From a business perspective it makes sense to have an operations center in the Middle East. It cuts down on the costs of covering news in that area of the world. It provides the ability to employ and expose a greater number of Middle Easterners to capitalism. It provides the opportunity to employ those with knowledge of the inner workings of the Middle Eastern culture and society. As Americans, it’s difficult to effectively communicate with a culture so foreign to us. If we employ them, we gain knowledge and insight into how to effectively communicate, but more importantly we can also gain access to experts in their culture who have connections and important perspective in interpreting information and news coming out of the Middle East.
The way I read the article, he was moving more there, than just physical plant for that geographic area of operations.
True, contact with us is probably good for them. Many of their misconceptions about the West are born out of ignorance.
I have always wondered what would have happened if Adolph Hitler had spent some time in the US. He may have come back to Germany with a “Holy Crap! They’re 50 times bigger than us, there’s more of them, they all have guns, they have more factories than we could imagine, and when they get mad, they’re mean as H*LL!”.
parsy, who doesn’t disagree with you if its just the Mid East type operations that are moving there.