The world is filled with bad actors killing thousands of their wn people. Any decision to get rid of one of them MUST include a cost-benefit analysis. I think the COST (still climbing) of the Iraq invasion has WAY exceeded any purported benefit.

Anyway, on a year-to-year basis, more Iraqi’s are dying today (as a result of sectarian violence, crime, destroyed infrastructure, etc) than in the last several years Saddam was in power.

No, we do NOT.

First of all I am not responsible for someone else’s behavior or choices. There are any number of ways to respond to an oppressive government.

Second, there is no science of human behavior (psychology, sociology, etc) that is strong enough or rigorous enough to tell us why someone will happily blow up an airplane full of innocent people. Anyone who claims otherwise is exercising the same hubris that the Bush administration displayed by invading Iraq: claiming to know more than they really did; claiming more understanding than was actually possible.

Terrorists and their supporters come from ALL KINDS of backgrounds – educated and illiterate, rich and poor, democratic societies and oppressive ones. There is no common socioeconomic theme. A recent study in the UK found that support for terrorism has actually INCREASED recently among British Muslim women and college students.

Give me a break, we all know they weren’t Iraqis, but that isn’t the point is it?

Saddam was a bad actor killing and murdering thousands of Kurds and Shites. You should be glad he is gone.

I don’t see anything wrong with trying to democratize the Muslim world and as a woman, (are you a woman? you seem to have so many names that it hard to tell who you are) any woman though would want to see women live free lives and not be forced to marry, to wear perscribed clothing, and murdered if they don’t do what their male relatives tell them.

I hear you about the Saudi perptrators of September 11. – What, they weren’t Iraqi?! –

I think you nailed it with another kind of poverty: oppression. These terrorist may have been educated, but they were without opportunity. It’s still about powerlessness. Sadly, it wasn’t too difficult to channel their frustrations toward the US. We have ourselves to blame for that. Certainly, changing the internal government in Saudi Arabia is a daunting task. But we didn’t attack Saudi Arabia. We attacked Iraq with the ideal of changing their form of goverment. And this is emblematic of how we have behaved in the Middle East. Our ruling class is in bed with the Saudi ruling class. We use Israel because of our interest in Iran’s oil fields. We manipulate the entire region via our role as super bully in the UN.

How to effect change? It’s impossibleuntil we disengage. As long as we’re dependent on their resources and as long as our ruling class has a financial interest in oil production, we cannot assist in affecting cultural change over there. We can’t afford to isolate them or stop buying their products. We have no leverage points and no credibility. Even force isn’t working.

If tomorrow, we magically tranformed into an economy that had no use for petroleum products, we would walk away and let them all sort it out for themselves. The fact that we became dependent on a resource that we don’t have enough of within our own boundaries is not the responsibiity of those who have that resource. And it does not justify our policies of fomenting confict and toying with the lives of millions.

f’sticks. That was me.

It’s not a question of justification, it’s a question of detering people from firing rockets into civilian areas and trying to kill as many civilians as possible. Israel has no reason to attack Hizbollah except to defent itself. Hizbollah’s reaons for attacking Israel are the elimination of the Jewish State and to kill as many Jews as possible.Read their charter.

“We need to each pull back from the brink.”

Who is we, Nabobico? There already is a war going on. The Israelis need to defend themselves.

“Hezbollah will not be eleiminated (that much was proven this month)”

Nothing of the kind was proven. We don’t know what the future of Hizbollah will be. We don’t know if the truce will hold. If they take over the Lebanese government the situation will become a lot more complicated and a civil war in Lebanon is possible. If they don’t they will be disarmed. In any case Hizbollah will not remain the threat it has been.

“any more than Isreal will be pushed into the sea.”

This is certain.

” Refugees on both sides have legitimate claims. Lets recognise them, listen to them, and from that move forward. No one is ever one hundred percent guilty nor innocent.”

This is a separate issue which has nothing to do with Hizbollah.

