Question Re: Middle East ...

Have you by any chance come across any good discussions of how the US should respond to the anti-American viewpoints being expressed in the Middle East and Central Asia?

So far, the vast majority of what I have heard/read has been about how the Bush administration is bad/wrong, but I simply haven't encountered any substantive dialog about how the U.S. ought to actually proceed from this point forward in dealing with anti-U.S. sentiment.

The vast majority of ideas I have seen expressed thus far about how to deal with the so-called "terrorist threat" have been those of the neo-conservatives in the White House. It is simply an appalling set of circumstances.

It's as though the media are either reporting events as they are spoon fed by the government, OR the media are covering topics with anti-Bush, anti-Cheney, anti-Rumsfeld slants. I'm not hearing answers. I'm just hearing attacks against a particular set of ideological beliefs.

Tom Hundley

TS Replies: I suspect the reason you don't hear more concrete ideas of how we should proceed is because America so takes for granted our birthright of wasteful consumption and the imperial hegemony that maintains it, that any real suggestions are greeted as if the person suggesting them had just climbed off a spaceship from Planet Chucklehead. Things like getting off our oil addiction, our belief in our exalted place in God's plan for the world, and the apathy of the American public that allows all manner of heinous crimes to be committed in our name are not likely to find a place in the corporate press--except to make fun of the granola-crunching whackos that wring their hands over such things. Instead, we get reasoned debates on how to force the world to love us or assurances that the ungrateful wretches should love us for their own good. There is probably also a reluctance on the part of some who oppose US policies to advocate giving up the spoils that those policies provide, and so we get the medieval style debate of how many angels can dance on Bush's pinhead. I think that the best place to look for useful suggestions of what America should do differently is out there in the rest of the world where people have long been articulating specific reasons why they are "anti-American."

A Young German's Perspective

Regarding the emerging new Iraq, I can only hope that some hard lessons that we had to learn during the efforts of the unification of East and West Germany will not have to be experienced by the Iraqis. But I think they will.

When a dictatorship is replaced by a government that subscribes to democracy and the due course of law, how it deals with healing the wounds of the old regime it replaces becomes the ultimate test of its effectiveness. I remember the German reunion as a time of great joy followed by a rude awakening. Deciding how far to go in convicting the criminals of the old regime became a critical issue as the nation moved towards justice and enlightenment. The people of Iraq are already trying to sort this out. I wish them well.

Here in Germany party-membership in the SED, the former East German ruling party, became a major issue. Be it in schools, administration or politics, countless employment relationships were reconsidered after the fall of the wall. Many argued that those that joined the SED cannot be dignitaries in a democratic society. Others pointed to the trying decisions many East Germans had to make. Oftentimes party-membership was inevitable to pursue a profession and in order to become firemen, educators or doctors many East Germans did lip-service for an ideology they did not agree with. A dictatorship is more than one protagonist and a few supporters making up a small upper class. Even if the majority of the people in Iraq feared and despised their regime, the rulers needed the support of many within the society to control the crowds. For instance, there had to be people who reported others who dared to tell harmless jokes about Saddam, all the time knowing that they would be sent to cruel suffering, or perhaps worse. However, those who reported may have been under imminent threat, too. That's the way it is with tyranny. So it was during our NAZI era and our period of being a Soviet satellite. The Baathist web and our controlling government during the 1930s and through W.W.II were ideologues rooted in fascism.

Making fair and balanced decisions will be an uphill battle for Iraq's future lawmakers, judges and lawyers. Again, I wish the Iraqis well.

--Jonas Ecke, Potsdam, Germany

Okinawans Disappear

Just came across your site and wanted to set something straight. You had an article about the Okinawans' vote to close the military bases in Okinawa. Here is an excerpt..."You may remember that last week the voters of Okinawa, in a non-binding referendum, opted by a remarkable 90% to 10% margin to demand the closure of U.S. military bases in the Okinawan islands."

The vote was actually very loosely worded, more to the point of "are you in favor of a reduction troops and in the number of bases."

The press, anti-military press, reported it incorrectly. But, as we know about politicians, that was their intent. That is the problem with surveys and votes.

Thanks for listening,