Rasha doesn’t strike me as ‘passive’ or cowering. She is defiant of the Israelis. Might she be a Hezbollah sympathizer? Perhaps; but I think it doubtful. Her self-proclaimed ‘Ottoman’ identity is much more Sunni than Shi’a. Her defiance is the act of ‘morality’ I wrote of. I suspect that if bombs were raining down on my neighborhood, I’d feel as though the bombers were trying to make me flee. It takes a lot of gumption and defiance to override one’s instinct to run. She would rather chronicle the destruction of her city than guarantee her own survival. I can only guess that she is choosing this in hopes of making a difference in the world: a difference of perception. That’s not merely defiant but brave, and it’s certainly not ‘passive’.

Frankly, I think we in the West need her perspective: that non-Western perceptual lens. Were we to converse with her in depth, we might find that her geopolitical opinions don’t jibe with ours. Or, we might learn something to the contrary.

I hope she writes more for us. And I hope she survives it.

No, that’s not how I’d phrase it. Instead, I’d say: ‘terrorists’ (who consider themselves holy warriors) are behaving according to the literal words of their God. See the Koranic quotes in the post above.

And don’t think for a second that I’m sympathizing with the people who act out those medieval exhortations. I can’t quite accept that humans should allow beliefs like those to persist in this dawning age of scientifically obtained knowledge.

From reading you elsewhere, I seem to recall you’ve not much respect for the current US administration. If voters like you and I are to choose better and wiser national leaders, we ought, I think, know as much as possible so that patent nonsense like ‘They Hate Us For Our Freedoms’ doesn’t frame the next electoral cycle’s foreign policy debate. We may well be hated in the Muslim world, but it ain’t ‘for our freedoms’.

It’s for our policies, yes—but that’s not all. It’s also for our collective ignorance that enables the policies which the majority of the Middle East find so objectionable. And I don’t mean just our support for Israel. Peter Galbraith chronicles in his new book The End of Iraq that as Bush, before the invasion, discussed the coming Iraq war with exiled Iraqis, the Iraqis began to understand that the American President was unfamiliar with the words: ‘Sunni’, ‘Shi’a’, and ‘Kurd’. These Iraqi exiles later admitted this to Galbraith despite being supportive of Bush. They were stunned that the man ordering the invasion had no idea of the country’s three primary ethnicities. Galbraith was stunned too: how could the administration plan for the possibility of a civil war when the government’s leader didn’t even understand the target country’s basic divisions? (And is it any wonder that Colin Powell later quit in disgust?) And now we know that they didn’t plan for it. They believed they were about to liberate Paris, circa 1944.

There’s a word for such ideologically spawned idiocy and ignorance: inexcusable.

In another decade, ‘They Hate Us For Our Freedoms’ will likely be viewed as a propaganda ploy as baldly jingoistic as WWI’s infamous ‘Kill The Hun’. Catchy phrases like that pander to the ignorant. It’s a code for prejudice, and prejudice is a human failing that never demands the authentication of actual evidence.

We’re the people responsible for the election of these ignorant, manipulative, and unreasoning ideologues. We must begin to take our responsibilities more seriously. The only way to start is to understand all we can about the 1.3 billion people our government is so busily infuriating.

I’m aware, as a reader of yours, that you’ve plenty of enviable knowledge of other topics in the various ROS threads. So, I haven’t been picking a fight with you, but trying to offer the smidgeon of extra perspective that I’ve recently gleaned on this topic of Lebanon, etc. If it has come across as overly critical, I apologize. I expect we’ll disagree much less elsewhere. Until then, thanks for the conversation!

If you can accept that Lebanon was a satellite, then the Lebanese weren’t ‘hostages’ anymore than the Lithuanians were while the USSR busily settled Russians in the Baltic States. The Balts had no choice in this, and neither did the non-Hezbollah Lebanese. They were subjects, not hostages. We can’t in any good conscience blame them for being a small country controlled by bigger miscreants Nor should we blame them for being so religiously and ethnically diverse that reaching consensus is next to impossible: after all, the French gave Lebanon its borders, not the Lebanese.

Here’s another imperfect analogy that has at least some relevant parallels: are you and I responsible for the KKK? Would we have been even had we lived in the South 85 years ago? Would the blood of the lynched been on our hands? Even if we despised the KKK – and even while Grand Dragons weren’t the shady underground figures of today, but popular politicians?

