Fair – Reporting

How The Other Side Sees It  From the “Hudson New York”

by Mark Silverberg    @ http://tinyurl.com/2v5bdhz

As Harold Rhode, recently of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, wrote for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, it is crucial to understand the mindset of our enemies. Dealing specifically with Iran, but implying that the Arab dictators and despots of the Middle East move to the same beat, Rhode concludes that the paradigms that govern U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East today are totally at odds with the paradigms that actually govern the actions of our enemies. As Rhode notes: Compromise, as we understand the concept, is seen by the other side “as a sign of submission and weakness” that brings shame and dishonor on those – and on the families of those – who concede. Our efforts at compromise, contrition, accommodation and appeasement are perceived as symbolic of our weakness; and our attempts to find common cause with our enemies merely reinforce their belief that we are “paper tigers,” to use bin Laden’s term, and easy prey. “It is for this reason that good-will and confidence-building measures should be avoided at all costs,” he says, as our Western cultural biases make it easy to misunderstand the true intentions of our enemies.