I had to travel to Oxford last Thursday and stayed overnight, so I was, thankfully, away from a keyboard during the initial reaction to the terrorist attacks in London. Catching up on the online and print commentary, there appear to be just three sorts of response. First, there are the people who point out that, though this was a most terrible day for the victims and their families, Londoners (and the British generally) have put up with terrorist bombing campaigns before, and have managed to do so without launching pogroms. I agree with this and haven’t anything to add to it. Second, there are the numerous people who write variations on the “adequacy.org 9/11 standard column”:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html : Robert Fisk (an especially bad one in the Indie on Friday morning), “Nick Cohen in today’s Observer”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html , and so on. “Harry’s Place”:http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ is now showering one adequacy-variant with praise for insight and brilliance whilst castigating the other. This is pointless. Finally, there are the “Eurabia”-obsessed nut-jobs who are falling over themselves to tell us that Ken Livingstone, “whose speech was excellent”:http://no-doors.blogspot.com/2005/07/full-text-of-mayor-livingstones-speech.html , has said and done things of which they disapprove in the past. The Eurabians thereby merely remind us how much they value promoting their nasty agenda above elementary concerns with compassion and solidarity (ditto the egregious “George Galloway”:http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=819 btw).
[I think the “excellent John B”:http://www.stalinism.com/shot-by-both-sides/ probably linked to the adequacy.org piece first]
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sien 07.10.05 at 3:40 am
The Robert Fisk column is available at his website.
He points out that those who illegally invade countries cannot choose where the fight will be taken to them.
nick 07.10.05 at 3:56 am
Fisk’s piece was very rubbish indeed, as was Cohen’s.
This, on the other hand was not.
abb1 07.10.05 at 5:34 am
I liked Fisk’s piece and didn’t like the one Nick linked.
There’s no point of arguing with the actual perpetrators, Nick, they are mad, they are sick. But their madness is a result of something deliberate, premeditated; had Blair, UK politicians and the UK public refused to act as US clients – and they certainly did have that choice – this wouldn’t have happened. It’s as simple as that.
John Kozak 07.10.05 at 7:22 am
Chris, do you really, as you emphasis suggests, think that Fisk’s piece is so much worse than Cohen’s pitiable rant?
Chris Bertram 07.10.05 at 8:05 am
I hadn’t intended to imply that, though Fisk annoyed me more.
Sam TH 07.10.05 at 8:21 am
Chris –
You do realize that the adequacy piece you link to was written by CT’s own Daniel Davies, right?
sam th
Daniel 07.10.05 at 8:22 am
Gosh the Cohen one is a nasty little piece of work. It’s plain to see that his clash-of-civilisations, Islamism-is-fascism-and-therefore-we-must-invade-iraq(?) view of the world cannot be made either more nor less likely by an explosion in Russell Square, so what’s his point? I think he’s just saying “maybe now there’s been a bomb on their doorstep, English liberals will wake up”. In other words, we had it coming. What a wanker.
Brendan 07.10.05 at 9:16 am
‘At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq.’
Now that’s an interesting claim. Is there any evidence to back it up?
Harry 07.10.05 at 9:26 am
The evidence is on this blog every day – including today.
Wake up people.
Brendan 07.10.05 at 9:57 am
You are right Harry, we are waking up. As you and your ilk never stop pointing out, this is Spain, the ‘Islamists’ are the fascists, and we all know that the British and American troops are short of troops. So let’s all do the decent thing and join the army, eh? After all, our forbears in Spain did, ne c’est pas?
Let our phrase be: ‘Support our troops. Join the army’.
As soon as you join up you will let us know, eh, Harry?
Daniel 07.10.05 at 12:20 pm
The interesting thing to me is if we’re talking about “Islamism”, then the world’s most famous Qutbist (Yusuf al-Qaradawi) and Britain’s leading Islamist organisation (the MAB) have both condemned these attacks, and indeed, have also condemned 9/11 and the Madrid bombings. This suggests to me that, as I’ve mentioned before in arguments with Harry, “Islamism” isn’t a particularly helpful analytical category, and that we would do better to be thinking about the specific organisation al-Quaeda. I’d also point to Jason Burke’s article in the same issue of the Observer, in which he notes that if this had happened two years ago, the suspects would most likely be foreign fighters or asylum seekers, but that in 2004, native-born Britons radicalised by the Iraq War (like the Cockney al-Mahdis, who were not salafists or even Sunnis) are just as likely.
