Well I'm probably as misinformed as the rest of the you, but I just thought
I'd have my 10 pennyworth of comment/solution giving as this has been a
subject close to my heart for many years. I'm not a great writer a la
Charlie or Anders but I feel I ought to give this one a go. I live in a 1/2
million population city in the west of England that has a large Muslim
population, supporting about 8 mosques at last count. I meet and talk to
Muslims on a daily basis both socially and at work, I shop in Muslim-owned
shops and my children go to schools that celebrate Eid and Diwahli as well
as Easter and Christmas, my sons' best friend at school is the son of
Iranian immigrants, i had planned to go to Teheran in November to watch
Ireland V Iran in a world cup qualifier, not so sure now. I know Algerians,
Egyptians, Somalians, Iraqis, Turks, Afghani and Pakistani people and
although they are all devastated by events in the US and deeply ashamed that
they might be tarred by the same brush, none of them are very surprised that
this has happened, and frankly neither am I.
However most Americans do seem surprised that this has happened, why are
they so uniformed? In the UK we have lived with the expectation of terrorism
since I was a young child, my parents were Irish immigrants to this country
so they understood the nature of being treated as the "enemy within", much
as immigrants from Muslim countries to the west have felt for most of the
last week. On top of this fear of being identified with the perpetrators is
the threat of being blown up by along with any intended targets of
terrorism - however understanding what drove the IRA bombers and a modicum
of identification with my cultural heritage - has always given me some
satisfaction that the perpetrators (whether knowing or unknowing) of all the
wrongs against my "people" are not getting away with it completely. So for
instance I get a frisson of satisfaction when the IRA bomb the Grand Hotel
in Brighton where Margaret Thatcher was staying (1984) or launch mortar
bombs into the garden of No.10 Downing Street (early 90's), but am sickened
by the savagery of many other IRA atrocities and just wish they'd stop,
which of course they have, almost. Many in the Muslim world would find these
emotions familiar. It's a familiar fact that most states in the Muslim
world, and indeed no Arab states, are not democracies, or have not been
except for brief experiments in Algeria and Egypt. This of course means that
no Arab peoples have chosen their own governments, they are either
Monarchies or Military Dictatorships. However the idea of pan-Arabism the
idea of one Arab nation is highly popular among the ordinary non-voting
populations of North Africa through to the Gulf states. From the second
world war through to the 70s this was a Socialist Pan-Arabism ruthlessly
suppressed by Governments across the region. Some nations where this idea
gained some popularity, Yemen and Egypt and Libya were similarly ruthlessly
undermined or attacked by the US or European powers (Suez). Pan-Arabism did
not disappear though and was allowed to manifests itself in a fundamentalist
Islamic form in much the same way as Marxism was discouraged in the IRA and
romantic old Ireland republicanism was encouraged by the American
government. So most Arabs see the Arab world as one nation - they see their
governments as pawns of the West, or at best as too frightened to antagonise
the West and they see the American Army in Saudi Arabia as an army of
occupation in the most holy and important part of the Arab world. it would
be as if the Soviet army had occupied Washington DC in the 80s and then
asked what all you Texans, Californians and Vermonters were so pissed off
about, it had nothing to do with you. Apart from the unelected Saudi Royal
family and their allied unelected governments, everyone in the Arab world
wants the US out of Saudi Arabia. In much the same away as most Irish people
would want to see the Brits out of Ulster, but don't necessarily support the
bombers. In non- democratic countries though, any dissent is treason, at
least in Ireland we can now how a reasonable discussion about it. The people
of the Arab world believe that it is actually the US that is preventing this
reasonable discussion. That is why they are not surprised that some of their
number have done this dreadful act.
If this was the USAs only mistake in the region it would be enough but there
is much much more.
No one likes Saddam Hussein. Saddam was/is a Ba'athist, and in fact was one
of those Ba'ath leaders who hoped to be the one leader that bought about the
pan-Arab socialist utopia popular in the 70's, along with the Syrian and
Egyptian leaderships Everyone in the West and East was relieved when his
territorial ambitions were thwarted during the Gulf War, but most people in
the Arab world know that Saddam and his power was really a creation of the
CIA, bolstered to fight a war by proxy against Iran during the 70's where
millions died in battles reminiscent of WWI. Iranians still chant "Death to
America" at Friday prayers for half an hour every week with some
justification. The Shah was imposed in an American backed military coup on
Iran in 1956, many Iranian immigrants to this country were escaping the
Shahs torture chambers, interrogators trained by the CIA to instil fear into
left leaning intellectuals who refused to leave the country. Islamic
fundamentalism was ignored until it was too late and they ended up with an
anti-American fundamentalist revolution instead of the mythical communist
revolution they were attempting to suppress. Muslims in feel that any
attempt to control their own destiny in their own lands is ruthlessly
suppressed by American foreign policy. Iran has improved remarkably since
those days, women stand in Parliament, have access to higher education,
opposition is tolerated, open elections are held, granted the mullahs have
the last word on who is allowed power, but immense distrust for America
remains. The millions of dead from the Iran/Iraq war are the testament of
the USAs terrorism waged upon a people who just wanted to govern themselves.
I know most Americans are unaware it even happened, but the football match
between Iran and the USA at the last world cup was outside the USA was
probably one of the most watched sporting events in the history of the
world. Not many sporting events are preceded by overtly political speeches
from Bill Clinton and the Ayatollah Khameni calling for calm and tolerance.
Solutions -
Well there are no solutions, it would be nice to turn the clock back to wwII
and do things differently, and as someone who has grown up and learnt my
politics in a libertarian-communist tradition but is aware that it's
unlikely my preferred political/economic utopia will ever be implemented,
I'd just like to say what I would do if I was President of the World for a
day.
USA armed forces based in Saudi Arabia occupy Iraq, overthrow Saddam,
oversee Democratic elections and then go directly to the Congo to enforce
peace where over 2 million have died in wars over diamonds and other primary
resources in the last 5 years since the USA backed Mobutu was ousted, and do
the same again.
Chinese forces (the only avowedly atheist nation on earth) under the
auspices of the United Nations occupy Israel/Palestine with 100.000+ troops
and enforce Peace plus all the UN resolutions that have been completely
ignored by Israel. China has no axe to grind, and will at last be given the
responsibility commensurate with it's size and population and power of
taking it's place outside it's borders on the world stage - might make it's
government fucking grow up too.
A UN force made up of everybody occupy Afghanistan and establish a
government dedicated to human rights.
A world wide Marshall plan (one of the few decent American foreign
policies), eradicate third world debt and allow the free movement of people
globally.
I could have written a lot more .About dealing with bonded child serfs in
Pakistan, about 500.000 cancer deaths among the Marsh Arabs due to depleted
Uranium shells, about the West turning a blind eye to Russia killing a
250.000 Chechens in Grozny, all of this in the last 10 years, but as I said
this is the longest post I've ever written to the Extropians list anyway,
and I'd rather talk face to face with people. As Transhumanists I would hope
this does not derail our project.
that's enough.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:48 MDT