August 13th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

“I posted the letter because I felt it pointed a humane direction that the discussions surrounding the very complicated issue of the mid east could take, and I think the spirit has been echoed by other posters here.”

In other words it’s wishful thinking but it sounded nice.

The first rule of critic: get the facts straight.

“That is nonsense, not the facts of the letter. To state that all Palestinians in Israeli jails are guilty is beyond nonsense, it is ridiculous. Not even the staunchest defender of the american penal system would claim that every person within jail is truly guilty.”

We are not talking about the American penal system. We are talking about Israeli jailing people for offenses ranging from stabbing or attempted stabbings to people caught trying to blow themselves up and kill as many civilians as they can.

Are you aware that an Italian “tourist” was stabbed to death a few days ago because he was taken for an Israeli Jew?

It turn out he was there to help the Palestinian cause. Ironic isn’t it. Now do you think that his murderer should go free?

Nabobnico you are just propogandizing for the Arab cause and don’t give a damn about the facts.

You can try to justify these violent acts if you like but don’t pretend that the people in these jails are innocent. Why would Israel want to keep and feed ten thousand people? Ridiculous.

btw: I didn’t check on the number and I am taking your word that it is correct.

That is nonsense, not the facts of the letter. To state that all Palestinians in Israeli jails are guilty is beyond nonsense, it is ridiculous. Not even the staunchest defender of the american penal system would claim that every person within jail is truly guilty. Even they would admit that there is a margin of error to some degree. Your statement belies your entire argument which is based on hysterical name calling, mainly the anti-semitism charge.

In a review of Alan Dershowitz’s new book published in the Yale Israel Jouranl, Ariel Schneller writes, “Anti-Semitism in terms of “effectâ€? is a charge that is too easily played as a trump card against critics of Israel and it becomes merely another word for any action that happens solely to harm Jews.”

Dismissing the signers as in their ’70’s and 80’s also misses the point. Senior statesmen and commentators are often older and wiser than younger critics. besides, I think Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Charlie Glass and Richard Falk, to name a few would take issue with that staement.

Back to, for a minute, your staement that “the Palestinian prisoners in Israel have all been caught trying to carry out attacks on Israelis or had actually done so.” In an article in the Gaurdian, Chris McGreal, writes, “The bulk of the prisoners have never been tried and many are not even told the accusations against them. Just 1,461 have been convicted of any crime — some of atrocities against civilians which the Israelis use to justify their sweeping security laws.” Later on in the same article, he quotes the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and writes that many of the prisoners are locked up for political views. He quotes the oragnisation as saying, “Security is interpreted in an extremely broad manner, such that nonviolent speech and political activity are considered dangerous.” Not even the Israelis claim that every prisoner is guilty. Only you, JDyer.

From the posted letter.

This is nonsense.

An operation as complex as the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier took months to plan not to mention the time it took to dig the tunnel they used.

In addition, the Palestinian prisoners in Israel have all been caught trying to carry out attacks on Israelis or had actually done so.

It’s nonsense like this which makes most sensible people hold intellectuals like Chomsky and Howard Zinn in such low esteem.

Saramago is a rabid antisemite. He is not the only Nobel prize winner to hold such vile views.

By no means an easy task, but at least theoretically it should be alleviated by the long overdue insight of all governments involved that the only ones having profited of what’s been going for the past few years are extremists on all sides. Any further aggravation will substantially destabilize the region and cannot be in the interest of the Saudi monarchy, Israeli hawks or even the political madmen in Teheran. Let’s get them to the table then, now or never!

But there are two problems remaining. The first is that many, if not the majoirity of the 9/11 perpetrators were educated and middle class Saudis. Economic prosperity, or the hope thereof is not enough apprantly to stop the terrorist recruiting. Saudi Arabia is close to being a police state. But I am in no way suggesting tht we try to “democratize” Saudia Arabia in the violent Bush fashion. But here is a key factor to the kind of deep discontent that leads to terrorism in that part of the world – authoritarian regimes with no hope of daylight in the future.

