tv [untitled] September 19, 2012 9:30pm-10:00pm EDT
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the. if you. want. a low end welcome to cross talk i'm curious about past the time come to leave should the protests and even violence in the arab middle east against the u.s. make washington completely rethink its engagement of the muslim world and will staying only make matters worse. if you. do cross talk anti-american protests in the muslim world i'm joined by going to myron mines he is a professor of economic and social geography at mines university in seattle we have rooms he by route he is the editor in chief of the palestine chronicle and in washington we cross to roy goodman he is the correspondent for europe and the gulf
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for the mcclatchy newspapers all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want if i go to you in seattle given everything that's happened recently in the last week or so when i am focusing on all the protests should be in that should the united states consider quitting the middle east quitting the arab world or radically changing its strategy. yes i would go for the latter quitting the middle east is not an option at this as far as this point as far as the us is concerned there are in so deep in the are very involved in an all different sectors and at different levels but what they need to do they need a serious paradigm shift a serious rethink about their policies in the middle east the need to realign and redefine the relationship they have tell words our ups towards muslims move away from from this of you know militarization this kind of imposing foreign policy into that of partnership into that of the law and i think this is more or less the overlapping demands of most protests and most of the ministrations throughout the
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muslim world as of late ok what do you think about that how can it change because what's happening right now certainly isn't working. well i don't know that i would agree with your premise of respect peter i think that in fact the arab world and to a certain extent the islamic world are could see there are enough people right now and it's a change that nobody had forecast and nobody was prepared for and that's an evolving in a way that really we can't predict but we've seen the overthrow and the removal of dictatorships in north africa and the arrival of the fledgling democracies with the all of their problems and there's going to remain because i mean when you jump in i mean should they be beholden to the united states for helping them get democracy because we see this anti-american sentiment how do you explain that you know so
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what you have is a movement and certainly among the younger generation where people want their dignity they want their freedom they want something of a more representative government and they want him a modern state i mean that's that's at least three the positive side there are other people who see this upheaval as a chance to to impose a kind of religious puritanism islamism and salafi ism on the broad population so that they can control it from the top only do they would be dictators of the old fashioned sort of the religious dictators like the taliban and so you've got this competition going on right now and it's seems to me that a time of the upheaval like this what you really need is major powers like the united states russia and the european union to play a responsible role to try to guide these movements into a more stable and democratic future and of course you're going to have appeal you're going to have resistance from the guys who want to take power by force ok
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and that's that's what we've been seeing in the last week ok it's but i mean if i ok you know let me just go into real real quick here it seems like outside forces are playing a negative role here this is the point of the program what do you think about that going to. well at first coming back to the general proposes that the major global powers have to play important role and major global policy united states and the main problem we are faced here with quite contradicting aims of the us government on the one insight they call for democracy on the other hand and that's the problem that they have clear political economic interest in particular in the gulf region as far as audience is concerned this means that there is a double send that they are siding with saudi arabia they are siding in the suppression of any democratic movements in saudi arabia they are
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supporting saudi arabia by. demonstration in a hurricane they have double standards applied as far as the present arab spring is concerned and under these circumstances of cause a change would be necessary but preserving the main political and economic interests in the region in the middle east bringing these two demands together is almost impossible ok mom so you want to jump in go ahead. well i wanted to say that i do agree with those assessment of the situation especially the issue of dignity that i would say is the most common denominator. with all the protests that we have seen so far but i would disagree with the with the diagnosis or rather
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with the prescription the truly put forward that that the u.s. needs to guide the process that the europeans need to guide the process unfortunately i don't think that is that is going to be helpful in any way we have seen the u.s. and the european allies trying to guide the process and that the two guided missiles are all over benghazi and tripoli and other parts of the arab world starting with iraq and elsewhere so i think what the u.s. needs to do they need to step back and they need to reassess their foreign policy and they need to as opposed to find this this general generalized description of the situation where you have taliban and the competition and al qaeda and that sort of thing they really need to understand that this rage according to newsweek the reach of muslims or muslims rage in the middle east and beyond the borders of the middle east i think it's very much political rage if you look at every episode that we have seen since these satanic verses in one nine hundred eighty nine to the
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cartoons riots in two thousand and five to the crazy florida pastor in two thousand and ten and his spectacles of burning the koran and such you will find that every one of these riots and results of riots was linked to a much larger political issue so what we really need to be talking about what are these political issues and how can we redeem the mistakes of the past as opposed to look at other issues here you know all right it's again you know in mainstream media why do they hate us do you like that kind of narrative is i get it anywhere because i get essentially hate what i think you we behave what we do the question go ahead i think the question is is full of almost. self-pity and a lack of analysis of what is really going on in a place. you know the some of bin laden and al qaeda had a very clear political goal which was to overthrow the regimes in the gulf