Or in other words, The Bombings Mean We Must Support My Politics.
abb1 07.10.05 at 12:29 pm
Islamism is a reactionary movement and so was Roman Catholic Church during the time of Crusades, European religious wars and Inquisition; and that’s a period of what? about 700 years or so? Are you upset that, say, the enlightened Sufis didn’t come and eradicate that menace a few centuries ago?
Gordon 07.10.05 at 12:45 pm
Brendan
You sound to me like one of those students shrieking “no platform for Fascists” when some Tory minister like Keith Joseph tried to make a speech on some university campus.
When you are faced with a real Fascist with a breadsaw in one hand and a koran in the other you will be unable to utter the “f” word.
Still you have time to learn your lines.
Repeat after me:-
“I am a Jew and the son of a Jew”
When your time comes, according to your circumstances you may be told to replace “Jew” by “Crusador”, “Pig” or “Monkey”.
Incidentally the most moving and apposite statement that I heard on last night’s TV was that of an elderly, white bearded, Muslim who was searching, like many other ordinary Londoners for news of a missing member of his family.
“These people are the enemies of God and of Man.”
JJ 07.10.05 at 1:25 pm
So Chris, just out of interest – having criticised everyone else’s response, would you like to give us some guidance as to what you think the appropriate response should be?
By what you have to say about Nick Cohen and Harry’s Place, would I be correct in assuming that your response is simply a watered-down Guardian comment-page version of the Galloway/Fisk ‘understanding grievances’ and ‘context of the war in Iraq’ line?
Do correct me if I’m way off the mark here but I’m just curious to know.
soru 07.10.05 at 1:45 pm
—
native-born Britons radicalised by the Iraq War
—
When you talk about a british citizen ‘radicalised by the war’, surely you mean ‘radicalised by their experience of watching media coverage of the war?’.
Not quite the same thing at all.
soru
Chris Bertram 07.10.05 at 2:31 pm
jj, since I said of the first response I listed
“I agree with this and haven’t anything to add to it.”
I think your question is based on a misapprehension.
Brendan 07.10.05 at 3:33 pm
Gordon
You sound to me like one of those students who claimed to have ‘no interest’ in politics and then started rambling on about immigrants and how Enoch had a point after 3 pints when he thought no one was listening. No offence mate!
Incidentally question I asked Harry goes double for you (since you seem to be so keen to meet ‘a real Fascist with a breadsaw in one hand and a koran in the other’) I take it you are joining the army to go to Iraq and come back in a box, sorry, defend democracy?
Daniel 07.10.05 at 4:02 pm
When you talk about a british citizen ‘radicalised by the war’, surely you mean ‘radicalised by their experience of watching media coverage of the war?’
Not necessarily at all; the two Cockneys who were interviewed by the Guardian in Najaf around the siege there have presumably returned home and I doubt they were the only ones.
Brendan 07.10.05 at 4:07 pm
I might add that those British citizens who have been ‘radicalised by the war’ in the OTHER direction, i.e. who have now decided that it’s just peachy and that any one who opposes it is a dangerous communist, were INVARIABLY ‘radicalised’ by ‘media coverage’ of the war, them not having had the chance to get out to Iraq yet, what with all the pontificating and fulminating they have to do.
Robin Green 07.10.05 at 4:09 pm
So, Sam – just out of curiousity: dsquared was jsm on adequacy.org – was he also jsm on kuro5hin?
Sorry for the off-topicness. I used to spar with some characters from adequacy, that’s all. I wonder who else jsm was.
Gordon 07.10.05 at 4:15 pm
Brendan
Your first point I fail to understand since I did not refer to immigrants and if you want to know my oldest friend here in France is an illegal moslem immigrant.
Your second point is the banal “chickenhawk” meme which has been exhausted by now.
However I would very much like to see a justification of the actions of the “insurgency” or “activists”, that I categorise with the too verbose but accurate phrase “generis hostis humani” (please see old Pakistani male in my previous post if you don’t understand this. At least in my youth, the left did its homework!)
Brendan 07.10.05 at 4:35 pm
Christ will you people stop assuming that anyone who lives in the real world must be of ‘the left’? It’s extremely tiresome. You know perfectly well that the majority of people in Britain of all political persuasions have always opposed this war. In fact many of the most aggressively in favour of it (at least, according to Little Green Soccer Balls) are of the ‘left’.
