John Robb of Global Guerrillas points to an important quotation in yesterday’s Washington post:
“If there was just one Nasrallah in every Arab country—one person with his dedication, intelligence, courage, strength and commitment—Arabs would not have had to suffer stolen land and defeat at the hands of Israel for 50 years,†said an Arab celebrity, Kuwaiti actor Daoud Hussein on Al-Jazeera. (Faiza Saleh Ambah, Arab World Riveted by Coverage of the ‘Sixth War’.
I can only imagine that Mr. Hussein gives voice to what many people in the Arab world now believe.
That’s my gripe about the UNSC 1701: the tacit recognition of Hezbollah conveys legitimacy to the wielding of force by non-state actors. Such actors are not authorized by any legitimate instrumentality and governed by no laws or conventions. That’s a position that places all of us at risk. Not just us in the United States: everyone in the world.
UPDATE
The Palestinian Authory Minister of Culture expressed similar thoughts:
“The saying that Israel is here to stay has proven to be a false one,” he told a pro-Hizbullah rally in Gaza City. “Israel can be defeated and this is what the Arab regimes should know. It’s time to remove the dust from Arab weapons and to use them to liberate Palestine and the Aksa Mosque.”
He expressed his wish that “every Arab capital would have its own Hizbullah… Hizbullah has taught Israel an unforgettable lesson and we hope that all the Arab countries will start recruiting and training young men to fight like the great Hizbullah fighters.”
Hat tip:Â Marc Schulman
Indeed, I consider 1701 a step backward, in that it gives Hezbolah legitimacy. IN fact, I’d say that mistake is the only thing that is guranteed by 1701. If peace is the goal,1701 is worse than useless; it’s counter productive.
Indeed, I consider 1701 a step backward, in that it gives Hezbolah legitimacy.
No, it doesn’t!
What gives Hezbolah it’s legitimacy is it’s fighting abilities. Israel was not willing/capable to take them on, they know it, Israel knows it and the world knows it.
To paraphrase Mao, Power flows from the barrel of a gun.
Why do Americans whinge on so much about UN, at once wishing it were magically powerful (to achieve of course only their point of view) and complaining about supposed ineffectiveness (as if a talking shop in a bitterly divided political circumstance would ever have effective decision making).
You’re engaging in quite facile and magical thinking, of the worst kind typical of Americans when their aims are not realised, whinging on that the world doesn’t meet their expectations.
The negotiated decision, a compromise based on the achievable and expression of the incompetence of the US’ present capacity of persuasion, does nothing more than recognise reality: legitimacy was created by “facts on the ground” or the political results of the failed Israelo-American attempt to use force to solve what is effectively a political and not a military problem.
Instead of whinging on about the UN, which merely clarified the reality (or crystalised) your lost influence – pissed away gratitiously – and the failure of the politico-military conception of the issue, you might more profitably reflect on the utility of the institution, the UN, in rendering clear what self-deception has camoflaged.
Bloody whanking on….
Awful lot of whingeing about whingeing, wot?
They want war. Give them what they want. Unrestricted war.
And when their filthy, stinking hellhole settlements are piles of rubble, let their “brothers” aid them to rebuild, with some of their trillions in oil money; the civilised peoples of the world don’t and won’t owe them one red cent, not one bottle of water, not one aspirin.
Palestine was mostly useless desert before the Jews arrived, despite the fact that Arabs have lived there for two millennia; in sixty years the Jews have turned it into a garden; the “Palestinians” want to turn it back into a desert. Enough is enough.
The first step is to cut off aid. All of it.
Nice to see bigotry is alive and well:
Palestine was mostly useless desert before the Jews arrived, despite the fact that Arabs have lived there for two millennia;
Amusing.
Truly bigotted and yet amusing for all its bigotted stereotyping, funny that 19th century quasi-racial stereotyping remians a la mode in the context of Israeli-Arab issues.
