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Tim Cavanaugh | December 16, 2004

Michael Young gives a raspberry to the Rabat Forum For the Future.

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|12.16.04 @ 4:38PM|#

Any American-influenced reform project is the region is going to require that the people who live there have some degree of faith in the United States, our honesty and decency.

Most Arab people don't feel that way. It doesn't matter, Mr. Young, that you think they should. They don't. Perhaps they shouldn't have concluded from the Iraq invasion that we are intent on creating an empire. Well, they did. Getting red in the face and insisting that they're bad people for not trusting us isn't going to do any good. They don't trust us.

If we're serious about getting reform to go forward, we need to take actions that will improve our image in the eyes of Middle Easterners. Simply saying "They SHOULD trust us anyway" isn't going to cut it.

Maybe it shouldn't be necessary to achieve peace and justice for the Palestinians for us to have enough credibility to push for reform in the region. Too bad. It is necessary.

You either support doing what's necessary to make reform a reality, or you don't. The building's on fire, and writing about how it shouldn't be on fire isn't going to save the building.

|12.16.04 @ 5:00PM|#

Oh bullshit joe! They're usung an irrelvant issue - which the Israel-Palestinian conflict absoutely is to the actual lives of almost everyone in the region - to distract from the the neccessity of reform.

|12.16.04 @ 5:00PM|#

Invading Iraq was do-able in a way that invading Iran today is not, even as Iranian civil society offers many more opportunities for change stimulated from the outside than did prewar Iraq.

Well, it certainly *did* provide many opportunities for change that no longer exist thanks to our brilliantly thought-out use of force. Islamic fundamentalism there was waning in popularity until we fed the fire by invading Iraq, and recently puffing our chests against Iran.

Not only have reform-minded Islamist groups been marginalized but the regime has been strengthed by the (again thanks to us) rising price of oil.

The idea of eliminating the most fundamentalist strains of Islamism by drawing them into a deathmatch in Iraq really ought to seem quaint by now. Extremism, unlike oil, is a renewable resource.

If we continue in failing to distinguish Israeli interests from our own, Iran will very likely turn into World War III.

|12.16.04 @ 5:03PM|#

I never thought I'd miss Kissinger and Brzezinski, but holy shit do I ever.

|12.16.04 @ 7:47PM|#

There's a simple and, it seems to me obvious, solution to this problem. The Muslim world refuses to reform untill there's a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They've convinced their own people of this. Fine, they want the Palestinians to have a state. As the only state in the position to influence Israeli policy in this regard, we have power and we should use it. Tell the world that not only will we not push for a solution, we will actively obstruct one untill the muslim world reforms. Make them put there money where their mouth is. Is it fair to hold the palestinians hostage to the rest of the Muslim world? Certainly its more fair than holding everyone else hostage to them.

|12.16.04 @ 11:10PM|#

"we will actively obstruct one untill the muslim world reforms."

The US government isn't really interested in reform in the muslim world. They are only paying lip service to it when they need to pressure governments to bend over and take it. Case in point: support to tyranies such as Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan, and soon Lybia.

|12.17.04 @ 1:56AM|#

I don't trust us. We almost elected a man who would abandon the Iraqis who want reform. Who knows who will be President in four years?

|12.17.04 @ 1:58AM|#

I guess Bush will be Pres. Let's try four years and two months.

|12.17.04 @ 5:00AM|#

I love how Young describes the option of using force as part of the "mixture" but also concedes that we really don't have the resources available to use force since they're largely committed to Iraq.

|12.17.04 @ 9:35AM|#

Todd, it doesn't matter that you think the issue is irrelevant. They don't.

I don't think Americans should oppose gay marriage. I think they should support a Democratic presidential candidate who endorses gay marriages. Now, if I want to get a Democratic candidate elected, I can sit around bitching and moaning how stupid the American public is, and say nasty things about Republicans who whip up hostility towards gay people in order to win elections, but neither of those actions are going to achieve a damn thing.

We can lecture the Arab world about reforming without a solution to the Palestinian issue. Or we can set about working towards democratic reform in the Arab world. Pick one. Your feelings about the unfairness of it all aren't going to get a parliament elected in Jordan.

gaius marius|12.17.04 @ 11:01AM|#

the neccessity of reform.

mr fletcher -- and mr young -- i fail to understand the case for the "necessity" of every government on the planet to be a democracy, short of the implicit extension that all democracies are pro-american. in this case, causing democracies (by hook or by crook) amounts to building de facto an indirect american empire -- and this, while i disagree with it, it an ancient motive.

why is it necessary that all governments should assume the least stable form of organization -- the one that most often and most reliably leads to despotic tyranny? these nations, it can surely be agreed, don't exist in the intellectual climate that produced locke; assuming that they will now regularly become 200-year republics is willfully stupid, imo.

i think one has to admit the likelihood that this "global democratic revolution" is an inadvertent attempt at fomenting the anarchy characteristic of greek city-states in much of the world.

i understand that true belief in the principles of rousseauian radicalism and trotskyite perpetual revolution doesn't allow for this sort of pragmatic questioning, but i'd be curious to know if anyone in favor of democracy-at-gunpoint has considered that democracy has been shown throughout history to be inherently unstable, quickly despotic and strife-ridden....

gaius marius|12.17.04 @ 11:12AM|#

Most Arab people don't feel that way. ... They don't trust us.

nor should they.

mr young, perhaps you can testify for or against this -- i get the distinct impression that the muslim world (not the fundamentalist conservatives or ruling elites, but the mainstream moderates of the demos) fear the example of western decadence and social decay, and this (along with a desire for peace) leads many of them to moderate their agitation for the adoption of western institutions -- which are obviously dependent on a notion of idealized individual priority which is inherently antisocial.

this is far from saying that mainstream muslims do not desire some of the things the west has. but conversations i've had with arab muslims lead me to believe that they see the west as having lost its moral compass and somewhat abhorrent -- an impression reinforced by the content of western television and media -- and that this might be the price of some desirable wester things curbs their enthusiasm for these reforms.

thoughts?

|12.21.04 @ 1:00AM|#

Why the Arab-Israeli conflict matters to reform of nations thousands of miles away from the Holy Land:

As long as their is a conflict, state-controlled Arab media will exploit it to divert the attention of their people from the injustices in their own countries.

"You think you have it bad? How selfish! Look at what the Jews are doing to our people!"