>Which is why remarks like this:
>
>>1 Western domination of the Middle East provoked the attack on >September 11
>>
>>The perpetrators of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were not
>>oppressed victims of Western domination, but mostly wealthy or middle
>>class Arabs from the Gulf States. Not the grinding poverty of the Gaza
>>Strip, but the conspicuous consumption of Saudi Arabia proved the seedbed
>>for Al-Qaeda. September 11 was roundly denounced throughout >the Middle East.
>
>are so ahistorical! And what's really dangerous about the notion is that
>it's always used to dismiss bourgeois criticism as not "authentic". It's
>not as if the proposition couldn't be criticized on many other grounds, so
>why this one?
yeah, but the problem is, if we assume that it's poverty that generates the problems, then people assume that the answer is to buy them off, right. just bring them into the civilized world. just create a marshall plan for the Middle East. yadda. which turns out to be what kmart said awhile ago: scratch a lefty, find a liberal.
so getting the story right isn't necessarily about pointing out how they aren't authentic. ehrenriech was discussing the theories that had been put forth thus far to understand S11, and not necessarily endorsing the one above, either.
kelley