My second point is absolutely NOT the ‘chickenhawk’ argument, which was purely about Vietnam, as you will recall. My point is much simpler. You claim to support the war. My point: no you don’t. If you supported the war, you would be there, fighting it. You have made the decision, every minute of every day of every week since the war started that this war is not worth your life being risked, and in actual fact you are correct. It is not.
You know that there is a shortage of troops. You know that the war is not going well. You know, in other words, that your country needs you. And yet you do not go. Why not?
To repeat, you do not go because you do not in fact support the war. Hence my reference to Spain. In the 30s, ordinary men and women picked up a rifle (or the equivalent) and fought fascism in Spain. If you really believe that this is a war against evil, if you REALLY BELIEVE that we are fighting evil in Iraq, by the logic of your own argument, morally, you MUST go to the armed forces, and offer your services.
And yet you do not. Why not? Because you don’t support the war. And I agree with you.
(Cf the insurgents: if they really are the enemies of humanity, why aren’t you killing them?)
tvd 07.10.05 at 5:33 pm
“I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.
But it’s a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West – and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.
Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC…”—Nick Cohen
Sam TH 07.10.05 at 6:33 pm
Yes, he was jsm on K5. And lowertriangular, if it comes to that. He was also streetlawyer and John Saul Montoya on slashdot. He might have been streetlawyer on K5 as well, but I’ve forgotten.
soru 07.10.05 at 6:36 pm
—
You know that there is a shortage of troops. You know that the war is not going well.
—
What’s with this bold assertion of the contents of other people’s heads?
soru
y81 07.10.05 at 7:12 pm
brendan, at age 47, I think I will have a hard time persuading the U.S. Army to accept me. And if I did talk my way in, as I believe Gary Hart did at about my age, it wouldn’t be a combat position. Do you disagree?
However, I wouldn’t have a problem with restricting voting to active duty soldiers; would you? Would there be a single Democrat left in the U.S. Congress, I wonder?
Robin Green 07.10.05 at 7:34 pm
However, I wouldn’t have a problem with restricting voting to active duty soldiers; would you?
That’s the single-most stupid idea I’ve heard all year. How can you suggest it in all seriousness? Do you have any understanding of how democracy functions?
engels 07.10.05 at 8:24 pm
Robin. It’s not meant seriously. It’s a hilarious straw man lovingly crafted by Christopher Hitchens (cf. his latest effusion). Calling y81 a hypocrite is an implied attack on democracy. Of course, Christopher, have another triple scotch.
Walt Pohl 07.10.05 at 10:03 pm
y81, the same percentage of Democrats as Republicans are veterans. You dishonor yourself and your country, yet again.
Brendan 07.11.05 at 4:56 am
Wow! And I thought the premise of Starship Troopers (where you only get to vote after having been in the army) was satire! Obviously not.
Incidentally Soru, I wasn’t mind reading. My comments were on the same level as ‘You know the earth is round…you know the earth orbits the sun’ because as a matter of fact, the US/UK ARE short of troops and the war is NOT going well. I assumed he knew that. Perhaps I was wrong. In which case, HE is. If you see what I mean.
Incidentally y81, I wasn’t implying that you HAD to accept a combat position. If the army would accept you in some other capacity, why not? More to the point, you are about the right age to have a teenage son/daughter, so I assume you are encouraging them to enlist?
nick 07.11.05 at 7:16 am
we would do better to be thinking about the specific organisation al-Quaeda.
Or the specific brandname al-Qaeda. Jason Burke’s Foreign Affairs piece from last year made the important point that what was a kind of venture-capital / franchise organisational structure appears to have turned into something more akin to the ‘[insert state other than Kentucky] Fried Chicken’ places that are common around London.
Fisk’s piece was just plain lazy: when he does actual reporting, it masks his tendency to phone it in as an op-ed commentator. Cohen, on the other hand, is never going to get over being Chalabi’s lead propagandist in the mainstream British press, which is always going to damage one’s attempt at moral weightiness.
Robin Green 07.11.05 at 7:56 am
Cohen, on the other hand, is never going to get over being Chalabi’s lead propagandist in the mainstream British press, which is always going to damage one’s attempt at moral weightiness.
To be fair to him, I don’t think that’s really accurate. Chalabi, by some accounts, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the US government: they provided him with funds; he provided them with so-called “intelligence”, which was duly dished out to the media.
