I see a different set of reasons for our support of Israel. And I see only a pointless partisan diversion in debating them. My point is that whatever the reasons were/are - they're wrong-headed. I'm suggesting the US move toward equalizing it's relationship to the needs of both the Arabs and the Israelis from here on out into the future. I'm suggesting it because it is in our geopolitical interest to do so.

I've got a paint brush bigger than yours but if I pull it out I'll be called a racist or something and the hate crime police will come and take my computer away and people will say bad things about me cuz I may say what you say but about other people. Small world ain't it.

agreed, art.
i misunderstood the thrust of the thread at the outset a little and have been viewing it a bit too narrowly--i took it to be more about characterizations of "fundamentalism" than about american policy in general with reference to islam/the islamic world.

longer term, yes, bad geopolitical strategy by the u.s. after 1967 with reference to israel can and should be reversed. this is not going to happen in a neocon dominated buish administration (check the project for a new american century as a starting point for a dismal overview of the type of committments that animate the wolfowitz crowd on this.)

there are also discursive dimensions that make things even more difficult--the lovely term terrorism, for example; the cluster of terms that shape american political discourse (and to a frightening extent policy) outlined in the open democracy piece above (for better or worse)--more recently, the term "islamic fundamentalism"---which is never defined with any specificity---and which operates to mobilize racist attitudes toward muslims in general, arabs in particular---which in turn function both as a backhanded support for the problems outlined above with reference to the way successive american administrations have chosen to support israel and as seperate generators of obscurity in their own right.

one effect: the near-absence of coherent information on the realities of the occupation and situation of the palestinians--and an almost totally uncritical reporting of likud policies as if likud was identical with all israelis.

another effect: the conflation of islamic fundamentalism with its (american-based) christian discursive double. non-differentiation of basic terms like this are important for maintaining the background noise of paranoia which is key for the world according to george w bush. it worked fairly well as the center of his marketing campaign since 2001. but it was, is, and remains incoherent analytically. the usage of the term islamic fundamentalism refers much more directly to the political requirements of this administration at home than it does to anything in the real world.

=====

regarding the responses above to the initial post on the various phases of the history of the "jihadist" movement: if you read the articles i posted, you'll see that the movement was a history--that it is not a single entity--that its primary constituency has shifted across time. the more recent variants of the movement have emerged largely in conditions of economic and cultural marginality. this most recent period is just that--the most recent period--it does not stand for all periods.
i dont really see where the confusion could have come from that set off a phase of others reassuring themselves that these folk were always and everywhere wealthy or "middle class" folk--it is bizarre to read--it is almost like they really want to believe that these movements are precisely what they are not---representative of islam in general. what purpose this serves, i can guess--as can anyone. it is of a piece with the fatuous "clash of civilizations" thesis so dear to the hearts of tv viewers around america. a 30-second pseudo-understanding of a complicated world.

There was a poll taken today in the Jerusalem Post that showed that over 70% of the Palestineans wanted Hamas (radicals) to form the basis of the new Palestinean government, instead of the PLO (moderates).

Now, in conceding that America needs to tone down its pro-Israeli rhetoric, what is to be done if the Palestineans elect a government that STILL refuses to crack down on terrorism? That still refuses Israel's basic right to existence? That insists upon the return of its pre-war refugees? That incites violence against Israeli civilians? This is the perfect, the PERFECT time for the Palestineans to show the world that they are serious about peace with Israel. It is now 'The Moment of Truth' in the history of this entire crisis, and the ball is sitting squarely in the Palestinean's court. It's their move; it's their chance to doing something positive. Who is to blame is they choose poorly?

I'd say it will be an historical, evolutionary process.
The US can be a positive force in this by restructuring our priorities toward the future states we say we seek, rather than continuing our largely one-sided support of Israel.

Yet another "the Palestinians had the chance and they screwed it up" excuse.

