10-02-2003, 01:37 PM
But I am not going to argue much about this today.
The Islamist approach, the reactionary approach, is not universal, but like the reactionary Christian approach, it comes from a very loud minority who seem to wield influence out of proportion to their numbers, possibly due to adroit handling of both the media and of politics. I have always thought it humorous how much the reactionary moralist Muslim and the reactionary moralist Christian have in common. :) Both find the modern, urbanized, secular society very distasteful, for some of the same and some different reasons, and both want to change the world to something less distasteful. I even suggest that they both want to put a genii back into a bottle, but that may be an oversimplification, since both of those groups have a better chance to make some change than anyone has to put the genii of, for example nuclear arms, back into the bottle.
One thing Said and I agree on, fundamentally. Were it not for the presence of an enormously useful commodity under the sand, oi,l U.S. policy in the Mid East would be immensely different, or should I say, indifferent? True since 1933, and true to today. Why? We really have very little in common, culturally, with the garden variety Muslim Arab, our base cultures spent ten centuries at odds with each other, yet at the same time, we probably have a great deal in common from a purely human, man on the street, point of view. Politics do not get driven by the latter, it gets driven by paths of power and influence.
So, when someone says that our 1991 and 2003 battles with Iraq are all about oil, the answer is "well, no fooling," but it is not a stovepipe interest, and it is not as simple as the soundbyte "blood for oil" tries to depict it. Every bit of policy of the U.S., and for that matter, much European Mid East policy, was built on that oil and trade from the get go.
That oil makes Arabs, or some Arabs, filthy rich. It made the Shah of Iran filthy rich. It gives "them what has it" a power and a voice in global issues that they woule not otherwise have. Without the addiction to oil that the ENTIRE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD has, the pushers in Arabia, many of them from elsewhere, would not make as much money, and the Arab voice would most likely not be heard as often, or as loudly.
It is not just the price of gas at the pump that makes American and other Industrialized nations' policy makers care about the GLOBAL oil supply. It is oil's insidious influence on the economies of every one of our mutual major trading partners. The industrialized world lives and dies by trade.
In 1973, the King of Saudi Arabia answered Ayn Rands infamous question in the novel "Atlas Shrugged" :
Who is John Gault? He sain, in effect, "I am."
The Saudis, and other Arab and non arab Oil Producing states (OPEC) then proceeded to lay down a heavy bit of econominc power on the US. But the Persians did not. :o
In 1991, Saddam Hussein, no idiot, tried to annex the Kuwait oil fields so that he could, after a fashion, be the next John Gault. He failed, but had he succeeded at the political level in making the annexation of his Sudetenland stick, he would have been in a position vis a vis the entire industrialized world, and particularly America had he decided that we were on his sh** list, that OPEC was in vis a vis the U.S. in 1973.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a policy maker in an industrialized nation will pursue policies that ensure their economy does not grind to a halt. Did WJ CLinton not get elected on the "It's the economy, stupid" campaign? That is part of the job of the national leader of ANY nation.
I already found a whole bunch of Said's articles via a web search, and some of his Al Ahram commentary is most interesting.
In any case, thanks Jester, I always appreciate interesting view points, and your post here got me reading some very insightful stuff that Said has written in the past two years. :)
The Islamist approach, the reactionary approach, is not universal, but like the reactionary Christian approach, it comes from a very loud minority who seem to wield influence out of proportion to their numbers, possibly due to adroit handling of both the media and of politics. I have always thought it humorous how much the reactionary moralist Muslim and the reactionary moralist Christian have in common. :) Both find the modern, urbanized, secular society very distasteful, for some of the same and some different reasons, and both want to change the world to something less distasteful. I even suggest that they both want to put a genii back into a bottle, but that may be an oversimplification, since both of those groups have a better chance to make some change than anyone has to put the genii of, for example nuclear arms, back into the bottle.
One thing Said and I agree on, fundamentally. Were it not for the presence of an enormously useful commodity under the sand, oi,l U.S. policy in the Mid East would be immensely different, or should I say, indifferent? True since 1933, and true to today. Why? We really have very little in common, culturally, with the garden variety Muslim Arab, our base cultures spent ten centuries at odds with each other, yet at the same time, we probably have a great deal in common from a purely human, man on the street, point of view. Politics do not get driven by the latter, it gets driven by paths of power and influence.
So, when someone says that our 1991 and 2003 battles with Iraq are all about oil, the answer is "well, no fooling," but it is not a stovepipe interest, and it is not as simple as the soundbyte "blood for oil" tries to depict it. Every bit of policy of the U.S., and for that matter, much European Mid East policy, was built on that oil and trade from the get go.
That oil makes Arabs, or some Arabs, filthy rich. It made the Shah of Iran filthy rich. It gives "them what has it" a power and a voice in global issues that they woule not otherwise have. Without the addiction to oil that the ENTIRE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD has, the pushers in Arabia, many of them from elsewhere, would not make as much money, and the Arab voice would most likely not be heard as often, or as loudly.
It is not just the price of gas at the pump that makes American and other Industrialized nations' policy makers care about the GLOBAL oil supply. It is oil's insidious influence on the economies of every one of our mutual major trading partners. The industrialized world lives and dies by trade.
In 1973, the King of Saudi Arabia answered Ayn Rands infamous question in the novel "Atlas Shrugged" :
Who is John Gault? He sain, in effect, "I am."
The Saudis, and other Arab and non arab Oil Producing states (OPEC) then proceeded to lay down a heavy bit of econominc power on the US. But the Persians did not. :o
In 1991, Saddam Hussein, no idiot, tried to annex the Kuwait oil fields so that he could, after a fashion, be the next John Gault. He failed, but had he succeeded at the political level in making the annexation of his Sudetenland stick, he would have been in a position vis a vis the entire industrialized world, and particularly America had he decided that we were on his sh** list, that OPEC was in vis a vis the U.S. in 1973.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a policy maker in an industrialized nation will pursue policies that ensure their economy does not grind to a halt. Did WJ CLinton not get elected on the "It's the economy, stupid" campaign? That is part of the job of the national leader of ANY nation.
I already found a whole bunch of Said's articles via a web search, and some of his Al Ahram commentary is most interesting.
In any case, thanks Jester, I always appreciate interesting view points, and your post here got me reading some very insightful stuff that Said has written in the past two years. :)
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete