27th June 2003, 10:38 PM
What, my post on that subject isn't good enough? Well I'll expand on it then.
Though I do focus on history, as you'd expect. :)
Get ready, this is REALLY long.
First, this really does continue the history segment I wrote in my previous post. So read that first. Its the second quote-resoponse there.
You can hate what the people did, sure... that's fine! Many of them did bad things! But hating the people themselves as a whole? NO. They don't deserve that. The ones that did evil things... yeah, probably. The ones that killed people knowingly and with no concern for their own beliefs... absolutely. But the ones that just followed orders, and believed what they were told? You can't really hate them for being misled and deluded by their authority figures, especially in societies that teach obedience to the chain of power and command... that isn't evil, just doing what they thought was the right thing. You do have to consider the historical record and all the factors involved... it goes a long, long way to explaining what happened. Once you do that you see why they did as they did... and how they could have seen it to be okay. It doesn't make it right, but it is very informative and helps to understand and forgive in the end... but you'd never do even the first step of that. You don't want the truth, just your hate.
Would you like a longer explanation now of the WWII part here? I've said a lot above here and in my last post, but I could go into more detail...
As for the Arabs... tricky issue. The whole situation is truly awful... the region is turning against us, we against them... they hate us more every day and we them. Neither side really understands the other, and understanding is the baseline for peace and forgiveness... so things just get progressively worse and worse.
What do I think... I think that the terrorists are obviously evil. They should be stopped. However, just killing terrorists will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Nothing. Because it'll get rid of them for a little while, but they will come back. Just like poisoning ants in your house -- they'll be back. Why? Because killing solves nothing. All it does is lead to death... and death to more death. We will never solve our problems in the middle east by killing. So what can we do? We can try to understand... and then try to solve the problems. They are so deep and sticky that I don't see a real solution anytime soon, but we must try.
Now you say that we solved World War II with no understanding for years afterwards... true. But that was fundamentally different in every way... for one we put MASSIVE numbers of troops into the nations -- hundreds and hundreds of thousands. And they stayed there for over a decade. Also, in both of those cases we also removed the things that had been causing the trouble during the war, making restitution and healing the wounds of war possible. It just won't work that way in the Middle East.
The core of the problem of course is Israel. The creation of that state angred the whole Arab world immensely, as you'd expect. When it was created we instantly created friction between the West and the Middle East. That friction hasn't gone away. It has gotten worse, obviously. They still hate us, and more than ever... and we cause more problems every day. Especially with this administration. And there really is no solution that can work quickly.
On one side are the Arabs. They are all behind the Palestinians... directly or obtrusely, they support them. That is obvious when you look at the facts. From day one they kept Palestinians in camps... they knew this would be very long term, so why did they do that? The answer is simple: So that they could keep this group together and angry at Israel. And of course it worked brilliantly, because now we have a huge group outside of Israel very angry and still considering Israel not just their land, but their land they must have NOW. The Arab nations could have avoided that problem if they had wished, but they didn't wish to so we still have it. And that is of course not counting the ones paying familes of suicide bombers, or the ones giving state support to terrorist groups or doing absolutely nothing to stop terror groups in their nations. But the Arabs are mad and that is an unrealistic goal... they will not change because the leadership, population, and religious leaders all agree on the issue. When you have such unaminity its tough to fight...
Now, I'm not saying that all Arabs hate us. That is obviously not true. But it is true that the Arab leaders just aren't doing much of anything beyond the absolute minimum to fix the problem, both because of personal belief and because they know that if they do much they will make important parts of their population extremely angry and might just go the way of Sadat... and they don't want that. So they give tactit support to the Palestinians... and when they have the government and their religious leaders -- who in Muslim society have an incredible amount of influence -- at the very least the population will support the Palestinians. It doesn't mean hating America, of course... but it does lead to skepticism, especially as we support Israel more and more... but we have to support Israel, because from a political and moral standpoint they really are on the right side... it IS their land now. The Palestinians were displaced, but lots of people have been, and there is plenty of space in the Middle Eastern societies that the 'refugees' are in now... and its not like they'll ever get back Israel. So they need to be realisitic. I know that in this world that's a lot to ask... which is why I'm pessimistic about a solution anytime soon.
As for the Israelis, the situation would be much better if they'd agree to stay in just Israel and let the Palestinians set up a mostly seperate nation in the West Bank and Gaza... and not set up illegal settlements. They need to be realistic too -- they aren't getting those territories anytime soon and all those illegal settlers do is anger the Arabs more.
