Bill Quick has a good analysis of the shortcomings of the Muslim world's honor-shame standards."Israel, by its very existence, is a humiliation to its neighbors, who, in all their hundreds of millions, lack the power to conquer a tiny state with seven million citizens. Worse, the quality of Israeli existence is a humiliation: Surrounded, constantly threatened with attack, vilified, dependent ultimately on the goodwill of the United States for survival, and yet Israel, at least in comparison to any other country in the Arab world, thrives. Its people live in freedom. It is incredibly productive. It is the only nation in the middle east to make the desert flower wholesale. Everything it accomplishes, every new height to which it rises, is a living rebuke to Arabia, which has done none of these things." This is the quality, ingrained in Arab culture, that makes coexistence with the west intolerable. It's why they squealed like piggies when Berlusconi made passing reference to their shortage of accomplishment — "You don't have an inferiority complex. You're inferior." It's also why we have to win the war. |