Posted on 11/16/2003 10:24:45 AM PST by jveritas
The article below about Arabs may upset a lot of the PC people who will read it. This article is based on my own experience being born and raised in Lebanon for twenty-two years, including fifteen years of the Lebanese civil war and the first Gulf war in 1991. Some may say that it is not fair to generalize because not all Arabs are like what I am describing. Yes I can generalize; because generalization is talking about the majority and not the minority. I am convinced that what I am saying applies to the majority of the Arab society; make it the vast majority.
No people in the world today has suffered from more crushing defeats than the Arabs. In the last one thousand year, the Arabs have lost every war they fought. The psychology of defeat is so deeply rooted among Arabs, that it has created the strongest feeling of delusion that can ever plague a society. This state of delusion has created in them an extremely foolish state of denial that the West cannot comprehend. Reality and Arabs cannot go together and that where many problems stem out.
During their fifty-five years conflict with the state of Israel, the Arabs have lost every war. The defeats were very crushing. In June 1967, Israel destroyed three Arabs armies in six days and triples its size. The Arabs were claiming great victory in these six days and they were comparing Israelis Air force to flies; the same flies that totally abolished the Arabs Air force in the first three hours of the war. In October 6 1973, Syria and Egypt launched an offensive where they had achieved very little gains in the first few days, but after two weeks they were totally crushed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel made more territory gains in Syria and Egypt then they did in 1967. Today Arabs still celebrate 1973 as a victory and they have October 6 as national holiday in Syria.
The crushing defeat that the Arabs have suffered at the hands of Israel had worsened the state of delusion and denial that they have suffered from for hundred of years. Even worse, it created unimaginable hate and anger not only to Israel but also to the West in general and to the United States in particular. Because of this, many Arabs are living in the last twenty years in a more fatal delusion where they think that they are going to destroy the United States of America and establish a new world order ruled by an Arabic Islamic empire.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 2nd 1990, many Arabs were cheering the invasion because they thought this man is the new leader that will unify the whole of the Arab WORLD and lead them to the ultimate victory against Israel and the United States. In fact they strongly believed that the Iraqi army will crush the US military and they were eagerly waiting for the show down to come. When the war started on January 17 1991, the vast majority of Arabs strongly believed that the United States will suffer ten of thousands of death and will flee the Middle East. In fact in the Arab streets they were talking about these imaginary victories that the Iraqis were achieving against the US and its allies. When the war ended in late February 1991, the Arab street could not believe that the Iraqi army can be crushed so quickly and they start introducing all the conspiracy scenarios between Saddam and the US where Saddam invade Kuwait so the US will come kick out and control the Arab oil in the Middle, in return the that Saddam stay in power and get US protection. You may not have heard this here in the US but these are the wild and delusional stories that I have heard in the Arab street and the Arab media.
Enter the most delusional of all Arabs; the Islamic fundamentalists. Those people strongly believe that they can defeat the United States and rule the world through the Islamic shari’aa and few events in the last twenty years that fueled their delusions. In October 23rd 1983, a Islamic suicide terrorist destroyed the Marines barrack in Beirut Lebanon killing 241 of our military. The United States withdraw shortly after that and many Arabs claim they have achieved victory. I remember the cheers and the firing of AK 47 in the streets of Islamic West Beirut celebrating the presumed defeat of the United States. This event emboldened Arabs and Muslim fundamentalists and they start hitting us here and there without any real response from the United States. Finally, they thought they would deal us a final blow, so they came on September 11 and killed thousands of us. A large number of Arabs and Muslims were cheering that day and their delusions of a final victory against the United States grow from bad to worse to the worst.
When we went to Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and AL-Qaeda, the Arab street and the Arab media said that we will face the same fate of the Soviet Union and Britain before us. We removed the Taliba in three weeks and Al Qaeda is on the run all over the world. When we set up to remove Saddam Hussein, the Arab street and the Arab media thought that we will loose ten of thousands of soldiers in streets fights in the Iraqi cities. To their ultimate shock Saddam Hussein and his regime fell in three weeks with very few casualties and this defeat was extremely hard for them to accept or comprehend. Now after seven months of our occupation in Iraq, we are facing an insurgency of few thousands and the Arabs strongly believe in their delusional mind that we are going to loose this war and withdraw. Even worse, many Arabs think that Saddam deliberately gave up Iraq so he can engage in a guerilla warfare against the US, defeat them and return to victorious to power. They think if they kill few hundred of our troops we will leave running like what we did in 1983 in Beirut. What the Arab do not understand because of their perpetual state of delusion that after 9/11 America will not leave the Middle East until we root out terrorism once and for all.
The Key words are "very hard task" and "something like that". I am not claiming that Turkey has a Western type Democracy or separation between the state and the Church the way we understand it in the USA. Turkey was able to achieve a semi democracy and this is much better that the political, social and cultural state that the Arabs live under. The best they can do is to be like Turkey and that is not very bad.
Moreover, I totally agree with you that Turkey has a very dark history and had committed genocides against the Christians in 1915-1916, particularly the Armenians, and as a Lebanese Christian who lived during the Lebanese civil war I fully understand what these horrible deeds mean. However, to be historically accurate, it is not through these massacres against Christians in WWI that Turkey became some type of a secularist state. Attaturk realized that to put Turkey in the modern age, they must separate Islam as best they can from the State.
similar thoughts to jveritas. "The Arabs" of the day (meaning the dominant force in the Islamic world) was the Ottoman Empire. They ruled almost all of the "uma," or Islamic world. The House of Saud, the current Saudi royal family, were the "lackey's" of the British, siding with them against their "masters" in Constantinople/Istanbul. The Ottoman's sided with the Germans. The Germans and their Ottoman allies lost and the victors, the British and the rest of the allied powers, divided up the Ottoman empire among their "friends" in the region, creating countries that never existed in history, like palestine, Iraq, Jordan, etc.
Winston Churchill, in large part, drew up the map of the Middle East that we are dealing with today. Of course, most of what we now call Jordan was part of the land set aside, with the full agreement of the Arabs, for the Jews as part of fullfilling the Balfour declaration. The Zionists, at the insistence of the western powers, have been "compromising" with the Arabs ever since, to the point that they are now down to a country 9 miles wide. Ossama references the events of WW1 often in his diatribes against the west and the "humiliation of the Arab world 80 years ago."
Look up the definition of psychotic in the dictionary.
I do have a question for you....
Logic (at least mine) indicates that when the average population begins to accumulate things they enjoy and want to preserve (refrigerators, TVs, cars, better clothes, etc.), they are less likely to start or perpetuate a war and risk these possessions.
Does this logic apply at all in the Middle East with the Arabs?
Muslims abhor the thought that they could possibly live under a predominantly Christian state.
About the term "arab" - My Arab Christian friends resent being lumped into the term Arab when the issue concerns terrorism. The terrorists are Muslims of every ethnic background.
It is happening very day. Several of my students (college age and up) have already converted to a variety of Christian faiths. It is wonderful to see.
Actually my friends and acquaintances who call themselves Arab Christians are Palestinians, and from Jordan, Syria, and Tunisia.
The point of all this is that Christian Arabs are not terrorists. It is the Arab Muslims (and all the other Muslims in the world) who need enlightenment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.