Transforming the Middle East

It’s not reassuring that the folks who tell us that we can remake the Middle East in our image need to reach back to the allied occupation of defeated Axis nations to support their arguments. To make the obvious point: that was far, far away and a long, long time ago. Even if we put aside the differences between Germans or Japanese and Arabs, we are still stuck with the differences between the U.S. in 1945 and the U.S. in 2002. Want a concrete example of what these differences mean? Look no further than Bosnia, where the New York Times reports that “since the war there ended seven years ago, the presence of thousands of NATO troops and civilian workers for the United Nations and aid agencies has made it a prime market for both prostitution and sexual slavery.”
Posted by at October 25, 2002 09:11 PM | Send