Why do they hate us?

swoop[TR] · Apr 20, 2003

You can't expect much from the NY Post AAA, I agree with you though.

KymarFye · Apr 20, 2003

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

I wouldn't argue with most of this article but I wouldn't go too far down that road that the success of an army depends mostly on the kind of society you have.

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I don't think VDH treats the idea as an absolute: He's not arguing that a platoon of small-d democrats would be a match for a nation of totalitarians.

The Third Reich had a pretty effective military
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Scoreboard.

, Stalin's troops showed incredible bravery and toughness
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while being slaughtered in great numbers...

and the Red Chinese were all we could handle in Korea.
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The kill ratios were obscene - often almost as bad as those that the Iraqis have typically suffered against the US: The symbol of Red Chinese tactics was the human wave attack - which serves as an excellent illustration of VDH's point, as seen from the other side.

Military success has more to do with resources, technology, leadership and picking your wars carefully.
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...and resources, technology, leadership, and picking your wars carefully have everything to do with what kind of society is doing the fighting - which, I believe, is very much VDH's point.

And dismissing VDH as "THE NEW YORK POST," as per Swoop, is silly.

swoop[TR] · Apr 20, 2003

Frankly Kymar, the New York Post has little credibility as to its unbiased reporting abilities. And VDH's analysis seems just as slanted. (The NY POST wouldn't publish him otherwise).

www.foreignpolicy.com

KymarFye · Apr 21, 2003

Quote from swoop[TR]:

Frankly Kymar, the New York Post has little credibility as to its unbiased reporting abilities. And VDH's analysis seems just as slanted. (The NY POST wouldn't publish him otherwise).

www.foreignpolicy.com

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Frankly, Swoop, your response suggests a fundamental misunderstanding about the difference between an op-ed and a piece of reportage.

VDH's op-ed offers a simplified version of theories and positions he's expounded at great length in several books, as applied to current events. The issue in assessing such a piece isn't whether or not it has a bias or "slant" - that's rather the idea in the first place.

Is there some point to the link to foreignpolicy.com?

msfe · Apr 21, 2003

The American Mongols

To win the war against terrorism, the United States must overcome the burden of history

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This fundamentalist interpretation of Islam has failed to penetrate the thinking of most Muslims, especially in recent times. But religious hard-liners can drive the political agenda in Muslim countries, just as Christian and Jewish fundamentalists have become a force to reckon with in secular nations such as the United States. And with over 1 billion Muslims around the globe, the swelling of the fundamentalist ranks poses serious problems for the West. If only 1 percent of the worldâs Muslims accept uncompromising theology, and 10 percent of that 1 percent decide to commit themselves to a radical agenda, the recruitment pool for al Qaeda comes to 1 million.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

KymarFye · Apr 21, 2003

Quote from msfe:

The American Mongols

To win the war against terrorism, the United States must overcome the burden of history

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
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I see msfe has been busy posting articles all over ET today, but, for some strange reason, he still hasn't found the time to back up his claim, above, that the "New American Century" represented some "racis[t]" "fascist neocon" agenda. Has he read the Project for a New American Century report? Probably not. Probably he's just expanding upon something that he read on some web-site somewhere, or read in some propaganda pamphlet, and accepted uncritically.

Totally consistent with his past behavior. When directly challenged, he changes the subject or disappears for a little while. Recently on another thread, for instance, he made the ridiculous claim that the European media reported the war more "correctly" than American counterparts. (His use of the term "correctly" strikes me as revelatory - "correctly" seems to mean "in a manner that conforms to his prejudices.) When presented with contrary evidence and observations, he simply disappeared from the discussion.

Around the same time, he made totally unfounded personal accusations against me on yet another thread. When challenged on the subject, he again simply disappeared.

An individual with any integrity would have withdrawn the personal statements and apologized - just as an individual who was interested in an authentic, civilized debate or common search for truth would not make political claims or accusations without backing them up.

KymarFye · Apr 21, 2003

Arab Mediaâs Conduct During War Indicative of a Deeper Malaise
Dr. Abdulhamid Al-Ansary, Special to Arab News

DOHA, 21 April 2003 â

* * *
For how long will we be cursed by attaching ourselves emotionally to defeated heroes? Why has it been written about us that we are a nation which does not learn from our defeats? And within one generation, there are other nations who have suffered defeat once and have risen from its ashes.

* * *

To a large extent, the Arab media was characterized by selectivity, and it was decidedly on the side of the Iraqi regime. Our intellectuals took over the line and constantly repeated it. Our media then devoted special programs to disseminating and repeating the falsehoods of Sahaf. Their biased point of view was imposed on listeners. Our media attempted to increase the degree of hatred against the coalition by concentrating on the degree of the destruction and the number of civilian victims, without making clear that this was because the regime positioned its forces and tanks in civilian areas. The army of Saddam of which they were so proud because it was the only army which could protect civilians in fact used the civilians to protect itself.

It was the Arab media itself which claimed that the aims of the war were to destroy Iraq, put an end to its capabilities, and, in the end, to occupy it. It did not for a moment consider the role of Iraqâs ruler in the destruction and ruin of the country over a period of more than thirty years. It did not consider how he had destroyed the countryâs environment, education, health and legal systems. He also set oil wells on fire and destroyed bridges, and he transformed the cities, especially in the south, into wretchedness, deprived even of clean drinking water.

