h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And while the peasantry has always been dispensable (in the eyes of power) it wasn't until the rise of the Industrial Revolution and scientific management that workers--skilled craftsmen--became so too.

I really don't agree with you two about Taylor - you're confusing a craft-based industry with the kind of volume commodity industry that underpins a national economic infrastructure. With the latter type (like steel) you just have to be efficient and competitive or you get blown away by developing economies. This means, essentially, that you have to do it with half the men they do, period. Protectionism is no answer for US steel, which is where it is because it lost the plot as regards prosecuting Taylor's legacy. And don't let anyone tell you that steel has or needs an abundance of craftsmen, or indeed ever did...blah, blah...

Then again, the Weddell has recently declared herself Very Bored Indeed by this same subject, and there's much more interesting other stuff happening today. Blair has just carried a Parliamentary vote on Iraq, although the motion was practically unintelligible. Earlier today, the much-trailed "Dossier" was published, to resounding cries of "but we knew that already".

Blair has a difficult position. As long as the UN produces a robust declaration, sanctioning military action if Saddam cheats, then the worst Blair has to face is the (not inconsiderable) risk to British forces. If the UN pussies around, though, and if the US then mobilises alone, then Blair looks bad either way. He will either be Bush's puppet in European eyes or no better than the rest of Europe in American ones.

There were the first signs of some interesting advice from inside Whitehall today, too. The inference was that Bush is losing it, and that Blair's best tactic was rhetoric against Saddam, berating of the UN for weakness, but a clear promise that only a UN agreement would allow British forces to be deployed. This is presumably based on a belief that, in the long run, the US itself will see that as the reasoned and reasonable stance of an honest ally. There were also some fairly direct "get Israel in line, George" messages that probably won't play too well in Washington.

I guess Tone got special dispensation to put his arm round Gerhard Schroeder this lunchtime.

The next few days are going to be interesting, and not just because of the Ryder Cup...

What Israel is doing in Ramallah is beyond the pale. I cannot believe that the rest of the civilized world is sitting back letting it happen! At this point, I'm all for going in and doing something to Israel, myself. What about a UN peacekeeping force on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank? Then, if Saddam does strike Israel, which he keeps threatening to do, we go in and kick everyone's butt all at once.

Personally, I say "go Isreal". If I lived there I would be wholeheartedly supporting any action against the current Palestinian regime, which says it supports peace, yet gives the green light and a little wink, wink, nudge, nudge to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

Okay, I give you the fact that Arafat isn't the most up-and-up guy. But that doesn't mean that ordinary Palestinians should be locked up at night, or forced to live behind barbed wire, and suffer for what their leaders do. How do we solve the incessant vicious circle created by Israel's occupation of the West Bank? It wasn't theirs, it was war booty. And the Golan Heights? Why should the UN allow Israel to violate its charter? The instant Iraq went into Kuwait, we were all over that like a wet blanket, yet Israel has held both the Golan Heights and the West bank, in violation of international treaties, since the late 1960s, and no one says "boo" for fear of being thought a nazi!

The Palestinian regime is equivocal and weak, for sure. But isn't that a consequence of an Israeli regime that's intransigent and brutal?
About the only thing that can ultimately save Israel is widespread sympathy, and Sharon (like some of his predecessors) doesn't encourage much of that.
I can't help feeling that Israel is now fuelling the violence of its own demise. It's tragic, and it's going to create years of turmoil, but it will surely happen.

I think you might be onto something there, Pinniped. Israel really should consider whether its totalitarian stance viz Palestine is in their best interest, given that everyone else in the region would be happy for any excuse to annihilate them.

Boy, if we're going to start demanding that nations return lands conquered through force, then that would start a chain reaction that would change the boundary of just about every nation on earth. The boundaries of the Middle East are arbitrary lines anyway--what's the use of fighting over divisions that never existed historically?

I'm not going to condone Israel's human rights violations, but do you honestly, *honestly* think that if Sharon and the Knesset gave the Palestinian Authority everything they wanted in terms of land that these problems would cease? Israel's neighbors will not be happy until the nation is annihilated from the face of the earth. I don't think they should capitulate when it comes to their security. I'm sorry. And, let's face it, the threat to Jewish settlers does not come from Palestinian leaders--it comes from the rank and file, the "ordinary" people. Hamas and Islamic Jihad recruit young boys and girls to do their dirty work, young adults who can blend into a crowd and thus do the most damage with the bombs strapped to their bodies.

