Sullivan article

[Jon Ford]

Mike is right about the URLs. I got this fairly long article in xerox form 
at school, and I have known Sullivan's work for some years (even published a 
reprint of one of his essays in a book I edited).However, I don't agree with 
him that  the war is entirely religious, although we do have Muslim 
extremists lined up against right-wing Christians and, on the Israeli side, 
some fanatical ultra-Orthodoxers. In many ways, despite the pursuit of the 
elusive terrorist network of Bin Laden, a man without a country or even real 
estate, this is a traditional war of control and turf, if we include culture 
as part of the turf. Muslim "extremists" would like, as Middle East natives, 
to control their own land and resources. They resent some of the corrupt 
governments the US helps keep in power there, and the "cultural control" 
that comes over the US owned mass corporate media. Israelis want to control 
land, as in the case of the settlers, who have nibbled away at lands 
originally banned from further settlement by the original peace accords.On 
the other hand,  Palestinians want their land back, never accepted Israeli 
right to be there, always resented seeing them have good land and good homes 
Paelestinians had the original deeds to. The US would like more control over 
land and resources in the Middle East, where the  stability of US sponsored 
governments (and now our own domestic safety) is being menaced by the 
extremists.
Bin Laden hates the United States (in part because of the reasons just cited 
above,I'm sure),  and he whips up a great deal of religious rhetoric to 
justify and "cleanse" his horrible terrorist acts, but underneath that is 
the same old resentment of have not countries for a superpower that seems 
invulnerable, that seems to desire world hegemony and doesn't seem to listen 
or care about the poverty and ruin in many of the countries in the Middle 
East.

So it seems to me that to say the whole thing is "religious," and to evoke 
the checkered history of Muslim fanaticism, which is certainly repellent 
(although more so if seen in a vacuum, decontextualised from history and the 
struggle of control over land, food, and resources), is to avoid fuller 
thinking and to sink down to a level of theological philosophizing that can 
be self-defeating (not that it isn't important to understand Muslim 
extremism and its roots). But if the problem is seen simply as evil Muslims 
and crazed terrorist fanatics, I guess we'll have to kill them all, because 
they sure ain't gonna convert. I think this could become a kind of horrible 
scorched earth crusade against the "evil ones," and that would be horrible 
indeed. Indeed, it's already horrible enough for me.




>From: Michael Eisenstadt <michaele@ando.pair.com>
>To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
>Subject: hint as to its gist should be your mantra
>Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 11:05:37 -0500
>
>Don Laird wrote:
> >
> > Below is a very insightful explanatory model and forecast from the 
>NYTimes
> > Magazine.
>
> > >  This Is a Religious War...
>
>Don and other forwarders. This is too long a forward (Rule 22 again).
>Roger for example has acquired laudable terseness and knows how to paste
>in URLs.
>
>You praise the article in your top sentence but it would be helpful
>if you give us a hint as to its gist. Even better than posting the
>entire article to us would be to paste in its URL address.
>
>Mike the Manager
>


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp