OT: Al Ahram

[Possum]

Wait, there are 2 separate issues here.

AMF, you have been fine. We disagree, but I have no complaints with anything you have said.

My objection was mainly to Phoenix's "concentration camp" comment, and I am frankly apalled that you would actually defend him for saying that.

No, that was not a logical deduction. Go back and look carefully. I made a comment about residents of the middle east, and he responded by accusing me of wishing to put US citizens in concentration camps.

How does "residents of the middle east" equate to "US citizens"? Even if we ignore all the other outrageously insulting implications of his comment, that alone tears any basis of logical deduction out from under his comment. It was a gratuitous cheap shot.

Care to defend him further?

AMF said:
If you don't want people to disagree with you, or draw conclusions from what you post, then I would suggest you avoid starting threads that will engender debates.

AMF, please go back and look at the initial post in this thread. And please tell me what in that first post is engendering debate.

[Possum]

OK, back to the real issue under discussion here. I chose to separate the two issues into two separate posts.

AMF, you're right about at least one thing; we are definitely talking past each other here.

Let me make a request. Have a look here at the Wiktionary definitions of de facto and de jure.

If I understand correctly, you are arguing that "they cannot be our enemies, because if they were our enemies, we would not be able to operate in that area". Your reasoning in support of that argument is impeccable, and I would not question it in any way. Believe it or not, I was actually aware of 90% of that

I am arguing that, "They are our de facto enemies because they hate our wormy guts and would gladly see us all burn in hell."

Bro, those two statements are not mutually exclusive. Or even directly contradictory.

[AMF]

Well, ok, but my comment was more than just the practical one but also based on the fact that if you want to know who our enemies are, you can just ask the people who have decided these things. And US and other Coalition policymakers state publicly that the 'people of the middle east' are NOT our enemies. They go out of their way to say that.

It sounds like what you're saying when you state that "They are our de facto enemies because they hate our wormy guts and would gladly see us all burn in hell" is that we should consider all muslims to be our enemies, becuase they all hate us.

(I'm not going to get into what I perceive to be the inhernet immorality of that -- I think others have done that better than I) but instead, my rejoinder is that if we made them all our enemies the consequences would be impossible to deal with in the extreme. And there is no need - there are lots of moderate Muslims. Again, look at our alliances and so forth (Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, etc...). The Pakistanis, for example, are key allies of ours. In fact, just a few months ago, they were in command of a wide variety of US and other coalition naval assets in the area. (unclass info here, obviously). At the end of the day, conducting this war is utterly dependent on the good will of moderate Muslims. But, it sounds like we agree on that, so I would just enquire as to how you would deal with the consequences of treating all muslims as our enemies.

Which brings us to the concentration camp statement: First, Phoenix should have been clearer, and stated internment camps rather than concentration camps. They are, obviously, different with much different implications. But he did correct himself later.

Second, it was somewhat unclear from your first few posts whether you were talking about people from the middle east in general or all muslims. And if you were talking about treating all muslims as our enemies, then I think the debate must inevitably address the fact that there are a lot of muslims in the US and other coalition nations, so, if they're our enemies, how does one deal with that? And, the perfectly apt historical analogy was Japanese internment camps in WW2 (again, Phoenix might have been better served by saying internment camps vice concentration camps from the get go). So, I see the logic in both sides, but it perhaps was more an issue of diction.

Just to clarify, then, when you say that "They are our de facto enemies because they hate our wormy guts and would gladly see us all burn in hell" are you claiming that 'they' is 'all muslims' and that they are all our enemies?

Thanks,

AMF

EDITed: re-wrote what I was thinking in a more straightforward way to take into account prior postings.

[Possum]

No. In this thread, I have only talked about the Middle East. It was others who tried to extend this to moslems resident elsewhere in the world.

And Pakistan is not considered a middle eastern nation, is it?

I have no idea how old you are, so this question may be wildly inappropriate, but did you spend any time in Iran before the revolution?

Pre-revolutionary Iran was in many ways much like the Turkey of today, (barring the topless beaches, of course!).

There was a sizable, educated, secular middle class. And they drank wine. Hell, it was Omar Khayyam who said, "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou."

And everybody was so sure that the military would keep Khomeini in line, that the fundamentalists would never be a real problem. Right up to the last moment, they were so serenely confident of that.

Yet somehow, it all turned to [censored], almost overnight. Somehow, the military, (best trained and equipped in the Middle East, outside of Israel) failed to intervene. Some mysterious religious thing happened, and the generals just....folded. Suddenly, bright Paris-educated women, who had been wearing Parisian fashions last week, were in chador. And their husbands were suddenly saying "Allah Akbar", banging their heads on the carpet 5 times a day, and desperately pretending to have been good observant muslims all along.

And all those solid-gold contracts we had were suddenly worthless, assets nationalised, or just destroyed. Gods only know how many millions Schlumberger alone was ripped off for. Gods only know how many westerners were murdered, or just beaten silly, robbed, and sent scampering for home.

So when I look at Turkey, and say "maybe...", that's what I'm remembering. It could happen again.

Now, there are important differences.

Persia/Iran was the only nation in the middle east with a Shia (AKA Shiite) majority; in all other middle eastern countries, the Shia were a relatively small, poor, and generally despised minority. Some people might argue that only the volatility of the Shia made the Persian revolution happen. I don't know if I buy this theory or not, but it's out there.

Others might point to a fundamental difference in the nature of the Turkish and pre-revolution Iranian militaries. Maybe this counts for something. I won't pretend to be sufficiently well-informed to say.

I'm not saying I expect Turkey to go the way of Iran. I am only saying it's entirely possible.

Which is why, when I listed our friends in the middle east, I used the qualifier I did with regards to Turkey.