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How the Arab World Came Apart
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoSo far this is good. There's a lot of depth. One nit: " Much as the United States Army and white settlers did with Indian tribes in the conquest of the American West, so the British and French and Italians proved adept at pitting these groups against one another, bestowing favors — weapons or food or sinecures — to one faction in return for fighting another. The great difference, of course, is that in the American West, the settlers stayed and the tribal system was essentially destroyed." I think it's a mistake to only back up to the end up WWI and start running the tape there. The Arab world has a rich and nuanced history full of the exact kinds of tribal tensions we see now going back hundreds of years. There's a reason the Ottomans were the way they were -- and it has nothing to do with Colonialism. There are also great parallels between what's happening with the Arab spring and what happened when other great powers consolidated their hold over the Arabs and then left. Just citing one example seems like a tremendous disservice to the history. Also the meme of "It was the Sykes–Picot Agreement" has some truth but is extremely easy to lean too much on. With this amount of verbiage being produced, I'm expecting some alternative lines of reasoning to be explored. Looking forward to more of the series! (Apologies -- looks like the entire thing is here? Wow! I've heard of long-format writing before, but this is kindle material. Tremendous amount of work here.)
- jcranmer 10y agoThe problem with blaming Sykes-Picot for everything is that almost none of the modern borders are due to that agreement (well, the Jordan-Syria border does seem to match up, but that's it). More likely a better explanation lies in the importation of the Western idea of a nation-state (that a country should be coterminus with cultural boundaries), which tends to strongly reject the idea that countries can have multiple countries, combined with the failure of the Ottoman Empire to synthesize a durable Ottoman culture. The latter failure is arguably due in large part to, you guessed it, European meddling: the Ottoman state had largely functioned, and kept peace among fractious religious sects, by keeping its Islamic nature as a core of its identity (basically being a dual Turkish-Arab state). One aspect of this was the basis that most obligations of civic duty (particularly military duty) was borne solely by Muslims, with the non-Muslims (predominantly Christians) paying an extra tax, an arrangement generally accepted by both groups. European powers considered this intolerant [1], and forced a series of capitulations on the Ottomans in part to guarantee the security of Christians (which basically leads to the Armenian Genocide). With the idea of a state centered on Islamic identity increasingly a failure, the Young Turks instead focused on a narrow, Turkish-based state, which alienated pretty much all minorities (including the Arabs) save the Kurds (their bid for nationalism started mostly post-WWI). After the Armenian Genocide, many Arabs suspected that similar treatment awaited them, but they largely kept to showing support for the regime during the exigencies of WWI. The Iraqis in occupied Mesopotamia didn't cooperate with the British (not that it saved them from retribution), for example. The Bedouin did offer support to both sides, but they were not reliable allies to either side. Only the Hashemites (who controlled Mecca and Medina) revolted, successful only due to the aid of the British, who gave them Jordan and Iraq as victory spoils (their original Kingdom of the Hejaz was conquered by the Saudis, another British ally, in the interwar period). [1] Side note: the Ottomans generally forbade the Muslims from proselytizing to the Christian groups, whereas the capitulations generally forced the Ottomans to accept Christian missionaries attempting to convert Muslims.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoThank you. Much-needed context. This rabbit hole goes down deep. Too much for HN. There's a lot of ground to cover: gates of Vienna, and the fall of Constantinople, the Second Crusade, and so on. As one can imagine, depending on where you choose to focus, you can fall back on western meddling or not. Sadly, this is the case for most arguments in the Mideast. Some things never change. Suffice it to say that we could continue. For some time. It's a mixed bag, and nobody is either entirely innocent or entirely culpable. Simplifications -- even those in comment threads like ours -- invariably give the wrong impression.
- transfire 10y agoJust ask Lawrence. Same shit, different day.
- nepotism2016 10y agoI couldn't agree more
- rublev 10y agoWho is Lawrence?
- ars 10y agoLawrence of Arabia.