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region they certainly on the arab side and and put himself in power and the fact that he attacked the united states was part of his effort to recruit support throughout the arab and the islamic world but you know. i don't agree i don't agree with that but the question i think what one should really be asking is how can these countries. work through some evolutionary means if possible to a stable of modern states and what what bin ladin was doing and i think with the various people attacking us missions we're doing is they are people who would like to turn the clock back to a more more medieval model where they're they are in power i want to come back to what good are said about america the american double standard in the gulf i'm not going to disagree with you good here i was in bahrain about a year ago i spent a lot of time there and and i was in saudi as well last year reporting i think that
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there's no question that the united states is very much listening to the saudis and very very loath to to go against them when these things that their vital interests are concerned the truth is though saudi vital interests are not engaged in bahrain there's despite what the saudis think it is think they are and that democracy in bahrain would be a very positive thing for the entire gulf region and and so on it could be an example for the saudis instead the saudis are using it as the one place they want to suppress in order to suppress democracy at home i don't think you can suppress it i think that at the end of the day the younger generation in all of these countries are going to say look at our buddies abroad look at the people we are communicating with them face. book look at that look at the world that it is and we're living in a medieval feudal kind of existence this is not going to work ok and the united states has got to adjust to it this is not in use in many respects me and i have friends and i did go to going to read this is there but this is something different the the west the outside you control this process to democracy is that what you're
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hearing from. the world quite the contrary if you look at the media in the arab world you had a completely different picture they see first of all with a quite empty american sentiment what has been down. as far as your own foreign policy. is concerned during the last few years so there's a very strong and american sentiment and what we have to keep in mind is that this started in the united states as was i hate to be d.-o. was i hate video produced by fundamental militant christians and by claiming that this was done by an israeli american and sponsored by one hundred jews shows that this was clearly intended
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as an exile it is a hate propaganda against the whole muslim world and also against the christian militants jellicoe for example it's a right wing christians in the us i read the comments let me. go to the break you're welcome is that account for the rage in the muslim world this one film i find that hard to believe. i me too i mean i don't i don't think that the issue is directly linked i don't think it's about freedom of expression on islam because if you think about it much of the protests in egypt and tunisia were about people demanding to have the kind of freedom where they can express themselves i think what in the happening is that there was a lot of bent of anger and frustration with the role that the united states have played in the middle of the one hand we're jumping here i'll go back to after
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to. welcome much of rostock like you know about the mind you were talking about anti-u.s. protests sweeping the muslim world. and it. started . ok michael back to you in seattle in our discussion here i don't hear enough about drones the palestine issue an american american to western troops in the muslim world why does western media keep skipping that are not going to much depth on those three topics. exactly i think i think the western media right now is going through a process of redefining the issue by putting the focus on discussions that i think are not very pertinent dealing with freedom of expression and such i think these are important issues but this is not what we are facing right now when you have millions of people protesting from senegal to cairo to sanaa yemen to other parts
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of southeast asia and cross the middle east. this is collective rage against people's rights to express themselves but again it's a political underpinnings of it all the second day of the protest nato forces the u.s. forces bombed afghanistan and they killed eight of danny women how do you account for that really belong in the greater equation is in the fact the afghanis were protesting the death of this woman as they protested the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent and poor afghanis and iraqis and yemenis and so forth isn't this part of the overall the that the u.s. is facing among muslims so we can't really be focusing on some nut job phone maker of in somewhere and really ignore the basic issues here the basic issues is about a great deal of inequality and injustice that many muslims and arabs face starting
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with palestine in one thousand forty eight and crossing all the way to iraq and now afghanistan and yemen and elsewhere and if we do not redefine then we align that relationship i assure you that these things are going to happen for what seems to be a seemingly simple reasons to react. you're going to listen i i happen to think that the palestinian issue is a huge one and it's an underlying factor in the quiet throughout the islamic world and understandably so i think that this needs to be resolved i think that the u.s. is. of force to refocus on issues in iran but i think ultimately this is got to be dealt with at the earliest possible time but i want to come back to the whole attitude the whole idea that he was expressing about anger at the americans you know in libya and i happen to spend about six weeks there last year i
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was covering the revolution there from benghazi by the way and i even was in the consulate offices there i did not meet steven at the time but you know the american role and the british role in the french rule was initially popular in benghazi in helping get rid of gadhafi even though they didn't send ground troops and even though they were bombing from the air you know they made a huge difference in avoiding an enormous bloodbath in libya and i saw the mirror i was kind of astonished any american reporter would have been astonished to see american flags flying in a place of honor in the main square is a little better i know it's just here for a second hand. if you don't mind me really i mean isn't this exactly what we did and sit in iraq didn't we say that didn't the neoconservatives went throughout american media fox news and elsewhere. arguing and propagating for the idea that americans are going to be perceived in iraq as liberators and what do we do and
