> > > > I don't think I mentioned brown people.
> > >
> > > You may as well have. Maybe it's just a coincidence that Arabs (the largest group of people in "that part of the world") are not white.
> >
> > I think you're probably being a bit hard on Howard, Stephen. By your logic, one cannot make a political judgment about any continent not populated by whites? I totally don't buy that.
>
> No, but stereotypes based solely on the heritage of people are wrong. I don't know how else to put it. People in those part of the world, unlike the Japanese, don't learn from their mistakes? That's not racist? It's assigning attributes to an entire race based on their heritage. What else should we call it?

Ok, I see what you're saying. Part of it is that I misremembered some of Howard's post.

All the same, I think I see where he was coming from. All his life, and certainly all of ours, that region of the world has been plagued by violence, and there is no end in sight. It remains a largely a dangerous place, oppressive in particular to women, Jews, and Christians.

If it's been going on all of Howard's life, let alone the centuries prior, what does that say about an ability to learn from mistakes?

Granted, what I've just described are the continuing actions of corrupt governments and radical extremists, not so much the people at large. Still, if one thinks in terms of nations instead of individual citizens -- not at all unusual or wrong in a discussion of global affairs -- I can sympathize with Howard's frustration at the story recent history tells, however much it could have been expressed better.

The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder what the poor desert tribes bit has to do with anything. Howard, what's the desert tribes got to do with it?