as simple as that. And that means that this ultimately will be a unilateral war by us; we're the ones with the most on the line. If the Arabs eventually do get nukes, the first one they use will either be against Israel or against us. It won't be against Europe, and if more conventional terrorist attacks continue, the most damaging ones will be directed against us. We will pay most of the price for this war, in staggering amounts of money, in losses on the field of battle, and in death and destruction at home, and therefore any talk of unified multilateral international action by a coalition of equals is nonsense. The other nations won't risk as much and won't pay as much and won't contribute as much and therefore deserve less say in what will happen.

In the mean time, now that al Qaeda has broken the ice, there will be further terrorist attacks against us as long as this war continues. They may be made by al Qaeda itself, or they may be made by other groups who will spring up. We can't totally prevent that until we've removed the true cause of those attacks: Arab cultural failure. Nothing short of that will stop the attacks. They're part of the setbacks which always accompany any major war. We'll do our best to foil such attacks, but inevitably some will succeed.

And those who don't understand the true issues will inevitably point to such attacks as proof that our campaign is a failure, that by our aggressiveness we raised further terrorist groups against us, that we should abandon the war and try appeasement, concession, aid, humanistic solutions.

And they'll be wrong, because they don't understand the real reason why we're being attacked and therefore why such approaches won't truly remove the source of the grievance.. They won't stop hating us until they become successful and begin to achieve on their own. We can't make them successful with material gifts, including aid to their poor. We can only make them successful with cultural changes, and they will resist that. Now that we've been attacked, we are ourselves compelled to force them to accept those cultural changes, because that is the only way short of actual genocide to remove the danger to ourselves. This war will end when they change, but not before.

Civilization is always at war with people like this.

We were only able to ignore them for a while because we were being blind. Now that we open our eyes we can see them everywhere.

They will always try to rise up and they will always loose just like the comunist anarcists that run round here because their system jsut doesn't work.

Need a new constitution and set of laws to run your country under. Got you covered - it's the Koran.

Need new leadership to run your country? Got you overered - it's the Mullahs governing by the Koran.

Need a college education for your kids? Got you covered - they'll spend four years studying the Koran.

Need to make something out of yourself and compete in the world today. Nope - reading the Koran and following Allah should be your main focus. Allah willl make you successful if he so chooses.

The comments following the lead article of this thread were posted by the usual suspects, KOBE members KOBE SCOTT, KOBE SBM, and another KOBE.

The article was likely published by KOBE SCOTT. KOBE SCOTT has a long history of publishing articles of this sort. Since he doesn't write well, he generally fully quotes the works of other Arab haters and publishes them.

KOBE SCOTT is Randy Scott of Minneapolis.

Here's a link to a short work about him:

http://www.stop-fascism.org/randy_scott.htm

This article will be responded to by claims of paranoia and the claim that it's assertions cannot be proved. However, this is not a court of law. The probability that there are many KOBE like groups with identifiable KOBE-like personalities working together in the same combination and using the same techniques is so low that it is reasonable to assume that these three individuals are KOBE. KOBE is now using other names because the KOBE name itself has been discredited by KOBE member behavior.

Nicely put BA.

I do so love that this shitbird actually refers to himself as a "victim". Of a pogrom no less!

I don't know much about this KOBE deal but these "anti-fascist" fruits sure do give them ALOT of publicity.

One point the author misses, and it is a big one, is the impact of Climate, and arability of land, on Culture.

Arab lands - and most of Islam for that matter is located in this Planet’s “Hot Zone”. It is by no major accident that heavy heat producing industry evolved in Northerly Climates - the ongoing heavy labor and heat production are more tolerable in the temperate climates of the North. As well the culture of Slavery was never practicable in Northerly climes as the hostile, and very warlike, Tribesmen would have none of it. (Even the vaunted Roman Legions were turned back by the Pictish Tribes of Britain who would rather die than wear the Roman Collar.) Returning to climate: Even today virtually all Heavy Industry is located North of the Tropics (there is little habitable temperate land mass in the Colder Southern Hemisphere).

The impact of Climate on culture has long been noted. The Arab/Islamic World located, as it is, in the Planet’s Hot Zone, with arable land relatively scarce, necessity evolved a more Nomadic Lifestyle: Herdsmen, Small Scale Agriculture, Traders, and Raiders. The hostility of the climate resulted in a people inured to the vicissitudes of a harsh and unforgiving environment and a culture shaped by the realities of that environment.

Cultures change at Glacial speed and herein we have the authors object of scorn. The Arab World is not enough like Europe or America. How dare these people reject the values that brought you the Holocaust, Nuclear Weapons, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), Crude Heavy Industry that pollutes and makes an environment uninhabitable, and they dress funny too. Never mind that the current Political Structure is one that has been foisted upon them by Western Powers to facilitate the “extraction” of Natural Resources.

