[noir]

@anasawad, at that time Robert Fisk (the most prominent foriegn correspondent in the region) wrote that Lebanon being part of Syria (which was split by the French colonial power) is self evident. The Syrians have the right to view Lebanon as theirs. As if Syria itself is not a creation of post Ottoman colonial powers. How much was changed since the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. Indeed both Lebanon and Syria were part of Great Syria, but like "Palestine" it wasn't a country rather an Ottoman province. Today everyone can see that Syria is as fictitious "nation" as Lebanon.

[anasawad]

Mount Lebanon had its own government since the 13th century.
It never was a part of the same government of Damascus.
Syria is a new country because it was 3 governments. One of Damascus state. Aleppo state. And the Alawite government on the coast.
Lebanon has been for several centuries a different state for Christians and Shia of the Levant to live in.

Syria was never a nation rather a region. Lebanon was always a nation. Gaza was always a state on it self independent of its sorroundings. Jerusalem was on the other hand a government center over most of Palestine except the far south being Gaza state and Ma'an being a tribal state of the Idwan tribe and Bane Sakher held most of south Jordan along with south of Palestine.

Anyone who searched the history of the region under the Ottoman empire, specifically the political structure would know this. I don't expect you to have read it.

[noir]

Mount Lebanon had its own government since the 13th century.
It never was a part of the same government of Damascus.
Syria is a new country because it was 3 governments. One of Damascus state. Aleppo state. And the Alawite government on the coast.
Lebanon has been for several centuries a different state for Christians and Shia of the Levant to live in.

Liberal Westerners used to take Robert Fisk bullshit as if it was gospel.

[anasawad]

Syria being a new government, it doesn't mean the people in its area and themselves being nations isn't real.
And it doesn't mean you have the right to kick them out of their homes that they lived in for centuries because they were conquered by a foreign power and a government placed on them.

[Zagadka]

What makes you think a Marshall plan would be? I would imagine the foreign aid received by many of these countries over decades already exceeds what was spent on reconstructing Europe after WW2.

Yea, but not very well. We basically just dumped pure money, not actual services and investment.

[noir]

Yea, but not very well. We basically just dumped pure money, not actual services and investment.

The EU did invested in actual services and investment in multibillions. It simply doesn't wark. In fact it was part of the problem.

[Zagadka]

So what did they build? Curious to know what doesn't work.

[anasawad]

They sent aid the first time. Politicians took it all. And in case of Jordan the royalties took it all.
Then they send the second time, and again politicians took most if not all the aid money.
And with the years passing by, a new class of billionares appeared and it happened that all of them either are politicians or are families of politicians.
And this basically became the stable method of payment for many Mideastern politicians and dictators to do what other countries wanted.
Though to be fair, sometimes they patch the roads and then claim not having any money so they stop in midway.

[noir]

So what did they build? Curious to know what doesn't work.

Lack of accountability with the huge funds and investment. Siding away all aspect of human rights in its bilateral relations with the Arab world save Palestinian "human rights" which blown out of proportion thus playing to the hands of the Arab radicals who need a bogey man to distract their people, which later went on radicalizing the Muslims inside Europe.

The EU has become the largest donor of financial and technical assistance to the Palestinian Authority, providing over 50 percent of the international aid to the Palestinians. From 1994 to 1998, total EU aid to the PA amounted to 2 billion euros in grants and loans.
The EU was the largest single donor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), supporting 38 percent of its budget. Thus, Europe indirectly shares responsibility for the Palestinian culture of hatred and terrorism against the Israelis, which has grown correspondingly since 2000. Arafat broke off from the Oslo peace process in October 2000 with his al-Aqsa war. The EU’s funding of the PA implied an indirect collusion with Palestinian terror against Israelis, which, beginning in October 2000, coincided with an extremely violent and coordinated anti-Israeli press campaign in the European Union, as well as criminal attacks against Jews, synagogues, their schools and centers.