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what are we discussing now we're discussing the numbers of that half a million die in iraq or is it a million and a half i mean we're discussing and debating the level of destruction that has been invited in iraq why is libya any different i mean now we are saying fifty thousand it's a lie did you see thousand missing it is more are wounded why is that any different just because we've found people who would use an american flag the same way that we found a few iraq is raising an american flag is that enough to assure us that it's ok to do what we do and violate international law exactly the same way we did in iraq why is that any difference and let me go into. in kurdistan the american flag is also held very high but in the rest of iraq and i was a reporter based in or in baghdad last year in the rest of iraq know of the american invasion is treated as something that's actually made things worse for most people although of the liberty and the freedom that they have and the end of the dictatorship is something most people welcome look the fact is the arab world
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is in upheaval and there are aspects of it which are very dangerous but there are aspects of it which are very hopeful and when i said earlier that i seems to me that the western powers and also russia by the way should be supporting and guiding what i'm talking about is guiding helping through peaceful means to guide these these fledgling democracies and these states in upheaval to a peaceful and stable future because that's what we need we need and they come in we are based on american and european interests i mean this is contradictory of going to do you want to jump in there i just cannot see how more outside interference can help. convince me i'm obviously interfering i wouldn't care if i had to marry somebody a point which has come out here we have talked about libya. and he brought in kurdistan the point is that we have quite different backgrounds we have quite different local politics and this hate video is
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a used in a different of it way by. on one side always call islamist salafist on the other hand it is also used in the cause enormous problem by the new government after the arab springs so if we look at the situation in cairo it was all going ised only partially by salafist group of. football soccer fans came in so this was something which was not planned in advance but the major problem arises now when morsi the president has to keep a balance on the one inside and the right wing salafist who demand a very strong position towards you as a on the other hand morsi and the muslim brotherhood well knowing to what degree they are depending on the united states in libya the situation was completely
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different it was basically a planned attack on a small group of militant may be inspired people in yemen quite different situation again here one of the conservative. muslim preachers had to call to call it to his followers to demonstrate even powerful by force against. the u.s. embassy in the u.s. embassy was a symbol of fall massive drone attacks. with numerous victims among civil population so what we see here we have to analyze the specific situation in each islamic country will you know if i can go back to who we are seems to me and you always seems to me for we've all seen it we look at the american use of drones correct me if i'm wrong almost all those drones are directed
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against muslims and i think the muslim world sees that. that makes sense. go ahead because i hear from the way they will say it is not using the words like moderation and we can help them and all that i don't see that works go ahead ramsey you know i again i really do agree and i wrote his assessment based on his real experience on the ground in the middle east but it seems that the conclusion goes somewhere entirely different where you end up talking about guiding what guiding this talk about one political experience since world war two and which the us guided any muslim country towards real democracy not one but the guy that many wars that have killed millions of people so i feel like this particular juncture is very very problematic as far as the drones are concerned you know an interesting statistic that says that there are more innocent people innocent muslims mostly who died as a result as a result of us use of drones under the presidency of barack obama than they did
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under that of bush so even all the talks and the rhetoric about change and hold and all of that did not translate to a smaller number of muslim. of muslim casualties and this is what we we need to be talking about the eight afghan women who represent the millions of people who have died or were injured or were maimed or displaced as a result of the u.s. wars who are these women why are they killed who represents them who speaks on their behalf how is the guided us democracy is in any way going to prevent more women in afghanistan of being killed this is what we need to be talking about instead of going back to the old rhetoric about us democracy and guiding this and guiding that ok roy you want to jump in can i can i please actually listen you said there's no one muslim democracy that the u.s. is guided tour to more democratic future were obvious but i live in turkey and turkey is an example of a turkey's a member of nato very. well i don't care it's all. about about rum
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sees a point and i think that it is in dispute secondly i i think the u.s. very much has been going on the interest of its interests in the gulf in oil and fossil fuels but i think going back to hillary clinton's speech at the end of two thousand and ten i think it was in one of the gulf states she said you know this is a democracy and and a desire for free and states and people having their dignity she said it she laid it out well in advance just as the arab spring was was about to start i think of them i was like a little yells this guy orthodox. i know it was prior incident so the matter i went into was what i wanted it was about equal i want us to the allow the arab spring ramsey finish up go ahead let me let me come back to the drones issue i think what's happened in afghanistan with the deaths of those eight women is into really
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very very sad but you know at the same time that that is happening you know why they're drones are attacking they're attacking they're going after leaders of the you know of the of the extreme militants and the taliban and whoever and all their friends and drones do not discriminate but neither do infantry men discriminate between good and bad people because they simply don't know the reason for the forest leave something that would let you know if you believe run out of time because many thanks to my guest today in washington seattle and in mind and thanks to our viewers for watching us here as you see in x. time and remember crosstalk. keep.
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