Okay, but could they at least agree to the borders as set up in 1948?

I think Palestinian terrorists are created by the conditions in which they live. Their older siblings, fathers and mothers are killed by the Israeli military, and of course it's easier for Hamas to recruit them! It's a self-perpetuating cycle that won't end until Arafat is dead (because no one will oppose him), and Sharon is out of office. Do I honestly think that Israel capitualiting to all of Palestine's demands will solve the whole thing? Of course not. But Israel has to realize that it plays a part in its own destruction. And the Palestinian people have to be allowed to maintain some sort of dignity. It's rather a chicken and the egg question, which came first, the Palestinian terrorists, or the inhumane conditions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip?

A man I know, an Arab whose parents live in Old City Jerusalem, thinks its really up to the Israeli government to make a little, almost symbolic, gesture. Like allowing Arabs with no ties to terrorist groups to move from one side of Jerusalem to the other without having to present identity papers at multiple checkpoints, and thus, allowing them human dignity.

Israel : I'm not trying to make a moral point here - I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to judge right and wrong. I'm making pragmatic points about what seems likely to happen.
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Probably true of several Arab countries. So what is Israel to do?

First - what it is doing : acting in a manner which is inflammatory to most world opinion, allowing Arafat et al to project themselves as the wronged party. Relying on the US to neutralise UN indignance, and to keep up the threat of military retaliation if any enemy state interferes in Israel.

The US isn't going to be able to keep this up, though. For starters, Bush needs at least the acquiescence of Israel's enemies to prosecute his war on terror. That's going to mean compromise.
Economically if not politically, reconciliation with the Arab world would do the US a lot more good than taking the side of Israel.
More fundamentally, electoral expediency may start to spoil the once-unquestioned "Look after Israel" reflex. Sharon doesn't look good in the US either. As has already been pointed out in this thread, the US's natural foreign policy is fairly isolationist. Memories of Vietnam, the horrors and indignities of becoming embroiled in unwinnable wars, are still fresh, and are moreover being reinforced by post-9/11 experiences and perceptions.

If the State of Israel finds itself facing invasion and dissolution, the whole world, including the US, might just shrug and say "Sorry, guys. You brought this on yourselves".

So what choice has Israel got, other than to seek compromise and reconciliation, sue for peace and rely on the goodwill and sympathy of the whole world to ultimately protect the core of their State?

To go down in flames, it seems. And no Blaze of Glory, either.

Ah, but that excludes the trump card of the Holocaust. I'm not saying that anyone has presented it yet, and in a few years, no one in Israel will be able to say they lived through it, but it hangs like a spector (er?!) in the background. Israel can do whatever it damned well pleases, because so many of its citizens have been through such traumatic experiences.

Mind you, I think its emotional blackmail, but the whole "if you're against Israel, you must hate Jews" thing has kept plenty of world leaders in check.

Hi MR

Presumably you see the Holocaust as a guarantee of American sympathy?

The reasons why that may not always be valid, include :
- No real relevance to the current situation
- Israel, of all nations, should have learned the price of intolerance (in other words, the Holocaust experience really should be a factor in influencing Israel to act in the peace-seeking way I described)
- Significant Jewry, based in the West and able to form opinion on this issue, are themselves sceptical about Sharon and Israel's current stance. Perhaps it's these still-itinerant Jews, the ones who speak most directly to Western media, who we are tempted to perceive as the "rightful" victims of the Holocaust
- There is, sadly, such a thing as Horror Fatigue. America has it's own terrible images now, and they relate to a world far more immediate and personal. CNN weren't at Auschwitz.

You may be right; the Holocaust legacy may be a factor in extending Israel's hand. But I don't think it will ultimately change the scenario I described, except by delaying it.

Pin

(If you're sceptical about the third point, then let me plead Britishness. There's an additional factor in the British perception of Israel that reinforces this idea that the "good Jews are still in Europe". This is a tendency to characterise recent Israeli politicians as former terrorist/bandits who shot and bombed British troops in Palestine in the late 40s)

I think you're right, that the perception of Israel is changing, but there will always be those who see the country as the underdog, and thus, push its interests even when those interests are antithetical to the way in which the rest of the region operates.

And you may be right about the "Horror Fatigue."

But perhaps I need to make it clearer. In the past, the fear of being seen as anti-semitic kept many world leaders from criticizing Israel's policies. That fear, as you so rightly pointed out, is no longer relevant, mostly because Israel has overused it. There can only be so much sympathy for a country that seems bound and determined to annihilate the Palestinians, even if it costs them their own country.