Of course, a bit of accuracy would note that 2 millenium takes one back to the Roman period, when Palestine was a multi-ethnic province filled with Jews, Hellenised Semites of various origins (Jewish, Cananite, etc.), Greeks, settled Arabs -Nabateans as they were known, and the like.
Nor was, despite the Israeli nationalist agitprop (understandable as it was, although rather based on 19th century European style racism), the Ottoman province “useless” desert. Of course, it is true that lacking capital to leverage new technologies, the Jews, Arabs, Turks and Circassians resident and then native to the late Ottoman empire were unable to develop to the same degree as European immigrant Jews with access to modern means of mobilising capital, new technologies and the like.
Nothing like bigotry (again so very amusing that old school racialist bigotry remains de rigeur in this context) to inform one’s shrieking on, and blame the impoverished peasant for his lack of capital, all of course due to his ethno-racial background. Very Victorian racialist bigotry that, facts be damned, lucky the white-skinned uber-mensch came along to save the filthy Wogs, eh?
in sixty years the Jews have turned it into a garden; the “Palestinians†want to turn it back into a desert. Enough is enough.
Quite right, enough is enough, it is tiresome and tedious to see nationalist propaganda that fairly stinks of Victorian style racialist bigotry repeated as fact.
It’s no better than the anti-Jewish crap that one reads in the gutter press in the MENA region. Worse really in that it is dressed up as “comments” revolting against the nasty dirty evil subhuman Arabs….
Lounsbury, you seem to forget the fact that the Jews didn’t assimilate into Europe very well, and are therefore, to a large degree (not completely) a Semitic people, as are the Arabs. Racial bigotry, eh?
The current wave of Jews, coming back to the land they were largely forced out of millennia ago, did indeed turn the desert into a garden. By very hard work, despite the fact that they have, at the same time, been fighting a war – for SIXTY YEARS! A war against people who demonstrate, by their actions, that they want to turn the area back into a desert.
Perhaps because the newcomers have embarrassed them by showing that the corner of the world could, at any time, have been turned into just as much of a garden by them – if they had been prepared to do it instead of killing each other.
A very early illustration of the mentality of some people in that area is the fact that what is now Iraq used to be extremely fertile, because of irrigation works carried out by the Sumerians and Babylonians, over thousands of years – what high technology and capital were they using, eh? – and pretty well the first act of the Moslem Arab invaders was to destroy them all.
Now, 1200 years later, the area is still a desert. Maybe Moslem Arabs like deserts – after all, that’s where their religion came from, and so that’s what they are comfortable with.
Probably unlike you, I have lived in close proximity to several Arabs (this particular bunch were rich ones) for several years – unfortunately for me.
Why exactly are we in the West giving aid to those who want to kill or enslave us? Are we collectively insane?
Is it not an injunction in the Koran to help those of your brothers in faith in need?
Of course, those with control of the oil money in the Mid-East prefer to spend it on luxury cars, yachts, Western whores, whisky and drugs, when they get out of their country-sized prisons. (Add hypocrisy to the list of their many sins.) Not to mention weapons to kill the infidel.
One last point; about those who advocate suicide/murder as a way to guarantee entry to heaven. Why aren’t the preachers first in line?
Fletcher Christian, Lounsbury is a financier who has worked with and, presumably, “lived alongside” Arabs for much of his career, as I understand it mostly in Lebanon and Morocco. He is an apologist for Arabs in, I think, the best sense. I value his contributions both here and on his own blog. I wish he’d make them more civilly since I believe he’d have more influence that way but one can’t have everything.
Like all of us he has areas of greater and lesser strength. For example, I think his insights into the business area of the MENA region are first-rate and I wish he’d treat us to more of them. As I said, one can’t have everything.
Mr. Schuler, I stand semi-corrected. I was living, for several years, in the same building as several Arabs (and at least one Persian) who should have been part of the cultured elite of their countries, as they were being sent to one of the premier fee-paying schools in England (I was a scholarship pupil).
This “elite” spent most of their time drinking, smoking drugs, and, just for fun, terrorising the younger kids in the same school. Not one of them passed any exams whatever, or tried to. Far too much like work.