- louwrentius 10y agoI haven't read the article yet but from the introduction I sense a narrative that the current situation is due to the 'illegitimate' second war in Irak? So it's Amerika's fault as usual?
- tomp 10y agoCan you come up with an alternative explanation? I mean, it's plausible (likely even) that certain events would happen even without US interventions ("Arab spring" in Tunisia and Egypt), but the overall unstability in the region seems to have been introduced by US bombs (in Iraq, Syria, Libya).
- jomamaxx 10y ago"Can you come up with an alternative explanation?" Open a history book.
- awesomerobot 10y agoLike most of modern history: America's fault most recently, but Europe's fault originally.
- mms1973 10y agoWhen Europe dominated the Middle East (and Africa), it was a pretty safe place. Certainly there was hope. Now the entire region is going down the sink. Maybe the problem instead is that Europe _LEFT_ ?
- not_a_terrorist 10y agotl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)
- berntb 10y agoThanks, will read after work. :-) It was surprising. From what I've read, people living for a long time in dictatorships are quite intolerant and hateful. (There were quite a bit of intolerance in East Germany after 1989, too. And examples from Eastern Europe are well known.) If/when the Arab world get rid of the dictators controlling the media and education gets better, they should become more "normal". Or maybe I am too liberal in assuming every culture will walk the same path as us. I doubt it. Until someone comes up with something that works better, liberal [edit: and ~ capitalist] democracy is the least bad alternative.
- pjc50 10y agoThe general public aren't all that liberal even in the liberal west. It seems to be a question of security: the more secure people feel, the more willing they are to let others do their own thing. Whereas if their own economic or security situation is bad, they're much more likely to interpret difference as threat.
- tdkl 10y agoNo, you're just naive in that a community ruled by religious narratives will suddenly jump to democracy. Look at age of enlightenment. They never had one.
- douche 10y agoThe age of enlightenment only came after a series of religious/civil wars that wracked Europe for hundreds of years, set brother against brother, depopulated and ravaged huge swatches of Germany, central Europe and France, and essentially broke the temporal power of the churches and the papacy. That's not the most pleasant blueprint to follow...
- known 10y agoTriffin dilemma. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold-story-behind-saudi-arabia-s-41-year-u-s-debt-secret http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untold...
- mms1973 10y agoI recommend to read Raphael Patai's classic "The Arab mind" to try to understand. Don't drink the NYT koolaid.
- koevet 10y agoI have checked the book out, and it seems to have attracted a fairly amount of criticism, since its publication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arab_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arab_Mind I will nevertheless read it.
- fsloth 10y agoSome sources claim the book is racist and not backed by solid research. Any opinions on this? (looking for a good book on the topic).
- jessaustin 10y agoThis one [0] is fun. Choice quote: "The best use for this volume, if any, is as a doorstop." [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/24/worlddispatch.usa https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/24/worlddispatch....
- TeMPOraL 10y ago> Some sources claim the book is racist Funny thing - given how easy it is to get an "racist" label these days, I'd treat this as a signal that the book may be touching on some controversial topics or reaching unpopular conclusions.
- fsloth 10y agoFunny, I get the exact opposite vibes. Given how crackpot racism has a strong historical background it's very hard not to treat it as a signal of being a produce of crackpot racism. "Race" does not explain anything - although, many people would love it to because that would make it easier to comprehend the world. There is very dark history of this in european pseudoscience. There is far more genetic variation in average within population groups of same 'race' as there are between 'races'. There are cultures with obviously harmful practices - take female circumsision for example - but to the way to respond to those is to make it clear it is not acceptable, and not to use it as an example of the barbarism of individuals belonging to the culture in question. There are wide variations in cultural sensibilities, and actual painpoints between interactions of populations. There are well known, and actually difficult problems to solve. Adding crackpot theories to the mix based on opinion and imagination does not really help the world to evolve.
- sevenless 10y agoThe NYTimes itself is also a considerable part of the reason, considering Judith Miller, Friedman, Krauthammer and many others propagandized hard for invading Iraq.