Yes, suicide bombers are bad. No, I don't condone what Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups are doing. But if israel wanted to wipe itself off the face of the earth, it's doing a really good job of getting there. At some point, someone, or some group, has to tell Sharon and the other hardliners that their policies are only going to make things worse. What is needed is a regional peace treaty. And I think it is possible, as long as Israel accepts that it has contributed to its own bad image in the Middle East (the 6 day war, etc).

Why? Because if Egypt can come to an agreement, than so can Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Turkey. I don't know if you could get Iran to the table, and Lebanon (unless the Golan Heights are returned), Iraq, and Syria are probably not going to show. But the Sauds have great influence over the region, and if they agree to some sort of brokered peace, then other, smaller countries will fall in line.

But the Israeli persecution (and that's what it is) of the Palestinian people as a whole (yes, by all means, punish those responsible for terrorist acts) must stop before any of this can be achieved. Of course, on the Palestinian side, they have to be willing to either turn over, or prosecute fairly, anyone committing terrorist actions, and to agree that Arafat, while beloved, is perhaps not the best person to lead them.

This is quoted directly from Reuters. The Israelis launched two missles into a town on the Gaza Strip, and this is their reason:

"The air strike occurred as the Israeli government defended its week-long siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's headquarters against world criticism, saying it was preventing an increase in Palestinian violence planned in anticipation of a U.S. campaign against Baghdad."

The (il)logic here astounds me. I leave it to you to figure out just how many layers of double-talk are imbedded in this sentence.

Egypt *did* come to the table to negotiate peace with Israel and look what happened: Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic hard-liners in his own country. It would be great if Isreal stopped its incursions into Palestinian homes and territory and if the nations of the Middle East could come together to begin a lasting peace process. After all, I don't think Israel is *really* going to disappear anytime soon (unless, of course, Bush attacks Baghdad, Saddam fires missiles at Tel Aviv, and the whole region erupts--yet another reason for the US not to attact Iraq) so it's important and inevitable for Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, and Jews to resolve their differences. But I don't think that's going to happen as long as leaders in the Middle East pander and cower before Islamic fundamentalist groups. They're the real problem here. Personally, I think anytime religion rears its head, common sense and decency fly out the window. And that goes for any religion, not just Islam. If it wasn't for the hard-line right-wing Christian fundamentalists in this country a lot of the push for war with Iraq would cease.

And, Pin, the US stopped having an isolationist stance long ago. The Monroe Doctrine, from very early in the 19th Century, declared our interest in the goings-on of other nations in the Western Hemisphere. After the Spanish-American war, our sphere of influence expanded across the oceans. Yes, we've had many politicians and talking heads who would like us to shrink back in our shell, but once we set up CIA-sponsored regimes in Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, and most notably Chile in 1973, we lost any resemblance to a turtle.

Interesting example, FG. Didn't the Monroe Doctrine have an isolationist slant itself, though? Self-proclamation as protector of the Americas from European avarice doesn't sound to have very broad horizons from this side of the pond. Or do we teach it wrong over here?

Look, I don't mean to criticise US isolationism, but it is a fact; face it. As has already been said, it was part of the point of creating the nation, to throw off the European yoke. And did the US really lay claim to a world-wide "sphere of influence" before the end of WWII? I've never believed it did, and moreover (for a country as strong as it had by then become), many would consider the US's restraint to be exemplary.

Part of the reason that the current advocacy of war in Iraq is so scary is that it's out of character. Historically, the US has been slow to anger, measured in its reaction. The examples I can bring to mind of its neglect of those principles are all recent, and all disastrous.
The worst of the terrible legacies of 9/11 might be that reckless adventure abroad will assure electoral success at home. You know the film "Wag the Dog", I guess? I used to think it was funny.

Um, Pin, the US has often jumped all over situations, but thanks to the fiasco of Vietnam, we've done them all covertly. All those regime changes in the South and Central America in the 1970s and 80s? Courtesy of the CIA.

And I still firmly believe that Ronald Reagan made a deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages until he was president. There's no other explaination for why the Iran hostage situation happened like it did.

