Cultural Differences and the the way different actions are percieved by each person through their own cultural viewpoints.

they are lenses of a sort....

Negotiation .... for example. is seen in the west as a prefered form of end conflict resolution. In the ME it is seen as a sign of weakness. One only comes to the bargaining table when you are too weary or weak to continue to fight.


Does seeing the enemy through "Western Eyes" impede our chances of victory in the WoT?

I think its generally fair to say the two opposing perspectives (the oriental as opposed to the occidental) are each locked into their own conflicts which pay scant regard to the other. In other words each side is fighting its own struggle and using the opposite as a means to that end.

Taking Osama Bin Laden as an example, its well known that his ultimate goal is the liberation of Mecca and Saudi Arabia and that his jihad against the west is only a step towards that. There are other organisations whose goal is the establishing of a grand Caliphate, Hizb ut Tahir for example, but these are considered so marginal to main line Islamic thinking that most western countries do not even think of them as being terrorists (though I personally don't rate them as being much better).

On the opposing side is the argument that GW Bush and the General 'war' on terror is nothing but a ploy to maintain American hegemony, one that requires the existence of a significant threat to maintain and justofy the cause and its cost.

The truth is probably somewhere stuck in the middle of it all, but I think its a fairly accurate observation to say that seeing 'the enemy' is subjective in the extreme. I believe the belligerents on both sides have done their utmost to convince the majority of people, east and west alike, that here is a pressing confrontation that calls for serious action and the expenditure of a lot of resources that could otherwise be used productively.

As for the 'war' on terror. I do not believ ein such aconcept. I see it as a cynical use of language to create the illusion that something exists. Without a formal decleration of war I cannot see how the USA can consider itself on a 'war footing'. In short there is no war so how can it be won?

Oh, I fully agree with that. The "state of war" that supposedly exists here is entirely a rhetorical one, designed to justify actions that the government might have difficulty taking otherwise. It is like the eternal war that was fought between Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia. There was no possibility of victory, and no interest in it either; it existed merely to facilitate Big Brother. It's not by accident that the main casualty in this "war" has been civil liberty here at home.

America has never been war on U.S. soil, not since 1865 anyway. I don't count the collapse of the two towers. Horrible as that was, it was a pinprick compared to what war brings. And it is our national ignorance of war that enables the administration to bandy the term about so loosely, and convice so many that we are "at war." "War," indeed! In this day and age, if the United States is ever really at war, we won't need the Secretary of Homeland Security to constantly remind us of it.

Words of the State Department legal advisor

Does seeing the enemy through "Western Eyes" impede our chances of victory in the WoT?

Absolutely. Our misunderstanding of the culture has led to blunder after blunder. In some cases, even actions we considered to be kindness were slaps in the face, and we were just too ignorant to know. My husband took a Brookings institute class a few months back and they discussed this very issue. One of the anecdotes I remember was the passing out of candy to children. Normally this would be considered a nice thing to do, but in the case of Iraq the troops found that they (and the children) became targets when they stopped to hand them candy. Instead, they started driving by and throwing the candy so the kids could collect it in the sand. Their parents were appalled at the disrespect and felt that the Americans were making their children look like chickens plucking through the dust.

Then there is the language barrier, and the critical shortage of personnel who speak it. We are trying to fix things now, but much of it is too little, too late. Mustang addressed this issue in a poignant post almost three years back.

And yet somehow the point i was trying to raise is missed completely...


Do cultrural perspectives make winning this war as we are currently trying to do it harder than it needs to be or possibly all together impossible?




Thank you ... this is what i am looking for...

as far as the enemy is concerned our begging for a semi-peaceful resolution is seen as weakness and keeps them fighting.

Only overwhelming force will win the day for us.

Do you have any evidence for this assertion? Is it common to all the cultures of the Middle East (Kurd, Coptic, Persian, Israeli, Urdu, Druze, Berber, Afghan, Turkish, Lebanese, and others, as well as the more familiar "Arab")?

Does seeing the enemy through "Western Eyes" impede our chances of victory in the WoT?

Possibly. However, it's hard to say for sure, since nobody has really defined what would constitute "victory" in the WoT, let alone anything specific about what this would mena for the Middle East.

And also, the "enemy" (have they been properly and definitively defined either, I wonder?) seeing us through "Eastern Eyes" surely doesn't confer on them any particular advantages, does it? They will make assumptions about how we will respond to their actions which may or may not be correct, just as we do about their responses?

For example, Western peoples and their governments are not widely renowned for giving in to terrorism, are they? Far as I can tell, they only really start to negotiate once the guns and bombs fall silent.

And, to my mind, the jihadi idea that the supposedly supine and decadent West, especially in Europe, will stay supine and compliant while sharia law is introduced through the back door betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about the West.

Not to mention a very short term view of history; the massacre of a religious minority that led to the setting up of Israel and set this whole Islamist ball rolling wasn't carried out by aliens from the planet Nazi. It was carried out by ordinary white Europeans, albeit ones who'd been manipulated into it by an unpleasant ideology.

These "Eastern Eyes" are blind to the fact that they are picking at the scabs on a wound on a sleeping giant who would, if roused, go beyond even the terrible things they have been prepared to do. Historically, white Europeans and their diaspora have been responsible for, and more effective at, far more sectarian murder than pretty much anyone else. "Eastern Eyes" are blind to the likely outcome of picking the kind of global fight they seem to be angling for - their own annihilation, alongside uncounted millions of innocent bystanders on all sides.

The only reasons "we" can possible lose the WoT, despite its loose definition, is how "we" feel about it, and our choosing not to do things in the name of winning it that we do not feel comfortable with. Depending on what those things are (for example, not engaging in an anti-Muslim Holocaust), I would say that both Western and Eastern eyes would be able to look on the result and claim victory.

I don't think that this boilerplate from the "State Department Legal Advisor" is particularly relevant the to points that I and others have been making on this subject. Bush, Cheney and their team haven't been quoting from that source, pointing to it, or saying anything remotely similar to what is said there. On the contrary, it is said that "We are at war," that "I am a war president," that it is a "time of war," and so on, and so forth. Further, that the United States is supposedly at war has been offered as the explicit justification for very serious expansions of executive power and abridgements of civil liberties.

I am very happy to see that some State Department lawyers appear to have better sense than the president does, however.