- pmyjavec 10y agoOh, the irony of this being published in the New York Times, it burns!
- nl 10y agoThe invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea, and the NYTimes should be ashamed for that. But the real problems occurred in the disastrous power vacuum and complete lack of a plan that occurred after the war was won. That's what tore Iraq and the Middle East apart. I don't think the NYTimes has any responsibility for that.
- bogomipz 10y agoIndeed. I can't recommend this Frontline piece highly enough - "Losing Iraq". Its practically a case book study on the missteps that took place under the leadership of Paul Bremmer a Kissinger associate and who was chosen to lead the CPA - Coalition Provisional Authority(the transition government) after the US took Baghdad. Bremmer knew nothing of Iraqi politics and was only briefed on them on the flight to Baghdad. The largest mistake was his decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army, followed closely by the de-Baathification of the government in country that only has a single political party - the Baath Party. Bremmer had near autonomy in his decision making. This is perhaps one of the best pieces I have seen on the subject: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/losing-iraq/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/losing-iraq/
- brassic 10y ago"Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone" is an excellent book on the same topic. What is most staggering (to a foreigner like me anyway) is how the appointment of American administrators in Iraq was entirely driven by American politics. Experience and competence were of no importance. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Baghdads/dp/0747592896 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Baghdads...
- jomamaxx 10y agoHa ha ha ... ha ... The 'Arab World' was never together. Ever. All of the 'Anti-American Imperialism' kids here should remember that the bulk of the 'Arab World' is 'Arab By The Sword'. Arabic is spoken across North Africa, in particular because of Arab Colonialism of the 9th-12th centuries. Not since then has the 'Arab World' been anything resembling 'together'. The Turks kept them (and there was not much of them) under the thumb, after that the Europeans tried to maintain some degree of balance, now the Americans. The most recent and damaging decision by the US was Obama's withdrawl of troops in Iraq. Of course, invading in the first place - but Obama simply by virtue of having 10K soldiers sitting on a base 'behind the wire' doing nothing, could have kept forcing Malaki to play nice with the Sunnis. The moment Obama withdrew, Malaki purged Iraq of Sunnis, and the Sunni tribes decided that ISIS was 'less worse' than their own government and there you have it. As far as Syria ... this is a function of the 'Arab Spring' more than anything, and I don't think anyone can say anyone else is directly responsible for that. Other than the standard: Assad, Saudis, Iran etc... Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down.
- jomamaxx 10y agoDidn't finish that sentence: 'of course invading Iraq was a huge mistake' ...
- icebraining 10y agoI'm still surprised at how people let them off with "a mistake". Cheney himself detailed very clearly what would happen, just a few years back. How can it be a mistake when you predict that some action will have a certain consequence, you do the action, and you're right in your prediction? https://archive.org/details/youtube-6BEsZMvrq-I https://archive.org/details/youtube-6BEsZMvrq-I
- reitoei 10y ago> Once things stabilize in Syria, maybe things can start to settle down. OT, but do you see this happening soon? The only way it seems that Syria can stabilize is for the regime to retake control. That's beginning to look like the most likely outcome. Could there ever be a path back to pre-Spring peace? Anything is better than what they have now :(
- ishener 10y agotl:dr
- Hortinstein 10y agoI really hope this gets put into a podcast/audio format, would love to ingest it on a commute
- return0 10y agoLong piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built as western protectorates, their history should not be a good guide for their future. Clearly the approach to colonialism/interventionism that the US takes is a failure, compared to the colonialism of the British for example (e.g. Jordan). The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states. Their only hope for peace is long-term economic prosperity and transition to secularism. Until then, tyranny worked. This piece may be fun to get through your flight, but it should offer a holistic perspective.
- douche 10y agoBefore they were western protectorates, they were Ottoman protectorates. It's been a mess for a long, long time. Once the oil runs out, or we move beyond oil, the whole region will be relegated to the kind of backwater it became after the advent of world-wide oceanic shipping in the age of sail and the overland trade routes were superseded.
