Moon of Alabama - a site I can't believe I've gone this long without putting on my blogroll - has issued the definitive rebuttal of this phenomenon earlier this year, in much more detail than I've ever been bothered to delve in what always strikes me as a ridiculous assertion. Anyway, please read it if you have not already. The entry is called "Arab 'Fear' Of 'Nuclear Iran'?"
Most recently I see this over at Debka, but it has been a constant occurrence for years now.
Right after Washington signed its nuclear contracts with Saudi Arabia and the UAR, an official in region remarked: "The clear message to Iran is: If Tehran insists on pursuing its nuclear program, we the Arab countries in the region are going to have one, too although without enrichment."
"Although without enrichment?", then what message would that be sending? This is a really stupid statement that would be unlikely to appear no matter how lightly sourced from any government outside of the Arab world.
Monarchy is the most ineffective remaining leadership structure on Earth. I guess it was viable when at a time when education and the associated selection mechanisms were far more expensive than they are now.
Selecting a leader in advance allows that leader to be given the highest quality education a society is capable of offering, but carries the cost that the leader selected is not particularly likely to be internally talented.
In a world where education was expensive for everybody and monarchies competed against monarchies the cost of not elevating a nation's most talented individuals to leadership was bearable. It is not any more, except that the United States, the world's richest nation and the nation that devotes by far the most resources to furthering the Zionist cause, offers Arab monarchies a form of life support.
Ostensibly the support is for the relatively pro-Zionist stances these monarchies effectively take, even if their rhetoric does not match their positions. But more than that, if Israel is surrounded by millions of people who believe its creation was an injustice and that could effectively pressure Israel to accept the refugees and abandon it's Jewish identity, then having those people under poor leadership is an advantage in itself.
I'm sure these Arab monarchies perceive themselves as cleverly engaging a long-term struggle against Israel, but that they are smart enough to accommodate the reality that the United States is the most powerful country in the world and it favors Israel. Actually, the Arabs states, because they have pre-modern leadership structures are inherently easy for modern states to outmaneuver.
Until these leadership structures are modernized, which would entail a defeat of the regimes themselves and of the efforts and resources the US expends to maintain these regimes, the Arab states are and will continue to be non-issues in world affairs.
A bunch of retarded children who, if anyone cared to stoop to the level that they actually wants to take their candy, can just walk over and trade it for dust.
Effective governments, aligned or opposed, would speak for themselves. Debka could never claim to be the mouthpiece of the Chinese, Russian, Turkish or Iranian governments. None of those four have perfectly democratic leadership structures, but each has a competitive structure, in which the leader is the winner of a competition set up to elevate the person among millions whose talents and values match the standards and values of a substantial, nationalistic and somewhat objective group of judges - even if the judges are not the direct input of the people ruled.
1 comment:
It is not the case that all Arabs think of Israel's founding as an injustice. However, the vast majority do.
It is likely the case that Arab governments are working to undermine Israel. One need only look at what occurs at the UN to realize that.
However, the reason that Arab governments are so inept at governing is home grown. It is the lack of an educated public - in fact, the lack of a sufficiently literate public. And, it is the fact that religion still dominates education to the extent of undermining reform. Note: in countries where the US had no influence, the governance was still horrible. And, the advocates to change the style of governance in the region mostly want to increase the role of superstition in public life.
The Israeli view is that when a secular way of thinking arises - likely to take a century or more - and it leads to an educated public not controlled by superstitious views of the world, Israel will cease looking so terrible. After all, the view among Muslims was, for centuries, that the reconquista taking of Andalusia was a great, great injustice - a sin against God. But, in time, other priorities came to the front and people moved on.
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