In December 2003, German Green activist Ilka Schröder declared in a New York lecture: “It is an open secret within the European Parliament and the European Commission that EU aid to the Palestinian Authority has not been spent correctly.”25 She accused the European Parliament of having no intention “to verify whether European taxpayers’ money could have been used to finance anti-Semitic murderous attacks. Unfortunately, this fits well with European policy in this area.” According to Schröder, “The primary goal of the EU is the internationalization of the conflict in order to underline the need for its own mediating role.”

Source:Eurabia

[Zagadka]

Like I said, they gave aid poorly. There is a way to invest in infrastructure and industry without giving the money to politicians.

Read a book like Dead Aid. This is a clear problem with clear solutions.

[noir]

Like I said, they gave aid poorly. There is a way to invest in infrastructure and industry without giving the money to politicians.

All the EU's Arab policy is based on false post war foundations. They wouldn't be EU without this policy.

The multibillion loans from the EU countries to Arab states, and the Palestinian Authority’s corrupt terror infrastructure, have already been briefly mentioned. The EU’s huge investments in Arab countries provide the EU with an immense political leverage that could have been used to suppress Arab terror and racism. However, the EU never blocked any agreements with Syria, the terror-backed occupier of Lebanon, nor with Egypt, Algeria, or other Arab dictatorships. Despite his ties to terrorism, whether Hezbollah or PLO, Syrian President Bashir al-Assad is treated with all the deference ordinarily accorded world leaders: he was received by Queen Elizabeth II in an official visit to London in 2002, and in October 2003 he hosted the Spanish royal couple in Damascus.

Moreover, we have seen with the Barcelona Declaration, and with other agreements, how the EU has created a meaningless legal smokescreen to allow it to conduct normal political and business relations with totalitarian states, some of whom sponsor international terrorism. With Syria, for example, a dictatorship that, as noted previously, shelters terrorist training camps and maintains twenty thousand troops in Lebanon, the EU promotes closer political and economic ties through the Barcelona Association Agreement.

In October 2003, a subcommittee of the U.S. Congress put forth the Syria Accountability Act for final approval to the Congress, and called for a wide-ranging boycott. On October 9, 2003, the EU denounced the U.S. move to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on Syria, declaring that instead it would continue to seek closer cooperation with Damascus. The spokeswoman for EU Commissioner Chris Patten stated that the EU was in the process of negotiating a political-economic association agreement with Syria. Another EU spokesman, Diego de Ojeda, acknowledged that it would not be easy to compel Syria to respect human rights and reject terrorism, but said that the EU hoped to get positive results by offering financial rewards.5
In America, however, President Bush signed the Syria Accountability and Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act in December 2003. It accused Syria of sheltering terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.

Source:Eurabia

[AJS]

Like I said, they gave aid poorly. There is a way to invest in infrastructure and industry without giving the money to politicians.

Read a book like Dead Aid. This is a clear problem with clear solutions.

Most aid is given poorly, thanks to the stubborn economic rule that people are more careful with their own money than with "free" money. Especially when those people are corrupt politicians with little accountability.

There's probably some place for aid, especially with expertise rather than cash, to assist in economic development but as a strategy for dealing with Islamic terrorism I don't see much merit.

[noir]

After 1973 Oil Embargo, the EU adopted what the Syrians call "objective stances"

The annual Conference of the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Dialogue convened in Damascus on July 11, 1998, under the auspices of Hafiz al-Asad, then president of Syria.

As had become usual at these conferences, the beginning of the Euro-Arab Dialogue was recalled. Syrian foreign minister Al-Sharaa emphasized that it took official shape after the war of Syria and Egypt against Israel in October 1973 and the sharp increase in oil prices. “The Dialogue would not have been launched unless certain European countries adopted objective stances. France was in the foremost [among] the countries that denounced Israel’s aggression of 1967 and suspended all military aid to it.”21

This friendly gathering of Europe’s political and moral leaders in Syria, including the ICRC, lent an air of respectability to a country whose army had occupied, terrorized, and colonized Lebanon for over twenty years. Moreover, the Syrian regime was known to harbor and protect terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other PLO terror groups, which for years have planned their attacks against Israel and which raises funds and recruits terrorists from Syria. Those facts were clearly restated by American Secretary of State Colin Powell on May 3, 2003, when he denounced Syria as a state sponsoring terrorism. Conversely, the EU—especially France—has continued to downplay Arab-Islamic terror, not only that of Arafat against Israel but also in refusing to consider Hamas as a terrorist movement in spite of its Charter’s statements declaring its dedication to the destruction of Israel and to terrorist acts. Only in September 2003, at an EU meeting, were those facts reluctantly acknowledged. Yet France still maintained an ambiguous position.

