Charlie Rose

m41uhsin  06/11/2010 07:56 PM Report

We are naturally indoctrinated by prevailing views and seemingly corroborating circumstances. When unfolding facts prove otherwise we do better to go back, reassess past judgments and adjust to the new facts. This gives us the freedom to move on rather than feel in some way still bound to defending past views whose inadequacy has been demonstrated. In that respect I admire the courage and honesty of Peter Beinhart.

When I came to this country from Iraq in the early sixties to study at Columbia University I was often challenged by Jewish students to debating the Israeli-Arab conflict. I resented the unsolicited talking points they threw at me which were repeated by everyone almost verbatim. The onslaught propelled me into a reflexively defensive mode which made me feel uncomfortable. Then it occurred to me that I had had my own talking points acquired while growing up in Iraq which also came out of my mouth without thinking. This collision with the new and the realization of my own indoctrination made it possible for me to think freely without the discomfort of repeatedly defending views that weren’t my own.

Modern Israel has undergone a tremendous change since its birth, so did the Arab countries, the Middle East and the rest of the world for that matter. Most traditional advocates for one side or the other keep repeating the same stuff over and over but many of the young see a different reality that doesn’t correspond to the indoctrination they have been receiving from their elders.

robdverity  06/09/2010 06:06 PM Report

The size of Obama's $400 million gift to Abbas, says he has learned the Icarus lesson. Humble, yes. Hubris, no. Insulting, mostly mindless, YES. Too small to be nothing but a political embarrassment. Obama's losing his grip. Pocket change to Israel's USA largess. Israeli's have to be guffawing up their collective sleeve.

charlizecourriers  06/09/2010 04:09 PM Report

Another episode in Rose's Lost Cause In Iraq series. Bush won the war in Iraq and all "lost" Rose arguments won't change that truth.

REMant  06/09/2010 02:25 PM Report

The hubris hasn't changed, it has always been the same "manifest destiny" that was dissected fairly well by William Appleman Williams more than a generation ago, and more recently by Andrew Bacevich. From this discussion I don't think Beinart has fully come to grips with it in himself. Our involvement in wars have clearly always been promoted by those who have an evangelical view of the country and the world. People like Tom Friedman, and Graham Greene's "Quiet American," who patronize while preaching freedom. Our tacit support for colonialism did more to create problems than to solve them, as James Michener argued it would just after the WWII, and it is simply perverse for people professing peaceful commerce to make war to obtain it. While we may have learned the Powell doctrine from Vietnam, as obviously Reagan did, the loss did nothing really to dampen the enthusiasm evident in all our 20th c Democratic presidents and some Republicans, and even he had in mind bankrupting the Soviets in an arms race, not making friends with them. When we have not been policing other countries, directly or indirectly, we have been engaged in "dollar diplomacy." I suspect China was included on the Security Council mainly to protect it from efforts to dominate it and its market, which had been a cornerstone of US policy for a half-century, and, of course, at the time it was an ally, as well as, the largest independent country in Asia. Containment, as was hinted, was actually an opposed notion more akin to traditional balance of power, and concerned with territory, not markets or personalities. But all of this has a provenance going back to Aristotle and Machiavelli. Of the foreign policy the latter has a lot to say, but none more important than "Wise princes and republics should content themselves with victory; for when they aim at more, they generally lose."