I realise that this sort of behaviour is common in such establishments, but this bunch was by far the worst of the lot.
If not for the oil, nobody on Earth would give a good goddamn what Arabs think. They have never produced anything worthwhile – the “achievements” of the Muslims in the Middle Ages were all stolen from either Hindu India or the Ancient Greeks.
The only exports of note from the entire region have been dates, carpets, oil and terrorists. I would far rather do without the first three, if we could in that way also do without the fourth.
I find it amusing to be “corrected” in the following manner, insofar as a bit of reading comprehension would have prevented some portion of the stupidity:
Lounsbury, you seem to forget the fact that the Jews didn’t assimilate into Europe very well, and are therefore, to a large degree (not completely) a Semitic people, as are the Arabs. Racial bigotry, eh?
Actually, mate, Western European Jews assimilated in Europe quite well from the late 18th century forward, and especially the 19th century.
That, in the end, turned out to be a problem when racialism ran its course, and ended up as Nazism.
As for the idiocy of your “correcting” the comment on bigotry, well, first, Semite is a linguistic identification – anyone with more than a passing acquiantance with the actual region knows bloody well that in the hoary old 19th century race scheme, the Arabs ain’t no bloody race by objective standards.
But quasi racialist bigotry ain’t about objective, clear-headed science, it’s about group identification, hatred and fear of a “foreign” group/tribe and ultimately politics.
So, yes, the Arab and Hebrew cousins (and indeed again, logically anyone wishing to be analytical would note that much of the Palestinian population must be descended from either Xian or Muslim converts, who originally were no doubt Jews, Cananites, and other local Semites, cousins all) by linguistic and partial direct lineage relationship.
That means fuck all in terms of bigotry.
Above all when for political reasons a goodly number on both sides do not allow for such facts.
So, your idiotic note which misread my comment (note the “quasi” and “racialist” – both terms were there for a reason you sub-literate whanker, rather clearly indicating for those capable of joined up reading, the bigotry is inexact.)
The current wave of Jews, coming back to the land they were largely forced out of millennia ago, did indeed turn the desert into a garden.
Oh bollocks.
The current wave of Jews may or may not have been “forced out” a millenia ago – utterly fucking irrelevant – but the “desert” has hardly been turned into a “garden” – yes marginal lands with proper capital investment in new technology and the end of the old traditional rentier land ownership forms have done much. However, the deserts remain desert.
Scrubland, some sustainably, some not so sustainably, have been upgraded, and yes, indeed, a brilliant demonstration of the advantages of better institution, access to capital and
By very hard work, despite the fact that they have, at the same time, been fighting a war – for SIXTY YEARS! A war against people who demonstrate, by their actions, that they want to turn the area back into a desert.
Propaganda.
In 48 the Israeli nationalists kicked Palestinians off their lands. Obviously said folks were and are rather unhappy about that. Rather like the North American Indians. Only they did not get thoroughly crushed.
Eggs get broken of course, I can’t particularly blame the Israelis for 48, not many choices really in establishing the state if one looks at this coldly. Much of what was done (not all, but most) in violence was, in the final analysis, necessary for them to do if they wanted to win the land. Pity, in many senses that there were already folks on the lands they wanted who did not want to give it up -and were there certainly through no fault of there own – but there it is. A necessary evil – but it was an evil and dressing it up in fake clothes, mythologising and demonizing I have no patience for.
Demonizing the Palestinian reaction as “turning” the land “back to desert” is pure idiotic tripe, lapping up nationalist agitprop. Contemptibly stupid.
Perhaps because the newcomers have embarrassed them by showing that the corner of the world could, at any time, have been turned into just as much of a garden by them – if they had been prepared to do it instead of killing each other.
Perhaps if people would stop writing contemptible bigoted crap like this, lapping up archaic 19th century style nationalist agitprop, one could have a clear-headed discussion of the issue.
But no, the archaic 40s-50s era nationalist agitprop (which I may add the Israelis had to engage in, and for which I don’t particularly blame them) indulging in 19th century style racialist bigoted stereotyping of the local inhabitants as savages seems de rigeur.
