[Vnbiz] 15 RULES FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST, Thomas Friedman, NYTimes.

[Craig Stevenson]

Friedman has a way with words, and often his words annoy me from their
simplicity in truth but arrogance in formation and delivery.

Craig


On 12/29/06, bachinh nguyen <nguyenbachinh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
>
>
>
> Dear CACC,
>
> Gems from the "newspaper of record" as Friedman comes into his own:
>
> Ba Chinh
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 15 RULES FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST
>
> THOMAS FRIEDMAN
>
> New York Times  (TimesSelect)
>
> Pg. A15
>
> December 20, 2006
>
>
>
> For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over
> what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes
> vanished last summer. So, I'd like to offer President Bush my updated rules
> of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they'll
> help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.
>
>
>
> *Rule 1*: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is
> irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own
> language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn't count. In
> Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In
> the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you
> what you want to hear in private.
>
>
>
> *Rule 2*: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq
> should have to take a test, consisting of one question: "Do you think the
> shortest distance between two points is a straight line?" If you answer yes,
> you can't go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, Korea or Germany - not Iraq.
>
>
>
> *Rule 3*: If you can't explain something to Middle Easterners with a
> conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all - they won't believe
> it.
>
>
>
> *Rule 4*: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the
> mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time
> someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasser Arafat, I could paper
> my walls.
>
>
>
> *Rule 5*: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a
> cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning's paper.
>
>
>
> *Rule 6*: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the
> moderates tend to just go away.
>
>
>
> *Rule 7*: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab pols is: "We were
> just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that
> stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would
> have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for being so
> stupid."
>
>
>
> *Rule 8*: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas - like
> liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes,
> Iraq is having a civil war as we once did. But there is no Abe Lincoln in
> this war. It's the South vs. the South.
>
>
>
> *Rule 9*: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium.
> When one side is weak, it will tell you, "I'm weak, how can I compromise?"
> And when it's strong, it will tell you, "I'm strong, why should I
> compromise?"
>
>
>
> *Rule 10*: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S.
> civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil
> war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the
> Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that
> keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is
> us. If we don't want to play that role, Iraq's civil war will end with A or
> B.
>
>
>
> *Rule 11*: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is
> humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about
> borders. Israel's mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who
> can't understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so
> powerful. Al Jazeera's editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently
> told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: "It gnaws at the people in the Middle
> East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million
> inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our
> collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every
>
> Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."
>
>
>
> *Rule 12*: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will
> always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.
>
>
>
> *Rule 13*: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs' first priority
> is "justice." The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really
> have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian
> land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in
> endless tribal wars. For Iraq's long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is
> first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the
> minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us,
> democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is
> first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.
>
>
>
> *Rule 14*: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: "Great powers
> should never get involved in the politics of small tribes."
>
>
>
> *Rule 15*: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you
> can't want it more than they do.
>
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