Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Big_Bird]

Interesting article by Robert Fisk (long time war correspondant in the Middle East) about the increasingly volatile relations between the Middle East and the West. I suppose he's asking: "Where the Hell are we going?!?"

Robert Fisk: The Age of Terror - a landmark report

A few days after Lebanon's latest war came to an end, I went through many of the reporter's notebooks I have used in my last 30 years in the Middle East. Some contained the names of dead colleagues, others the individual stories of the suffering of Arabs and Kurds and Christians and Jews. .... It was only after a few minutes that I realised what I was looking for: some hint, back in the days of dangerous innocence, of what was going to happen on 11 September 2001.

And sure enough, in one notebook, part of a transcript of an interview I gave in Toronto in the late 1990s, I see myself trying to discourage the Middle East optimism of my host. "There is an explosion coming in the Middle East," I tell him. What was this explosion I was talking about? I find myself writing almost the same thing a couple of years later in The Independent - I refer to "the explosion to come" without locating it in the Middle East at all. What was I talking about? And then, most disturbingly, I re-run parts of a film series I made with the late Michael Dutfield for Channel 4 and Discovery in 1993. Called From Beirut to Bosnia, it was billed as an attempt to record "Muslims growing anger towards the West."
....

And then when I call on my landlord to discuss this latest, hopeless demonstration of Western power, he turns to me in some anger and says, "Yes, why is the German navy cruising off my home?" And I see his point. For we Westerners are now spreading ourselves across the entire Muslim world. In one form or another, "we" - "us", the West - are now in Khazakstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon. We are now trapped across this vast area of suffering, fiercely angry people, militarily far more deeply entrenched and entrapped than the 12th-century crusaders who faced defeat at the battle of Hittin, our massive forces fighting armies of Islamists, suicide bombers, warlords, drug barons, and militias. And losing.

The latest UN army in Lebanon, with its French and Italian troops, is moving in ever greater numbers to the south, young men and women who have already been threatened by al-Qa'ida and who will, in three of four months, be hit by al-Qa'ida. Which is one reason why the French have been pallisading themselves into their barracks in southern Lebanon. There is no shortage of suicide bombers here, although it will be the Sunni -- not the Hizbollah-Shiite variety -- which will strike at the UN.

...

And still - be certain of this - when the fire strikes us again, in London or New York or wherever, Blair and Bush will say that the attack has nothing to do with the Middle East, that Britain's enemies hate "our values" or our "way of life".

To read full article follow this link:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1814843.ece

[ddeubel]

Wow.

this is like argentinian espresso. I can see why so few of the feeble and fecund have responded. Truth hurts. Hopefully some others of the forthright and firmament will.

Why do we do this? And not connect the dots? Because of our peculiar brand of ethnocentrism.............and voracious miitary profitism (more to the point, without stating the obvious taxation on this profit, Political power and puppetry.).

Wow.

DD

P.S. If those like ....forget his name, don't understand............please just walk on by and keep uping your intack of all bran.

[thepeel]

We must stop screwing with them. They have their path and we have ours. No need to spoon-feed our way of life to them.

Separation. Total separation. Let them live as they want, and we will do the same. Safer, that way.

[ddeubel]

[Big_Bird]

For those of you who find the Independent format a strain on the eye, here is a more easy to read format which
I've just spotted at another website: Double Standards of Morality


I think Fisk has provided much food for thought...

[thepeel]

There are Westerners (us) and non-Westerners (them). We (us) spend far too much of our time trying to get them (them) to do what we (us) want them to. I would much rather we (us) just leave them (them) be and worry about ourselves.

To paraphrase Duddly Do Right, 'yer an epic douche'.

[Kuros]

I think one of Fisk's assertions is reasonable, that the West is clearly losing. When Bin Laden hit the twin towers, recruits were ready to fight and die for him before America even touched down in Afghanistan, much less Iraq. However, America's detention policies and its dubious reasons for entering Iraq have reinforced suspicions among those who wouldn't have and who won't be planning the next bombing in the West. What this means is that I don't agree with the 'they have been inflamed by our actions' thesis. As BJWD points out, the we/us, they/them dichotomy is tricky. However, this does mean that when attacks by the extremists occur, who were extremists well before Iraq, more polarization can occur, and those in the Middle East are a little wiser than Fisk, because they don't embrace either 'us' or 'them,' but become suspicious of everyone.

[Gopher]