For decades this is how the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has played out. Israel pushes for more, antagonizes the splintered leadership of the Palestinians, plays one group off the other - and then when they can't organize based on what Israel wants, it becomes a blown opportunity for the Palestinians to "make" peace.

If this is the "Moment of Truth" for the Palestinians, every other moment is the "Moment of Truth" for the Israelis.

- Tear down the wall (so pleasantly referred to as a "fence").
- Give back the land according to the UN/1948 map.
- Split Jerusalem.

It's all in Israel's hands. Has been for decades.

Israel is the #1 recipient of US aid.

Egypt is #2.

I think Jordan is #3.

One sided support of Israel?

What would you have us do?

That's absurd. I don't know where you get this stuff. Iraq was the FIRST time the US has preemptively struck another nation. Before this war the US only responded to actions against her and engaged in diplomacy to the extreme. I'd like to see your examples of the US abusing its power to reshape the world to its western image. You are truely blinded by your own disdain for America.

Ustwo, I don't think it's a situation of economic support exclusively. The way we have created a unique military "superpower" out of Israel is an obvious instance of imbalance, for example.

I'd have us reassess the situation based on the need for us to take more balanced positions in the ongoing negotiations regarding territory, settlements, and the ultimate composition of Jerusalem, rather than "accepting" the positions taken by Israel, for example.

As for the rest of it, I don't think a single poster on an Internet message board is capable of sensibly refashioning geopolitics. I think it's prudent to indicate the most desired general policy direction, as I have.

I think that it would be near suicide to soften our tone toward arab nations at the current time. I agree that our policy has been flawed, but to back down now would only embolden terrorists. We have to not only look at attacks against US intrests, but islamic terrorism occuring worldwide. How much of a p.r. boon would it be to say that terrorism swayed the most powerful nation of the world.

That's one of the problems with geopolitics, any sign of movement away from your positions is often taken as a sign of weakness. That's why I personally think Kruschev (sp?) should get the lion's share of the credit for the Cuban Missle Crisis. Knowing that he could be seen as "weak" and on the losing side, he still did what he thought was necessary. And honestly, even if they were inclined, the current political climate would not be good to the administration if they did try to change their position.

simplicity sells.
it results in alot of needless death too, but hey, they're just brown people far away so really, what difference do they make?
what matters really is consistency. poli sci 101 understandings of geopolitics are the order of the day. everyone is a little kissinger. (powerclown's arguments above are point for point kissingers about the election of allende in chile--those arguments yielded yet another brilliant triumph for american foreign policy....and if the rest of the world took that same line about the united states, i would suspect there would already have been a coup d'etat here)

it's funny, the right cheerleads for continuation of the conditions that create "terrorists" then exploits "terror" to market its politics and then claims they are boxed in by "terror"...the americans have enormous power, but they are hedged in on all sides by an invisible enemy.
interesting bind marketing sometimes creates.
inept and ill-conceived polices come to be written in stone.
nitwits become heros.
elections are apparently won.
everyone is happy.
it's easy. it's safe.
except for those extra dead people.
but hey, they are just brown people far away--worse still probably muslim--so who really cares?

if the administration had any foresight, any courage, they would undertake changing american policy toward the middle east precisely because it would contribute to diminishing the problems they face from militant groups. the way i see it, this administration has none of the above, and worse needs these groups to legitmate itself.

What's so bad about American foreign policy toward middle eastern countries? I'd like you to list examples of where US policy has caused terrorism. Everyone talks of evil US policy. According to bin ladin its because we have military bases in Saudi Arabia that he attacked us. Is that all this is about?

- Unconditional support for Israel at the expense of its Arab neighbours
- US troops and bases on Arab soil, such as Saudi and Bahrain (especially Saudi though)
- Support for "despotic and tyrannical regimes that are abusing their power and abandoning their responsibilities" (ie, the Sauds)

Basically, they don't like the influence that the US has in the region.