In fact, again, if one leaves aside archaic hoary racialist bullshit like your statement supra, the issue is rather clear. Two parties wanted the same land, and control. The vision of a Jewish state re-established just was not going to work in the context of Arab (Xian and Muslim) Palestinian desire to retain (or in most senses, gain) political control and remain on the prime lands (yes, of course most of the Arabic speaking population were tenants to Ottoman landholders, it’s not of course a sin to be a population victim of a rentier economic system that positively punished investment in the land, upgrading etc. – even if they had access to the technology and capital, which they did not. One can rather clearly see the hurdles in the differentiated results in terms of economic opportunity between European Jewish immigrants and “Oriental” Jewish immigrants – the effects of which linger to this day. Greater access to capital, understanding of how to leverage such institutions, etc. have immediate competitive impacts. It’s grotesque and bigotted to blame as such either the Arab Jews or the Arab Muslims or the Arab Xians for the fact they had grown up in a socio-political system – the late Ottoman empire – the positively punished domestic economic initiative to the favour of the Consuls.)
A very early illustration of the mentality of some people in that area is the fact that what is now Iraq used to be extremely fertile, because of irrigation works carried out by the Sumerians and Babylonians, over thousands of years – what high technology and capital were they using, eh? – and pretty well the first act of the Moslem Arab invaders was to destroy them all.
It’s a demonstration of your stupidity, ignorance and bigotry that you use such as an example.
My fine bigot, the decline in Mesopotamian fertility is tied to a nasty little side effect of irrigation that crops up whenever irrigation is used in situs where the evaporation rate is high: salination of the soil.
But of course you prefer to blame “Muslim Arab invaders” in your nasty little quasi racialised view – the dirty nasty savage Wogs, very Victorian colonialist. I continue to find it amazing that such ignorant tripe still has currency re the Arabs.
I would add that had you the faintest acquitance with the actual history of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, you would know that in fact the initial Muslim invasions merely decapitated the fairly abusive Sasanid and Byzantine imperial bureacracies and ended roughly two centuries (more if you count the Roman regime proper) of ruinious warfare between the two in that very area.
With the Caliphate providing peace and despite the Dhimma taxation, lower taxes, as well as a unified free trade area – to use modern terms, although relative – in fact the area boomed under the Ummayad and the Abbasides
The ruin of the irrigation systems and break-down of the regimes that helped combat salinisation of the soil (but did not stop) came with… wait for it, the Mongols. Most un-Muslim they were when they invaded.
But that doesn’t fit into your bigotted, ignorant narrative, does it?
But unsurprising, the ideological bigot rarely really knows his history, he cherry picks half-understood factiods.
Certainly, I would note that the instability that followed the Mongol invasion, including the Turkic tribal penetrations never helped, and the Ottoman state even at its height did not ever restore the by then rather badly declined frontier region – having once again become a frontier of combat between the Western power and the Persian power.
Now, 1200 years later, the area is still a desert. Maybe Moslem Arabs like deserts – after all, that’s where their religion came from, and so that’s what they are comfortable with.
I am not even going to bother with something so profoundly stupid and bigotted in a cheap back-country parons sort of manner as this statement
Probably unlike you, I have lived in close proximity to several Arabs (this particular bunch were rich ones) for several years – unfortunately for me.
Oh that’s bloody rich, so you were one of those red-necked expats with his cheap little contempt for the dirty savage Wogs you worked with, speaking a bit of Kitchen Arabic?
Well, mate, I’ve spent the past decade working throughout the MENA region (and Africa, as well as North American prior to that), and I speak the bloody languages quite fluently.
I have no patience or even an ounce of respect for your kind of contemptible, half-informed quasi-racial bigotry.
You’re a fool, a contemptible half-informed fool.
Why exactly are we in the West giving aid to those who want to kill or enslave us? Are we collectively insane?
No, but many of your sorts have not unlearned 19th century bigotry.
