apathy? who cares?

[rone]

Here's my take on the war: don't give a fuck.  Bomb away, give `em democracy, give `em peace, put Saddam Hussein in Camp X-Ray.  Ten years from now, Iraq will still be a horrible place.  "Our" "victory" will be empty.  Same as it ever was.  History is so last millennium.

I suppose i could be optimistic and look forward to when one of our little sorties will buck the trend.  If nothing else, hey, we might actually learn something this time... ha, who am i kidding.  Here, fucking read this, will you?  That's a good chap.

Comments

[tritone.livejournal.com]

As a textbook on history repeating itself, A Peace to End All Peace (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805068848/qid=1048153330/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-1618614-1298330?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) is an excellent recounting of the way the modern Middle East was shaped by the imperialist powers at the end of WWI. In particular, self-styled "Arab experts" in the British and French foreign service who really knew nothing about Arabs created the arbitrary boundaries around Middle Eastern states that directly led to the problems there today.

One wonders how many self-styled "Arab experts" in the current administration actually have a clue what things are really like over there.

I heard recently about a show called "Mosaic" on one of the local Bay Area stations that rebroadcasts clips from various Arab news agencies, with a running English translation. If nothing else, it might be a way to get some sense of what Arabs are exposed to in their own media, as a way of starting to understand how we're perceived in the Middle East.