Like it is...

Window in Lebanon has been doing some great blogging recently. Take to-day's post on Orientialism: for instance:

Though rather typical of the way France's salon thinkers think, the analysis entitled Saddam, come back! and published in to-day's Libération is curious to say the least. In this pamphlet, which I presume is written for provocation, Barthélémy Courmont, a researcher at IRIS (Foreign and Strategic Relations Institute) explains that, "as was foreseable, the capture of Saddam Hussein has solved nothing. Worse yet, it may have durably worsened the security situation." Further on, he writes more to the glory of the one he calls the Reïs, a western way of demonstrating his knowledge of Arabic (reïs means leader in Arabic):

The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was entirely damnable. Entirely? Not necessarily. The Ba'th party, guarantor of the secularism and unity (albeit by force) a diverse nation, like the many that Western nations have successfully built, progressively made Iraq into a rogue state, but a state nevertheless. The villain was in power but it was possible to contain him when he got too big, particularly over the Kuwait border: our leaders could sleep with an easy conscience. However, the current situation has plunged the region into a chaos for which no response seems fitting.

It's not easy to realize that some do not want to understand anything and learn nothing with time. One the one hand, the Americans have been waging war the same way for centuries and they must now face problems that are unworthy of their military capacity; on the other, the Europeans like their dictators very well because they're reassuring. And because they've taken the time to learn the dictators' names. And the Arabic surnames one uses in salons, before adding, "I've spent two days in Iraq and I can tell you it was foreseable, the capture of Saddam Hussein would solve nothing..."