It is one of the peculiar chauvinism's of Western Culture in that the assumption, made automatically, is that superior machinery equals superior culture. No, it may make for a higher material standard of living, more leisure time, and greater War making power, but does not address the fundamentals; such things as Religion, Philosophy, Mores, and Customs all of which infuse a culture and shape it’s attitudes. A cursory glance will show that such mechanistic marvels have had an indirect influence on culture, certainly greater leisure should allow for greater time to explore the truly important questions of our own nature and existence. That Western Culture has increasingly abandoned such pursuits is to it’s detriment. The author of the piece heading this thread talks about the West being “fat and happy” no, fat, dumb, and happy. Witness the decline of our own educational system, declining S.A.T. scores and average reading level. The increasing use of such mind numbing amusements as Television are not positive indicators. The West, and America in particular, is entering a period of decay - decadence if you will. Imperial expansion, as the Bush Junta’s War on Iraq, is symptomatic of that decay. The West has ceased innovating in key areas, such as Energy Production Technology, because entrenched interest groups have been successful in blocking it. Shortsighted? Certainly. Disastrous? In the long run, yes. Nevertheless all too real.

As for the absurd assertion that the rapid acceptance and use of Western Technologic gizmos indicates some failure of Arab culture well, one can find parallels in Western Culture. Spain, following the Conquest of Mexico, Central, and South America, was awash in that highly valued medium of exchange: Gold. Spain proceeded to buy everything they ever wanted. They continued on in a more or less Monarchic Feudal Culture and ceased innovating and expanding their internal economy. In other words they stagnated due to a glut of material wealth. This took Spain from it’s position as one of the three great powers of the time into it’s current recovering backwater state. The point being that the Arab world, in the possession of great wealth, saw no need to industrialize when they could just buy what they wanted. This is nothing new, or unique to the Arab World.

The author of the head piece, shallow as he is, can only see one solution to the problems inherent in a tribal culture coexisting with a High Tech Culture: “Kill them, conquer them, and force them to be more like us. How “enlightened”. By asserting such the author destroys his entire thesis and reveals his attitudes as being not fundamentally different from those whom he would see “put to the Sword”. Perhaps his prose is more evolved, although Arab Poetry even now remains part of the Western Canon of Great Literature: need I mention the Rubaiyat of Omar Khay’am or the “Thousand and One Nights”?

Another fallacy of this rationale for conquest is that the resentment of the Arab World against the West is a resultant of their stagnation as a culture. To some degree that may exist however they have a good many other reasons to resent the West: Constant intervention in their internal affairs, imposition of Western Will on Arab actions - depriving them of their own self-determinism, and economic exploitation which is all too evident in the way the Political Structure of the Arab World has been formed by the actions of Western Powers.

To assert that crude physical force is what is required to “improve” Arab Culture is ludicrous. All such intervention will do is result in untold misery as such intervention will be resisted, engender further resentment, further entrench current modes of thought, and ensure Arab enmity against the West and the United States and Britain in particular.

More productive, although now hard to do because our actions have created the hatred we face, would be a long term Peace Corps type program. The Peace Corps at it’s inception was one of the most effective tools of Civilization and American Foreign Policy of the 20th Century. Too effective perhaps - the entrenched interests saw it necessary to destroy it as it threatened their power base and created in their diseased minds a threat to their power.

What this screed is is nothing more than an attempt to rationalize Empire and make endless war and endless conquest seem reasonable. It is an insane rationale born I suspect of deeper motivations.

"I do so love that this shitbird actually refers to himself as a "victim"."

Way to go, fresca. Whenever we asinine conservatives have nothing intelligent to say, we can always just sit there and call someone a "shitbird." It really helps demonstrate how childish we are. Great job!

Good idea! We'll blame our problems on cultural differences, then exterminate everyone in the groups we've decided to blame. This will be fun- we'll be just like whatshisname, that German-sounding guy, Adolph something-or-other. If you're having trouble coming up with a catchy name, how about "The final solution?" That has a nice ring, don't you think?

what missing $trillion ? 7th failed audit in a row.

doing good.

Got to love the privilage of working for the Nazi state.

has already been spent many times over. Let the good times roll.

How about this:

We treat all cultures as equally moral and valid...whether they provide their members with personal freedoms and opportunities for success unparalled in history or whether they reduce their citizenry to cannibalization, promote murder in the name of religion, and keep the people in abject poverty while the rulers grow fat and wealthy.

Then, when we're attacked by some group of fanatics, we can blame ourselves and then insist that we have no right to punish those responsible.