- crdoconnor 10y agoOnce the oil stops being important (Just Another Commodity like, e.g. iron ore), life will probably improve for citizens of the middle east: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse We'll stop meddling and making things worse. The leaders of those countries won't be able to substitute oil wealth for popular support or funnel money into pushing Wahhabism. It's the best thing that could happen to them.
- cstross 10y agoIt's the best thing that could happen to them. ... In the long term. In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed, as the sole source of foreign exchange goes away and the ordinary folks find themselves abandoned in a climate-change-drought-crippled land that has become populated well above its agricultural carrying capacity, and the elite jets off to enjoy their stolen wealth in Switzerland.
- giis 10y agoJust last week, I watched this documentary called "Saudi Arabia Uncovered" to understand its current state. Its on youtube.
- anonu 10y agoYes - its quite well done. It is a PBS Frontline Documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/saudi-arabia-uncovered/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/saudi-arabia-uncovere.... Also, more salient to the NYT article, I would strongly suggest http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-secret-history-of-isis/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-secret-history-of... . The synposis on the latter is: The Bush Administration was so intent on proving the existence of WMD's in Iraq that they inadvertently gave power to what was soon to be ISIS.
- acqq 10y agoAlso worth seeing is "Why We Did It" - The Invasion of Iraq.
- anonu 10y agoMy view on the Middle East: it has been a playground for the powers of the world to muck around. The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end WWI allowed the region to be carved up between the French and the British. Secret agreements like Sykes-Picot cemented borders that should never have been there. After WWII a considerable amount of support was put behind Israel (and rightly so). However, the ongoing conflict and lack of a 2-state solution to this day continues to be a rallying call for millions of Arabs against the West. To keep the Arabs in check - the West continuously undermines their governments (which may be led by strongmen - but this is better than the alternative which we have seen). In addition, the West assumes it understands the intricate complexities of the demographics on the ground. Mucking around only exacerbates the problems.
- alanwatts 10y agoPretty accurate description for the last 100 years. But this fighting has been going on for thousands of years between the 3 Abrahamic religions, perpetually fighting over the Holy Land and between their own respective sects.
- pm90 10y agoAnd even before that: the epic Roman-Persian and Greco-Persian wars.
- dd9990 10y ago>After WWII a considerable amount of support was put behind Israel (and rightly so). I'm guessing those who lost their families and homes at gunpoint would disagree with that being "right". Each intervention creates more victims, it's just that some are more easily written out of history.
- Salamat 10y agoThis is just another propaganda piece to obscure what is really happening.To make sure that no Arab spring takes place, the US has sold all its allies all the weapons they might need to crush any opposition to their fiefdoms. The New York Times never explains to us who those moderate rebels are. "The alliance says it is fighting “terrorists,” a name it uses for all of Mr. Assad’s foes, from the extremists of the Islamic State to more moderate rebels who came out of the Arab Spring protest movement against his rule." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/syrian-forces-and-russian-jets-attack-rebel-held-towns.html?ref=todayspaper http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/syrian-fo... "Donald Trump Praises Dictators, But Hillary Clinton Befriends Them" "Clinton has described former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and his wife as “friends of my family.” Mubarak ruled Egypt under a perpetual “state of emergency” rule that involved disappearing and torturing dissidents, police killings, and persecution of LGBT people. The U.S. gave Mubarak $1.3 billion in military aid per year, and when Arab Spring protests threatened his grip on power, Clinton warned the administration not to “push a longtime partner out the door,” according to her book Hard Choices. After Arab Spring protests unseated Mubarak and led to democratic elections, the Egyptian military, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, staged a coup. El-Sisi suspended the country’s 2012 Constitution, appointed officials from the former dictatorship, and moved to silence opposition. Sisi traveled to the U.S. in 2014 and met with Clinton and her husband, posing for a photo. The Obama administration last year lifted a hold on the transfer of weapons and cash to el-Sisi’s government....Egypt is far from the only military dictatorship that Clinton has supported. During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton approved tens of billions of dollars of weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia – including fighter jets now being used to bomb Yemen. Clinton played a central role in legitimizing a 2009 military coup in Honduras, and once called Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad a “reformer.” And in return for approving arms deals to gulf state monarchies, Clinton accepted tens of millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton has also boasted about receiving advice from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was notorious for his support of dictators. According to records from the National Security Archive, Kissinger oversaw a plot to assassinate the Chilean President Salvador Allende and install the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet."
