Introducing MEMRI's Turkish Media Blog
In view of the historical developments taking place during this time in Turkey – developments that will determine the future of the Turkish republic, its relations with its neighbors in the region, and its positioning vis-à-vis, or its alignment with, the E.U. and the U.S. – MEMRI is announcing the launch of its Turkish Media Blog (www.thememriblog.org/turkey/).
The blog will provide firsthand primary-source material translated from the Turkish media – left, center, right, and Islamist, as well as original analyses.
One of the components of the Turkish Media Blog will be translations of speeches, interviews, sermons and segments from TV and movie programs in Turkish, found on youtube and other online video sites.
The MEMRI Turkish Media Blog will supplement MEMRI's Turkish Project's Special Dispatch and Inquiry & Analysis series.
Visit daily to see news before it appears anywhere else in the Western media.
8.20.2007
New MEMRI spin-off
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Turkey is the battlefield of ideas in the ongoing war between civilization and the horrors of the Middle East, not Iraq. Let's hope the Enlightenment wins there. Otherwise, our excursion into Iraq and our inevitable bombing of Iran will be for naught.
ReplyDeleteHad we not wasted the money and lives in Iraq and instead used it to solidify Turkey, rid Iran of its nuclear facilities, and scourged Afghanistan completely, the world would be safer.
But doing so would require an American administration that admitted that faith and religion were to blame for 9/11. Neither party did, and so here we sit, impotent to prevent the inevitable.
Were that the Enlightened were in charge again...
I totally agree.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, pulling out of Iraq now would be devastating for all of the world. I'm glad Bush saw the wisdom of listening to the greater generals of the Pentagon, and it's sad that he has wasted all of his political capital convincing us that Saddam had an ongoing and effective WMD program and an offensive, world-threatening stockpile. Even that wasted capital could have been rebuilt by an open admittance of no WMDs and a need for more troops early on (as most competent [read fired] generals had said before), and by not repeatedly preaching false patriotic dichotomies to justify his status quo. Had anyone in the Bush administration been concerned with being honest grown-ups instead of being "strong" and "troop-supporting" "patriots," Democrats (and libertarians) might not be so understandably skeptical of the plan Bush's administration puts forth now. It's forgivably hard to believe his hand-picked military advisers; the ones before have proved incompetent profiteers or bible-smooching eschatologists.
ReplyDeleteBush should get his new generals up to Congress quick and let them convince us all. We don't need convincing that more troops will allay violence, but that more troops will actually accomplish political change. I am totally unconvinced of the latter, and totally unconvinced that this administration can ever bring about the latter. I hope I am proved wrong; I really do. But my bets on this administration have all been losers, and I'm not going to call in all my favors (read military lives) to bet on them now.
The executive is no longer believable; the retarded wizard's curtain has been drawn.
Had Bush been an actual leader and thinker, he would have galvanized the military to deal with the real cause of terror (religion), he would have wiped Afghanistan off the map (arguably with nukes), he would have cratered Iran's military and nuclear weapons facilities, and he would have invaded only part of the latter to set up a non-Tehran, Enlightened "free zone." While Iran sorted itself out, with us providing the cover fire, Iraq would be left to fester as our special forces provided military aid to the south and north, guaranteeing they could have a country of their own (democratic or not, I don't give a fuck).
Democracy cannot come from invading a country; it can only come from dividing one up and empowering citizens to vote for their local well-beings and to man their new borders. Did we wait for Canada to renounce England, or wait for their consent to write the Constitution? No, not at all, AT ALL!
Why invade Baghdad? Why not let central Iraq tear itself into oblivion while the north and south enjoy establishing their own stable, economically lucrative republics? Why go after Saddam when we could have made him even more irrelevant and less powerful?
It boggles the mind if one thinks about this war from a non-religious, non-economic, Enlightenment viewpoint. And the expended lives on both side are simply unforgivable. So very sad...