So we have two sides which hate eachother and have major arguements on religion, land, politics, and most everything else. That isn't a good recipe for anything other than unending war... which is what we have.
And we won't have peace soon without very surprising things happening on both sides. American presidents have been trying for decades with no avail, after all... so this is obviously something hard to come by. But it is possible someday... I think what would probably need to happen is
1)The Arab nations need to admit that Israel is there and is staying there.
2)Both sides need to agree on the border between the Israeli and Palestian lands as a permanant, solid border -- not a permeable one that the Israelis can go through and settle on the other side of.
3)The Arabs need to crack down hard on the terrorists and take a hard line towards all supporting them. They also need to cut the anti-Israeli and anti-US religious rhetoric.
4) Israel has to respect the borders they set and not go in with tanks killing people every time someone sets off a bomb once they really start into this process. It just makes the Palestinians angrier.
This is of course just a start... you can't change the long-bred hatreds on both sides quickly. But unless you work on it it'll become even more permanant and we'll still be worrying about Israel in another 50 years. That would be very bad.
If we can get these sides that hate eachother as much as these do to make some basic agreements we could change things... but I'm not stupid. I know the terrorists don't want peace. And neither do people like Ariel Sharon. You have to know that the terror groups will bomb every time we get close to peace... its their way of keeping their movements alive. They don't want to suddenly me made irrelevant, after all...
But on the other hand Israel can't just ignore the terrorists and do nothing because that won't help much either. So they try to get the Palestinians to crack down on terrorism... while because of many reasons -- some of them the Israeli army and others being natural Palestinian resistance to actually stopping the terrorists, among things -- the Palestinians can't and won't do much. The ones in the Palestinian government who do want to do something don't have the power to do much... and in the Palestinian territories the terror groups have massive networks and can do a lot to resist efforts from the fairly weak Palestinian government to stop them...
So the Israelis go in with tanks. And then Palestinians angry about that and other problems bomb a Israeli bus. And so on...
I'm pretty pessimistic of this cycle changing soon. You need extrordanary circumstances -- leaders, on both sides, willing to do the unpopular thing and compromise their demands to the reality of what can happen and brave enough to enforce this on the governments, no matter what tries to stop them.. or a popular force moving on both sides to solve this issue.. that it just seems unlikely that it'll change soon. So we'll deal with terrorists.
Oh... right, this isn't just a Israel thing. Its all Arab terrorism. Well, until we solve Israel we will have terrorism from the Arab Middle East. It really is that simple.
The other forces for violence there are mostly in the Anti-American religious thoughts dispensed by the Iranian Shi'ites and the Iraqi Shi'ites who agree with the Iranians on those issues. That problem of course is a big one. We can't let Iraq become a Iran-style theocracy, of course, but because of the Shi'ite majority and the fact that lots of them do believe in the Iranian leaders' viewpoints and that that should be in Iraq too it'll be trouble. I doubt they can be a absolute majority... but they have a LOT of power and its a major problem that we need to deal with somehow. We also need to do something about Iran without doing anything... that's hard. We are waiting for a revolution, I guess... but that'll be a long time coming, because while things are clearly changing there they don't appear to be changing fast enough to avoid making the major problems they are causing in Iraq especially a lot worse before they get better.
And once again, there really isn't a good solution to this... for Iran we do really have to wait it out. Its inevitable that they will change, since they have such a huge majority of people wanting change and getting frusterated by the lack of it, but until then the Shi'ite Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are causing major problems by disseminating their brand of Islam... and the people there like what they hear, as I'd fully expect.
So given all these problems, can you be surprised that so many terrorists come from there? Or that a significant number of Iraqis hate us? No, I can't.
As for Iraq, we CAN do things there now -- its not too late to do some things. We can fix the power stations and water stations so that everyone gets power and water all the time again. That alone would give us lots more support by the Iraqi population. We also need to clamp down more on security. We need more troops, preferably from a multinational force. And we need to work with what we can to spread understanding of what our aims are (preferably lying because saying "we wanted your oil and props for the Bush re-election campaign" won't go over well), improve services beyond what was provided before, and not abandon them too soon. If we leave in the next five years we'll have failed them. It'll probably take longer than that.
And the American population will need to acccept these casualties and a long-term troop deployment there numbering in the high tens of thousands at most after we move in a multinational force as well to help relieve us from all the burden.
Because if we leave and abandon the Iraqis, they'll end up in a bad state and just fester and breed even more terrorists and murderers.
