How the Arab World Came Apart
nytimes.com
How the Arab World Came Apart
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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#2So far this is good. There's a lot of depth.
One nit:
" Much as the United States Army and white settlers did with Indian tribes in the conquest of the American West, so the British and French and Italians proved adept at pitting these groups against one another, bestowing favors — weapons or food or sinecures — to one faction in return for fighting another. The great difference, of course, is that in the American West, the settlers stayed and the tribal system was essentially destroyed."
I think it's a mistake to only back up to the end up WWI and start running the tape there. The Arab world has a rich and nuanced history full of the exact kinds of tribal tensions we see now going back hundreds of years. There's a reason the Ottomans were the way they were -- and it has nothing to do with Colonialism. There are also great parallels between what's happening with the Arab spring and what happened when other great powers consolidated their hold over the Arabs and then left. Just citing one example seems like a tremendous disservice to the history. Also the meme of "It was the Sykes–Picot Agreement" has some truth but is extremely easy to lean too much on. With this amount of verbiage being produced, I'm expecting some alternative lines of reasoning to be explored.
Looking forward to more of the series!
(Apologies -- looks like the entire thing is here? Wow! I've heard of long-format writing before, but this is kindle material. Tremendous amount of work here.)
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#3Just ask Lawrence. Same shit, different day.
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#4I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#5I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
Can you come up with an alternative explanation? I mean, it's plausible (likely even) that certain events would happen even without US interventions ("Arab spring" in Tunisia and Egypt), but the overall unstability in the region seems to have been introduced by US bombs (in Iraq, Syria, Libya).
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#6I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
Like most of modern history: America's fault most recently, but Europe's fault originally.
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#7tl:dr 100 pages:
1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#8Triffin dilemma.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold...
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#9I haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
May I suggest you read it before commenting on its content? If you want your thoughts in it to be taken seriously, that is.
Re: How the Arab World Came Apart
#10tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
Thanks, will read after work. :-)
It was surprising.
From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.)
If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal".
Or maybe I am too liberal in assuming every culture will walk the same path as us. I doubt it. Until someone comes up with something that works better, liberal [edit: and ~ capitalist] democracy is the least bad alternative.