Thursday, November 19, 2009

Commentary 11

A Special Report on the Arab World; Waking From its Sleep
The Economist


The Economist’s article, entitled A Special Report on the Arab World; Waking From its Sleep, details exactly that. Arab nations have been in a sleep-like standstill in terms of political power and progression within the world. For approximately two decades, Arabs have been divided between maintaining the currently authoritarian rule versus following the rest of Europe towards unionizing politics and economics. The author describes a persistent lack of freedom, unity, and especially passing of history. What this means is that Arab nations are constantly in wars or at ends with neighboring countries, causing attention on internal development to lose focus.


Subsequently, Al-Qaeda’s influence and terror became quickly rooted within Arab society. This was possibly a result of the abundance of oil, increased conflict with Israel, and a non-democratic government. Another issue is nationalism. Nationalism can be symbolized by a flag to create a sole meaning of identity, but in Arab nations this ironically fragments Arab society.


I like how this article heavily included the impact or the attempted impact of the United States within Arab countries. I find this topic to be very interesting because of its controversial and always debatable sides. Do you think the United States has the right to interject in Arab affairs? What extent is appropriate/ inappropriate? How could the United States help stabilize and improve Arab politics and economy without forcing democratization?

2 comments:

  1. I don't think the United States has the right to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs and most of the damage that has been done to the governmental structures of the Middle East have been from Western(mostly British and American) colonialism in the area. Almost every state in the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine), they all have problems due to previous imperialism and colonialism. The US is a big part of the Middle East not being democratic today.

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  2. I don't know if the United States has any right to interject in another country's problems. Especially since our country isn't in top shape. I think for other countries to interfere it gets too confusing and messy. I think we can help but for us to try to fix everything isn't right.

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