The problem even with an enlightened Israeli policy towards creating a just two state settlement with the Palestinians that lasted some seven years or so, most notably under the leadership of the assasinated Itzhak Rabin, is tht the Islamic extremistis under Hamas did everything in their power to disrupt negotiations towards this peaceful settlement by bombing Israeli buses and other terrorist acts. Now Hamas is in power because the PLO was too corrupt and did not deliver services to its people and because the Israeli government swung to the right under Sharon and decided on the path of an imposed settlement.

As I have written before on ROS, an imposed settlement is an excuse for perpetual terrorism and recrutiment by Hamas and Hizbollah. On the other hand, if ever the Israelis would go back to the bargaining table with the Palestinians for a true compromise settlement, Israel must have absolute assurane that the new Palestinian state will not be a launcing pad for terrorist attacks by rocket and so forth by an uncontrolled Hamas out for blood. A real chicken and egg dilemna. Almost as hard as how an enlihtened America can use its influence and not its military to bring about a greater measure of freedom and democracy in these authoritarian regimes.

Nevertheless, the 75% improvement in US foreign policy will go a long way to turnign the tide of events in the Middle East.

Anybody got an idea about the other 25 per cent?

This is put better than I could ever put it; it addresses the core problem I think we have all been circling on this thread, and one which deserves our close attention….

A Letter from 18 Writers

including three Nobel Prize recipients

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner–and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis–there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this “kidnapping� was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources–most particularly that of water–by the Israeli Defense (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly–who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear, for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognized for what it is and resisted.

PS: As Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the documentary film Arna’s Children, asked: “Who is going to paint the ‘Guernica’ of Lebanon?�

John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Harold Pinter
José Saramago
Eduardo Galeano
Arundhati Roy
Naomi Klein
Howard Zinn
Charles Glass
Richard Falk
Gore Vidal
Russell Banks
Thomas Keneally
Chris Abani
Carolyn Forché
Martín Espada
Jessica Hagedorn
Toni Morrison

While of course I can’t claim to fully understand the terrorists myself I do firmly believe that the thought that weakness is what islamic extremists feed on isn’t very helpful in devising strategies against them. Example? Israel, showing strength and military power for decades and still constantly feeding terrorism against its borders and people. We have to move away from this binary thinking of weak and strong. Maybe in these times of asymmetrical warfare the traditional rules of power politics don’t apply.

I’d even go so far as to say that terrorists do feed not on weakness but on the opposite: on power or at least the excess of it. Excess of power leads to missuse of power, the very sort of extremism that befalls even a superpower with only the best intentions. Osama & Co. do want us to show the absolute resolve that George W. Bush constantly claims for his administration, because it helps to alienate moderate Muslims around the world and makes it easier for them to rally their troups.

Perhaps it is necessary to reexamine the origins of the demise of the first wave of international terrorism which from the 60s to the 80s saw extremist groups of the left in many industrialized countries as well as in some third world countries cooperate against the perceived imperialism of the capitalist West. This set of terrorist movements ranging from the German RAF and the Italian Red Brigades to the Peruvian Sentiero Luminoso and groups in Northern Africa and Arabia was just as heterogenous as today’s islamic terrorism.

But one after another they seem to have dissolved, and not because they were bombed by the worlds most powerful air force (which they weren’t) and heavy police prosecution (which they were) but because the root of their self-understanding, the Cold War and the opposition of Capitalism and Communism ceased to be. Therefore we have to find and dispose of the root that Islamic fundamentalism is based on. And I can’t think of a better place to start than to finally settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestines.

It is the cynical logic of this opposition that practically forces Israel to kill innocent Civilians and by military or political means inhibit individual freedom and national prosperity in Palestine, the Gaza strip and the southern part of Lebanon. In that same logic Hizbullah and Hamas are able to recruit young males and females to die as suicide bombers killing yet more civilians on the other side.