*does character count check*
12,048. Wow.
Though I do focus on history, as you'd expect. :)
Get ready, this is REALLY long.
First, this really does continue the history segment I wrote in my previous post. So read that first. Its the second quote-resoponse there.
You can hate what the people did, sure... that's fine! Many of them did bad things! But hating the people themselves as a whole? NO. They don't deserve that. The ones that did evil things... yeah, probably. The ones that killed people knowingly and with no concern for their own beliefs... absolutely. But the ones that just followed orders, and believed what they were told? You can't really hate them for being misled and deluded by their authority figures, especially in societies that teach obedience to the chain of power and command... that isn't evil, just doing what they thought was the right thing. You do have to consider the historical record and all the factors involved... it goes a long, long way to explaining what happened. Once you do that you see why they did as they did... and how they could have seen it to be okay. It doesn't make it right, but it is very informative and helps to understand and forgive in the end... but you'd never do even the first step of that. You don't want the truth, just your hate.
Would you like a longer explanation now of the WWII part here? I've said a lot above here and in my last post, but I could go into more detail...
As for the Arabs... tricky issue. The whole situation is truly awful... the region is turning against us, we against them... they hate us more every day and we them. Neither side really understands the other, and understanding is the baseline for peace and forgiveness... so things just get progressively worse and worse.
What do I think... I think that the terrorists are obviously evil. They should be stopped. However, just killing terrorists will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Nothing. Because it'll get rid of them for a little while, but they will come back. Just like poisoning ants in your house -- they'll be back. Why? Because killing solves nothing. All it does is lead to death... and death to more death. We will never solve our problems in the middle east by killing. So what can we do? We can try to understand... and then try to solve the problems. They are so deep and sticky that I don't see a real solution anytime soon, but we must try.
Now you say that we solved World War II with no understanding for years afterwards... true. But that was fundamentally different in every way... for one we put MASSIVE numbers of troops into the nations -- hundreds and hundreds of thousands. And they stayed there for over a decade. Also, in both of those cases we also removed the things that had been causing the trouble during the war, making restitution and healing the wounds of war possible. It just won't work that way in the Middle East.
The core of the problem of course is Israel. The creation of that state angred the whole Arab world immensely, as you'd expect. When it was created we instantly created friction between the West and the Middle East. That friction hasn't gone away. It has gotten worse, obviously. They still hate us, and more than ever... and we cause more problems every day. Especially with this administration. And there really is no solution that can work quickly.
On one side are the Arabs. They are all behind the Palestinians... directly or obtrusely, they support them. That is obvious when you look at the facts. From day one they kept Palestinians in camps... they knew this would be very long term, so why did they do that? The answer is simple: So that they could keep this group together and angry at Israel. And of course it worked brilliantly, because now we have a huge group outside of Israel very angry and still considering Israel not just their land, but their land they must have NOW. The Arab nations could have avoided that problem if they had wished, but they didn't wish to so we still have it. And that is of course not counting the ones paying familes of suicide bombers, or the ones giving state support to terrorist groups or doing absolutely nothing to stop terror groups in their nations. But the Arabs are mad and that is an unrealistic goal... they will not change because the leadership, population, and religious leaders all agree on the issue. When you have such unaminity its tough to fight...
Now, I'm not saying that all Arabs hate us. That is obviously not true. But it is true that the Arab leaders just aren't doing much of anything beyond the absolute minimum to fix the problem, both because of personal belief and because they know that if they do much they will make important parts of their population extremely angry and might just go the way of Sadat... and they don't want that. So they give tactit support to the Palestinians... and when they have the government and their religious leaders -- who in Muslim society have an incredible amount of influence -- at the very least the population will support the Palestinians. It doesn't mean hating America, of course... but it does lead to skepticism, especially as we support Israel more and more... but we have to support Israel, because from a political and moral standpoint they really are on the right side... it IS their land now. The Palestinians were displaced, but lots of people have been, and there is plenty of space in the Middle Eastern societies that the 'refugees' are in now... and its not like they'll ever get back Israel. So they need to be realisitic. I know that in this world that's a lot to ask... which is why I'm pessimistic about a solution anytime soon.
As for the Israelis, the situation would be much better if they'd agree to stay in just Israel and let the Palestinians set up a mostly seperate nation in the West Bank and Gaza... and not set up illegal settlements. They need to be realistic too -- they aren't getting those territories anytime soon and all those illegal settlers do is anger the Arabs more.