- swalsh 10y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph: Though not required by the syntax of any language, paragraphs are usually an expected part of formal writing, used to organize longer prose.
- susi22 10y agoSlightly off topic: Clicking "Simplify Page" on the google chrome printing dialog makes this a fantastic formatted PDF. I'm impressed (be it Chrome's doing or NYT's).
- awqrre 10y agoReader view in Firefox looks better the original layout too.
- bogomipz 10y ago"The Arab World" - What does that even mean? Arab is a language distinction, a language of which there are many dialects. As Arabic is spoken from Western Sahara all the way east to Oman that pretty much disqualifies Arab World from having geographical significance. Arab also does not denote religious faith as there are Arab Jews, Arab Christians(Coptic) and of course Arab Muslims. There was once briefly a concept of Pan-Arabism but that died when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970. Does a Muslim Arabic speaker from Morocco really have any sense of kinship with an Arabic Christian(a Coptic) from Egypt? I am going to say probably not. Probably not any more than two Slavic language speakers in different parts of Europe do. Have the Saudis taken in any Arab refugee "brothers" from Syria and Iraq? No. Have the Arab Emirates? Again no. So what is this "Arab World" that the NYTimes and the rest of the media are so fond of using as a point of reference? Countries carved up as part of the Sykes Picot agreement? Can they not come up with a more meaningful distinction? This matters.
- ZoeZoeBee 10y agoI'm not sure where you get the idea that Pan-Arabia died with Nasser in 1970. The main reason the US kept on Saddam was his stated intention of Pan-Arabia >'We don't look on this piece of land here in Iraq as the ultimate limit of our struggle,'' he told a group of visiting Iraqi ambassadors in 1975. ''It is part of a larger area and broader aims: the area of the Arab homeland and the aims of the Arab struggle.'' After a coup attempt against him five years later, he called Iraq's political struggle a ''revolution which aims to destroy the bases of imperialism, to shine over the whole Arab world to make it a new power on the world scene.'' And only a few months before Mr. Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, Mr. Hussein unveiled an ambitious pan-Arab charter for the decade, rejecting any superpower military presence in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean and charting a course of regional nonalignment. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/05/international/05HUSS.html http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/05/international/05HUSS.html http://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0802/02011.html http://www.csmonitor.com/1991/0802/02011.html >In their view a confrontation with the West - at least a political one - was unavoidable, in light of Saddam's attempt to lead the Arab world. Saddam's pan-Arab ambitions have been clear since the late 1970s, when Iraq led the so-called rejectionist front against Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Iraq also controlled many Baathist organizations in Arab countries and saw itself as the capital of Arab revolution against "pro-Western reactionary regimes." But the war with Iran forced Iraq to seek money and political support from Arab nations and put a stop to supporting opposition parties in other states. After the war, however, the Iraqi leadership renewed its bid to lead the Arab world.
- pipio21 10y agoFor me it is extremely simple: They have an extraordinary amount of oil:Iraq,Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, natural gas: Libya,Iran or they are in the middle of strategic places to build oil ducts: Syria, Afghanistan. http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg http://www.energybc.ca/images/profiles/oil/reserves.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g... The West needs much more energy that what they have. They have industry and without energy their society will collapse. Anything else is secondary. Most of those places are desert, and have not enough technology to protect themselves from Western (or Eastern)plundering. Those countries can only life in peace as protectorates from powerful industrialized countries, like Saudi Arabia(de facto protectorate of USA, its oil can only be paid in USD), or Iran(protectorate of Russia and China) or Syria(Russia). Libya itself had a lot of Chinese civilian presence, but not military. So UK, USA and France thought it was going to be easy to take the country by force, like they did. They also tried with Syria, but Russia had an army there. They tried hard, remember Assad having chemical weapons so the West needed to "save" and "free" the country? Putin reacted fast to that. The need of creating a fly exclusion zone(prior to the invasion, like in Libya), again Putin reacted faster sending his own airplanes.
