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Topic: Great article

topic by barb 3/6/2002 (14:58)

reply top The Core of Muslim Rage Commentary by Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times The latest death toll in the Indian violence between Hindus and Muslims is 544 people, many of them Muslims. Why is it that when Hindus kill hundreds of Muslims it elicits an emotionally muted headline in the Arab media, but when Israel kills a dozen Muslims, in a war in which Muslims are also killing Jews, it inflames the entire Muslim world? I raise this point not to make some idiot press critique or engage in cheap Arab-bashing. This is a serious issue. In recent weeks, whenever Arab Muslims told me of their pain at seeing Palestinians brutalized by Israelis on their TV screens every night, I asked back: Why are you so pained about Israelis brutalizing Palestinians, but don't say a word about the brutality with which Saddam Hussein has snuffed out two generations of Iraqis using murder, fear and poison gas? I got no good answers. Because the real answer is rooted in something very deep. It has to do with the contrast between Islam's self-perception as the most ideal and complete expression of the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — and the conditions of poverty, repression and underdevelopment in which most Muslims live today. As a U.S. diplomat in the Middle East said to me, Israel — not Iraq, not India — is 'a constant reminder to Muslims of their own powerlessness.' How could a tiny Jewish state amass so much military and economic power if the Islamic way of life — not Christianity or Judaism — is God's most ideal religious path? When Hindus kill Muslims it's not a story, because there are a billion Hindus and they aren't part of the Muslim narrative. When Saddam murders his own people it's not a story, because it's in the Arab-Muslim family. But when a small band of Israeli Jews kills Muslims it sparks rage — a rage that must come from Muslims having to confront the gap between their self-perception as Muslims and the reality of the Muslim world. I have long believed that it is this poverty of dignity, not a poverty of money, that is behind a lot of Muslim rage today and the reason this rage is sharpest among educated, but frustrated, Muslim youth. It is they who perpetrated 9/11 and who slit the throat of the Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl — after reportedly forcing him to declare on film, 'I am a Jew and my mother is a Jew.' This is not to say that U.S. policy is blameless. We do bad things sometimes. But why is it that only Muslims react to our bad policies with suicidal terrorism, not Mexicans or Chinese? Is it because Arab-Muslim conspiracy theories state that Jews could not be so strong on their own — therefore the only reason Israel could be strong, and Muslims weak, is because the U.S. created and supports Israel? The Muslim world needs to take an honest look at this rage. Look what it has done to Palestinian society — where the flower of Palestinian youth now celebrate suicide against Jews as a source of dignity. That is so bad. Yes, there is an Israeli occupation, and that occupation has been hugely distorting of Palestinian life. But the fact is this: If Palestinians had said, 'We are going to oppose the Israeli occupation, with nonviolent resistance, as if we had no other options, and we are going to build a Palestinian society, schools and economy, as if we had no occupation' — they would have had a quality state a long time ago. Instead they have let the occupation define their whole movement and become Yasir Arafat's excuse for not building jobs and democracy. Only Muslims can heal their own rage. But the West, and particularly the Jewish world, should help. Because this rage poses an existential threat to Israel. Three broad trends are now converging: (1) The worst killing ever between Israelis and Palestinians; (2) a baby boom in the Arab-Muslim world, where about half the population is under 20; (3) an explosion of Arab satellite TV and Internet, which are taking the horrific images from the intifada and beaming them directly to the new Arab- Muslim generation. If 100 million Arab-Muslims are brought up with these images, Israel won't survive. Some of this hatred will remain no matter what Israel does. But to think that Israel's exiting the occupied territories — and abandoning its insane settlement land grab there — wouldn't reduce this problem is absurd. Israel cannot do it alone. But it has to do all it can to get this show off the air. It would take away an important card from the worst Muslim anti- Semites and it would help strengthen those Muslims, and there are many of them, who know that the suicidal rage of their fanatics is dragging down their whole civilization. Copyright 2002 The New York Times

reply by John Calvin 3/6/2002 (15:21)