In a broad sense, therefore, the entire US/UK mainstream media was guilty of (knowingly or not) propagandising for Bush/Blair/Chalabi, whose interests all happened to coincide at the time.
engels 07.11.05 at 7:57 am
Jason Burke’s Foreign Affairs piece from last year
A link would be most welcome…
soru 07.11.05 at 8:24 am
—
because as a matter of fact, the US/UK ARE short of troops and the war is NOT going well
—
Unless you are a fairly senior member of the insurgency in Iraq, it is physically impossible for you to know whether the war is going well or not.
Making solid assertions about ‘facts’ you have no possible means of knowing is hardly a sign of wisdom.
soru
Brendan 07.11.05 at 8:52 am
Soru.
‘Unless you are a fairly senior member of the insurgency in Iraq, it is physically impossible for you to know whether the war is going well or not.’
God that’s so true. So I take it that Tony Blair and George Bush’s comments about the war are also useless, and you will be writing to them asking if they are ‘fairly’ (I love that qualifier!) ‘senior members of the insurgency’.
Equally if I ever catch you in any blog ever pontificating about how well the war is going (or the contrary, for that matter), I will be there to point out that only the opinion of senior insurgents in this matter has any value. Presumably in WW2 only the opinion of ‘fairly’ senior Nazis was of any true. How naive we all were to listen to Churchill.
The comment about troop numbers is simply false incidentally: the US ARE short of troops. We in the reality based community tend to use these new fangled things called ‘facts’ to back up our ‘arguments’. Crazy I know but it seems to work!
jet 07.11.05 at 9:39 am
One of the most painful to read threads ever. Idiocy ABOUNDS. First off, anyone who thinks Heinlein meant that as satire is reading impaired or hasn’t actually read him.
Walt Pohl,
Get a grip on reality.
And as for if the war was responsible for creating radicals in England, perhaps you haven’t been reading the f’ing news. Did the war do it, or did the plethora of cultural leaders spreading hate do it?
Brendan 07.11.05 at 9:50 am
Jesus Christ. Again. It should have been pretty obvious from context that I was referring to the movie not the book: I know what Heinlein’s politics were. (What was that you were saying about ‘reading impaired’?)
Incidentally has anyone noticed that since Harry’s Place stopped its comments section, suddenly the ‘regulars’ have been spreading like lice over the rest of the blogosphere, giving us all the benefit of their smug little political opinions, almost all of the ‘I know everything: if only everyone would do exactly what I wanted immediately all would be right with the world’ variety?
Please let’s all write to Harry and ask him to reinstate his comments facility…..the results are becoming painful.
nick 07.11.05 at 10:09 am
A link would be most welcome…
Like others, I get my policy mixed up with my affairs: it’s from Foreign Policy, April 2004. (reg. required):
soru 07.11.05 at 10:12 am
Certainly I have an opinion on some of those matters, but I usually try not to confuse my opinion with statements of fact of the degree of certainty of ‘the Earth is not flat’.
Seems a pretty simple precaution to maintain.
soru
Brendan 07.11.05 at 10:42 am
To state that fighting force X has inadequate troops to win battle Y is a question of empirical fact, not one of opinion. If the US win this war without increasing their troop numbers then I will gracefully accept defeat, but I will be wrong about objective facts not about opinions.
I would also like to point out the obvious fact that whether the US win or (as seems more likely) lose this war will be a matter of fact not opinion, no matter how this matter will be spun by the pro-war propaganda machine.
jet 07.11.05 at 10:43 am
Brendan,
And what in that would lead someone to think you were referring to the movie instead of the book? Given the movies reviews, I’d hazard a guess that far more people have read the book than seen the movie.
I love it when someone who is so holier-than-though and so full of themselves as the Ultimate Voice On This Subject gets caught saying something that reflects less then positively on their intellect..
Brendan 07.11.05 at 11:11 am
Jet
You may well hazard a guess about that, and you would be wrong wouldn’t you? And not for the first time.
If anyone gives a shit (and Christ knows I don’t) put in ‘satire’ and Starship Troopers, and you will know that it was commonly accepted that the film (not the book) was intended to be a satire on, amongst other things, Heinlein’s own unpleasant political views.
‘I love it when someone who is so holier-than-though and so full of themselves as the Ultimate Voice On This Subject gets caught saying something that reflects less then positively on their intellect..’