- pipio21 10y agoOne of the most interesting things traveling to African countries is lots of locals considering oil a curse. There is a great relationship between having huge resources and war, violence and crime. The countries in Africa with less resources are the richest ones, because they had peace for a long time. War destroys any wealth people have and give it to a few guys. It also destroys al civilization and social structures.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago> One of the most interesting things traveling to African countries is lots of locals considering oil a curse. Don't see any of them in a rush to give up their 'curse'.
- nickik 10y ago
- punnerud 10y agoTo get pictures in the article, remove the last part of the url: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-middle-east-arab-spring-fractured-lands.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-...
- Cyph0n 10y agoIt's fun to see the armchair historians and political theorists pop up. HN is becoming more like Reddit by the day. Stick to discussing technology guys ;)
- 6stringmerc 10y agoHow did it come apart? Almost exactly like Dick Cheney thought it would 20 years before cheering for the invasion. From an episode of Meet The Press in 2014[1]: CHUCK TODD: All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look. DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE): That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of Eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds. And the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-december-14-2014-n268181 http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-...
- freewizard 10y agoThis video I guess? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I
- webXL 10y agoEerie he's so prescient there. If only youtube was a thing then we could have all been sending this around. To give backers of the war the benefit of the doubt, a whole lot of shit changed after that video. Hindsight is 20/20 and we can't back test strategies like the stock market. It would be nice if we could.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoHoping this is phrased well by me, but I'm fairly certain some brief dives into historical tales of power dynamics will show that deposing an entrenched "Strong Man" leader results in a power vacuum, which can be filled by another of the same tactic, or, in the case of the region in discussion, a quagmire of sorts. I know an Army Captain (since Middle School), Psy Ops I'm pretty sure, and his experience on the ground in Iraq was that the local populations had no conception of how to function without the Strong Man. Essentially, for most all of their lives, the process was "Saddam says this, we do this," so concepts of self-governance were extremely foreign and somewhat troubling. Anecdote for sure, just hope it fits with our subject!
- nowey 10y agoI think even farther back with the overthrow of the Shah in Iran it started
- d23 10y agoI wish long form, informative articles like this had a way to donate a small amount of money to show appreciation. I don't read any particular news outlet enough to get an exclusive subscription with them, but I'd love to reward them for good individual pieces.
- clydethefrog 10y agoBlendle is exactly like that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hedonistbot 10y agoThis piece was a huge waste of time. Following the personal stories of a number of individuals in most of the Middle East countries does not give any information to the reader about any of the geopolitics or power plays in the region. It just leaves the reader confused and depressed that nothing can be done and we should probably leave this matters to people more knowledgeable. Is this some new form of journalism. And to see this in a NYT publication... Also NY Times has so much *to answer for in their coverage of the events that it kind of make sense that they are avoiding any real analysis of the issues.
- hedonistbot 10y agoTo expend further - not a single mention of Saudi Arabia as a major actor and sponsor of radical Islam (Wahhabism), Israel is mentioned in passing and Turkey is only mentioned as an emigration destination and a "porous" border, not a major actor with huge interest and ambition in the region. Full disclosure: I stopped reading after part 2 and searched for the relevant actors and that's what I found. Correct me if I've missed some hidden gem of insight from the NYT "journos".
- 6stringmerc 10y agoAs much as I respect the NY Times, I still have trouble reconciling why they give space to Brooks & Friedman, who are both increasingly out of touch, hackish, and self-interested to the point of combining their forces to snatch away gobs of credibility and flush them down the proverbial toilet.