We're sneaky, the US is.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant. Recent adventurism. The last thirty years = recent. No?
I suppose I sound pretty uninformed sometimes, but a main point of this Convo as far as I'm concerned is to give you guys a feel for how the US is portrayed in Britain. What I know of the US is a combination of my own impressions as a visitor with the perspective of a British upbringing + what's presented in the British press.
Before I ever went to the US, I was taught at school that the US was a nation founded on its rejection of British colonialism, and which therefore took an isolationist stance on principle. The irony for Britain (and Europe) said the history teacher, was that the former colonial masters would become reliant on the former colony first for trade and ultimately for military salvation.
I never came across anything to make me either doubt this, or see wrong in it. My early times in the US revealed a people with self-confidence and general disinterest in Europe, but I saw nothing wrong in that either. What could be wrong in seeing your own nation as centre of the world when it IS centre of the world?
My more recent visits (particularly the most recent, in Feb/Mar 2002) suggested a significant loss in self-confidence and a sudden 'recognition' that the US had to engage in world affairs in order to protect itself.
I seriously doubt the wisdom of this new 'view', that's all. That's the central point of what I'm trying to say. Whether or not Central American adventurism was the beginning of the rot, the US ultimately serves its own interests best by relative isolationism. If the Rest of the World fails to appreciate US engagement (and most of it does so fail), then maybe the US did ought to pull back, tend its own patch and leave the Old World to contemplate its folly for a while.
(Do let me know if I'm just being a pain. I'm keen to let you know what Europe sees in US history and/or current politics, that's all. It interests me and I thought it might help you)
Yeah?
Pin

You're not being a pain, dear.

I completely agree that the US is best served by a sort of mitigated isolationism. But I think some of that isolationism has been shed not so much because of 9/11, but in spite of it. What al-Qaeda wanted was for us to withdraw, tighten our borders, and get the hell out of the Middle East (yet again, evidence that those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it...didn't they think about what we did to Japan after Pearl Harbor?!).

I don't know if the US *can* pull back any longer. But yes, there is something to be said for an object lesson. Europe, for a long time now, has relied heavily on the US to police the world, while it floated along policing itself (and none too well...IRA, the Basque sepratists, Italian politics...). For all of the lashing out at US imperialism, the question remains why is the US the police force of the world?

I think it's because of WWII. Europe was badly damaged, and sorely wounded, and pulled back to lick its wounds, leaving a huge gap in global politics and security. The US, despite having lost many men and not a little of its faith, was still in far better shape than Europe (mostly because its infrastructure was still intact), and stepped into that gap. The problem is that once Europe recovered, we found ourselves held in that role while other countries used their resources much more wisely (German engineering, anyone?), and managed to rebuild itself quite well.

The problem is, the US never got completely off the wartime economy train. We still rely much too heavily on cranking up the economy by finding some conflict to resolve/mediate. Bosnia, Somalia...and Iraq. Don't you find it a little suspicious that Saddam Hussein has been defying weapons inspectors for over 10 years, and until now, the US has done nothing? And no, it isn't just because Clinton was in office. The economy was going well, bouyed by technology stocks, etc. When the tech stocks failed, and Enron and other big companies went belly up, suddenly Iraq seemed like the thing to do.

What I don't think Shrub realizes is that people are on to this scheme, and most of us don't give two figs about Iraq, except in a vague way. We are more concerned with the fact that 1.4 million more Americans went without health insurance last year than in 2001. We care about the quality of our lives, and until it affects us in our wallets, we don't much care...(now, that's not saying that no one cares, otherwise we would not be having this conversation).

The people who "suddenly" recognize that we need to engage in world affairs are those who don't know that we have been engaged, just not in an overt manner.

And on this side of the pond, there is increasing frustration that no one else seems to care, either.

I do believe it's *us* Pin who are being the pain, not you. It's nice that you have such a rosy picture of the US. I know that MR and I certainly appreciate it after being involved in other forums on h2g2 where researchers who know neither world history or geography (nor have they actually even *been* here!) bash and blame the US for everything from the problems of the Mideast to the fact they had cold tea for breakfast.

Obviously, for all of our kvetching about the state of politics here we must like it--after all, neither of us are in the process of moving anywhere else! For all of our faults, we do have something most nations lack: a healthy sense of self-criticism. To this day, not many Germans like to bring up the Holocaust nor are the Japanese rushing to condemn Emperor Hirohito's role in WWII. Despite some of our official federal government agencies' policies--like the CIA, ATF, or FBI--to the contrary, most Americans love to discuss and debate our mistakes and conspiracies. I think that's what makes this country so great.