- support for Israel is mainly because it's Arab neighbours want to destroy it. In other words: they're angry they're too weak to exterminate the Jews there.
- US troops were *invited* to come, after Iraq threatened to attack SA. Most troops are now gone from SA, and are in Iraq instead. As long as Iraq's neighbors don't want to send any troops themselves, they should STFU.
- support for any regime that is relatively friendly to the US, given the oil in the area. If a democratic, US-friendly oil-rich country were to excist in the middle-east, they'd support that. Again, they're blaming the US for their own problems.

I'd say the essence of the Arabs' hatred is that they're weak, and they want to become powerful, just like the west. However, instead of actually building up their power (like most of Asia did), they're more interested in destroying the west, to drag them down to their level.

dragonlich,

I don't know how you can assert that those nations want to become more powerful.

Their control over vast oil resources makes them quite powerful, in my estimation. If they wanted to get crazy, they certainly could. No, I think relations between many Muslim governments and Western governments is quite friendly.

I think we need to separate the population from the government when discussing this. The US (along with other Western powers) supports despotic regimes in return for access to oil. I think the internal conflict between the populations and their governments (families that were friendly to Western demands) is more to blame than anything else.

Israel might be a political rallying point now, but I don't see fundamental strife between Jews and Muslims. Over the centuries they have gotten along and the Muslims provided sanctuary to persecuted Jews around the globe. If anything, problems have been between Jews/Christians and Muslims/Christians, not Jews/Muslims--despite what Christians claim about centuries of conflict they pull out of their readings of the "old testament."

Also, it might be beneficial to not lump the entire Middle East populations together. They have different motivations and different relations with the West.

- When I talk about "support," I don't mean giving them shitloads of cash - I mean supporting them in the international stage to the extent that they pretty much have global carte blanche, allowing for no admonition or accountability.
- US troops were invited by a regime that the fundmentalists consider their enemy as well. I don't think you'll appease them on that front by saying, "It's okay, King Fahd asked them to be there." They hate both of them.
- I don't quite get what you're saying in your last point. My point is that the fundamentalists consider the Saudi ruling family an enemy as they have sold out Islam by inviting infidel troops to set up base on Islamic soil, and are also eroding Islamic values through their ruling of the country. The fact that the US supports these regimes is another source of hatred for the fundamentalists.

Your last point seems to veer off on a tangent though. Why do you refer to all Arabs as hating the US, implying that the terrorists are actually Arab governments? You make it sound as though the whole of the Arab world sits around fantasising about the destruction of the US. That is just not the case and I think you know it.

What I'm saying is: If there was a democratic US-friendly government in one of those countries, instead of a depotic ruler, the US would support them. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the US would prefer democratic governments in the middle east. OTOH, the US has more need for oil than it has need for democracy in the middle east; hence the "US-friendly" part of the equation.

I did not say *all* Arabs hate the US, nor did I imply that the Arab governments are terrorists. ^*) I said that a lot of the hatred in the Arab world comes from jealousy. The Arabs naturally want to be important in the world, not just as suppliers of oil, but as a political and cultural force. That is totally acceptable to me. What is *not* acceptable is the way at least some Arabs (the terrorists) want to achieve this goal. Instead of building up their own strenght, they seem much more interested in destroying ours (and theirs in the process).

^*) I do think a lot of them provide support, though. Maybe not openly, but certainly by looking the other way.

Just some questions: what was the last fundamental scientific breakthrough that emerged from the Arab world? Why doesn't any major news network pay attention to stock markets in the Arab world? When was the last time you saw "made in the middle east" on any of your consumer goods? Why does the middle east need *western* companies and experts to export their oil?

The answer is simple: the Arab world in general doesn't grow enough, they don't build enough, they don't invest enough in their own population, nor in education or science. Their economies are mostly driven by oil, and many people have pretty meaningless jobs, being paid for by their rulers. When the oil runs out, they'll still be a bunch of backwards third-world countries, and they'll lose what little "power" they have now.