The Arab media attacked the Iraqi opposition and imposed a collective boycott while satellite stations played host to everyone but the Iraqis who were, after all, the ones most concerned. The Kuwaiti media was the sole exception to this rule. Not one satellite channel had the courage to transmit scenes of welcome to the coalition troops in the liberated cities. Instead, the satellite stations made a great fuss over what they called the crimes of the coalition and ignored the crimes of the regime. The correspondents continued to impose their political points of view on viewers. Not one of the satellite stations, except Kuwait, had the courage to show a tape of the chemical strike against Halabja. It was the same with the air attack of the 1991 uprising in which holy places were hit and hundreds of Shiites were killed and tortured. More than 250,000 Iraqi citizens were killed in the uprising.

* * *
Again, the question: Is it possible for the Arab media to be objective?

In my view, it is not possible because the Arab media is controlled by the prevailing general atmosphere and by people who have been fed on the slogans of incitement and inflammatory propaganda for more than half a century. They are captives of those who fed them and brought them up, those who controlled their mentality in which long-standing imaginary ideas, fables and superstitions were planted.

This is a deeply rooted aspect of the Arab mind, firmly established in Arab psychology and mentality. The same idea was expressed in an outstanding article, âWe are the Nation of Defeated Heroes.â It is a very delicate analysis of the reasons for the defeats of the Arabs. But the deeper question again arises: How did the idea of the âconspiring otherâ become entrenched in our minds and mentalities? the âconspiring otherâ from whom no good can proceed?

We are forever listening apprehensively to âthe other,â to him who wishes us evil. Others have had similar problems, but they have risen up and rebuilt themselves because they were able to rid themselves of the fear of âthe other.â

* * *

The musings of a simple Iraqi from a liberated area caught my attention. He said: âThe Arabs left us and did not liberate us. Why are they attacking the coalition which wants to liberate us?â Why is this simple fact not realized by our men of culture, our intellectuals, our men of the media and our religious leaders, the men who call for participation in âjihad?â

(Dr. Abdulhamid Al-Ansary is a Qatari writer.)
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http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25446

Madison · Apr 21, 2003

Quote from KymarFye:

Victor Davis Hanson on THE ARAB DISCONNECT:

... religion mixed in with government, sexual apartheid practiced, tribalism promoted over meritocracy, freedom squashed,

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was this true in Iraq?

KymarFye · Apr 21, 2003

Anglosphere: Where have the fascists gone?
By James C. Bennett
From the International Desk
Published 4/19/2003 10:56 PM

WASHINGTON, April 19 (UPI) -- The term "fascist" has become one of the most overused terms of political abuse throughout the world. Judging from usage, its current meaning is something like "one who does not agree with me."

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European fascism was like a large river, flowing and carrying along millions of willing and enthusiastic adherents across the European continent. The question now is, where did this river disappear to in 1945? These people and their underlying sentiments were the culmination of generations of political evolution. It defies reason to believe that they simply changed their minds, all of them.

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Integral to the fascist message were the hatred of individualism and free markets and hostility to the Anglo-American culture that they saw (accurately enough) as the source of those values in the modern world. They hated the popular culture that they saw as eroding respect for the traditional forms of European cultural authority. Of course, they despised the Jews as agents of modernism among them, but that current was muted in post-war Europe, since the fascists had successfully achieved their agenda of destroying the Jewish communities as significant economic and cultural forces on the European continent.

Above all, fascists everywhere enshrined the role of the state as the focus of national life and the source of meaning and value. This separates fascism from other movements of political violence and racial caste conflict (like the Klan, for example) and unites it with the superficially liberal but state-exhalting European nationalist movements of the 19th century of which fascist movements are ultimately mutated descendents. This value also unites fascism with the purposive and directive state of European bureaucrats today.

Particularly, they resented the loss of political power by Europe to America, and sought to revive the integrated European economy they had achieved from 1940 to 1944 in order to recreate a European counterweight.

They also continued to build on the 1940-1944 theme of an underlying cultural commonality among Continental Europeans, which they counterposed to the "barbaric" American culture: the theme of "Coca-Colonization."

With the end of the Cold War, many of the more repressed elements of European fascist culture were able to come out of hiding and return to political respectability. Of course, they avoided the old symbols, and generally continued to substitute a pan-European cultural identity for the old national chauvinisms pre-war fascists had displayed, a process well underway by 1944. Even anti-Semitism came back in the lightly disguised form of anti-Zionism and solidarity for Palestine.

Where have all the fascists gone? The answer seems to be that the river of fascist sentiments merely flowed underground for a few decades, and now they are seeping back to the surface. Looking at the pro-Baathist demonstrations that swept Europe in the last month, it is clear that these sentiments have regained more overt respectability that at any time since 1945.

***

The fascist stream was not the only stream of European public opinion, nor ever the majority stream. Others, genuine adherents of freedom and democracy, hated them and opposed them with every weapon they had. The descendants of these streams remain the majority streams of political philosophy in Europe.

But we must not let our sympathy and respect for these positive forces disguise the reality that the currents of fascism did not disappear in 1945, and that their re-emerged currents today are not just the small bands of pathetic losers that openly recreate the symbols and names of the past.

Fascism is an organic development of strains of political thought that have been endemic in Europe since the Industrial revolution. Fascism as an organized movement under that name no longer exists, nor is it likely to re-emerge as such. But the sources of fascism are still alive; new expressions of the same underlying sentiments are regaining more respectability and political presence than at any time since 1945.
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http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030419-013929-1026r

msfe · Apr 21, 2003

The American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as "a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Sound familiar?