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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| VDH: The Premodern Middle East and Postmodern West Don't Mix, Mr. President |
| 2012-09-20 |
| The wrath of the Muslim Street is elemental and existential. It can be explained in terms something like this: Islamists have convinced the Arab masses that their present mess (so easily fathomed in a globalized world in second-by-second, instantaneous comparisons with other cultures -- via cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and cable television) is not their own fault. The Middle East is not fascist, communist, Baathist, pan-Arabist, or Islamist, so much as it is screwed-up-ist and blame-them-ist. It is not brain surgery to enter the modern world. Follow some South Koreans or Chileans around for a week with a video camera. Grow up and stop blaming those on whom you depend for everything from drilling bits to laptops. A good start [for US foreign policy] would be very quietly to start trimming aid at about $100 million every month, and quite coolly rejecting visas from the Middle East. We can put travel restrictions on the Middle East, and ask the Egyptian ambassador to go home for a month or so to think things over. Otherwise, Westerners must make themselves as immune from Middle East passions as is possible. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |