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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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No. It's crap. Bush is saying exactly what all the planners of the Vietnam war used to say... "As soon as young South Vietnamese soldiers stand up, we can stand down." The vietnamization of the war. Etc.
Insurgents are putting up a stand up fight a block away from the green zone. After years and years of this, shouldn't at least one freakin' city be secure? |
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alffy
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject: Re: Bush adds troops in bid to secure Iraq |
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| Troll_Bait wrote: |
| Just asking: Do you think it'll succeed? |
Succeed? What's that? |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject: Re: Bush adds troops in bid to secure Iraq |
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| alffy wrote: |
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
| Just asking: Do you think it'll succeed? |
Succeed? What's that? |
Good point. In his television address, Bush admitted that "victory" would not take the same form as in the World Wars, with surrender papers being formally signed on the deck of a battleship. I guess that "Mission Accomplished" fiasco served him up a generous helping of humble pie. |
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spinario
Joined: 24 May 2006
Location: daegu
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| Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:13 am Post subject: |
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as much as it was a mistake to deploy troops into Iraq in '03, it will be a much larger mistake to withdraw now.
and by the way, the issue is much broader than the security of one city. that's a narrow view of the conflict. |
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Cerebroden
Joined: 27 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:41 am Post subject: |
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| spinario wrote: |
as much as it was a mistake to deploy troops into Iraq in '03, it will be a much larger mistake to withdraw now.
and by the way, the issue is much broader than the security of one city. that's a narrow view of the conflict. |
ahh the voice of reason.  |
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Wangja
Joined: 17 May 2004
Location: Seoul, Yongsan
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| Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Iraqis might be happier with more electricity. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
No. It's crap. Bush is saying exactly what all the planners of the Vietnam war used to say... "As soon as young South Vietnamese soldiers stand up, we can stand down." The vietnamization of the war. Etc.
Insurgents are putting up a stand up fight a block away from the green zone. After years and years of this, shouldn't at least one freakin' city be secure? |
yes. I just finished Barbara Tuchman's book March to Folly. One section is devoted to Vietnam. While I was reading it, there were so many instances where I thought, "My god, that sounds like Bush and Iraq!"
Sure, vietnam and Iraq are very different but we have followed a similar path for both of them. |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:40 am Post subject: |
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U.S. lawmakers hammer Bush's new Iraq plan
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U.S. lawmakers on Thursday hammered President George W. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, leaving the White House increasingly isolated over deepening American involvement in the unpopular war.
Some of Bush's fellow Republicans joined newly empowered Democrats in voicing skepticism that dispatching 21,500 extra troops to help Iraq's beleaguered government regain control of Baghdad would work.
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Arabs see little hope for Bush's Iraq plan
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U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops will fail to bring peace to Iraq and could aggravate a conflict in which tens of thousands of people have already died, Arab analysts said on Thursday.
Bush, taking advice mainly from a small group of ideologues, has misunderstood the nature of the conflict and is wrong to think that a military solution is possible, they added.
A few analysts in the Gulf, where the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was less unpopular than in the rest of the Arab world, said more troops might help, but it could also be too late.
Bush's plan, announced early on Thursday in the Middle East, overlooks or rejects policy options which the analysts said were essential -- dialogue with Iran and Syria, and a determined U.S. effort to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"America is no longer in the driving seat. It has lost Iraq and adding a few thousands troops is not going to help because the situation is beyond fixing," said Abdel-Khaleq Abdullah, a political scientist in the United Arab Emirates.
Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, said: "The Bush plan is based on many erroneous assumptions such as thinking that a military solution is possible. I think that is impossible."
"He has abandoned the classical American pragmatic approach. He considers that he has a vision but he is completely detached from the reality on the ground," he added.
Hilal Khashan, political scientist at the American University of Beirut, said extra troops would not make a difference and the Iraqi authorities could not impose order, as envisaged in Bush's plan.
"The Iraqi military has been a recruiting ground for militias and death squads. I can't see the Iraqi military helping to restore law and order. They are an expanded militia, a party to the conflict," he added.
The 21,500 extra troops will take the total U.S. force in Iraq to about 150,000, a troop level which the United States has already tried and which falls far short of the level which some military experts recommended at the time of the invasion.
[ ... ]
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 11:21 am Post subject: |
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Another war to compare is the Korean War: US killed 33,686 US wounded 103,000.
It's interesting to see the accomplishments of S. Korea compared to N. Korea with the benefit of US blood.
Could one say Iraq could be just as prosperous after 40 years or so?
cbc |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 11:30 am Post subject: |
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| I don't expect a park chung-hee type pop up in Iraq. |
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Gamecock
Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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Another war to compare is the Korean War: US killed 33,686 US wounded 103,000.
It's interesting to see the accomplishments of S. Korea compared to N. Korea with the benefit of US blood.
Could one say Iraq could be just as prosperous after 40 years or so? |
I'd say it's hard to compare a homogenous nation like South Korea to Iraq which has three distinct (and opposing) religious cultures which are not going to disappear any time soon. As well, East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China) seems to have a sense of practicality when it comes to letting go of the past and embracing modern economic strategies. I'm sure people on this board will nitpick at that last sentence, yet I don't believe the Muslim culture of the Middle East has this same code in their cultural DNA's, if you will. Islam exalts the roaming beduoin as the "true Arab" even today, and it is this sense of rooted-ness in history and the sense that modernism is evil and untrustworthy that will keep most of the middle east from becoming truly prosperous in the future global economy. Oil will, however, continue to make a few rich.
