Can't buy me love.
Aug. 29th, 2006 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lollardfishI have been thinking about Baghdad, Beirut, and New Orleans.
In the late fall of 2003, I walked through the damp streets of Venice with a Greek-Cypriot friend of mine. We were both working on our dissertation research, and had taken a break from the archives that afternoon to see the Christmas decorations and do a little shopping for our families. In a mix of Italian and English, we had a friendly argument.
She invoked the eternal wrath that her family felt towards Turkey, and said that nothing, ever, could change their minds. Turks had killed their family and friends, and none of her relatives would ever agree that Turkey had any right to be on Cyprus. The same, she argued, held true for Iraq. America's air campaign had killed far too many civilian Iraqis, and they would never forgive the U.S. How, she asked, can one get over the death of a child, or a parent, or a sibling, or a loved one, or a cousin, or a friend? It's not that the Iraqis wouldn't also blame Saddam, but he was out of power (this was just after he'd been captured). The American enterprise in Iraq had been doomed from the start.
I disagreed. Yes, I thought, the hatred was high in Baghdad now, but it didn't have to be. If Iraqis looked around their lives, and noted the absence of a deceased loved one, they would blame the Americans. But if they had electricity, sewage, jobs, security, and yes, even a stake in their government (i.e. democracy), things might change. I wasn't talking about Iraq loving America - that's not going to happen. Just that it takes a lot of hate for someone to pick up a gun, to make an explosive, to risk their life. If life is pretty good, or seems like it's getting better, a lot of individuals would not make that choice, and eventually one would reach the tipping point to where violence was the aberration and security the norm.
She accepted my argument, and asked me if I thought this could happen. Not a chance, I replied. I still believe that there was a window after the fall of Baghdad when we could have "won" this war. Enough troops, enough cash, immediate rebuilding, and we'd still have an insurgency, but it would be an aberration.
This was years ago. When the cease-fire came into effect in Lebanon, one of the first images we saw was of common Lebanese with $12,000, courtesy of Hezbollah. Commentators dismissed it as propaganda, or noted its probably Iranian connection. This doesn't matter. Throughout the conflict, western and Israeli politicians kept saying that sure, the Lebanese were mad at the Israelis now, but after the war they would realize Hezbollah was to blame - which, frankly, it was. But it will take a lot of hate and anger for Lebanese to risk their lives by trying to throw out Hezbollah, or even disarm them. Hezbollah is buying off some of that anger, getting news coverage (not only from the Arab stations, but such bastions of the liberal media as Fox News), and the perception is that they are taking care of the Lebanese. Reality is irrelevant. The Shiite group has many advantages - they have the cash, they are inside their own country, and they had an infrastructure in place. Sheik Nasrallah even came on TV and apologized to Lebanon, saying that he never would have ordered the Israeli soldiers abducted if he knew that Israel would react in that way. It was a slick apology, at once taking some blame, but directing anger towards the "overreaction" of his enemy.
Now Katrina. There was some money, but it took longer to get to the citizens than it took Hezbollah. There are excuses for this (flood waters, scattered population), but theoretically the US is so much richer and more powerful that it shouldn't have mattered. There was no apology, at least not until opinions were already set in stone.
On the other hand, Cyprus is pretty peaceful these days.
Edit: Sorry, cut-tag in. Didn't realize how long it had gotten.
In the late fall of 2003, I walked through the damp streets of Venice with a Greek-Cypriot friend of mine. We were both working on our dissertation research, and had taken a break from the archives that afternoon to see the Christmas decorations and do a little shopping for our families. In a mix of Italian and English, we had a friendly argument.
She invoked the eternal wrath that her family felt towards Turkey, and said that nothing, ever, could change their minds. Turks had killed their family and friends, and none of her relatives would ever agree that Turkey had any right to be on Cyprus. The same, she argued, held true for Iraq. America's air campaign had killed far too many civilian Iraqis, and they would never forgive the U.S. How, she asked, can one get over the death of a child, or a parent, or a sibling, or a loved one, or a cousin, or a friend? It's not that the Iraqis wouldn't also blame Saddam, but he was out of power (this was just after he'd been captured). The American enterprise in Iraq had been doomed from the start.
I disagreed. Yes, I thought, the hatred was high in Baghdad now, but it didn't have to be. If Iraqis looked around their lives, and noted the absence of a deceased loved one, they would blame the Americans. But if they had electricity, sewage, jobs, security, and yes, even a stake in their government (i.e. democracy), things might change. I wasn't talking about Iraq loving America - that's not going to happen. Just that it takes a lot of hate for someone to pick up a gun, to make an explosive, to risk their life. If life is pretty good, or seems like it's getting better, a lot of individuals would not make that choice, and eventually one would reach the tipping point to where violence was the aberration and security the norm.
She accepted my argument, and asked me if I thought this could happen. Not a chance, I replied. I still believe that there was a window after the fall of Baghdad when we could have "won" this war. Enough troops, enough cash, immediate rebuilding, and we'd still have an insurgency, but it would be an aberration.
This was years ago. When the cease-fire came into effect in Lebanon, one of the first images we saw was of common Lebanese with $12,000, courtesy of Hezbollah. Commentators dismissed it as propaganda, or noted its probably Iranian connection. This doesn't matter. Throughout the conflict, western and Israeli politicians kept saying that sure, the Lebanese were mad at the Israelis now, but after the war they would realize Hezbollah was to blame - which, frankly, it was. But it will take a lot of hate and anger for Lebanese to risk their lives by trying to throw out Hezbollah, or even disarm them. Hezbollah is buying off some of that anger, getting news coverage (not only from the Arab stations, but such bastions of the liberal media as Fox News), and the perception is that they are taking care of the Lebanese. Reality is irrelevant. The Shiite group has many advantages - they have the cash, they are inside their own country, and they had an infrastructure in place. Sheik Nasrallah even came on TV and apologized to Lebanon, saying that he never would have ordered the Israeli soldiers abducted if he knew that Israel would react in that way. It was a slick apology, at once taking some blame, but directing anger towards the "overreaction" of his enemy.
Now Katrina. There was some money, but it took longer to get to the citizens than it took Hezbollah. There are excuses for this (flood waters, scattered population), but theoretically the US is so much richer and more powerful that it shouldn't have mattered. There was no apology, at least not until opinions were already set in stone.
On the other hand, Cyprus is pretty peaceful these days.
Edit: Sorry, cut-tag in. Didn't realize how long it had gotten.