So we have two sides which hate eachother and have major arguements on religion, land, politics, and most everything else. That isn't a good recipe for anything other than unending war... which is what we have.
And we won't have peace soon without very surprising things happening on both sides. American presidents have been trying for decades with no avail, after all... so this is obviously something hard to come by. But it is possible someday... I think what would probably need to happen is
1)The Arab nations need to admit that Israel is there and is staying there.
2)Both sides need to agree on the border between the Israeli and Palestian lands as a permanant, solid border -- not a permeable one that the Israelis can go through and settle on the other side of.
3)The Arabs need to crack down hard on the terrorists and take a hard line towards all supporting them. They also need to cut the anti-Israeli and anti-US religious rhetoric.
4) Israel has to respect the borders they set and not go in with tanks killing people every time someone sets off a bomb once they really start into this process. It just makes the Palestinians angrier.
This is of course just a start... you can't change the long-bred hatreds on both sides quickly. But unless you work on it it'll become even more permanant and we'll still be worrying about Israel in another 50 years. That would be very bad.
If we can get these sides that hate eachother as much as these do to make some basic agreements we could change things... but I'm not stupid. I know the terrorists don't want peace. And neither do people like Ariel Sharon. You have to know that the terror groups will bomb every time we get close to peace... its their way of keeping their movements alive. They don't want to suddenly me made irrelevant, after all...
But on the other hand Israel can't just ignore the terrorists and do nothing because that won't help much either. So they try to get the Palestinians to crack down on terrorism... while because of many reasons -- some of them the Israeli army and others being natural Palestinian resistance to actually stopping the terrorists, among things -- the Palestinians can't and won't do much. The ones in the Palestinian government who do want to do something don't have the power to do much... and in the Palestinian territories the terror groups have massive networks and can do a lot to resist efforts from the fairly weak Palestinian government to stop them...
So the Israelis go in with tanks. And then Palestinians angry about that and other problems bomb a Israeli bus. And so on...
I'm pretty pessimistic of this cycle changing soon. You need extrordanary circumstances -- leaders, on both sides, willing to do the unpopular thing and compromise their demands to the reality of what can happen and brave enough to enforce this on the governments, no matter what tries to stop them.. or a popular force moving on both sides to solve this issue.. that it just seems unlikely that it'll change soon. So we'll deal with terrorists.
Oh... right, this isn't just a Israel thing. Its all Arab terrorism. Well, until we solve Israel we will have terrorism from the Arab Middle East. It really is that simple.
The other forces for violence there are mostly in the Anti-American religious thoughts dispensed by the Iranian Shi'ites and the Iraqi Shi'ites who agree with the Iranians on those issues. That problem of course is a big one. We can't let Iraq become a Iran-style theocracy, of course, but because of the Shi'ite majority and the fact that lots of them do believe in the Iranian leaders' viewpoints and that that should be in Iraq too it'll be trouble. I doubt they can be a absolute majority... but they have a LOT of power and its a major problem that we need to deal with somehow. We also need to do something about Iran without doing anything... that's hard. We are waiting for a revolution, I guess... but that'll be a long time coming, because while things are clearly changing there they don't appear to be changing fast enough to avoid making the major problems they are causing in Iraq especially a lot worse before they get better.
And once again, there really isn't a good solution to this... for Iran we do really have to wait it out. Its inevitable that they will change, since they have such a huge majority of people wanting change and getting frusterated by the lack of it, but until then the Shi'ite Islamic fundamentalists in Iran are causing major problems by disseminating their brand of Islam... and the people there like what they hear, as I'd fully expect.
So given all these problems, can you be surprised that so many terrorists come from there? Or that a significant number of Iraqis hate us? No, I can't.
As for Iraq, we CAN do things there now -- its not too late to do some things. We can fix the power stations and water stations so that everyone gets power and water all the time again. That alone would give us lots more support by the Iraqi population. We also need to clamp down more on security. We need more troops, preferably from a multinational force. And we need to work with what we can to spread understanding of what our aims are (preferably lying because saying "we wanted your oil and props for the Bush re-election campaign" won't go over well), improve services beyond what was provided before, and not abandon them too soon. If we leave in the next five years we'll have failed them. It'll probably take longer than that.
And the American population will need to acccept these casualties and a long-term troop deployment there numbering in the high tens of thousands at most after we move in a multinational force as well to help relieve us from all the burden.
Because if we leave and abandon the Iraqis, they'll end up in a bad state and just fester and breed even more terrorists and murderers.
*does character count check*
12,048. Wow.