Dr. Hugh Roberts was one of the inspiring speaker’s I ever heard. He made a lot of remarks regarding the U.S. government and argued about some British political system as well. But mostly his presentation was on Islamism. One of the interesting argument he made was political problem should be a political approach. In relation to U.S. he made an argument that the U.S. government has not approached a political action in relation to 9/11. And that he totally made a disconnection with War in Iraq and 9/11. As he explained further that there could be no war on terror. Then why does the government referring the war in Iraq to the war on terror. The so-called war on terror by the government has made the problem much more massive. The problem is now bigger than it was in the past. The U.S. government has not made political choices but rather made fatal choices in making the matter worst. The government has made some of the worst policies in relation to Middle East. Then he goes into media the biggest problem in today’s world for example the words moderate and radical. Media has tried to use words that are bad but also good in the political system to make one group better off than the other one. And in terms of Islam they use words while talking about politics to make Islam as if they want power and control over something. Again as of “War on Terror” it’s not something you can do. But people don’t realize even the soldiers who are fighting for their own country not realizing why they are fight the war. Is it on terror? As far as I think it isn’t terrorism the government has targeted. The U.S. government has fought the wrong wars. He relates the terror groups with Sunni’s and they all relate to Sunni’s rather than Shia. Which I quiet didn’t understand why he made that claim. But one of the important arguments he made was Westerns stepping the Islamic values that Islamic have an evil ideology. And then made the claim that Westerns don’t really cared about issues that go on and the fact they still go into those conflicts to make them worse. He also mentioned a little bit about Palestine and that the problem wont be fixed until the people realize what they are doing and realize what they are doing is wrong. Until then there isn’t any policy that could fix matters like that. But I planned to look into more of his work on http://www.crisisgroup.org, which has his report and other information that I can read to analyze more on my topic.
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Thanks, Harmon. The website from the international crisis group seems like a useful website for many in our class. You might go to blackboard and send all of the class this website address to help with their research. I am not sure what you meant when you were describing what Dr. Roberts said about Palestine and wrote “the problem won’t be fixed until the people realize what they are doing and realize what they are doing is wrong.” What problem? What people? and “what are they doing”? Can you be a bit more specific as to exactly what claims Roberts was making here? Also, how might you use Robert’s lecture in your own essay to help you generate original ideas???
Hey Laurie well to him personally the problem lies in the minds of the Israeli-Palestinian people and the problem won’t be solved until people in their minds realize they are not different and learn how to live together and forget the differences. And that’s when the conflict will come to an end. I will be using Dr. Robert’s lecture in my essay as a lens that will articulate how the differences comes into being and that changes perceptions of the people. Some of the examples are politics, media…the connection between terror and Islam.