Bill
05-17-2007, 03:12 PM
You folks probably don't know who Edward Luttwak is...
But, when I was a young teenager, I shoplifted his most famous book, "Coup De'Tat - a Practical Handbook", and read it over and over. I still have that tattered paperback.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat:_A_Practical_Handbook
His latest article about American and European misunderstanding and HUGE exaggeration of the middle east threat was just as brilliant as Coup De'Tat.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9302
One of my biggest and most important objections to the way the right wing keeps calling this business with the terrorists WWW3, is that I can't believe they are dumb enough to believe a world war can be fought with a bunch of ignorant savages who don't even have a SINGLE weapons manufacturing capacity.
And don't tell me about car bombs and suicide belts - that's a damn CRAFT, not manufacturing, each and every one of those devices is hand-built in a shop whose most sophisticated tool is an old-fashioned drill press. They are building these things with technology that would be completely familiar to pre-WW1, pre automobile blacksmiths.
Their most sophisticated weapons are handmade rockets with a range of a few miles and a small and unreliable warhead.
Without managing to steal some of our weapons and explosives, all they can hurt is each other.
So calling this "a global conflict" is nonsense. There can be only one purpose in calling it that, and that is to create false fears.
Some great paragrapghs from the article:
---
"The third and greatest error repeated by middle east experts of all persuasions, by Arabophiles and Arabophobes alike, by Turcologists and by Iranists, is also the simplest to define. It is the very odd belief that these ancient nations are highly malleable. Hardliners keep suggesting that with a bit of well-aimed violence ("the Arabs only understand force") compliance will be obtained. But what happens every time is an increase in hostility; defeat is followed not by collaboration, but by sullen non-cooperation and active resistance too. It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behaviour.
Softliners make exactly the same mistake in reverse. They keep arguing that if only this or that concession were made, if only their policies were followed through to the end and respect shown, or simulated, hostility would cease and a warm Mediterranean amity would emerge. Yet even the most thinly qualified of middle east experts must know that Islam, as with any other civilisation, comprehends the sum total of human life, and that unlike some others it promises superiority in all things for its believers, so that the scientific and technological and cultural backwardness of the lands of Islam generates a constantly renewed sense of humiliation and of civilisational defeat. That fully explains the ubiquity of Muslim violence, and reveals the futility of the palliatives urged by the softliners."
---
"That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.
Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.
The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.
Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.
But, when I was a young teenager, I shoplifted his most famous book, "Coup De'Tat - a Practical Handbook", and read it over and over. I still have that tattered paperback.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat:_A_Practical_Handbook
His latest article about American and European misunderstanding and HUGE exaggeration of the middle east threat was just as brilliant as Coup De'Tat.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9302
One of my biggest and most important objections to the way the right wing keeps calling this business with the terrorists WWW3, is that I can't believe they are dumb enough to believe a world war can be fought with a bunch of ignorant savages who don't even have a SINGLE weapons manufacturing capacity.
And don't tell me about car bombs and suicide belts - that's a damn CRAFT, not manufacturing, each and every one of those devices is hand-built in a shop whose most sophisticated tool is an old-fashioned drill press. They are building these things with technology that would be completely familiar to pre-WW1, pre automobile blacksmiths.
Their most sophisticated weapons are handmade rockets with a range of a few miles and a small and unreliable warhead.
Without managing to steal some of our weapons and explosives, all they can hurt is each other.
So calling this "a global conflict" is nonsense. There can be only one purpose in calling it that, and that is to create false fears.
Some great paragrapghs from the article:
---
"The third and greatest error repeated by middle east experts of all persuasions, by Arabophiles and Arabophobes alike, by Turcologists and by Iranists, is also the simplest to define. It is the very odd belief that these ancient nations are highly malleable. Hardliners keep suggesting that with a bit of well-aimed violence ("the Arabs only understand force") compliance will be obtained. But what happens every time is an increase in hostility; defeat is followed not by collaboration, but by sullen non-cooperation and active resistance too. It is not hard to defeat Arab countries, but it is mostly useless. Violence can work to destroy dangerous weapons but not to induce desired changes in behaviour.
Softliners make exactly the same mistake in reverse. They keep arguing that if only this or that concession were made, if only their policies were followed through to the end and respect shown, or simulated, hostility would cease and a warm Mediterranean amity would emerge. Yet even the most thinly qualified of middle east experts must know that Islam, as with any other civilisation, comprehends the sum total of human life, and that unlike some others it promises superiority in all things for its believers, so that the scientific and technological and cultural backwardness of the lands of Islam generates a constantly renewed sense of humiliation and of civilisational defeat. That fully explains the ubiquity of Muslim violence, and reveals the futility of the palliatives urged by the softliners."
---
"That brings us to the mistake that the rest of us make. We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.
Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.
The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.
Unless compelled by immediate danger, we should therefore focus on the old and new lands of creation in Europe and America, in India and east Asia—places where hard-working populations are looking ahead instead of dreaming of the past.