The blog on the UAE leads to one of the ideas brought up in the documentary “road to 9/11”. Osama bin laden talks about an oppression for the past 80 years. Western powers came into the region and easily took control. So the Arabs looked to their oppressors with hatred and began to resent all things Western. Unfortunately as the society turned its clock backwards to resist the West, they also turned their back on many aspects of society a culture needs in order to thrive in the modern era. No longer did they allow for the education of at least half their citizens, allow for political competition, or the pursuit of modern sciences. If one was to look at the distribution of Nobel prizes for the past ten years, the Middle East has an embarrassingly low number which is interesting for a society that’s turned its back on modernity, yet wishes to fight a war against it. There aren’t many positive ways out of that dilemma. But there are compromises. The Middle East doesn’t have to change its traditions; many non “western” people live symbiotically in the west. But they cannot continue to fight a war they will never win. How could they progress even militarily, if they refuse western culture? One can be pretty sure Arabs carrying around Jambiya’s won’t put up much of a fight against the US army. Eventually they will have to put down their arms to allow many positive aspects of western society to filter into their own. Hopefully they chose the latter of the two.
MW
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4 comments:
Interesting points. You wrote, "One can be pretty sure Arabs carrying around Jambiya’s won’t put up much of a fight against the US army." Seems to me that the insurgents in Iraq have put up quite the fight. This war in Iraq that was to be quick and decisive has been anything but.
If you are using the war in Iraq as an attempt to show either Middle Eastern military might or US incompetency, then you have picked a poor example. In Iraq we are not resorting to total war or full military power because we use some descretion in who we killed unlike these insurgents and terrorists. You may know we have nuclear bombs, specifically hydrogen bombs that could literally destroy the entire country. So, we do have a staggering military advantage. Also, in terms of a war in the air or in the sea, our forces are much superior. Do the iraqi's even have an airforce? (p.s.) you cant walk to America, so they'd have to get their one of those ways.
Instead of comparing our forces to Iraq’s forces and our military to Iraq’s I think we should look at the reasons for us being there. The first and most obvious answer being, that they attacked the United States, but now we get into the question of who attacked the US. I can almost certainly guarantee that the majority of Iraq had nothing to do with it. A specific group launched an attack. Here is where it gets interesting in my opinion. The group al Qaeda does not at all only pertain to Iraq, but that is where we are. Are we going to invade every country to try and eradicate people how hate the US? No we chose Iraq for a reason. The publicized reasons being that they had WOMD, a corrupt government, and abused their women. The list goes on, but in my opinion the main reason is that we wanted to protect our own interests. Oil…
It is very antagonizing to hear people say we only went in their for oil. Whether or not you believe that is the case, we still toppled a tyrannical ruler and potentially freed a country. I also wouldn't say we were even protecting our own interests because Saddam didnt even trade oil with is, we may have been expanding our interest.
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