Saturday, June 28, 2014
Monday, September 30, 2013
What the Arab World Doest Understand about the West and Why the Arabs Act Against the West
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-14/opinions/35494313_1_arab-world-arab-society-arab-countries
Dr. Fouad Ajami is a leading American Arab scholar and has been for the past 30 years and he is one of most prolific modern day American scholars writing on Middle Eastern affairs.
He hails from John Hopkins University and has been writing about the Westernization of the Arab culture for over three decades. His writings, numerous articles and books about the Middle and our foreign policy are a primer and necessary ingredient for any western policy maker, student or interested person who wants to understand better the Arab world and how it interfaces within the larger international community today and why the Arab culture, like so many others are actually confronting their own psychological hurdles in dealing with the modernization around the entire world, that largely is a western construct.
Its been an ongoing serious and continuing important if not the most important theme of Ajami's writings and again reading his commentaries, even if I don't necessarily agree where he writes from today, much of political commentary, ...at the conservative Hoover Foundation...nonetheless, his is a singular important voice of gaining a true and genuine and deeper understanding of the Arab culture itself....given his academic pedigree and his own Arab background ...from my own youthful college days, his books, his voice and his writings and the many journals he has contributed to for decades have not only have deepened and broadened my own understanding of this vital region of the world, but it also has given at least this student of foreign affairs, a much deeper, better and truly genuine understanding of why the Middle East is what it is a culture apart and what makes the West's relationship to it, so vital and how and why it remains among the most important issues in our world today.
Dr. Fouad Ajami is a leading American Arab scholar and has been for the past 30 years and he is one of most prolific modern day American scholars writing on Middle Eastern affairs.
He hails from John Hopkins University and has been writing about the Westernization of the Arab culture for over three decades. His writings, numerous articles and books about the Middle and our foreign policy are a primer and necessary ingredient for any western policy maker, student or interested person who wants to understand better the Arab world and how it interfaces within the larger international community today and why the Arab culture, like so many others are actually confronting their own psychological hurdles in dealing with the modernization around the entire world, that largely is a western construct.
Its been an ongoing serious and continuing important if not the most important theme of Ajami's writings and again reading his commentaries, even if I don't necessarily agree where he writes from today, much of political commentary, ...at the conservative Hoover Foundation...nonetheless, his is a singular important voice of gaining a true and genuine and deeper understanding of the Arab culture itself....given his academic pedigree and his own Arab background ...from my own youthful college days, his books, his voice and his writings and the many journals he has contributed to for decades have not only have deepened and broadened my own understanding of this vital region of the world, but it also has given at least this student of foreign affairs, a much deeper, better and truly genuine understanding of why the Middle East is what it is a culture apart and what makes the West's relationship to it, so vital and how and why it remains among the most important issues in our world today.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Coming to Understand International Relations and Middle Eastern Policies and Politics While Attending Oral Roberts U
Not every student of american foreign policy has had a doctor from Princeton University in political science who believes in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ....teaching them about the fundamentalism of the shites in Iran and how the Ayatollah Komeni become so radically powerful inside the minds of mideastern youth early in the80's...
Such was the good graces of what it meant however, to be a student studying at the feet of not a long haired jesus freak, but a shirt and tie Princeton PHD doctor of political science professor who ended the year long seminar by focusing the young student of his senior mock "NSA CONSULTING GROUP"...a name he created for those of us studying under him about the movements, the psychology and the history of the mid east...on the reality of what it meant to have a rising messianiaism occuring inside the entire world, but especially in the mid east in the end decades of the twentieth century...
....at a time, when this country was witnessing the rise of born again evangelical
activitism and its marriage to a b movie actor, from california...
it was a special study..one rigously accademic oriented and nothing to sneer at...
Dr. Repko was no jokester, and no slouch....nor some wing nut born again who was trying to make national and international relations fit into some kind of modern religious "pat robertson ready for the world" world view so tv evangelist could promote a trip to Israel or something...
....he was the real deal and he knew his ...stuff we shall say....
and like a post modern christian believer, one among many...he had his shit together...
as the modern phraseology likes to say....today...
before Ronald Ray-gun and before we knew the name Bill Clinton and Hillary, or even obama, and before we ever experienced a single "bushism"...
a group of us...hard working and accademically gifted students were sitting in very nice chairs, inside a very nice and parlanced modern new upper-story classrooms studying CIA field manuals on what made the mid-east such a mystery, so vital and yet so dangerous a place to try to venture a guess on what and when was to happen next...
one thing we learned after months of study and even more to come...was one simple but profound lesson...
no super power...ought to be running amok around inside these arab cultures...
and no western power will be long in keeping hope alive...
by trying to and ...whether sincere or not, in remaking such a cultural vastness into their image any time soon...or if in attempting to do so, w/o creating major serious upheavel..in the region and for our own western world
and sending, on a scale of a major earthquake-like, waves throughout the world...
