Minor Thoughts from me to you

So, apparently, the President has been negotiating an arms deal with the Saudi's. (Last I heard, it still needed Congressional approval.) Unfortunately, the State Department still doesn't understand the Middle East. Therefore, we're getting taken for a ride and -- assuming the deal is approved -- the entire Middle East will think we're morons of the highest degree. Why? Middle East observer Daniel Jackson comments.

One Hand Clapping > Blog Archive > The US-Saudi arms deal - a view from Israel

So, if I understand all of this, the US is giving the large men of Saudi Arabia $20 billion worth of high tech toys with no strings attached. ... Here is the first warning -- the Shah of Iran. Five years after the fall of Vietnam (the dread of the liberal left), Jimmy Carter lost the first round of this war without a shot. According to Professor Steve Brahms at NYU, it was largely due to the inability of the State Department to understand what Khomeini's value preferences were in the emerging standoff.

To the point, as history has shown, it was unthinkable to the State Department mind that a rational actor might prefer death (read martyrdom) to money. Who would not want to talk to the US and not get lots of money?

While the liberal left is worried that Iraq as another Vietnam, they are ignoring the first total failure of the post-Vietnam foreign policy culture -- Iran. Carter's failure, and the first complete humiliation of the US, was simply because of a refusal to work in the Bazaar. There is no market/capitalist mode of production out here.

As I mentioned before, negotiating in the Bazaar is not working the Market. Possession is everything and all transactions are conducted in front of all other actors in the Bazaar. Whoever wins is considered to be a Big Man because he was able to force the other person (the loser) to take a lower price or pay more than the item was worth. There is nothing here about mutual benefit -- whoever has the good has the power and dictates the price. Just look at Hamas's recent change in the price for Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped (he was 19 then) last year. It is not about price, it is about power.

The worst, however, position to be in the Bazaar is to be the one who gives up something for nothing. This is the freier -- a term that can only be roughly approximated as a sucker, but this lacks the total humiliation of the term. The freier is the guy who gives up a good or does a job for nothing. Even the concept of "getting ripped off" lacks the appropriate derogatory abuse that accompanies being labeled a freier.

We're about to be the freier. The last thing we want is for the Middle Eastern nations to view us as imbeciles. But, if State gets the deal approved, that's exactly how we will be viewed.

Read Daniel Jackson's full commentary -- he provides much more information than the little bit I've excerpted here.