You know already that it’s my opinion that most Americans—including me—are ‘generally aware’ but not genuinely informed of the facts, history, and cultural background of the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. Well, here’s evidence: Amr Hamzawy, a guest on tonight’s hour of ROS, said earlier today on KUOW’s The Conversation that Hezbollah acted not only at Iran’s behest but precisely because some Lebanese, as a natural consequence of the Cedar Revolution’s ousting of Syrian troops, had begun calling for Hezbollah to disarm. Instead, Hezbollah opted to use its Iranian arms, arms built up over the years of Syrian domination of the Lebanese government.

Here’s the link: http://www.kuow.org/programs/theconversation.asp

Why didn’t we know this before today? My guess is this: because the Western news media didn’t know it, and therefore couldn’t report it.

Wouldn’t knowing this have altered your opinion of the Lebanese? And since the government of Lebanon was manipulated by Syria, and since the Syrians were kicked out only 18 months ago, and since Hezbollah, under decades-long Syrian auspices, had grown into a quasi-governmental entity with a well-armed militia in southern Lebanon, how reasonable is it expect the Lebanese to deal with that third of their population in only 18 months?

They didn’t want another civil war. Can’t say I blame them. Civil wars are some of the world’s worst barbarisms, and typically not ‘blitzkriegs’ that are over in but a few weeks. The Lebanese know this much better than we do. Their (15-year) civil war, unlike ours, took place in living memory.

So, we’re ignorant of many if not most of the salient facts, not by choice but by chance. When it comes to the Middle East, we don’t know jack. Yet day by day we hear more from experts who can enlighten us. This is all to the good. And I want more, especially because most people of the Middle East aren’t jihadis but people like Faysal and Rasha, who, for all we know, might be Muslims the way most Europeans are Christians: more by descent than by conviction. Still, their seemingly secular perspectives are molded by their gradually modernizing societies that are rooted in ancient cultures. Ancient cultures that were molded by harsh, uncompromising beliefs.

I want to understand their perspectives and sympathize where appropriate—not from political correctness but from simple human empathy. I want the Middle East to know that we’re listening, even if we don’t always agree. It’s the least we can do, especially since Europeans, not the natives, carved the region into its ill-suited states, and since Westerners continue to manipulate the geopolitical winds via the politicians we elect, who determine our foreign policies.

I’ve got more to say—especially about our ignorant politicians—but this little essay is already way over the ROS word limit.

Okay, I’ll do my best, but I can’t do it in 200 words or less. (Apologies in advance for the ‘carpet bombing’.)

First, big apologies for putting you one the defensive; it was not my intent. I’m not accusing you of anything I haven’t done too. Israel is a more or less Western country: it’s much easier to view the conflict through the lens shaped and ground by Israeli points of view. I’ve done it most of my life. But I no longer think that’s a wide enough lens. It offers too small an information base.

We’re up to our collective necks in the Middle East, and the majority of people in that region resent our ignorance of their perspectives. Couple that popular resentment with the incendiary passages of a widely believed-in religious text that calls for true adherents to slay the opponents of their faith, and you get stuff like 9-11. The world is home to 1.3 billion Muslims. Much if not most of the Islamic world has access to Al-Jazerra or similar networks.

And it doesn’t matter whether the scenes on those networks are representative of ‘reality’ (as we would define it), or selectively edited to maximize their sensationalism. It doesn’t matter because the anti-Zionist arguments represented, on this very site, by ‘zaqidog’ are widely held opinions in the Muslim world. It doesn’t matter whether those arguments are incomplete ‘halves’ of the full two-sided picture, because to Muslims these figures are an ‘untold truth’ of bloody injustice. ‘Untold’ because, according to this regional/cultural perspective, the ‘Zionist controlled American press’ suppresses it. Add to those beliefs of suppression the images of Muslim civilians—including children—dying from American made and Israeli delivered munitions—and then consider this:

“The unbelievers are your sworn enemies.� ~ Sura 4:101.

“Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal harshly with them.� ~ Repentance; Sura 9:123.

“We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. They serve other gods for whom no sanction is revealed. Hell shall be their home.� ~ The Imrans ; Sura 3:150.