Well hey mr pot, here’s mr kettle.
(this is my last post on this particular subject: it’s a beautiful day and life is simply too short).
soru 07.11.05 at 11:23 am
—
To state that fighting force X has inadequate troops to win battle Y is a question of empirical fact, not one of opinion.
—
It is potentially not a matter of opinion, but only to someone in a position to know the facts in question. For a historian in 2025, or perhaps Zarqawi now, that is the case. Anyone posting to this blog who thinks they fall into one of those categories is, I rather think, deluded.
soru
Brendan 07.11.05 at 11:59 am
Soru
to repeat, if at any point, in any discussion on any blog, you hint that the war on terror or the war on Iraq is going well or badly, or in fact any ongoing war anywhere, rest assured I will be there to point out that you cannot possibly know this unless you are a historian in the year 2025 or Zarqawi (I must admit this is the first time I have seen Zarqawi posited as the most objective observer of the Iraqi farrago, but let it pass).
Incidentally, why are you wasting MY time writing about this? Why not write to, for example, John Ashcroft, who also wrote about why he was ‘winning the war on terror’? Clearly he has no idea what he is talking about. You should write to him immediately pointing out that only historians writing in the year 2025 could possibly know this.
This will be my last post on this particular subject as it’s all getting a bit silly, and it remains a beautiful day, (if I might be forgiven for enunciating disgracefully subjective opinions).
tvd 07.11.05 at 2:13 pm
‘Unless you are a fairly senior member of the insurgency in Iraq, it is physically impossible for you to know whether the war is going well or not.’
Actually, I thought this was an incisive comment. The Allies during WWII expected quick success in 1944, but the Germans scored quite well in the fall.
Things looked grim for the good guys. Only the German high command truly knew that this, their last gasp, was doomed anyway.
Or, for a more popular touchstone, the Klingon battlecruiser that attacked the Enterprise in “Elaan of Troyius” only seemed invincible because it was wired for speed and attack, not defense or ever going home.
It was on a terrorist mission, with no hope of victory, only of disrupting the peace process…
jet 07.11.05 at 3:27 pm
If anyone still thinks that it was England’s involvement in Iraq, England’s lack of support of Africa, England’s history of colonialism, or anything else England has done wrong that anyone can point to that caused the bombings, you just don’t get it. England did NOTHING to deserve the bombings except be a modern, well adjusted Western nation. And there, as this gem in the Tehran Times might help you understand, lies the problem. They hate us for who we are, not what we do.
engels 07.11.05 at 4:36 pm
Or, for a more popular touchstone, the Klingon battlecruiser that attacked the Enterprise in “Elaan of Troyius†only seemed invincible because it was wired for speed and attack, not defense or ever going home.
Sorry, but if this is the best example you’ve got for overturning the conventional wisdom in military intelligence I don’t think I’m convinced.
J Thomas 07.11.05 at 4:38 pm
“Unless you are a fairly senior member of the insurgency in Iraq, it is physically impossible for you to know whether the war is going well or not.”
Wisdom from fools and babies.
The Coalition is fighting with its head in a sack, we have no real idea whether the war is going well or not, except for the known statistics which look bad.
Needless to say, this is not a good position to be in when you’re fighting a war.
Brendan 07.11.05 at 5:52 pm
Really Jet? Give us more of your profound wisdom. Or (to misquote Richard Dawkins speaking of a similar situation) tell us why you think that you, speaking no Arabic, never having read the Koran (or any other Moslem text) never having been to Iraq (or Iran) having little or no understanding of the history of the middle east, have some important insights to give us that are denied to lesser mortals?
Or to give another example:
‘On 9 November American marines came to our house. My father and the neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We thought we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my veil, since men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong for them to see me with my hair uncovered.
“This saved my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door, the Americans opened fire on them. They died instantly.
“Me and my 13 year old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge. The soldiers came into the house and caught my older sister. They beat her. Then they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they left, but not before they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the money from my father’s pocket.†‘
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/02/1722397.php
Why do we white people, we Christians, hate Iraq? Don’t forget, it’s not for what they do, it’s for what they are.
Actually I forgot, she is a brown skinned person, therefore a terrorist and must therefore be lying.
What’s the phrase? Oh yes…’wake up’…..
dglp 07.11.05 at 6:05 pm
‘They hate us for who we are, not what we do.’
