Comment

Twitter Might Teach Us a Lot About the Arab World

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CuriousLurker9/24/2014 4:39:03 pm PDT

Interesting article, but I’m not convinced Twitter is an especially good gauge of the larger general public of any particular group of people. There’s access, the anonymity, the trolls, etc.

Also, we already largely know what the problem is. We’ve been interfering in the Mideast for about a century now, often helping prop up authoritarian regimes. How do you imagine we look (to the people living under them) when we support assholes like Saddam et al (because it’s in our interests, however short-term), then carry on about how great freedom & democracy is?

Oh, and let’s not forget about that time we helped overthrow Mossadeq in Iran, the long-term unforeseen consequence of which was the ascendance of Khomeini and the creation of the IRI.

Yes, yes, I know what D_F and some others would say about realpolitik and all that, but this mess is the result of that, isn’t it? Maybe it’s not such a great idea. It’s certainly not very humanistic. When will we say “Enough!” and start to wean ourselves off the Mideast oil that keeps us embroiled in all this shit? If we’d committed to making serious changes after the oil crisis back in the 70’s, things might look a lot different today.

We haven’t been even-handed WRT the I-P issue either, regardless of whether or not you, I, or anyone else thinks being even-handed is warranted. Anyway, that’s a whole other can of worms I don’t really want to open up right now.

Basically, what I’m saying is that our lack of even-handedness on the I-P issue combined with our dependence on Mideast oil and support for non-democratic, often brutal dictatorial regimes when it benefits us, leaves an opening for those very regimes/rulers to inject antisemitism and anti-American sentiment into the mix when it benefits them. More realpolitik at work.

No, I’m not naive enough to think that solving the I-P issue would magically transform the Mideast and make antisemitism disappear, but it would be one less explosive cluster**** in the region that could be used against us. It seems to me that would be in our best interests, but what do I know?

What an effing mess we’ve helped create. And we keep going back in, to what end I’m not sure. The people in the Mideast have eyes and can see our hypocrisy, no matter how we try to spin it for the folks here at home.

This book is on my Kindle reading list. You might want to take a look at it.