Then we can appeal to an international body of terrorists, despots, thugs, and their appeasers for help...and have that help refused.

There's a slogan for that one, too: "Not in Our Name."

Think that'll work?

Daveman, there were universities, libraries, learned physicians and philosophers in Muslim lands at a time when your ancestors were probably running through the forests of western Europe trying to steal eggs from birds' nests.

That's true.

So what?

I think you'll find, with very few exceptions, that the people of today are not their ancestors.

What point, if any, are you trying to make?

would investment in arab schools and universities work? this could create a smoothing of cultural differences.

"would investment in arab schools and universities work? this could create a smoothing of cultural differences."

Who knows, but clearly what's being taught in them now is not working.

Brilliant Diogenes, just brilliant!

Your "Hot Zone" theory clearly explains why Egypt, Rome, Carthage, and the Mayas never built great societies. They were in the "Hot Zone" so it would have been impossible.

...you have successfully retained your reputation as someone able to make a totally fallacious and irrelevant point.

Nowhere in my prior Post did I assert that it was not possible for an advanced culture to rise and exist in the Planet's Hot Zone. What I stated was that Heavy Industry did not arise in the Hot Zone and observed that the majority of Heavy Industry still exists outside of the Hot Zone.

Obviously advanced cultures did arise in this region. That is why Iraq sits athwart what is known as the "Cradle of Civilization".

Infuckingcredible.

...so let's pull all Western interests out of the Middle East.

Bring all the troops home, all the corporations, quit buying their oil, don't sell them anything.

Total embargo. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Let them slide back to the 13th century where they seem to want to be.

You think they'll leave us alone then?

Doubt it.

Look at Egypt. The state-run press constantly denounces America, yet they have their hand out, demanding billions, as if they're entitled.

Cut 'em off, I say. Ungrateful jerks. You want the mighty US buck? Better make nice then.

...than you have to be. Disengagement is not a viable option and you know it. Therefore your argument is bogus.

We are not going to "win friends and influence people" by bombing the shit out of them and stealing their resources. Which is the Bush Junta Policy. It may create a short term opportunity to "extract" resources but it is not a solution.

I was quite serious when I said a Peace Corp like program is one viable avenue. Kenney proved it in the 60's. It was one of the most successful diplomatic iniatives of it's time. It is a simple recipe - you extend a helping hand without strings and you help. People appreciate it. Yes there are always nuts who will disparage such but they are a minority and their concealed hatred of others is a disease. You deal with them as you must. You don't go in killing wholesale and expect people to love you. They won't. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Your solution of endless strife and exploitation is one such insane solution.

BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED. It really is that simple.

The Muslim world was richer and in many ways more economically developed than most of Europe until Europe grew rich and powerful by conquering the Americas and exploiting them with the help of the African slave trade. The slave trade also helped to finance both the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the economic growth of the 13 colonies and the early United States. That is not a record to be proud of.

The peoples of the Middle East will never make real progress until they overthrow their tyranical (and mostly pro-U.S.) governments and also throw out U.S. and British imperialism and get control of their own resources. One thing is for sure - the oil producing nations of the Middle East are under no legal, ethical or moral obligation to provide the United States with petroleum sufficiently cheap to allow it to follow the absurd practices of building its transportation system around the private automobile and its housing system around building more and more suburbs.

in about 50 years when the ground is bone dry they can have the land back. we'll call it a compromise. Oh don't worry about the suburbs genious. fucking whiny bitch

Sounds like you've been inhaling too many lawnmower fumes. Or spending too much time trying to convince yourself that we are still in the 1950's and that the Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best are accurate depictions of reality.

At the rate that Americans are being killed in Iraq, there is no chance of our being there for fifty months, let alone fifty years. If Suburbia dies and people learn to walk again and to shop downtown instead of in malls it will be an advance for civilization. Even better would be the death of television and the death of the automobile.

Good to hear from you. How true.

Say, Morningstar, are you really Robert Young or Ozzie Nelson? I thought you fellows had passed on to the big shopping center in the sky.

Plese don't forget the '-' before and after my name.

Maybe someone can take thousands of Iraqis on a tour of Watts, Compton, and the most run-down sections of Oakland and Cleveland so they can see what modern capitalism can produce. After they see those places they will probably say "To hell with Islam, socialism, or anything else I used to believe in. Bring on the landlords, used car dealers, liquor stores, mud-wrestling palaces, massage parlors, and all the other wonderful things that I have seen in America."

So I guess from your sarcasm

you are opposed to used car dealers

pro prohibition

anti mud-wrestling

and want laws against prostitution enforced.

Hmm you seem pretty conservative.. specially on the used car dealers.. where will poor people get their cars?

.....