Of course, those with control of the oil money in the Mid-East prefer to spend it on luxury cars, yachts, Western whores, whisky and drugs, when they get out of their country-sized prisons. (Add hypocrisy to the list of their many sins.) Not to mention weapons to kill the infidel.
The Gulf Arabs went on the typical low-class, new-money splurge, having in one generation in the 1970s transitioned from being dirt-poor to relatively fabulously wealthy.
No surprise there – although only Saudi is a country sized prison, the others are merely tedious.
As to hypocrisy, well, it is a common human sin, and if one is not a hopelessly ignorant bigot, one learns to expect it from all kinds of humans.
I would add that while the Gulf states clearly pissed away large amounts of cash on living high on the hog, as the charming saying goes among Texans, if one looks at them comparatively – based on real data and not simple-minded stereotype and anectdote to inform pre-made conclusions – all the Gulf states invested more in public infrastructure with real public benefit than has been typical among “new-money” oil states (e.g. Angola, Nigeria, Mexico until its first currency crisis). A good portion of that investment was… to put it mildly, not particularly intelligently done, earning perhaps a poor return on capital, but regardless, a comparative between indicators for the Gulf in 1960 and 1990 shows that despite the gross stereotype of whoring and the like (which is indeed certainly with a strong basis), a good portion was invested.
Better still, this round – with far better trained cadres, a better educated population and far better capacity – it is clear from what I do that good amounts of capital are being directed into organised, rational investment schemes, in private equity and above all, in region.
So, save your ill-informed sneering for something you know something about.
One last point; about those who advocate suicide/murder as a way to guarantee entry to heaven. Why aren’t the preachers first in line?
Human nature.
It’s a moronic question, not even particularly interesting as a tedious attempt at a rhetorical point.
Finally, re this:
If not for the oil, nobody on Earth would give a good goddamn what Arabs think. They have never produced anything worthwhile – the “achievements†of the Muslims in the Middle Ages were all stolen from either Hindu India or the Ancient Greeks.
Spoken like a true bigot.
That was the best smackdown I’ve ever read. Damn.
Lounsbury, the useful idiot. I bet you supported Soviet Russia, when it was still going, too.
Another rhetorical question. If Islam and Arabs are no worse than anyone else, where are the Baptist suicide bombers, the Buddhists sawing the heads off foreigners with a dull knife on TV (with the apparent support of the station), the Hindus blowing up irreplaceable 1200-year-old religious monuments, the Zoroastrian poppy-farmers, the Shinto hijackers, the Catholics throwing disabled veterans off cruise ships? I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list.
You’ll probably still be an apologist for these murderous fanatics when they arrange the first stoning to death in your street, of a woman who shows an ankle in public. Maybe you will be the one to cast the first stone – after all, you are without sin, are you not?
You may or may not be aware that one of the worst problems suffered by outsiders attempting to train the Saudi army has been their total refusal to carry out basic maintenance even on personal weapons, because it’s below their dignity to get their hands dirty. This may be relevant. Of course, this info is oldish – maybe the sons of the desert have learnt that a modern warrior has to do more than wave a weapon and shout “Allah ‘Akbar!”. But I’m not counting on it.
And by the way, I speak no Arabic, and don’t want to. I didn’t work with Arabs – I lived with them, largely in the same building, for several years. And this bunch were supposed to be the upper crust – which in practice seemed to mean that they considered themselves to have a perfect right to terrorise anyone they could get with terrorising.
It is one of God’s little jokes, if you are religious, that most of what is probably the world’s most important resource has been given to people who seem to want nothing more than to kill people with it. If the oil wasn’t there, they would be what they were before – barbarian savages with nothing to offer except a bad example.
If the Americans hadn’t wasted most of their own resources, they still would be despite the oil.
But in any case, the Arabs aren’t the problem, except for supplying the money – Islam is. I am prepared to be told I’m wrong on this point, but I believe the Bali bombers were ethnically South-East Asian, and the would-be bombers most recently in the news were second-generation British, of Pakistani extraction. Or at least most of them were.
