Contesting what is sacred - Opinion - theage.com.au
Karen Armstrong, whose work I have not read, but who I understand has been criticised for being too soft on Islam, doesn't do much to dispel that image today in The Age:
How do we move forward? Washington's threatening posture towards Iran can only lead to an increase in hostility between Islam and the West, and we must expect more conflicts like the cartoon crisis.
Oh come on. How about a teensie mention of a certain "threatening posture" repeated several times from Iran to Israel?
She writes:
Instead of allowing extremists on both sides to set the agenda, we should learn to see these disputes in historical perspective, recalling that in the past, aggressive cultural chauvinism proved to be dangerously counterproductive. The emotions engendered by these crises are a gift to those, in both the Western and the Islamic worlds, who, for their own nefarious reasons, want the tension to escalate; we should not allow ourselves to play into their hands.
All very high-minded, but rather useless when you get to the specifics of how to deal with a nation bent on developing a capacity for nuclear weapons while simultaneously hoping out loud for the destruction of a neighbour state. And it's not as if diplomacy and face saving ways around it have not been tried or offered.
I am not suggesting that the way forward is necessarily through military action. But "let's just be nice and respect one another" is patently not the answer in some situations.
5 comments:
Armstrong is worth reading on Islam. The chapters in "History of God" are good - I haven't read the specific book on Islam.
I have no idea what anyone should do about Iran, but it occurs to me that America induces nausea amongst many Australians who worry that they have nuclear weapons - and we are not under threat from them.
For the Iranians, the US and Israel must seem incredibly dangerous to them.
Besides you have to be nice to ex-nuns. Her book "Through the Narrow Gate" is very moving and she is a medievalist as well. All good grounding for modern geopolitics I'm sure.
Geoff,
I would like to know the root cause of your intense dislike of the USA. Despite its questionable geo-political behaviour in many cases, it always has to be seen in the context of what other world powers were doing at the time.
A significant part of the bad PR that the USA has is because it is such an open democracy. I didn't notice many Russian Michael Moore's having Oscar winning doco's during the 1970's and 1980's. The inadequacies and injustices within communism (or indeed other totalitarian states) just never attracted as much attention in the public mind, certainly not at the time they were occuring. Indeed, it could take decades for the extent of the death and disaster under those regimes to emerge, if you take Stalin's legacy as an easy example. I believe Noam Chomsky made excuses for Pol Pot for years. Mao is undergoing more revisionism recently, and it's not pretty.
The other basic point is that geo-politics is unavoidably going to be dirty sometimes. There are some "no win" situations, where the US would have faced criticism whatever it did.
As for worrying about them having the nuclear bomb; well, it's not as if they had much choice about investing in them at the time they became available. Israel might not have an excuse for having them were it not for the fact that it has faced extinction more than once from its neighbours. Has Israel ever made a territorial claim on Iran, or denied it has a right to exist? If Iran fears them, it's an irrational fear.
I suppose the main problem is that smaller nations (France excepted) have to look at the whole world situation while admittedly always looking after their own interests. The US can't see the whole situation because for them, there is no other situation than their own.
They take the high moral ground on freedom then lock people away for ever without trial.
They have no memory for the mayhem they cause even when it rebounds on them (as with Iraq.
I heard Bush say recently that Iranian parts were found in bombs in Iraq and because of his track record of complete deceit and duplicitousness I disbelieve it.
What worries me is that no matter how obvious American culpability is, you find an excuse for it.
Q. Why do people take an instant dislike to Bush?
I doubt the locking away forever will in fact be forever. Those who want the Geneva Conventions to apply to those captured in Afghanistan tend to forget that those captured were not following the rules of war. There is therefore legitimate legal basis for not treating them as POWs. However, locking them away forever is not satisfactory either. It will have to be dealt with in future.
The use of torture: bad, although depends partly on how torture is defined. The extent to which torture of the worst kind is being used: very unclear. The consequence of prison abuse in Iraq by Americans that did involve torture that was clearly unacceptable: investigation, jail. That's good.
I don't think that this administration is the greatest in history or hasn't made mistakes. Bush may be not the brightest; I don't know. (I am pretty sure he is much better at staying awake than Ronald Reagan though.) Funnily enough, in the last 12 months or so I have seen people like Bono and ex Hong Kong governor Chris Patten (who disagreed with the Iraq invasion) say that they actually liked Bush on a personal level and (in the case of Bono) he seemed to be knowledgeable on the topic under discussion. I don't say that such endorsements are conclusive, as I recall Hawke saying much the same of Reagan, who I always was a dill and was just lucky that the collapse of the
Soviet Union happened under his watch. My point is that not every person with a brain thinks Bush is an idiot.
The thing is, though, the US has faced an extraordinary crisis, and its response has (in my view) been subject to too much unfair and inaccurate criticism. I therefore choose to publicly attack that only.
I also see a huge amount of hypocrisy in the old European powers, which is particularly annoying given their role in the mayhem of the 20th century.
You make good points and I suppose the appeasers of Hitler were people whose land had been fought over recently(unlike the USA at the time) and couldn't think of it happening again.
Politicians should be expert at being pleasant one on one. Someone recently told me how nice Brendon Nelson was at a function. Yet despite being pleasant he can run an idealogically based campaign to cripple rural campuses - weird.
At some point the sincerity becomes a learned reflex and I fear that anyone in politics has such an overdose of ego that they can use that to cover their self interest.
The point remains that the USA is not at war with any country and so rules developed for that instance seem misplaced. They have certainly suffered the leading edge of spectacular terrorism but at some point they have to face the fact that attacking Iraq instead of going after the terrorists has caused an awful lot of American casualities and even more Iraqis. Its all sad and I find it hard to think of a worse way it could have been handled. That said, my motto has always been that nothing really works.
I will cede to your expertise on geopolitics and try to positive about American efforts. This is also somewhat prompted by a moving talk on speakingoffaith.org on the middle east situation. Worth a look.
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