Furthermore, if the fundamentalists get their way, the Arab world will be even worse off than it is today, in terms of scientific/economic terms. But instead of blaming themselves, and doing something positive about it, many Arabs seem very eager to blame the US and the West (and the Jews) for holding them back. And of course, if Arabs blame the west, their propaganda machine makes a lot of other Muslims support their point of view.

A lot of the Arab's problems are problems they've made for themselves. Speaking for the oil-rich countries, an abundance of oil has let these countries depend on oil as the base of their economy, with no need to educate their public and move into the 21st century. These nations can be wealthy without doing any work to get there. This has left those in charge of the country becoming wealthy, while the average arab gets enough to get by handed to him from his government. Eventually problems arise, as you can see.

gee, it is interesting to see what a tight grasp you folks have on the entirety of the arab world. obviously, that world is basically one thing, everyone there is one way, and you folks know what that way is.
it is impressive to be amongst such wise cats.

look, the americans became the largest weaspons supplier to israel after the 1967 war
it was a function of geopolitical choices that were made within the cold war framework

the americans wanted to use israel to counter egypt and syria, which were understood as being more pro-soviet/more left in orientation at the time.
the inititial calculation was that the americans could balance against them support for israel and for more pro-western arab states. that part did not work out so well, but the policy choice remained in place.
you could map the inability of americans to make even basic differentiations amongst arab countires onto the collapse of this geopolitical situation.
perhaps the decision to arm israel into a regional superpower that no combination of neighboring states could threaten militarily simply reinforced this.
and perhaps this refocus of american policy generated it.
because in some situations the logic of particular policy choices gradually becomes the framework through which entire political situations are processed
because in the states the dominant media speak whatever discourse the party in power uses
as part of their general sycophantic relation to power
so those terms become the terms through which debate is staged
and the language of power dissolves into a natural-seeming frame of reference.
the above seems little more than a symptom of this.

so in dragonlich's post, you get a residuum of the anxiety generated across the 1970s by the emergence of opec as a fundamental economic force that endangered the older colonial monopoly on control of resources.
you also get traces of subsequent mutations in perceptions of the arab world--the neoliberal version is all over--they do not grow enough, they do not invest enough--as if neoliberal understandings of the fiction of markets overrides the need to supply even the slightest context for an "analysis"

if it was not for the floating racism that gets tangled up in all this, courtesy of cowboy george's particular way of spinning the "war on terror," this kind of thinking would be goofy but not a problem--things are, sadly, otherwise.

you could at least specify if you are talking about saudi arabia (which has many particular problems, not least of which are mecca and medina and their religious importance, whcih creates the space of religious modes of opposition to economic activity) or the other gulf states, or syria, or egypt, or jordan (each of which is particular) or algeria or morocco or anywhere else in the conversation.

Dragonlich, some answers to your questions:
Most of the Arabs you refer to study in Europe or the US, before getting jobs around the world just like anyone else. The reason they study Abroad is due to the strong trade links there, the excellent schooling system, for historical reasons and for the racial tolerance ;)
Watch CNN, and look out for the Oil prices, or listen out for a thing called OPEC, both of these are modestly influential in the world markets.
Last time I was in the UAE, there were many goods there that had been manufactured in the region, also many from Japan, India, China, Pakistan and Israel.
The Middle East needs Western companies to be involved in the exportation of oil because it is the West that consumes the vast majority of it. Just the same as when you seriously want to export Western goods into Middle Eastern markets, you will need Middle Eastern companies to facilitate the sale and keep you in business.

