Report from the East

[Wayne Johnson]

One of the infamous, crawling banners on CNN yesterday stated that Turkey
may send (ground?) troops into Afghanistan.  This would be the first
instance...in this stage of WWIII...where Muslim fought Muslim.   Of course,
the Turks have a rather long and grizly record of war against other Muslims,
so it is not exactly new news.  Still, this one is going to become very
complex before it is played out.

Imagine the "New Allies" in WWIII, phase one:

US, Britain, France (well, maybe, maybe not), Germany (remember them?),
Italy (well, they SAID they would help), Turkey...so far we have a lot of
Axis guys here....Russia .   Pakistan is sort of on our side as is Qatar.
Israel, I should imagine.  Oh, now we have Arafat on our side (makes me
sleep better at night, I'll tell you.)

Neutral guys:  These could be China and India.  Greece. Most of Africa.  All
of South America.  Most of Central America (except for Bob in CR), Mexico.
Maybe Iran.  Jordan?  Georgia?  Ukraine?  a bunch of post USSR
"tribalStans".

Bad guys:  Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, maybe Iran.  Probably Sudan and Libya.
Lebanon?

On the bubble:  Indonesia (with about half of the world's Islamic
population, btw), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan,  the "
tribal stans" of course could see fit to join the other side (it apparently
something of a time honored custom to switch sides in these things.)  Oman
and others scattered along the Arabian Peninsula.  Kuwait?  Morroco.
Algeria.  Tunisia.

Thus it can become what all of us fear, a division between Occident and
"Orient". (Sorry, Mike)   Turkey, thus remains a bit of an enigma.  The
Turkish soldiers were the only group the Koreans/Chinese could NOT crack
during the Korean War.  As POWs these guys were utterly undefeatible!  But
if we go the way of The Great Divide, how long would they hold out for the
"good guys"?   Governments can come and go.   Religious wars, which this
will become, have a tendency to forget about political borders and political
institutions (except, of course, where they are one and the same.)

WWIII will put the so-called Civilized World at risk for a new Dark Age.
Imagine,  say a 60% casualty figure.  Probably cause the rapid extinction of
Palm Pilots, for instance.

B.

-----Original Message-----
From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of clifford
endres
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 7:59 AM
To: StepCher@aol.com; telebob98@hotmail.com;
austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
Subject: Report from the East


Fellow Americans,

For what it's worth, here are two events that happened to me yesterday.

One, first thing in the morning, as I leave the house one of my neighbors
comes up to me and says, "We're with you, brother, against those nasty
Arabs.  That business is about what you can expect of an Arab."  I thank her
and move on.

Two, I'm in a stationery store in the afternoon, buying some paper, when one
of the two women behind the counter asks me where I'm from.  I confess that
I'm an American.

"We don't like Americans here," she says.
"Why?"
"Just think about it," she replies.

The other one chimes in, "We hate your country and your Bush and your war."

And with icy Turkish politeness, they invited me to finish my business and
leave.  Discussion finished.

First time anything like anti-Americanism had ever happened to me here,
except for the occasional wild-eyed student Marxist on the street.  The more
I thought about it, though, the more I considered it might be the mirror
image of monolithic American anti-Muslimism.  If so, and it spreads, we
appear to be in for some shit.

Your Constantinople correspondent,
Cliff