"Every dollar the U.S. gives to prop up repressive, torture-state dictatorships in
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan makes the war longer"
Michael do you really think the Middle East would be free of repressive regimes if the United States didnt even exist? Would the Middle East be sending craft to outer space and producing life changing inventions if the United States did not exist? Would the Middle East be sending food all over the world if the United States did not exist? Would the Middle East be filled with people enjoying high standards of living and under the rule of wonderful benevolent non-corrupt torture free leaders if the United States did not exist? Get real.
Having read Michael's response to this, I want to say that I think these are VERY good questions. Only I would change the question to be if the United States and other western countries had not intervened... not that they didn't exists.
It's impossible to know how things would have been in the region if there had been no need for the oil, for example, which is the main reason that anyone in the world was interested in Middle Eastern affairs more than 100 years ago... when all of this started.
But looking at things now, and then considering just 10 years ago, 20 years ago even, I would say that the Arabs NOW are acting like a bunch rebellious teenagers, fighting against a lot of change whereas before they were drifting towards (even if unwittingly). But that's mainly social, religious and cultural change.
On the other hand, I have another unique perspective. I recently changed jobs and now work for Elsevier Publishing, in the Medical Journals division - Middle East Business Development. The idea is that Elsevier wants to be a pioneer tapping into this market. Our journal publishers (so far) are Saudi doctors, hospitals, universities and Egyptian doctors, hospitals, universities. And they're good. But better still, their drive to produce world-class medical literature is incredibly strong. They don't want to be considered part of a backwards world. They don't accept second-rate and they don't allow themselves to be second-rate. Better still, all of the bibliometric data coming in shows that the world IS starting to listen. So I have to ask myself - without intervention and influence, would this be happening? Maybe not.
It's not a simple question for a simple answer, CU4.
(I'm curious, though - perhaps I'm not up on the news, but who in the Middle East is sending craft into space?)