the mid east is ancient, a holy land and also a divided and seriously fractured region...like a beautiful dark mysterious woman, she is tempting, to be sure...to any would be suiter..democratic inclined or not...
but she is a region, also not so easily imaged in the post WWII western notion of the world...democratic, in outward appearance or not...
oil money, super rich nations, with ambitions, military and social needs the size of texas, florida and california combined... with tribal leanings, ..all clothed with strategic significance beyond all imagination of their own size and own order in the world itself..in comparison to say rhode island or colorado...
the mid east we learned is no place to play "democracy now" games...for fun, even if your name ends in sh...for generations..and you're from texas....
even one of these small mid eastern nations, can ignite a world wide conflict that will send the markets of the entire world tumbling in an instant...
if the wrong signal or the wrong move is made within and/or towards one of them...[and they are not stupid ignorant people...]
and more and more inside their own nations...are becoming well attuned and have been for decades to the ways of the western super powers...including the western super power of eastern russia...
major world consequences can and will occur...
and its there we will begin, because, it was the invasion of afghanistan, that i began mainly my own studies and interests in this nation and part of the accademic world and the world at large in which today..we seem to inhabit and see so much of everyday on our television sets...
especially in light of what our 43 president has done... to that region and continues to attempt in the name of fighing for "democratic ideals" around the world...
its not for nothing, so many have weighed in on these policies and these latest american and western world attempts to reshape the mid east, in our better image...
an image and ideal that may think fits but in reality is no fit at all...to the cultures of the mid east and their historical struggle with modernity and a world view that largely does not include their own anymore....
it is to this region...and to these studies, and to the lessons learned by a senior studying his own accademic heart's leanings....
only to find himself...in the midst of his own nation's struggle w/ similar human strains of coping and coming to terms w/ one's regilious values and one's religous experience amidst a growing if not alway most informed nor intellectual approach to world events and a clearer understanding of the world itself...
charlie wilson's war...is about the hidden ways of one wayward congressman
on a mission...among his women...of his era in DC at the time
like charlie, ...there were christian students in earnest also reaching similar
conclusions...far far away from dc ...by not doing the things he was ...
but...studying the history, and the region and the influence of religious fundamentalism and the impact of western culture clashes combined with the influx of
oil's weath...into a ancient culture and civilization...
its a story that has to be written to be understood...
this is but a first febble attempt, in the wake of twenty or so years
and a three to four presidents, a world trade center bombing
and...a hollywood movied w/ tom hanks...
in the mix....to tell the story from the view of what twenty or so
students studied to a conclusion themselves...holed up in a nice comfortable
air conditioned classroom buidling on the then modern looking ORU campus
as ronald reagan defeated the only openly avowed born again christian of our
era....
[and only slowly...but w/ some reservations]
we began the to comprehend...fundamentalism...
did not...have limits...to the mid east...only.....
and the same or similar human need for certain and understanding of the world
would eventually lead us to where we are today....
....4500 dead american soldiers later...
and half a million dead iraqis and lots lots more on both sides
seriously maimed for life and several nations...burdened with an un-ending
almost intractable
war scenerio for decades to come...for the rest of our now not so
young lives
at least as young as we were
when..in 1980-81, we there in Tulsa, Oklahoma, began to learn of this
ancient and deeply mysterious region of the world...
from one very dorky, but approachable, white shirt born again believer who
looked and taught us...more like a
Wall Street lawyer and/or... a CIA DC consultant...which he could easily have
been...
but as one would clearly expect from a Princeton PHD ...
more so than a religious schools' propagator of the one and true christian
faith...and its own struggle with american late twentieth century
fundamentalism...
but from him....we learned the roots of religious fundamentalism and its ultra
seductive powerful political influence across not only our nation but the entire world...
Such was the good graces of what it meant however, to be a student studying at the feet of not a long haired jesus freak, but a shirt and tie Princeton PHD doctor of political science professor who ended the year long seminar by focusing the young student of his senior mock "NSA CONSULTING GROUP"...a name he created for those of us studying under him about the movements, the psychology and the history of the mid east...on the reality of what it meant to have a rising messianiaism occuring inside the entire world, but especially in the mid east in the end decades of the twentieth century...
....at a time, when this country was witnessing the rise of born again evangelical
activitism and its marriage to a b movie actor, from california...
it was a special study..one rigously accademic oriented and nothing to sneer at...
Dr. Repko was no jokester, and no slouch....nor some wing nut born again who was trying to make national and international relations fit into some kind of modern religious "pat robertson ready for the world" world view so tv evangelist could promote a trip to Israel or something...
