Monday, May 23, 2005
...the beam in thine own eye...
Mat 7:3 "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
The Newsweek scandal has erupted again and again during the past week. But the story needs to be about more than right or wrong. It's also about policy diffusion. Thomas Friedman writes about the lack of integrity and coherence that seems to be a standard concept in the attitudes from the Arab world:
We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it.
The Bush administration seems to be too focused on retaliating against Newsweek, thereby just adding to a blame game that doesn't really give any clear policy advantages. The Western world's news media on the other hand is too locked on targeting Bush (for just about everything) to even begin to question the lack of civil order or genuine enlightened debate in the Muslim world - the demonstrations and violent outbursts are more a result of propaganda than civil indignation over the defamation of the Islamic holy book.
Sometimes it might just be a token of decency to actually turn the tables on the ones who blame the U.S. just as a way to further their own goals. (Update: See some pretty straight-forward comments by Cox & Forkum.)
The Newsweek scandal has erupted again and again during the past week. But the story needs to be about more than right or wrong. It's also about policy diffusion. Thomas Friedman writes about the lack of integrity and coherence that seems to be a standard concept in the attitudes from the Arab world:
We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it.
The Bush administration seems to be too focused on retaliating against Newsweek, thereby just adding to a blame game that doesn't really give any clear policy advantages. The Western world's news media on the other hand is too locked on targeting Bush (for just about everything) to even begin to question the lack of civil order or genuine enlightened debate in the Muslim world - the demonstrations and violent outbursts are more a result of propaganda than civil indignation over the defamation of the Islamic holy book.
Sometimes it might just be a token of decency to actually turn the tables on the ones who blame the U.S. just as a way to further their own goals. (Update: See some pretty straight-forward comments by Cox & Forkum.)