To get back to that abominable idea of weakness: the administrations of Reagan and Bush sen. certainly did not show any weakness any time. Indeed they very firmly held on to their ideals — and yet were flexible enough to encourage change in the Soviet Union by cooperation on certain levels instead of stopping it by maintaining a policy of stubborn resolve. This kind of pragmatism stems from strength not weakness and today both the US and Israel should be strong and pragmatic enough to follow a course that would enable them to over time disarm their enemies by convincing the man and woman on the Arab street of their ultimately peaceful intentions.

Just envision the Near and Middle East in peace, a prospering region, booming with tourists from all over the world visiting the many grand historic sites in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, even in Iraq and Iran. There would still be die hard extremists around but most certainly only a few. Without a “just cause” most of the people would have something better to do with their lives.

“And god forbid that the BBC actually reflects British interests”

Does it reflect British interests or the interests of the a segment of the left?

This is the problem with theoretically stale analysis. You apply the principle of self interests and you come up with what? With the wrong answer.

Post modern societies dont have single interests and the BBC is a self contained entity which seems to reflect more its own internal culture than the interests of the British.

Ask Tony Blair about that.

Oh, I forgot you would rather ask a sociologists.

Well, good luck to you.

–Let’s not quote “experts hereâ€? we can out these issues for ourselves and if we can’t then “expertsâ€? can’t help. –

For some reason that sounds funnier when Steven Colbert says it.

And god forbid that the BBC actually reflects British interests on the air. What next? Are you going to complain because the CBC broadcasts in French?

For some reason that sounds funnier when Steven Colbert says it.

And god forbid that the BBC actually reflects British interests on the air. What next? Are you going to complain because the CBC broadcasts in French?

Think also BBC and NPR and radioopensource.

By the way for every sociological Bourdieu there is a sociological anti Bourdieu.

Let’s not quote “experts here” we can out these issues for ourselves and if we can’t then “experts” can’t help.

“One of the great powers of the internet is that it allows bloggers to call the ‘fast-thinking’ talking heads on their bullshit.”

Yes, the way they recently showed how reuter, ap, nytimes, and bbc have been publishing doctroed photographs that made Israel look like they were bombing Beirut indiscriminately.

Still, I would say that these media outlets have more power than the right wing media or the bloggers since they reach more people worldwide.

The BBC alone which is pretty anti-American is listened to by more people than there are bloggers and readers of those blogs.

My question was addressed to Allison.

As to your flippant reply:

“Next, I don’t have time to do the history research for you and find the academic links (perhaps someone else can), but if you have to ask how the US has participated in things that drastically affected the Arabs around the times of WWI and WWII, you need to read a little history. It is hard to believe that anyone doesn’t understand the resentment stemming from European/US impact on the region and how it affected their culture. As we have turned out to be the “Super Powerâ€? (oh, but we’re the victims) we have become the main target of those resentments.”

I happpen to know the history of the area pretty well and I do know that the US was not ivolved there till after WW2 except as consumers of oil which till 1960 was pretty minimal.

If you have any evidence to the contrary let me hear it.

Yes, I know about the coup in Iran which was in part blamed on the CIA, but I am talking about involevement in Arab affairs.

If you think that being involved in a coup is grounds for killing 3000 civilians on 911 then I’d have to say that we have nothing to talk about.

If a coup justifies wholesale murder then what don’t you think that wholesale murder justifies taking out the murderers?

One of the great powers of the internet is that it allows bloggers to call the ‘fast-thinking’ talking heads on their bullshit. That does not mean that we must become ‘fast-thinking’ bloggers ourselves. When the world has this many problems, we must have the courage and the foresight to SLOW DOWN, to think things through and to be honest with ourselves.

Gregor, thank you for your intelligent and informed words.