The Seattle Times today brought us an op-ed by a self-described "American-Arab journalist" (= pro-terrorism propagandist) who unwittingly displays most of the Arab world's most crippling political psychopathologies all in a single column! -- Seeing a picture of Saddam Hussein in captivity sent Ramzy Baroud into a paroxysm of despair. So now he shares his Conflicted feelings about the capture of Saddam:
"Are We Winning Now?" a headline arrogantly inquired, condescendingly proclaiming the capture of the former Iraqi president.[why are there scare quotes around "capture"??? -Ed.] Baroud, who claims that he grew up in a Gaza "refugee camp", goes on to reveal symptoms of the following maladaptive thought processes.Something inside me was crushed.
I am certainly not a fan of tyranny... BUT seeing Saddam in that cluttered state, willingly opening his mouth to an American military doctor, being treated "like a cow," as the Vatican claimed, provoked an array of emotions that I could hardly contain. Even then, I had no illusions: It was not the "capture" of Saddam that engulfed me with these emotions; it was what Saddam represented or, perhaps, failed to represent. It was the fear of a future undoubtedly bleak, unforgiving.
2) Failure to recognize that many times as many Arabs have been slaughtered by Arab governments than have died under the "brutal Israeli occupation", as he calls it:
In Gaza, my sorrow of losing countless friends and family members to the Israeli occupation forces was the shared destiny of the nearly 1 million refugees in Gaza's camps. With each new innocent casualty, the desire for a collective Arab will became stronger. But time has passed, and the dream of a collective Arab will has yielded to collective Arab chaos.3) Blaming the dysfunctions in the Arab world on American "imperialism":
Maybe this explains the reason behind the love-hate relationship many Arabs had toward Saddam: He was a brutal dictator, yet he defied the United States and its imperialist design in the Arab world. It was not hard for me to fathom why many Iraqis celebrated when Saddam was captured, while at the same time, they vowed to carry on with their attacks against U.S.-led occupation forces. That same paradox struck me watching Saddam's glum photo on America Online.4) Believing that the natural Arab response to the arrest of a mass murderer is more terrorism ... :
I paused to gaze at a 9-11 memorial poster hanging on my wall, anxiously considering the devastating repercussions that could stem from collectively disgracing hundreds of millions of people. It seems that fear and uncertainty are, sadly, among the people of the U.S. and the Middle East, a common sorrow.5) ... while also expressing surprise that Americans associate Arabs with terrorism:
I also learned that in the West, we were all grouped together, in a camp of "hostile Arabs" who must be "contained,"6) Voting with his feet and moving to the evil America, where, unlike in the Arab world, he has the freedom to write editorials and speak out to his heart's content, and where he uses his right to complain first and foremost to blame America for the failures of the Arab world!
UPDATE: Jim Miller wasn't favorably impressed with Baroud's op-ed either.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 23, 2003 04:31 PMExcellent fisking Stefan.
Saddam has killed between 100 and 200 Iraqi's for every Palestinian killed by Israel. And most of those Palestinians were combatants unlike Saddam's victims. I guess I shouldn't point this out because in Baroud's worldview I have just humiliated the Arab's by stating the facts.
It's time for Baroud and the Arab world to evolve from their 12th century mentality.
Posted by: Reid on December 23, 2003 06:45 PMWhat's funny is Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have all expelled hundreds of thousands of ""Palestinians"" in total for backing Saddam in the First Gulf War and now Iraq has expelled all of their ""Palestinians"" and we hear NO UN Resolutions, no cries from the ""Palestinians"" or the Arab World, nor the extremely worldly sensitive Europeans/EU??
There have been no ""moving"" editorials written by ""Palestinians"" in any European or American newspapers either?
Why is this, and why were they expelled, I mean did they declare that they were going to overthrow the governments there or murder every Kuwaiti, Arabian or Hashemite tribe that stood in their way? IF NOT I JUST DON'T GET IT?
Mike
Posted by: Mike on December 23, 2003 07:44 PMWell, Mike, that's because it's the fault of those damned JOOOOOOSSSSSS again.
See, if only Israel had given the Palestinians their own homeland, say in 1949 or so, then those poor, poor guest-workers would have somewhere to go, instead of the Palestianian diaspora (love the language) all over the Middle East.
And if the Palestinians backed Iraq in the Gulf Wars, that's because he cared about their fate, which, of course, was caused by the Israelis. And if they cheered on missiles from Saddam HITTING THEIR OWN HOMES, that's just a further sign of the desperation caused by the Israeli occupation of their homeland.
Doesn't that just make you wanna give 'em their own state,pronto?
The scary part is that I"m pretty sure EVERY SENTENCE of the above could be pulled from some "analyst" or another of the region.
Posted by: Dean on December 23, 2003 09:09 PM Ramzy Baroud appears to be psychotically conflicted. The answered question that hangs over his entire article is "Why are you in the United States?"
Anyone who is crushed by the capture of Saddam Hussein should be hanging out with the Bathhists in Tikrit or hanging with Hamas in Gaza or hiding in the Pakistani mountains with UBL.
Just read this post to put some perspective on the matter.
"Let us now compare the so-called Palestinians' economy, standards of living and rights in the territories under Israeli jurisdiction with the situation under the Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. Consider the accounting balance sheet."
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enZone=Views&enDisplay=view&enPage=ViewsPage&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article^l3058
"Israeli investment in Palestinian business, industry, and infrastructure helped the PA GNP grow 13% annually between 1967 and 1980; per capita income grew tenfold; unemployment dropped from 40% to below 5%"
Read the whole article as .
Just found this on Israpundit so maybe it ties in with the post.
"In her Ben Gurion University address, MP Schroeder claimed the issue of the EU funding terrorist groups points to a broader European goal, namely, to use the Middle East conflict to challenge US hegemony."
http://israpundit.com/archives/003918.html
Posted by: Barry on December 24, 2003 09:36 AMWorld War III is underway and it's much more sinister than you could have imagined. When did it start? Fourteen centuries ago. Who started it? An insane pedophile named Mohammed who, along with his gang of terrorists, formed the savagely oppressive, dehumanizing religion of Islam.
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