Again, the Declaration centered on Israel alone. It had nothing to say about the occupation of Kurdistan by Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, or these states’ current repression of the Kurds. It was likewise silent about the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, the Syrian colonization of Lebanon, and the severe discrimination against Christians in Egypt. Instead, it recommended the participation of Libya in all aspects of the Barcelona process. It even called for the full membership of Mauritania, where slavery remains prevalent. The linkage between Israeli-Arab peace and Israel membership in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was a reminder of Europe’s EAD obligation to impose upon Israel the Arab conditions for their alliance. No other conflict is considered a hindrance to peace. Only the Israeli-Arab conflict is regularly highlighted in the Dialogue’s documents and texts. In fact, the Forum more or less repeated the preceding Communiqué given in Syria three months earlier.

While maintaining steady opposition to the United States, the EU was able, under the mantle of the Dialogue, to develop good relations with such champions of human rights as Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia. The development of these relationships, indeed, was the primary goal of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, largely established by France and Germany and imposed willy-nilly upon the other countries of the EU. Nevertheless, despite the European taxpayers’ contribution of billions to Arab regimes to provide them with services and to improve their economy and skills, anti-Western hostility only increased among their population, fed by the frustration of their failed and totally dependent societies, as confirmed in the UN Human Development Reports of 2003 and 2004.

Source:Eurabia

[Drlee]

I

would rather a focus on democratic institutions such as a free media, an accountable, secular legal system with equal rights for minorities, education for girls and a move away from complete reliance on natural resources.

That is what a Marshall plan would look like. The only way we are going to get these goals is to take away the power of fundamentalist Islam and replace it with more liberal forms. A secular legal system demands a stable and freely elected government. A popular government can't coexist with poverty and despair. You can't have the education of women until the forces of radicalism are suppressed. You can't move away from oil and mining into other industries that employ more people without investment, technology and access to markets.

So what I am telling you is that you are asking for the fruits of a Marshall plan without being willing to do the work. Even if we brutally conquered the region and imposed all of the above, we can't keep it without addressing the problems of an idle and hopeless population. We can kick, beat and kill them into obedience but I doubt that is what you had in mind.

[Pants-of-dog]

The first step of any problem should be to stop bombing them.

Let me know when we do that.

[noir]

The only way we are going to get these goals is to take away the power of fundamentalist Islam and replace it with more liberal forms.

The people who steal foreign funds are those of "liberal forms", western educated and better off. The fundamentalist (Hamas in Palestine or Hizbollah in Lebanon) are less corrupt. Hard to see a solution.

Even if we brutally conquered the region and imposed all of the above, we can't keep it without addressing the problems of an idle and hopeless population.

Family planning

[stephen50right]

So let's give them money so they stop terrorizing us?

Sounds like an international form of the way the mob runs the protection racket.

[noir]

Can't see a solution. In Islam a man gains his honor by the number of male sons he breeds. Each generation the Arab population is doubling itself. In 1923 the Arabs were 38 million, in the 50' - 80 million. In 2003 320 million, today 422 millions. Too many young males with lots of time on their hand. If they refuse family planning then violent depopulation is what is left.


Good post by Drlee

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=168788&p=14797386#p14797386

[Drlee]

So let's give them money so they stop terrorizing us?

Sounds like an international form of the way the mob runs the protection racket.

So. Somewhere in your "mind" you have concluded that the Marshal Plan was a bad investment? I am getting so tired of the right. Seriously shortsighted. Decidedly dense. And education? What education?

[Godstud]

The Marshal Plan worked wonders in Germany and Japan. They aren't our enemies now, and never will be again.