Fisk is an idiot, but one of the concepts he raises is true: demanding change of backward Muslims just stirs the nasty little barbarians up.
Tim Blair:
Robert Fisk, the famous verb, advises teaching and education and caring as ways to improve the Middle East:
We always arrive with our tanks and our helicopters and our armoured personnel carriers and our soldiers instead of arriving with our teachers, our educators, our doctors and our social carers … we always come with soldiers, we always come to impose the society we believe these people should have.
(He forgot to add: “… and always for no particular reason or provocation.”/ed)
Fisk illustrates perfectly the screwed up, mangled and utterly perverted thought processes of the far-left commentariat.- Michael Moore, Phillip Adams, Noam Chomsky being others who engage in these bizarre mental acrobatics.
Observe, from 1.30:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b42FJwydOCY[/youtube]
But seven mere minutes later, during the same interview, Fisk tells teachy doctor-style carers to get the hell out:
We still feel that we are the superior people, that we must teach the other people how to live their lives. But, you see, if you have an NGO, for example, go into an Afghan village and announce that there must be equality of education between men and women, the men will see this as an attack on their society, their culture and their religion.
At the end of the day, they are the ones who are going to have to come to this decision. And, if the delay takes another century, we westerners have to put up with that.
Leaving aside Fisk’s rapid self-Fisking, consider the views expressed here by a leftist icon. For a start, it isn’t we in the west who have to put up with inequality of education. It’s women in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, whom Fisk thinks should be condemned for at least the next one hundred years to live by decisions taken by male village elders.
One wonders if Fisk would take the same view of a household in London wherein a father forbade education to his daughters. And what of a culture (the United States) that resists the intrusion of someone attacking their society (Fisk) who believes that a former elected leader (George W. Bush) was rubbish and should have been thrown out? In the case of non-Middle Eastern countries, Fisk evidently feels himself a “superior person” who “must teach the other people how to live their lives”.
Incidentally, Bobby, if we capitalists want to maintain our freedom, you socialists have to put up with that.
- Check out the comments, most of Tim Blair’s readers “get it”…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Why do the left-thinkers always claim that the Israelis are “stealing this land” when, in fact, they are merely taking back that which was once theirs. promised in the bible by God, before they were expelled by Islamic conquest over a thousand years ago.
He claims we think we are the superior people. I disagree. I consider myself an equal to my fellow human beings. My problem with Islamists is their superior attitude that Allah guides them and remain so until we convert to Islam thereby putting ourselves on the same pedestel, and following the same shariah as the Islamists. The Germans had a superior attitude as did the Japanese during WWII and considered other races inferior and fit for extermination.
It’s not much different with the present lesser jihad.
That is just my humble opinion, but I don’t much like Fisks.
I have to agree on one thing though…we have to quit trying to impose our systems of government on them. Let them run their own countries the way they wish. Let them make their own fiscal, moral, societal and political decisions. Just as long as they don’t bother or terrorize us.
If they do rain terror down on us then they deserve the wrath of Allah!
Land for peace?
Nasrallah of Hizbollah said that Israel should never be recognised by
any arab nation.
How can you make peace with people who don’t recognize your country? Hamas priority is to destroy the zionist state.
Giving land for empty promises will only encourage more attacks on
Israel; more rockets fired into israeli territory.
Historical rights; palestinians are descendents of the Philistines, which
would give them only the right to live in the Gaza strip. nothing more.
To rectify something i have written earlier; mixing up the Belfour
declaration and the U. N. resolutions and the fact that the main reason
for palestinians leaving the land in 1948 was panic & confusion among the population and not the ordering out by arabs or forcing out by israeli’s. (otherwise Israel wouldn’t have palestinian/arab citizens).
Still arabs never wanted to co-operate for a real solutions, Egypt and
Jordan acted in their own interest, not in favor of the palestinians.
A partly gaza/negev/sinai palestinian state could have been reality
a long time ago but no one is really interested in real peace overthere.