reply top http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5159 Appetite For Destruction Thomas Friedman Preaches War On PBS Norman Solomon is the author of The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media. He writes Media Beat, a nationally syndicated column. Thomas Friedman has achieved another media triumph with the debut of 'Tom's Journal' on the 'NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.' The feature will be a 'one-on-one debriefing of Friedman by Lehrer or one of the program's senior correspondents,' says a news release from the influential PBS program. Friedman will appear perhaps a dozen times per year -- whenever he comes back from a major trip abroad. Specializing in foreign affairs, Friedman reaches millions of readers with his syndicated New York Times column. And he's often on television -- especially these days. 'In the post-9/11 environment, the talk shows can't get enough of Friedman,' a Washington Post profile noted. He appears as a guest on 'Meet the Press,' 'Face the Nation,' 'Washington Week in Review' and plenty of other TV venues. He even went over big on David Letterman's show. A passage from Friedman's 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree sums up his overarching global perspective: 'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.' If he were as passionate about challenging global corporatization as promoting it -- or as fervent about stopping wars as starting them -- it's hard to imagine that a regular feature like 'Tom's Journal' would be airing on the 'NewsHour.' Friedman has been a zealous advocate of 'bombing Iraq, over and over and over again' (in the words of a January 1998 column). Three years ago, when he offered a pithy list of prescriptions for Washington's policymakers, it included: 'Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no one knows when the lights will go off or who's in charge.' In an introduction to the book Iraq Under Siege, editor Anthony Arnove points out: 'Every power station that is targeted means more food and medicine that will not be refrigerated, hospitals that will lack electricity, water that will be contaminated, and people who will die.' But Friedman-style bravado goes over big with editors and network producers who share his disinterest in counting the human costs. Many journalists seem eager to fawn over their stratospheric colleague. 'Nobody understands the world the way he does,' NBC's Tim Russert claims. Sometimes, Friedman fixates on four words in particular. 'My motto is very simple: Give war a chance,' he told Diane Sawyer four months ago on 'Good Morning America.' It was the same motto that he'd used two and a half years earlier in a Fox News interview. Different war; different enemy; different network; same solution. In the spring of 1999, as bombardment of Yugoslavia went on, Friedman recycled 'Give war a chance' from one column to another. 'Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around,' he wrote in early April. 'Let's see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance.' Another column included this gleeful approach for threatening civilians in Yugoslavia with protracted terror: 'Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.' Last November, his column was in a similar groove. 'Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance. This is Afghanistan we're talking about. Check the map. It's far away.' Friedman seems to be crazy about wisps of craziness in high Washington places. He has a penchant for touting insanity as a helpful ingredient of U.S. foreign policy; some kind of passion for indications of derangement among those who call the military shots. During an October 13 appearance on CNBC, he said: 'I was a critic of [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing ... that I do like about Rumsfeld. He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us, and I'm glad we got some guy on our bench that our quarterback -- who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know what that guy's going to do, and I say that's my guy.' And Friedman doesn't just talk that way. He also writes that way. 'There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like,' a Friedman column declared in mid-February, 'but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right.' Is Thomas Friedman clever? Perhaps. But not nearly as profound as a few words from W.H. Auden: 'Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.' Published: Feb 22 2002

reply by barb 3/6/2002 (15:31)

reply top Interesting info on Friedman. However, what do you think about what he SAID in the posted article?

reply by observer 3/6/2002 (18:59)

reply top Friedman's article is worthy of Goebbels. It combines some true statements with BIG LIES. While he does have a point about Muslims not protesting enough about massacres in India, this Zionist and imperialist propogandist accuses Saddam Hussein of massacring his own people when the whole world knows that the US sanctions regime tha thas been and is reponsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in that country. This is a lie as big and destructive as any ever told.

reply by John Calvin 3/6/2002 (20:38)

reply top Friedman's article? Sounds like he's commenting on the World Series or Superbowl.He has no understanding of the situation at all. He operates in a complete fantasy world, just like you barb. Like postings from that German fellow awhile back- all the paper in Canada would be insufficient to lay his ridiculous propositions to rest. I don't waste my time refuting fools like this, just wait for them to choke on their own vomit.

reply by barb 3/6/2002 (20:51)

reply top How do I 'operate in a fantasy world?' Or, as usual, are you not able to back up your assertions with anything other than insults as usual?

reply by John Calvin 3/7/2002 (16:42)

reply top I had real doubts about Norman Solomon's critique of Friedman, I'd though he just exerpted selected passages from his work to make him appear worse than he was but reading your posting I realized that in this case Solomion is right on. Friedman's message is definately 'Give War a Chance.'- gratuitously ignorant and insulting. Of course its very appealing to arrogant dolts like you who think other people have nothing better to do that answer your every concern or question.