OOHHHHH.... if you take away my mudwrestling... facist boy.*angry stare*

tastes differ. I prefer utopian village life with high tech communication, solar

and other passive powered industries with low consumtion high craftsmanship

material possesions.

Birth rates enforced by the survival method.

In order to procreate one must be able to cross a given length of terrain with only water, food and standardized clothing. The length should be determined to achieve 51% failure rate.

meyer you really are just a whiny little thing. everything in america is bad, why can't everything be perfect??(how i think it should be)I've figured it out so why hasn't every other living human being??i'm right ..listen to me. It's easy as killing an infant to sit back and point at the shit that doesn't meet your lofty standards. any asshole can do that. so why don't you go beyond your spoonfed rhetoric and do something about it. somebody should be telling the millions of people that want to come to america that it is a suckhole. maybe that can be your new progressive way of improving this lost country of 300+ million. your so smart. until then keep your whimpering jizzhole shut.

Thank you tick-tock -- my thoughts exactly. Meyer should move to Cuba where he can eat veggie burgers happily ever after.

By the way, Bush and Blair certainly do deserve to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

...to coincide with their War Crimes Trial?

911 - What Really Happened?

Excellent article, the best compliment I can give you, is that none of your critics, could dispute any claims had to resort to personal attacks; a clear sign of an intellectual gap.

“The Muslim world was richer and in many ways more economically developed than most of Europe until Europe grew rich and powerful by conquering the Americas and exploiting them with the help of the African slave trade.”

That’s odd Muslims were using African slaves as long as we “evil” whites did, they got theirs from East Africa, kept doing it until about 50 years ago. (Wow, they really are far behind us) I wonder why they never got rich. Seriously through, since both sides agree Islamic society was a world leader, up until say the last 400 years. How come now one is asking what went wrong?

If you want to examine how the Muslim world fell into a state of such despair, (until we found a use for that annoying black stuff they had) two critical dates spring up, 1526 and 1687. These were the last attempts of the Turks to conquer Europe, or more specifically Vienna. Guess what the Austrians didn’t have any colonies, so it wasn’t that. Reformation, the separation of church and state, henceforth more community leaders would selected based on their skill rather than their devotion to god. Western progress increased while the Ottoman Empire stagnated. (So basically we made sure people who had important jobs, actually knew what they were doing, god we are so smart!)

As for which culture is better, I ask you; How many Muslims in Europe? How many Europeans in the Muslims world. Yes it’s no contest!

As for which culture is better, let me put it this way;

How many Muslims in Europe?

How many Europeans in the Muslims world.

Yes it’s no contest!

Cultures become rich when they exchange ideas and processes. To equate superiority is to deny the dance and music of the play. Who the hell made you a critic?

Does one have the freedom to embrace the other?

Does force provide pretext?

Moron.

Cultures become rich when they exchange ideas and processes. To equate superiority is to deny the dance and music of the play. Who the hell made you a critic?

Does one have the freedom to embrace the other?

Does force provide pretext?

Moron.

fuck are you talking about sheepdog. try writing this again but try and make some semblance of sense.

I wont/can't explain it to you. Ignore it, then.

It is obvious from some of these posts that they spend their free time ( when they are not selling over-priced junkers to poor people at used car lots or unloading new shipments of Thunderbird and Night Train at their liquor stores) attending refined cultural events at mud wrestling palaces. That explains why they have no time for serious reading and therefore reveal their ignorance with uniformed, racist, xenophobic, neanderthal-like messages on this board.

The Hapsburg Empire in Austria actually conquered many areas in Eastern Europe from the Muslims. Much of the former Yugoslavia was fought over by the Hapsburgs and the Turks, and that troubled part of the world has still not outlived the effects of that conflict. Both sides inflicted brutal atrocities, causing the death of thousands, if not millions of civilians over the centuries.

The Austrian Empire did indeed have colonies - only they were European colonies. Try western Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Hungary, the above metioned parts of Yugoslavia, and a great number of others. And it did not enjoy even partial separation of church and state until the 19th century and full separation until after World War I and the collapse of the Empire in revolution and defeat.

The fact that there were slaves in the Muslim world (as there were in Europe throughout the Middle Ages) does not change the fact that Europe surpassed the Muslim world economically only when it settled the Americas with the help of the slave trade, largely exterminating the native Americans in the process.

...you left out "Monster Trucks", Television (of most any kind), and reading the "Limbaugh Letter" while spitting Tobacco Juice through the big gap in their teeth.

Parody of course but I think it is an important point that "what you know determines what you see". The Bush apologists only know the "Official Spin" and accept it as "Gospel". Of course they have been lied to, and believe the lies, and so as a consequence they use bad information to draw faulty conclusions.

Garbage in = Garbage Out.