Jet, which of these things that ‘we are’ do they hate: the ‘we are’ that ‘gives full support to the murder of unborn humans and gives legal acceptance of homosexuality as well as contraception’ or the ‘we are’ that is ‘deceiving us and you. They are destroying our democracy and our rights as U.S. citizens. They have no respect for our 200-year-old Constitution’?
Are you suggesting that ‘they hate us’ either way, regardless of our politics and our moralities, conservative or liberal? But even so, how can you be so sure that this is in fact what ‘we are’ and not simply what ‘they’ would like us to be? Indeed, what do you think we ‘are’? I’m not so sure you have any clearer idea than ‘they’ do.
Let me be emphatic about this. The argument about ‘hating us for who we are’ has to have a clear basis in the experience of one by the other, else it’s just bigotry. For instance, I cannot hate you for who you are because I haven’t a clue as to your character, your history, your actions. An assertion of hate would be bigotry, prejudice, and nothing more.
People who are said to hate us for who they think we are may be bigots without any clear idea of who any or all of us ‘are’. In that case, if you say ‘they hate us for who we are’ and disregard the evidence that ‘they’ are simply bigots, you are implicitly accepting that they know what we are and by extension, their judgement of us.
The two characters writing in the Tehran Times are taking potshots at an America based on each of them thinking we ‘are’ a particular thing. For you to take either of them at their word is to make both of them more credible in their claims.
jet 07.11.05 at 10:06 pm
Brendan you crack me up.
Quite a few assumptions you have there. Several of which are wrong.
And you expect people to take you seriously? I can’t tell if you are more silly than crazy or crazy than silly. And last, indybay ranks much lower than the Tehran Times as far as reliability in my book. The ear piercing shrillness from the bay area is just impossible to take seriously.
Dglp, you also are amusing me.
For you to take either of [KKK members] at their word is to make both of them more credible in their claims.
I think you have some confused concepts that need hashing out, so when you’ve nailed down exactly what the meaning of “is” is, let me know.
Whether they know who we really are does not matter, their peception is reality for all intents and purposes. We allow abortion, homosexuality, etc etc regardless of whatever qualifications you would posit. Maybe you should spend a few weeks browsing middle-eastern newspapers and then come back with your meta-physical “are they bigots or are they just meta-bigots who don’t know us well enough to become real bigots”.
Brendan 07.12.05 at 4:41 am
‘We allow abortion, homosexuality, etc etc regardless of whatever qualifications you would posit’
I think it is vitally important to realise that this statement is in fact false. It is false because it doesn’t add the qualifier: ‘in their countries’: after which the falseness of the statement can be clearly seen. It must never be forgotten that (with the exception of Syria and Iran) almost all the countries in the region serve US/UK interests in some way or other, either because they are simple client states (like Egypt or Saudi) or more general economic orientation (UAE and others). Since ‘we’ essentially own countries like Egypt (without our ‘aid’ the country would essentially grind to a halt) we could put pressure (to put it mildly) on the fascist governments that run them anytime we want. We (and by ‘we’ i mean, me, you) of course choose not to do so.
The statements that ‘abortion’ and ‘homosexuality’ are all illegal under all cirumstances in the middle east (which is what was hinted at above) is also false. Iran, for example, permits some abortions (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4436445.stm). Kuwait, Morocco and Saudi Arabia also permit abortions in some circumstances. Their laws in this respect are not acceptable and we should obviously be trying to liberalise them, but they are no worse than the laws of Poland and Portugal (in this respect) and I don’t hear Poland and Portugal offered as examples of why ‘they’ don’t have the same rights as ‘us’. (http://www.crlp.org/pub_fac_abortion_laws.html)
The situation on homosexuality is also a bit more nuanced than you implied. For example Jordan has no laws prohibiting homosexuality. However, the key point is that the Arab countries closest to the United States (Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan) have almost invariably the worst records on these and most other ‘social’ issues (note: homosexuality is technically legal in Egypt but gays are harassed via other legal mechanisms).
Finally, ok we wait with bated breath. You speak Arabic? Great. Do it. You have been to Iraq? Can’t wait to hear your travellers tales.
dglp 07.12.05 at 5:50 am
‘For you to take either of [KKK members] at their word is to make both of them more credible in their claims.’
Precisely.
‘Whether they know who we really are does not matter, their peception is reality for all intents and purposes.’
Not in my book. I’ll come back to this later.
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