....he was the real deal and he knew his ...stuff we shall say....
and like a post modern christian believer, one among many...he had his shit together...
as the modern phraseology likes to say....today...
before Ronald Ray-gun and before we knew the name Bill Clinton and Hillary, or even obama, and before we ever experienced a single "bushism"...
a group of us...hard working and accademically gifted students were sitting in very nice chairs, inside a very nice and parlanced modern new upper-story classrooms studying CIA field manuals on what made the mid-east such a mystery, so vital and yet so dangerous a place to try to venture a guess on what and when was to happen next...
one thing we learned after months of study and even more to come...was one simple but profound lesson...
no super power...ought to be running amok around inside these arab cultures...
and no western power will be long in keeping hope alive...
by trying to and ...whether sincere or not, in remaking such a cultural vastness into their image any time soon...or if in attempting to do so, w/o creating major serious upheavel..in the region and for our own western world
and sending, on a scale of a major earthquake-like, waves throughout the world...
the mid east is ancient, a holy land and also a divided and seriously fractured region...like a beautiful dark mysterious woman, she is tempting, to be sure...to any would be suiter..democratic inclined or not...
but she is a region, also not so easily imaged in the post WWII western notion of the world...democratic, in outward appearance or not...
oil money, super rich nations, with ambitions, military and social needs the size of texas, florida and california combined... with tribal leanings, ..all clothed with strategic significance beyond all imagination of their own size and own order in the world itself..in comparison to say rhode island or colorado...
the mid east we learned is no place to play "democracy now" games...for fun, even if your name ends in sh...for generations..and you're from texas....
even one of these small mid eastern nations, can ignite a world wide conflict that will send the markets of the entire world tumbling in an instant...
if the wrong signal or the wrong move is made within and/or towards one of them...[and they are not stupid ignorant people...]
and more and more inside their own nations...are becoming well attuned and have been for decades to the ways of the western super powers...including the western super power of eastern russia...
major world consequences can and will occur...
and its there we will begin, because, it was the invasion of afghanistan, that i began mainly my own studies and interests in this nation and part of the accademic world and the world at large in which today..we seem to inhabit and see so much of everyday on our television sets...
especially in light of what our 43 president has done... to that region and continues to attempt in the name of fighing for "democratic ideals" around the world...
its not for nothing, so many have weighed in on these policies and these latest american and western world attempts to reshape the mid east, in our better image...
an image and ideal that may think fits but in reality is no fit at all...to the cultures of the mid east and their historical struggle with modernity and a world view that largely does not include their own anymore....
it is to this region...and to these studies, and to the lessons learned by a senior studying his own accademic heart's leanings....
only to find himself...in the midst of his own nation's struggle w/ similar human strains of coping and coming to terms w/ one's regilious values and one's religous experience amidst a growing if not alway most informed nor intellectual approach to world events and a clearer understanding of the world itself...
charlie wilson's war...is about the hidden ways of one wayward congressman
on a mission...among his women...of his era in DC at the time
like charlie, ...there were christian students in earnest also reaching similar
conclusions...far far away from dc ...by not doing the things he was ...
but...studying the history, and the region and the influence of religious fundamentalism and the impact of western culture clashes combined with the influx of
oil's weath...into a ancient culture and civilization...
its a story that has to be written to be understood...
this is but a first febble attempt, in the wake of twenty or so years
and a three to four presidents, a world trade center bombing
and...a hollywood movied w/ tom hanks...
in the mix....to tell the story from the view of what twenty or so
students studied to a conclusion themselves...holed up in a nice comfortable
air conditioned classroom buidling on the then modern looking ORU campus
as ronald reagan defeated the only openly avowed born again christian of our
era....
[and only slowly...but w/ some reservations]
we began the to comprehend...fundamentalism...
did not...have limits...to the mid east...only.....
and the same or similar human need for certain and understanding of the world
would eventually lead us to where we are today....
....4500 dead american soldiers later...
and half a million dead iraqis and lots lots more on both sides
seriously maimed for life and several nations...burdened with an un-ending
almost intractable
war scenerio for decades to come...for the rest of our now not so
young lives
at least as young as we were
when..in 1980-81, we there in Tulsa, Oklahoma, began to learn of this
ancient and deeply mysterious region of the world...
from one very dorky, but approachable, white shirt born again believer who
looked and taught us...more like a
Wall Street lawyer and/or... a CIA DC consultant...which he could easily have
been...
but as one would clearly expect from a Princeton PHD ...
more so than a religious schools' propagator of the one and true christian
faith...and its own struggle with american late twentieth century
fundamentalism...
but from him....we learned the roots of religious fundamentalism and its ultra
seductive powerful political influence across not only our nation but the entire world...
Friday, August 1, 2008
Senior Year Studies At Oral Roberts University: Jimmy Carter The Christian Gives Way to Ronald Reagan
1981 Was a special and good year, not because Jimmy Carter the nations openly avowed born again president was giving way to the Hollywood B movie actor and former California governor but because we were young and falling in love....falling in love that is with far and middle eastern foreign policy studies in the middle of
a bible belt stretch of America better known for oil men, rich t.v. evangelists, wild bars and a lots of nice white folks....
a bible belt stretch of America better known for oil men, rich t.v. evangelists, wild bars and a lots of nice white folks....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
