Recent events

From: Ted Davis (tdavis@messiah.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 18 2001 - 15:26:03 EDT

  • Next message: Ted Davis: "Recent events"

    Though I agree that we need to understand how American foreign policy is
    understood in the Middle East, I generally agree with Lucy's comments.

    My own point would be this: there is *nothing* we in the west can do, short
    of wholly cutting our ties to the rest of the world or ceasing to exist
    ourselves, that would satisfy the "Islamicists" as these folks call
    themselves. Among our sins for which we are demonized are the fact that we
    not only educated women, we allow women to participate fully in the
    political arena. And we actually believe in democratic principles, as hard
    as they can be to put consistently into practice. Above all, we believe in
    "nation-states" and genuine religious freedom. And we are happy to help
    people in other parts of the world follow our lead on these points: in other
    words, we are dreadful neighbors. Of course modernity will encroach upon
    the Middle East regardless of what we do.

    We need to understand how deeply our view of the world differs from theirs,
    and how little we can do to redress these grievances.

    A further point: the man who murdered 5500 people is (almost certainly)
    wealthier than anyone he killed, his family could probably afford to rebuild
    the WTC themselves. Issues of wealth and poverty do indeed surround first
    world/third world interaction, but wealth and poverty are not the issues
    here.

    Ted Davis



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Sep 18 2001 - 15:26:31 EDT