This question is posed to a member of the Washington Institute who'll be visiting on April 8th. Your question should couple a detail from the Institute with one from the history we've been studying so far. Below is a description of the Institute from its website:
"Founded in 1985, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy* was established to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East. Under the guidance of a distinguished and bipartisan Board of Advisors, the Institute seeks to bring scholarship to bear on the making of U.S. policy in this vital region of the world. Drawing on the research of its scholars and the experience of policy practitioners, the Institute promotes an American engagement in the Middle East committed to strengthening alliances, nurturing friendships, and promoting security, peace, prosperity, and democracy for the people of the region."
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the institute claims it was "established to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East."
ReplyDeletewho is the target audience that is to gain this understanding?
How does the Washington Institute know what they are doing is affective, and how is what they do any different from what the UN does, or even what the president of the United States does?
ReplyDelete-Julia
In the past month many countries in the middle east have revoulted and tried to replace their governments. How many countries do you predict will become democrecies like Israel and the U.S.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if the countries became democratic would it impact peace with Israel and her neighbors?
ReplyDeleteTwo things -- The Washington Institute of Near East Policy claims it "was established to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East. Under the guidance of a distinguished and bipartisan Board of Advisor..". How can it allow individual with positions within the Institute to contribute money to political candidates, politicians and political organization AND preach that it is a balanced understanding of American interest? Contributing to a political candidate creates partisanship.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, one of their boards of advisors is Marty Peretz. Peretz owned the magazine The New Republic. TNR is considered to be among the most liberal of the widely distributed periodicals. Marty Peretz has also been accused of bigotry for writing negatively towards the Muslim and Arab community. An example... "Arab society' is 'hidebound and backward' [and] [t]hat the Druze are 'congenitally untrustworthy". He wrote this as well in editorial back in 2010, "But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse"
So is it really "Under the guidance of a distinguished and bipartisan Board of Advisors"?
This is going to sound a bit rude but here it goes: the organization is called "The Washington Institute for Near East Policy" right? Then why does it seem like it should be called "The Washington Institute for Israel Policy"? After spending about 25-30 minutes researching the entire board of directors, I only found 3 who are not Jewish, as far as I could tell anyway. Obviously I'm not saying all Jews are automatically going to side with Israel all the time, but when it comes to the middle east, I found in a ZOA article that 75% of American Jews feel the Arabs(the rest of the Middle east) plan to "destroy Israel". I then searched for some of the Directors side of the argument and found quite a lot of them siding with Israel. Curious how it can claim to want to cover the entire middle east, when clearly there is major Zionist tendencies on the Bord. Sure you can't talk about any crisis in the Middle east without some sort of reference to it's effect on it's only Democracy. But to claim what this organization does, I would think they would have some differently minded leaders. So when I looked at the staff, what do you know I found many more Jewish and Israeli sounding names, but I do have to admit I also came across Muslim names too. So is this organization as Zionist as I read it to be, or is it actually as unbiased as such an organization should be?
ReplyDeleteAlso I have a general question, why do we as Americans always feel the need to but in to other nation's business? Seriously take the Truman Document, why was America so scared of communism that we wage wars(Korean/Vietnam) just to prevent some other country from being overrun by it? In other words I'm curios why it's America's responsibility to decide the fate of the Middle east?
Ok this response took well over an hour to come up with....seriously I have not spent this much time on a single HW assignment throughout all of High school. But I am now in my last week of school? wierd.
Why does the Washington Institute of Near East policy see it as an imperative to promote democracy for the people of the Middle East? How is democracy being defined? Does it preclude a parliamentary system as well? Or is it a more general thing? To what degree is this a misguided symptom of Orientalism-of bringing "culture" to the "savage people" of the Middle East-and to what degree is this backed up with good intentions (and by no means are the alternatives rendered here mutually exclusive)? This brings to mind Napoleon's Grand Sanhedrin, in which many of the questions forced Jews to pick a side-are you French or Jewish first etc. There's little doubt that as AP Euro put it last year Napoleon was a "child of the Enlightenment". And yet those questions felt so intrusive--he felt so much like an interloper. How different are these two narratives? Does enlightenment usually correlate with some inexplicable desire to "enlighten" the benighted (and in the process disrupt, dismantle, dilute etc. a rich, vibrant culture)? Is there something entirely different going on here--or maybe partially different?
ReplyDeleteSo… The “Institute promotes an American engagement in the Middle East” specifically “committed to strengthening alliances, nurturing friendships, and promoting security, peace, prosperity, and democracy for the people of the region”
ReplyDeleteSounds all nice and hunky-dory right? I feel like playing some devils advocate so here we go! First the most obvious; the butting in. when two countries are in a hostile position will running in there and trying to make them make peace really make lasting peace? What gives that country the right to assert them selves in the first place? And second isn’t asserting YOUR opinions about peace, prosperity, and democracy a form of culturcide? Again what gives the right?
this orginization as ami and noah said seems like a blatant agent of american imperialism...how do you justify that
ReplyDelete...?
ya i know that was a really lame question its been a while since ive done one of these, and its like one o clock so ya, but also im not a lawyer i actually want to know his answer im not trying to back him into a corner or anything.
p.s noah, culturcide is a great great word i should have thought of that in my argument with creepy jesus lady
I have never really heard of this institute and if they are trying to promote peace and help the middle east why aren't they announcing it all over and getting peoples attention by making videos such as when something terrible happens in Israel it doesn't even make the page on the newspaper like when the bus got bombed like 2 weeks ago or the family that got killed.
ReplyDelete