Comments on: Placing people’s needs above avidity

By: grognard

grognard — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:43:31 +0000

Elrod, very good and well thought out points. Yes the radicals did stay in power, and indeed they became more radical in some instances. China did have the Mao period, but even though they are far from being a democracy today they are far away from that era. And what is driving the difference? Providing the â€œmassesâ€œ with material goods. Stalin was replaced by the reformers, then repression, and finally the whole system collapsed. Castro has held on, Cuba does provide some services like universal heath care but, yes,
the repression is what keeps people in line. Again I am thinking in the terms of many decades, before things sort themselves out, but your point is well taken that it might never be possible.

By: Don in Canada

Don in Canada — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 07:12:48 +0000

Anti-Israel sentiment is NOT just a creation of Arab authoritarian regimes.

No, but it’s certainly a useful tool to stir up the base, as it were. There, as here, fear of the other is a useful device for the self-interested ruling class.

Their only goal is the elimination of Israel.

For many of these groups, that may very well be the case, but for others it may be a primary goal but not the only one. Hezb’Allah and Hamas have become full-fledged political entities because they offered something else to their electorates: infrastructure services and responsible governance, respectively. While this is overshadowed by their militant wings’ abhorrent activities, it is a small sign of maturing.

Sadly, so long as the fearmongers remain dominant, there and here, we may never see what could be.

By: Salmenio

Salmenio — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 06:26:45 +0000

Brij…the “Hearts and Minds”.

I must laugh. Have you seen any indication that any of these arseholes have hearts or minds?

Good Grief.

By: Elrod

Elrod — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 05:14:20 +0000

Grognard,
I’m not sure I’m convinced by the whole “radicals would eventually lose because they can’t do bread and butter stuff.” Plenty of extremist governments have survived just fine and figured out how to do bread-and-butter governance. Is Cuba well-governed? Plenty have survived without doing the nitty gritty of providing for the people too – North Korea has survived a very long time and its people are not the most nourished in the world.

The other problem is that revolutions sometimes go into second phases, where they re-radicalize. That, in a sense, is what’s happening in Iran right now. It happened in China under the Cultural Revolution, which was Mao’s way of striking back at the post-Great Leap Forward reformers. (Mao starved millions of Chinese in the GLF in 1958-1960, was pushed aside for six years while more market-oriented reformed undid much of the GLF. Then Mao violently undid the reformers by reaching to “the masses” outside the party.) Same thing happened under Stalin too. The late Lenin New Economic Policy bureaucrats were the first to be purged by Stalin.

That could happen to Islamists too. Again, Iran is the model. If these oil-rich nations decide they can do business with China, Russia and India, they won’t be subject to pro-Western cajoling.

By: Jim S

Jim S — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 04:38:00 +0000

It’s not only that there would be conflict among Arabs even if the Israelis did everything most of their opponents want. Even that wouldn’t satisfy Hamas, Islamic Jihad and who knows how many others of the radical Islamists. Their only goal is the elimination of Israel.

By: grognard

grognard — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 02:09:05 +0000

Elrod, short term you might be right in that the governments would be more anti US/Israel but long term the radicals would have to deal with the bread and butter issues, like roads, sanitation, and healthcare. Hamas won the election more on what they could do for the community rather than a desire to take out Israel. The trouble is that the process for mellowing would take decades, if it were to take place at all. Can we wait decades? I donâ€™t know, maybe that is why Sharon gave up and decided to build the wall.

By: Elrod

Elrod — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:20:43 +0000

Good analysis, as usual. But how does one judge “their people’s needs?” The Arab populace is distinctly more radical than the regimes – with the exception, of course, of the radical regimes themselves. Therein lies the conundrum. If the regime is anti-US (Iran, Syria, Saddam-era Iraq) the populace is slightly less so. If the regime is pro-Western (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt), the population is viciously anti-American. In Palestine, the people and the regime hate Israel, and generally resent the US. Anyway, if the regimes of the region place their people’s desires above their own, opposition to Israel would much stronger. Anti-Israel sentiment is NOT just a creation of Arab authoritarian regimes.