Radicalizing the Middle East
Following OhioDem1's well argued Covservatism = Radicalism I was challenged by someone holding an opposing point of view to get "Conyers and his ilk to promote whistleblowers in Hizbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran." I found this to be an interesting little exercise. Following is my response.
Hezbollah and Hamas are not nation states or multi-national corporations. They are militant organizations that have been given mixed reviews over the years from their respective populations. When successful, they have managed to win the hearts and minds of their Shiite and the Palestinians by combining their military wing with a humanitarian approach of delivering food and medical aid to impoverished populations.
The U.S. backed Israeli military has helped the Hezbollah and Hamas recruiting efforts by an indiscriminate use of force that has resulted in much collateral damage over the years. Having said this, both organizations are ruthless in their determination to inflict damage (the old biblical "eye for an eye" retribution) on Israel. Hezballah and Hamas have heavily relied on suicide bomber since the 1980's. This is a brutal and barbaric practice. The blind devotion of their adherents is born of hopelessness and a twisted sense of religion. So, just who in these organizations would be a likely whistleblower?
Regarding Syria and Iran, brutal dictators used to be some of America's best friends in the region. After all Iran did have a democratically elected government before the CIA helped overthrow it and installed the Shah. Once again, a misguided foreign policy came back to bite us in the ass.
Syria has a history of brutally quashing any dissent. I suspect most potential whistleblowers have left the country of choose to keep quite in the current atmosphere.
There are several whistleblowers and friends of freedom in Iran. Unfortunately, they are not in charge right now. By isolating Iran and encouraging Israel to "have at it," we have given the hard-line stronger support and greater rationale for clamping down on dissent.
Still In Iraq
posted by REB 84 at 7/20/2006 10:48:00 PM
5 Comments:
Some good questions posed here...
The problem we have is that we are trying to put a western slant on a very backward middle-eastern social system. Truth be told is that they don't understand us and we don't understand them. Americans uniquely understand the concepts of Freedom and Democracy. Trying to look for freedom fighters in places like Iran and Korea and Syria is like looking for people who are waiting in line to be tortured and have thier familes killed. The terrorists organizations you speak of have one goal. A familar one to those who have studied the dark ages. Kill the Infadels. What we would call a twisted sense of religion in the norm in fundamentalist Islam. The "eye for an eye" is always taken out of context. This original law was based on injuring the unborn (Read it Exodus 21:22-24). Jesus said that we should turn the other cheek but we should also defend the defenseless. The question is "how do we defend those who don't want to be defended and still be who we are?"
God knows...but he's not telling
Pray...Just Pray
Most Americans are ignorant of world history and geography. We get a crash course from the mainstream media on the 11:00 news whenever a conflict flares up and then act like we understand what is going on.
The Middle East is an extremely complex mix of family and tribal ties, compounded by centuries of foreign interventions. From the Ancient Greeks, to the Romans, to the Turks, to the French, to the British, to the Soviests, to the Americans, one empire or another has heavily influenced the state of this region.
In order to even hope to understand what is going on and where things are heading, we need to have professionals in positions of power who realize the complexities and are familair with the people and the cultures. It also doesn't hurt to have intelligence officers who actually speak the langauges.
I am in the middle of reading a book that relates to this last point. I strongly recommend "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purposed" by: General Tony Zini and Tony Kultz. The forward is written by Tom Clancy.
And here is my reply from that "Voices" thread:
REB
You said:
"Hizbollah and Hamas are not nation states or multi-national corporations. They are militant organizations that have been given mixed reviews over the years from their respective populations."
Not anymore. Hizbollah has representation in the government of Lebanon, and are now guilty of treason against the Lebanese government by starting their part of this war. Hamas is the majority party in the government of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Then you said:
"When successful, they have managed to win the hearts and minds of their Shiite and the Palestinians by combining their military wing with a humanitarian approach of delivering food and medical aid to impoverished populations."
This is as pathetic a sentence on the situation as I've ever seen. Hamas was given (first by the Israelis, then by their voters) Gaza to govern. What is their policy? Lebensraum. This was seen before, and the world took steps to try to stop it before it had a chance to fester. Israel has done its fair share in keeping the peace process moving (Olmert, against the advice of the US, was looking to withdraw from the West Bank before this erupted), and it was up to the elected Hamas leadership to do anything. They chose war.
You said:
"The U.S. backed Israeli military has helped the Hizbollah and Hamas recruiting efforts by an indiscriminate use of force that has resulted in much collateral damage over the years. Having said this, both organizations are ruthless in their determination to inflict damage (the old biblical "eye for an eye" retribution) on Israel. Hamas invented the suicide bomber in the 1980's. This is a brutal and barbaric practice. The blind devotion of their adherents is born of hopelessness and a twisted sense of religion. So, just who in these organizations would be a likely whistleblower?"
Gee, maybe if the CIA would have concentrated on undermining them instead of the Bush administration, we might have found a few.
Next item I'll highlight:
"There are several whistleblowers and friends of freedom in Iran. Unfortunately, they are not in charge right now. By isolating Iran and encouraging Israel to "have at it," we have given the hard-line stronger support and greater rationale for clamping down on dissent."
You people never talk about them. I don't believe you even support them. In a comment some time ago, I asked OD1 if he would support the US backing a revolution in Iran and I believe he disagreed with it if it became violent. Yet, how else does one overthrow a violent tyranny, especially when the tyrants violently clamp down on dissent? And to think what Israel is doing just further exacerbates the situation in Iran is naive. Iran had been quelling protesters, violently, in the preceding several weeks. But, the MSM and the so-called "civil rights supporters" never bothered with it, while the conservatives have been all over the issue. Even the new UN Human Rights Council has seen fit to continuously harp on the US and Israel and ignoring real human rights violations in North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, the usual suspects. Bolton knew they were going to do this and wisely advised the President to denounce the new group before it formed. But the UN went ahead and put it in place anyway.
I don't believe there is very much concern about human rights here. Just support for those who would undermine the US.
REB
You said:
"Most Americans are ignorant of world history and geography."
You're right. One of them has to do with what are called the "Israeli-occupied territories". What's ignored by all those who preach this is that it ignores how this land was not considered occupied when Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled the West Bank, both of them doing this between 1949 and 1967. It was those governments who put the Palestinians into the refugee camps in those areas, not the Israelis. It was those governments that sought not to incorporate the Palestinians into their own folds, but to try to destroy Israel (along with others). It has been Israel who has given up land (the Sinai, Gaza) and is trying to remove their presence in the West Bank; yet, all they get is more terrorist attacks from the vile cancer that is Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa, and Hizbollah, all supported and supplied by the Syrian and Iranian governments.
The so-called "professionals in positions of power" already know this. Those that call themselves "liberals", like the pathetic Noam Chomsky and Juan Cole, seek to undermine Israel, the US, and democracy in general by lying to the American people about the true terrorists. It isn't going to work anymore. There are too many resources that contain the truth and completely refute the leftist liars that you would have us believe.
You said:
"It also doesn't hurt to have intelligence officers who actually speak the langauges."
As more "spies" like Larry Johnson and Valerie Plame leave the CIA, the more we can probably realize this.
Radicalizing the Middle East was cross-posted at TeamBio.org. Follow the title link to view additional comments.
BTW - I Steve was answered at Found: Missing Intelligence on Iran
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