“When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its load.� ~ Women; Sura 4:47 (To “smite a neck� means to decapitate).

“Let the unbelievers not think they will escape Us. They have not the power to do so. Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your disposal, so that you may strike terror into the enemies of Allah and the faithful, and others beside them. All that you give for the cause of Allah shall be repaid you.� ~ The Spoils; Sura 8:60.

“…[You] shall not kill—for that is forbidden by Allah—except for a just cause.â€? ~ Cattle; Sura 6:151.

“Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah does not love the aggressors. ~ The Cow; Sura 2:190.

“Make war on them [unbelievers]. Allah will chastise them through you and humble them.” ~ Repentance or “Al-Tawbaâ€?; Sura 9:14.

Source: http://www.campuscrosswalk.org/2005-winter-13.html

Now, you and I will likely find these passages as unsettling as they are archaic. (And I’m an inveterate and unapologetic unbeliever—in any god.) But Muslims don’t believe that Mohammed was ‘inspired’ by God – they believe God spoke directly through Mohammed. It’s a tenet of the faith that the Koran contains God’s literal words – and that this God is very much alive, not ‘archaic’. And that he’s very, very judgmental.

If only one in every 10,000 Muslims is inspired enough by what he considers outrages perpetrated by ‘infidels’ and so much so that he’s willing to fly airliners into skyscrapers, or sneak nukes out of Pakistan and into Western cities, that’s 130,000 jihadis, not the mere 20-minus-1 of the 9-11 attacks. And yet what if one in 10,000 is a conservative estimate? What if the Islamists, armed with their Korans and utilizing the televised images coming from Lebanon, are able to propagandize even better, parleying my speculative figure to one of every 1,000 Muslims? What if it’s 1.3 million jihadis? And what if that’s a conservative estimate?

I, for one, want a wider information base: I want more perspective. Even if I don’t agree with the Islamic world’s conventional wisdom, I feel obligated to understand it. Because Muslims aren’t merely outraged by ‘infidels’ raining death onto their faithful coreligionists. They’re outraged and frustrated by our apparent dismissive unwillingness to even begin to consider their points of view.

In Guatemala there was a long civil war. Which at least provided proof that not everyone supported the puppet government. But the Hezbollah buildup has mostly been in the period since the Lebanese civil war ended. So again, I’m not aware of any evidence that the Lebanese government or citizenry strongly objected to the presence of a heavily armed army on their territory devoted to the destruction of Israel.

You keep saying the my interpretation is through western blinders. But rather than asking us to read various conflicting Lebanese opinions, why don’t you just summarize what you feel is an alternative interpretation for why the Lebanese are not culpable for allowing a bloodthirsty terrorist organization to operate in their midst?

What constitutes prior knowledge?

Is he saying that the Lebanse government was not aware that Hezbollah has been conductiong a huge military buildup, including thouands of missiles, for YEARS? I think he’s being disingenous. No one is suggesting that Hezbollah informed the Lebanese government of the details of their attack plans. But the fact that the ONE and ONLY purpose of Hezbollah’s buildup was to attack Israel was certainly no secret.

I didn’t get that from her letter. She just seemed to to be a scared civilian speculating about different theories to account for her current plight, but with a complete sense of resignation about any role that she or her compatriots have played or might play in this. But why project her own passivity onto her countrymen?

By your reasoning terrorist are simply behaving according to the norms of terrorist society; Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, at al, are simply actng according to the norms of their rich, Americam, triumphalist society, etc. We are all absolved from taking any responsibility by our cultural upbringing. Is there any such thing as a moral free agent in your view?

The big problem comes from the INTERNAL inconsistencies. Lebanon has been playing host to a terrorist organization DEVOTED to killing Israeli civilans and disregarding the lives of Lebanese civilians.

In my biased western view that would be a good enough reason to ask them to leave but you’re saying that there’s something about Lebanese culture that makes concern over the lives of Israeli and Lebanese civilian SECONDARY to . . . what? Something. OK, fine, but now they’re all upset that lots of Lebanese civilians are being killed in this war. They can’t have it both ways. If concern over the deaths of civilans was secondary for years, why is it primary today?

As far as I know the Lebanese government has STILL not demanded the Hezbollah take their weapons and leave.