Katalusis Readers from Around the World Bring Hope for Peace

photo credits: InternationalDiscussions.com (click to enlarge)

In my Thanksgiving greeting to Katalusis readers last Thursday I mentioned that regular visitors to this web site come from all over the United States and around the world, including Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, India, and Australia.

Sitting here at my computer in the Twin Cities, it’s been a joy to check out visits to Katalusis from foreign countries and to welcome aboard those of you who have become regular visitors.

Since Thanksgiving, visitors from several countries not mentioned above have shown up to make my day. These include: Romania, Taiwan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Iran, France, Turkey, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, and China.

Each of you affirms the miracle of modern day communication and renews my hope that as we get to know one another better, we will some day experience world peace.

I hope you’ll all stop by Katalusis again soon and don’t forget to leave a comment!

Follow-up on Turkey

Thanks to Sara from Groveland who left a comment in response to David Brunet’s recent post: Turkey: An Endangered Bridge Between East and West.

Sara mentioned Rick Steves’ travel blog, which lists on its homepage three posts on Turkey in reverse order: Thorny Turkish Issue #3: If You Mix Turkey into Europe, Will It Curdle? Thorny Turkish Issue #2: Turks and Kurds; Thorny Turkish Issue #1: Armenia

In reply, Brunet, a former Fulbright scholar in Turkey, said he has always liked Steves’ travel notes. And he appreciated that in the above essays Steves identifies Turkey as a constitutionally secular government.

Commenting further, Brunet says “Steves talks about the Kurds being scattered throughout Turkey and notes that most of them are not PKK and don't favor a separatist state.” Brunet recalls, “When we lived in Izmir one of my favorite shopkeepers was Kurdish. I would stop and talk with him almost daily, and when I left Izmir to come home to the US, I went to his shop to say goodbye. I considered him a friend, and it had nothing to do with whether or not he was Kurdish.”

I checked out Steves' essays on Turkey, and I agree with Sara from Groveland and Brunet that they provide background information helpful in understanding the issues the Turks are now facing.

Turkey: An Endangered Bridge Between East and West

Note to Readers: The following post was written by David Brunet, a good friend and a former Fulbright Scholar in Turkey.

I lived in Turkey in 1992-93 as a Fulbright scholar, teaching at Ege University in Izmir. I’m pretty good at learning languages, so I made it a goal to learn as much Turkish as possible before and during my stay there. I was glad I tried to learn the language and although I never got to be as fluent as I had hoped, I was able to have simple conversations with grocery store clerks, shopkeepers, policemen, and others, and they were so pleased that an American wanted to have a conversation in their language.

I found the Turks to be warm and friendly, and even though they mirrored the U.S. in having a strong military, they were intensely interested in sustaining peace and strengthening cultures across the world. They valued diversity, the arts, and dialogue with other cultures.

My experience in Turkey was very positive. Despite our religious differences, I found that we shared basic values, and that in fact we worshipped the same God.

Overlooking the similarities between Islam and Christianity, President Bush labels the terrorists Islamic extremists. He forgets our Christian culture has also spawned terror: the gangs in our cities qualify as terrorists, and our use of force abroad to solve every dispute is viewed in other countries as terrorism.

James Carroll’s essay on Turkey in yesterday’s Boston Globe is right on target. The Turks have always seen us as their best allies. Long a part of European culture, they have also seen themselves as a bridge between the West and the Middle East. But as Carroll said, Bush is now creating chaos in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood.

Are the Turks our enemies? No! In my experience, Turkey responds with enthusiasm and gratitude when the U.S. and Europe show that we value their culture and their people. But Bush’s wars demonstrate to the world that we don’t value other people’s cultures. His response to a terrorist strike in the U.S. has destroyed the culture of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now he threatens to do the same in Iran.

Keep in mind that Iran has an ancient role as the cultural center of the Middle East. If we destroy that culture, we’ll alienate even more of the world’s population.

Memo from Rumsfeld: “Link Iraq to Iran”

My friend David dropped by Katalusis yesterday and left a comment in response to my Oct. 23 post, “Wrapping the Earth in an Explosive Vest.”

The suicide bomber’s explosive vest was the ominous metaphor developed by James Carroll in his reflections on the recent Bush-Cheney mutterings about Iran and the possibility of World War III. Carroll concluded:

Iraqi civil war, conflict with Iran, Turkish-Kurdish violence, chaos throughout the Middle East - and now President Bush tells us that, if we don't defuse the regional body vest carefully, World War III will start. There it is. Bush himself acknowledging at last what, under his leadership, the United States has done. We have put an explosive vest on Earth itself.

David responded:

Because I have lived abroad in several countries, and because I speak several languages (French, German, Turkish), I have been able to have conversations with people around the world not in English but in their own languages. And they have told me in their own ways that they view the US as a "terrorist nation." We get our way by creating fear, by using force, and by sacrificing our young people. And they have noticed that the nations we don't bully are the ones that have nuclear weapons. Is it any surprise that Iran wants to have nuclear weapons? If Bush is willing to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, then he is the incarnation of Satan himself, and the whole world will suffer or
even come to an end through him. I love this world, and I love my country. Already he has caused havoc that may change our world forever. A hex on you, Bush.--David Brunet.

However, the fact that many people around the world view the US as a terrorist nation isn’t due to Bush-Cheney alone; those two had considerable help from Donald Rumsfeld. Check out Robin Wright’s article in today’s Washington Post that jarringly reminds us of the former secretary of defense’s legacy, effectively captured in Wright’s opening paragraph:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

What I can’t figure out is why more people aren't as concerned as my friend David about our country’s reputation in the world and the latest saber rattling in Washington.

Wrapping the Earth in an Explosive Vest

In his column in Monday’s Boston Globe, James Carroll develops an ominous metaphor tied to Bush’s recent statement to world leaders that if they were interested in avoiding World War III, they ought to be interested in preventing the Iranians from obtaining the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.

Carroll calls attention to the deaths of two young suicide bombers whose plans went awry. The first changed his mind on the way to his target, but died when he accidentally detonated himself while reporting at a police station.

The second young man revealed his plans to family members. When his mother tried to remove the explosive vest from his body, the bomb went off and killed him, his mother, and three siblings.

The suicide bomber has been America’s nemesis in both Afghanistan and Iraq; Carroll says, “A seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers is what makes the American war the horror that it is.”

Carroll focuses on the extreme difficulty of removing the suicide bomber’s explosive vest without detonating it. And he compares the situation America has created in Iraq to wrapping that nation’s body in wires and plastic explosives, suggesting grim implications for a precipitous withdrawal.

Carroll concludes that Bush’s reference to World War III globalizes the explosive vest:

Iraqi civil war, conflict with Iran, Turkish-Kurdish violence, chaos throughout the Middle East - and now President Bush tells us that, if we don't defuse the regional body vest carefully, World War III will start. There it is. Bush himself acknowledging at last what, under his leadership, the United States has done. We have put an explosive vest on Earth itself.

And now our job is to get it off. The revelation here is that, in the new age, every bomber is a suicide bomber.

In my opinion, Carroll’s column is profoundly disturbing: a wake up call to the world.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.