I'm still shocked and amazed at the naked nationalism that, in 2004, is still being displayed by otherwise seemingly intelligent people. 60 years ago, nationalism brought the world into a bitter and dreadfull conflict that left millions dead. That blind nationalism is still alive today. It almost destroyed the world during the Cold War (by the way, does anyone else find amusing the way that Terrorism has been swapped for Communism nowadays? - a resurgence of McCarthyism can only be around the corner) But still the nationalism continues - the belief that your particular country happens to be right is based only on the random location of your birth. Doesn't that seem odd to you? Doesn't it seem strange to be able to label whole races of people as 'jealous', 'terrorists', 'too weak to exterminate the Jews ', 'interested in destroying the west, to drag them down to their level', 'angry', 'blaming', 'religious fanatics', 'trying to win converts with terrorist acts' etc etc - It's laughable propagandist bollocks - If you met any of these people, you would very quickly come to realise that they are exactly the same as you or I. The pressure on the area is very high for various social, historical, economic, religious and political reasons - how would the people where you come from deal with the situation?

The IRA, ETA and the ANC are/were non-muslim terrorist organisations that committed acts of violence and terror, however they have all either completely stopped or are taking steps away from violence. (By the way, the IRA has been performing terrorist atrocities for many years with direct funding from America - did Britain have the right to invade the US, because it was a 'sponsor of terrorism'? Likewise the Contra-rebels, the Taliban, Saddam Hussain and other less well-known USA sponsored terrorists, criminals and murderers) Back to the IRA, ETA and the ANC - why have these groups renounced, or are renouncing violence? What can be learnt from these conflicts that can be applied to the Palestinian/Israeli situation, and to the wider USA/Terrorism situation? (though it could be argued that the Terrorism situation is something that is being increasingly perpetuated by the US government as a tool for keeping the population scared and easily controlled)

If Islamic nations have anything to fear, it is the increasing paranoia and nationalism that is being whipped up and exhibited by the West. No wonder some of them have decided to take up arms in a futile attempt to stop the giant of the USA.

My worry is that when the money runs out (the US simply cannot afford to maintain its current foreign policy) there will be some very dangerous areas of the world that everyone else will have to tidy up.

NO CHILDREN ALLOWED

Aww how sweet. I'd hate to think we would say anything bad about a mom helping her son look good for a picture.

Inflammatory pics of the militarization of children.

NO CHILDREN ALLOWED

How beneficial to discussion.

I thought you two knew the rules...

this thread is already treading a thin line, try not to give us a reason to close it.

I'm sure it wouldn't take too long to find a picture of a "christian" american white-power-militia member teaching his chidren how to fire a real gun. I know ustwo would run with this as inarguable truth that all white-power-militia-men are christian, but i think it just means that you can't generalize all of the members of one group based on the actions of a minority of that group.

If only the Palistinians had the same view about terrorism.

NO CHILDREN ALLOWED.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pal-child-abuse/

Try looking at that link with an open mind.

jesus, ustwo....
even by your usual standards, that last post is foul.

Time to find a picture of the KKK to prove all Americans are evil terrorists.

Yep, it sure is horrible that every society feels the need to indoctrinate their children with hatred, but you need to open your mind if you think only palestinians do such things.

A religious Death Cult, plain and simple.

so much for this thread.

How would you explain this particular phenomenon?

Exactly what I was thinking. As if Americans don't ever raise their kids to hate.

The critical difference being that in this case, it's a societal norm, not the lunatic fringe. The ideology of hate permeates the entire society, from citizen to head of state. Hate is taught in schools, hate is taught in summer camp, hate is taught on tv, hate is taught in mosques. Important difference.

This thread is straining the bounds of civil discourse. I don't visit this forum often,and when i do, it is only because I am led here by those who think as I do: If you can't make your point in a logical, educated, and, yes, civil manner, keep your thoughts to yourself. There is no need to post pictures/articles of/about children to prove a point about the horrors of armed conflict; we all see it on the news every day. Let's find a more adult way to speak our peace or back off, rethink our method of assault, and carry on in a less threatening manner. Otherwise, I'll close this fucking thread in a heartbeat...

..............

This Ends Now
 

After review of this thread....I am sorely tempted to send the final message to the two (and you know who you are) that have destroyed it. I will be sending you each a warning, and closing this thread.

Do Not Do This Again