President-Bush continues to beat a dead horse in his attempts to persuade the Arab world to take a hostile stance against Iran. The Arab states of the Gulf region are deeply tied to Iran by historical ethnic and economic ties.
The United Arab Emirates alone are the repository for hundreds of millions of dollars (and euros) of Iranian investment. Powerful bilingual trading families span the Gulf, with members in both Iran and Arab states.
The idea that a little jawboning by a United States president could change centuries-old patterns is patently absurd.
The United States would do well to first understand the culture of the regions in which it hopes to hold sway, and then work with the existing cultural-patterns, rather than trying to turn-nations against those with whom they have longstanding interdependent relations.
William O. Beeman
Minneapolis, Jan. 14, 2008
Chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota.
Via NYT
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