Of course, the index case of this particular infection was in fact an Arab.
Sorry, made a grammatical error – meant to say “get away with terrorising”. Mea culpa.
Oh good bloody fuck, another cretinous sub-literate replyL
Lounsbury, the useful idiot. I bet you supported Soviet Russia, when it was still going, too.
Nope, you sub-literate cretin, as benefitng someone working in finance as I do, I have long been an implacable opponent of all forms of Left moronism.
That, however, does not blind me to the fact not all Left morons are the same, nor that Center Left Social Democracy contains some quite intelligent and useful propos in keeping people on-board with the general tenants of liberal markets.
So, sorry, try again you illiterate bigotted git.
If Islam and Arabs are no worse than anyone else, where are the Baptist suicide bombers, the Buddhists sawing the heads off foreigners with a dull knife on TV (with the apparent support of the station), the Hindus blowing up irreplaceable 1200-year-old religious monuments, the Zoroastrian poppy-farmers, the Shinto hijackers, the Catholics throwing disabled veterans off cruise ships? I’m sure this is not an exhaustive list.
It’s not an exhaustive list, but it does reflect your bigotted ignorance
The Hindus are nicely represented by suicide bombers on the part of the Tamils, who don’t hesitate to blow the fuck out of Sinhalese Buddhist civilians as well as their monuments when the odd chance presents itself.
The Hindus also very nicely have destroyed ancient mosques, massacred thousands of innocents (Muslim, suspected of being Muslim and well, just plain non-Hindu) in Gujarat.
As for Baptist suicide bombers, well you do have American militia freaks, but of course one does tend to find tendancy to violent opposition in poor countries
Regardless, the Xian Lord’s Army in Uganda has done a fine job on its very own of cutting of Heathen lips, etc. – this merely to cite one instance that comes to mind.
The idiocy regarding poppy farming is just droolingly moronic as you flail around for nasty little bigotted angles to try to prop up your sad, and pitiful recycling of mouldy Victorian era racialist prejudice.
For poppy farming of course you can go throughout the bloody Himalayas – it’s hardly a Muslim thing – indeed it’s frankly bizarre and reflects your pitiful argument – growing poppy, the Talibans repressed it as you might recall (oh wait, doesn’t fit into the bigot argumet of the moment).
By such logic, rather obviously Roman Catholics are sub-human savages, being deeply involved in growing cocaine, etc.
Logic of course being a polite term for bigotted tripe of the lowest order.
You’ll probably still be an apologist for these murderous fanatics when they arrange the first stoning to death in your street, of a woman who shows an ankle in public. Maybe you will be the one to cast the first stone – after all, you are without sin, are you not?
And this bit of hysteric red herring shrieking is intended to rebut my refutation of your bigotted non-facts?
You may or may not be aware that one of the worst problems suffered by outsiders attempting to train the Saudi army has been their total refusal to carry out basic maintenance even on personal weapons, because it’s below their dignity to get their hands dirty. This may be relevant. Of course, this info is oldish – maybe the sons of the desert have learnt that a modern warrior has to do more than wave a weapon and shout “Allah ‘Akbar!â€. But I’m not counting on it.
What the bloody fuck does the Saudi militia come Army have the fuck to do with fucking anything? (Other than you’re flailing around in the typical fashion of the bigot, stringing together non-facts, anectdotes and pieces of vile distortion to cast aspersion on the people you fear and loathe out of lack of self-confidence and respect)
But of course the Saudi militia/army is a bunch of whankers, so the fuck what? Has fuck all to do with anything.
And by the way, I speak no Arabic, and don’t want to.
Wa inta kdab, ma3ndksh wa la Arabiyah ila Arabiyah bita3 Kitchen.
Rah fi halek, kelb.
I didn’t work with Arabs – I lived with them, largely in the same building, for several years.
Oh the poor white man had to live with the dirty woggies.
Is this supposed to impress me, Kdab?
You’re a vile pitiful bigot and a liar. Fuck off you filthy scum.