The lesson of Gaza

Ossicle, your link leads to a post talking about the role of homosexuality in Scripture. What this has to do with Iraq stumps me at least.

The shame/ honor culture isn't unique to the Middle East and China and Japan have managed to grow their economies in spite of it.

R. Steven Humphreys' "Between Memory and Desire" is a much better look at the social, political and economic conditions that make so many problems in the Middle East so intractable. Essentially, there are a lot of incentives to acting in ways that guarantee short-term survival at the expense of long-term sustainable growth. In the Far East, shame/ honor culture probably played a large role in reinforcing positive behavior.

To give a sense of what Humphreys thinks of the Middle East's chances of change, the title is a reference to the "Wasteland" by T. S. Eliot.

I'm surprised no one has made the connection between Bush's efforts to bring Democracy to Iraq and the David Lean film, "Lawrence of Arabia", particularly the ending of the film where Lawrence's hopes for Arab self-rule comes crashing down.

Indeed, the connection provides a great opportunity for some political cartoonist to portray Bush as Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence, complete with keffiyeh and agal.

Unfortunately, there's only one lesson to draw from Gaza: The Palestinian Arabs are barbarians and Palestinian culture is a "culture of death" (does that phrase sound familiar, fellow Catholics?). No two-state solution will be possible unless the Palestinians curb their blood-lust for Israel and for each other. Unfortunately, the Arabs will ignore the Palestinians (as they have for decades) because the Palestinians serve as the perfect foil for anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) policies.

The Middle East is going to get a lot worse before it gets better -- and it will only get better when the Arab Muslims are so humiliated that they will reject their bloodthirstiness and the "religion" that serves as a cover for it.