> Leigh:
>> Replace the indigenous Iraqis with a new improved westernized
>> variant.
>
> I think you are unfair to the expat population - most of them are
> actually very open minded and cosmopolitan. This also applies to US
> expats who tend to be a nicer and gentler folk than much of the
> home-grown variety.
>
I was painting with a broad brush. Honest! Satire!
Although I'm not sure that "cosmopolitan" behavior is *not* part of the problem I'm trying to paint with that brush. Specifically in relation to the Middle East, it's traditional culture, and values.
> I think you are confusing 'Westernized" or "Europeanized" expats with
> an altogether different species, namely political refugees, a prime
> examples of which is the anti-Castro vermin in Florida, but many
> nations have their own as well. The difference is that while exapts
> left voluntarily because they valued other lands more than their own,
> the political refugees were forced out by their political opponents.
> While the expats tend to assimilate to the host country culture, the
> refuges are mentally still in their old one, fighting the old battles
> they lost over and over again. Most of the time, they fight it with
> words and on paper, but heaven forbids when they get a chance to
> fight it for real.
There would have to be some overlap between the western/europeanized expats and the political ones... Which was Ahmed Chalabi?. Did he have long term plans as he studied in the US. Westernized, or political?
It's a crap shoot.
Regarding the assimilation, agreed. Although it would seem to me, at an ancedotal/empirical level, that the Kach/JDL people were much more rabid than my father's belief in zionism. I'm not sure how much the trauma of "nation making"(?) and it's concurrent social upheavals relates to the integration of all comers after the fact.
Let's not forget that, in Israel's case, we are talking about a newly "liberated" piece of real estate, and it's not the same as, let's say, culturally assimilating Laotians to live in Wisconsin.
>
> I think certain elements of Jewish diaspora in the US belongs to the
> second category, but interestingly, this is mostly the second or
> third generation of Jewish immigrants. The first generation was more
> of the expat kind (cf. Finkelstein's comments in _The Holocaust
> Industry_). I do not quite understand the mechanics of that
> radicalization - Finkelstein attributes it to machinations of the
> unholy alliance of the "Holocaust Industry" and the US foreign policy
> establishment, but I do not find that very convincing.
>
I agree with his basic premise that the jews need to stop using the holocaust as a marketing tool(guilt) for maintaining the state of Israel. I need to read his recent book. (after Sen. Robert Byrd: Losing America)
In my estimation, that unholy alliance's current incarnation is the neocons. Not sure what it was called in the 30s-40-50s, but I'm sure it existed in some form.
I find the "holocaust industry" theory attractive, but can offer no insight except to say that selling water(Israel) to a thirsty man(D.P.) must be like shooting ducks in a barrel.
> I am not sure if the same process can be observed in other ethnic
> minorities - certainly NOT in Germans or Poles (and other Eastern
> Europeans) who assimilated quite easily and the subsequent
> generations would not give two shits about their "old world"
> countries and battles - that applies even to the children of the
> virulent anti-communist elements expelled from EE. However, I do not
> have any first hand knowledge of second generation Cuban exiles.
Judging from the ethnic communites I've been in contact with through my life, it's the kids of the immigrants that end up with the problems, not the original immigrant. Be they economic (Mexican) or political(Vietnamese... big on home invasion robberies done to mil-spec).
>
> Any comments?
>
> Wojtek
>
>
Yes. I was painting with a broad brush ;>
Leigh www.leighm.net