[GMMAC]

PING!

[Thermalseeker]

What Westerners think of as goodwill, Middle Easterners often interpret as weakness.

This is a fact that is lost entirely on the appeasement crowd.....

[MNJohnnie]

I say David. I know in your knee jerk Bush hater little heart you lack the moral maturity to do this but in the future you MIGHT want to actually pay attention to what the Bush Administration is currently doing when you write about an issue.

A really purposeless column in light of what the Bush Admin is doing right now. Do try to keep up in the future Davy.

[goldstategop]

Humiliating Britain and France destroyed America's World War II alliance with them. And they still remember in those countries how America shoved them off into the sunset of history 50 years ago.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)

[Dixie Yooper]

That's a great reminder of what really happened to shut down the canal for 20 years and the mentality of the not only the Arab but the mind of the Persians as well. It makes you wonder if it's not so much the race of the people we are dealing with as much as the religion. I'm sure it won't be too long before we have some European Islamic nations to deal with. A day I'm not looking forward to.

[Mike Darancette]

Eisenhower fiercely opposed the Suez war. He ordered Israel to stop and threatened economic reprisals against the British and French. The Anglo-French intervention collapsed. Nasser survived.

Frum seems to have forgotten that there was another player in the drama - the USSR.

[Clive]

-

[vimto]

Suez was the end of the illusion of British world power and many over here still harbour a hurt that we had to cave in under American pressure and the whole thing went pear shaped. That generation were cut down to size in a public and humiliating way on the world stage.

Is that how you read it in the USA?

It was not a good chapter.

Never the less if the lessons are learned it may yet help us face the issues of today.

[Alberta's Child]

I don't understand Frum's point here. Why the hell should the U.S. have cared about a dispute like this between shrinking colonial powers (France and Britain) and the new government of a former possession of theirs?

[humint]

Sometimes even mistakes can do the job. In 1986, a U.S. warship mistook an Iranian passenger jet for a fighter plane and shot it down. Khomeini refused to believe the shooting was an accident. He became convinced that the U.S. was actively intervening to support Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war -- and, for that reason, he at last agreed to accept peace.

Hmmmm?

The eight-year Iran-Iraq War was Iran's first major external conflict since the Russo-Iranian wars of the first decades of the nineteenth century. The Iranian mullahs' policy of exporting fundamentalism ("spreading the Islamic Revolution") to Iraq played a key role in the outbreak of hostilities. Indeed, the Khomeini regime's determination to export revolution to Iraq was a major cause of the eight-year war...

The objectives for which Khomeini fanned the flames of war were finally left unrealized. The regime was defeated, and Khomeini, in his own words, "drank the chalice of the poison of the cease-fire" in July 1988. The defeat, however, did not destroy the mullahs' dream of dominating Iraq and installing a client fundamentalist regime. After the cease-fire, the mullahs strengthened their clandestine network in Iraq and waited for an opportune moment to revive their efforts toward realizing the old objectives. That opportunity came at the end of the Persian Gulf War.

[humint]

BTW, thought provoking good post, bttt

[Fiji Hill]

One might recall that in the 1950's, conservatives were not united behind Israel, as they are today. For example, Human Events, the influential weekly whose editor, Frank Hannighen, was a longstanding opponent of Israel, denounced the invasion. And in her book Will the Middle East Go West? (Regnery, 1957), Freda Utley, an influential conservative writer from England, called upon the West to get behind Nasser.

[thundrey]

Ping!

[Peter Libra]

An interesting read. Food for thought.

I had lead off previously on the subject of the Suez Canal. I have done some homework since. I had it that there was a "100 year treaty". Actually the Suez Canal Company had a guaranteed lease for 99 years, from the 1869 grand opening of the Canal. Of course that was broken in 1956.

I find, what seems to me anyway, a curious parallel with the attitude of the likes of General Nasser, with certain "minorities". I have observed people in North America including Canada, fawning and complimenting a minority "spokesperson".

In most instances that "minority" person becomes more arrogant and more demanding. The would be sycophant then starts stammering apologies.

The First Nations people are an example. As we know, the demands get bigger and bigger. Ah, as to Dalton McGuinty, Ontario premier, what thanks has he got? (laughs).

[Tancred]

How about some other lessons from the Suez Crisis? Maybe Eisenhower thought allowing British & French intervention there would hurt the case the U.S. made against the U.S.S.R. when that Communist country tried its own interventions in other countries? Maybe it was also a recognition that the time for decolonization had come, and that the Egyptians, after their earlier subjection to colonial powers, felt they had a grievance against the West? I don't think we can ignore the background history of the Cold War and colonialism.

That said, there is truth to the observation that Frum & other posters have made about the differences between the Arab/Islamic mindset and the Western mindset, where the former displays arrogance, deceitfulness, and ingratitude at every opportunity. I am very thankful to be living in Western civilization.

[Salem]

---

AMERICA AT WAR
At Salem the Soldier's Homepage ~
Honored member of FReeper Leapfrog's "Enemy of Islam" list.
Islam, a Religion of Peace®? Some links...  by backhoe
Translated Pre-War IRAQ Documents  by jveritas
Mohammed, The Mad Poet Quoted....  by PsyOp
One FReeper On The Line  by SNOWFLAKE
The Clash of Ideologies - A Review

"It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world." [FReeper Retief]

[Mr. Silverback]

Bump for later reading.