| Submit your comments on this article |
| Arabia |
| Reality Is Staring Us in the Face |
| 2004-04-08 |
| If, as we are told, ignorance is bliss, then surely oblivion is nothing short of nirvana itself. President Clinton used to joke about Madeleine Albrightâs brooch with the famous three monkeys who see, hear, or speak no evil. Clinton was shrewd enough to see the irony of what his secretary of state was probably unconsciously advertising: If in such a position you donât see or hear evil, you really should go home before you even have the chance to speak evil. Ignorance is certainly bliss for many Arab leaders. Some of them are miserably ignorant and uneducated. They donât even know what a book looks like until they are ready to burn it. Most have no formal education and gathered what they âknowâ either through trial and error or from the army barracks â and we are not talking West Point. To be fair, we do have a new crop who can ski, ride motorcycles, surf, and even do a decent karaoke job, but then they canât speak Arabic. Clinton and his saxophone were a plus, our motormen and their bikes are a negative. Why? Clinton knew how to speak to his people. One such leader got so caught up in his French he translated ânotre majestéâ to an unseemly plural majesty in Arabic and bellowed it out in front of other Arab leaders at one Arab summit. You could hear a hundred million Arabs cringe, but the other 21 present around that table hardly noticed. If it takes two to tango, we might assume that ignorance needs a partner to be effective. The people ruled by such leaders are equally ignorant and have been purposefully kept that way for decades. The atrocity committed in Iraq with the unseemly dragging of the charred corpses was an extension of something historically entrenched in Iraq. Every single deposed leader since independence, including the king, had suffered this dragging fate. No one seems to mention this. More importantly, no one mentions the fact that the bloodiest of those leaders escaped this fate only because the Americans got their hands on him first. For a people âwithout historyâ, âpolitically naïveâ, and other epithets thrown their way, the Americans have one thing solidly on their side: Decency. Iâd exchange this historical freshness for anything solidly âhistoricalâ any day. The reality is staring us in the face: Though military boots are heavy no matter what the context is, we are not dealing with Attila nor are we in the realm of Augustus Caesar. Not a single occupying army has ever declared soon after its victory the date of its departure. The Americans have. Just for the record, the Crusaders stayed for 200 years, the Mongols for nearly a century, and the Ottomans hung on for almost 500 years. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 If only I could get a copy of the picture of Willy, HILLARY, and Maddie doing the monkey thing. It's out there, Me thinks Newsweek. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-04-08 1:08:09 AM |
| #1 For a people "without history", "politically naive", and other epithets thrown their way, the Americans have one thing solidly on their side: Decency. Not a single occupying army has ever declared soon after its victory the date of its departure. The Americans have. Now this is a hell of a note...even the Arab News "gets it", while our own fifth-column media does its best to conceal it. Scumbags and traitors, every fucking one of them. |
| Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) 2004-04-08 12:59:57 AM |