And cbclark4, don't you know that the blood of all those Americans has NOT brought benefit to Korea? It's made Korea worse! Just ask any Korean under the age of 30! (Heavy sarcasm here, in case you didn't catch it.) |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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Gamecock,
I agree with your comments that the analogy using the Korean peninsula is "off base". But I disagree with this ...
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| I'm sure people on this board will nitpick at that last sentence, yet I don't believe the Muslim culture of the Middle East has this same code in their cultural DNA's, if you will. Islam exalts the roaming beduoin as the "true Arab" even today, and it is this sense of rooted-ness in history and the sense that modernism is evil and untrustworthy that will keep most of the middle east from becoming truly prosperous in the future global economy. Oil will, however, continue to make a few rich. |
Once again, I have to state what should be obvious. Islam is a religion and not a culture. Many different cultures which embrace different aspects of Islam. A flower is a flower but manifests in many different forms.....think of it that way. Many different "Arabs" also. Your statements shouldn't use one big brush stroke and only stoke a lot of all ready ignorance.
There are plenty examples of prosperty that is "Islamic" and I don't think you can consign all "Muslims" or most into perpetual poverty because of "rootedness" in history. YOu can be both rooted in history and forward looking. Not an either / or thing. Most cultures are rooted in history, so the point is mute. Let's just mention that some of the most exhalted traders and richest "entrepreneurs" are Arab, many Muslim, having century old traditions of travel, trading, inter cultural connection and cultural understanding. For example, the richest of the world's communities, the Ismaili.
I would say your belief in this regard is a perfect example of Edward Said's belief that the west has a very biased view of the "Orient" Specifically,
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| Said makes the claim that the whole of Western European and American scholarship, literature, and cultural representation and stereotype creates and reinforces prejudice against non-Western cultures, putting them in the classification of Oriental (or "Others"). The heart of the matter in understanding Orientalism is this power relationship and how the Occident has used and continues to use and understand the Orient on its own terms. |
This reviewer of Said's views concludes,
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| Said's premise in Orientalism is that the West has a long history of purposefully misunderstanding the Middle East. The Western imagination of the Middle East bears little resemblance to the reality, and this inaccuracy is used to justify our political and economic course. If we are to truly assist in achieving a resolution to the current crisis, we must examine not only the "Orientals" but also ourselves. |
http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/orientalism.htm
DD |
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Gamecock
Joined: 26 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:37 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel,
I agree with you that you cannot generalize Islam as the same throughout the world, yet for the Arab in the heart of the middle east Islam IS a culture. Numerous scholars have recognized that at its heart, Islam is a mystical exaltation of 6th century bedouin culture.
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| I would say your belief in this regard is a perfect example of Edward Said's belief that the west has a very biased view of the "Orient" Specifically |
I am well-read concerning the Middle East and familiar with Said's philosophies. However, after living in an Arab culture for over 2 years and studying the language I would hardly say I am speaking from an imaginary western stereotype. I don't believe i painted them as inferior, or as terrorists. I am a huge fan of many aspects of Arab culture. To say that generally Arab muslims are skeptical of or outright hostile towards modernism is not a fanciful, biased western idea. It is obvious, and is readily admitted to by most Arabs on the street. There is a huge internal struggle between Islam and modernism, especially since it is commonly seen as the embracement of western goods and values and resulting in the erosion of traditional cultural/religious values. I will continue to argue that for most Arab Muslims it is impossible to seperate religion and culture, nor do they want to.
The problem with Said is that he is a Palestinian who lived almost his entire life in the United States as a scholar. He is also a Palestinian Christian (a massive minority in Palestine, and even more so in the Arab world), not a Muslim. He does not come close to representing the mainstream of Palestinian intellectual thought. He is in the popular camp of American philosophers of different races these days who claim that westerners cannot understand their culture and have no right to make any observations because it only ends in biased generalizations. This also goes hand-in-hand with the idea that no one should ever generalize about anyone, because there is always an exception which needs to be taken into account. Personally I think this is ridiculous. I stand by my first-hand observations as well as the reading I have done by native Arab Muslim scholars. You can disagree with me if you wish. It's your prerogative. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:46 am Post subject: |
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Gamecock,
I can understand where you are coming from. And I do agree that in some parts of the Islamic world, there is a large struggle between modernity and tradition. But that tradition is not the exhalted Bedouin solely but various models. I also think that we should be careful to define carefully what we mean by "modernity" when discussing this. The way you discussed it, it could also be interpreted, that there is the same struggle in many Christian or Buddhist parts of the world. I think in the case of the Islamic world it would be more accurate to portrait the cultural change as one of passing through their own age of enlightenment, as one about embracing individual rights and modern legal norms.
I agree, as with any scholar, Said has/had his own prejudices but I don't think he outright thought that no western scholar or commentator could properly comment on the Islamic world. He was much more concerned about the spreading of uninformed stereotypes and paradigms of Islamic culture than wholeheartedly throwing out all western viewpoints. He asked for more balance in the media and for more exchange between the two worlds, not walls or blanket statements that Muslims are historically primitive, savage, etc...... I would never say that Said was a "cultural relativist", not at all. He enjoyed a very priviledged place, foothold in both worlds and I listened to him from that standpoint. But yes, he isn't mainstream, a la Muslim thought and standpoint. I don't think we can say anyone is. That is also the point.
I just think it more even and scholarly and fair minded to see that it isn't a case of just "them" in the 14th century, "us" in the here and now.
DD |
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