Ralph Peters

…in the New York Post.

…A culture of blame prevents moral, social and political progress. This is a self-help universe. The nonsensical Arab insistence that all Arab problems are the fault of America and Israel (or the Crusades) ignores the fact that Arab civilization has been in decline for 700 years – and has been in utter disarray for the last 200.
This is a homemade failure. Through their own choices, cherished beliefs, values and norms, Arabs have condemned themselves to strategic incompetence. No society that oppresses women, denies advancement on merit even to men, indulges in fantastic hypocrisy, wallows in corruption, undervalues secular learning, reduces its god to a nasty disciplinarian and comforts itself with conspiracy theories will ever compete with us.

One Response to “Ralph Peters”

1. John says:

   August 24, 2006 at 3:03 pm

   I love the part in “What Went Wrong” where Lewis looks at Turkey agianst the other Muslim states. Turkey’s leaders asked the question “What did we do wrong?”, while the Arabs asked “What did they do to us?”.