Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Third Learning Block: American Friends Service Committee

We met with Joseph Gerson, a speaker for the AFSC on Tuesday Morning 8:45am.

Mr. Gerson took us on a historical overview of western intervention in the Middle East. Starting with the crusades, following through to WWI and the division of Middle East into the modern nation states. After WWII, British and French lost their imperial control in the Middle East and America moved in to control many countries with puppet governments. We set up a government in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, and there has been much unrest and war since then. Gerson argued that we set up an "empire" in the Middle East because of oil.

Our impressions, and questions:

Matt: One sided presentation and it seemed that the presenter wasn't really listening to questions.

David T.: The history helped to gain insight into how many middle easterners view the West and U.S.

Mike V-G: Appreciated the expertise, intelligence and breadth of knowledge of presenter.

2 comments:

Hans Mundahl said...

Truely remarkable job on your JUA experience. Nice work!

Anonymous said...

1)what is your opinion on the war in iraq? 5/6 said it was terible and it was a waste of human life and resources.1/6 they felt about 50/50 about the war.
2)what do you think about sending more troops over to iraq? 5/6 siad they should police it and stop sending so many over. 1/6 replied with no answer.
3)what do you think our american image is? 6/6 said its not good and we act like we bully other countries so we can get our way.
4) did you expect for the war to last this long or even? 5/6 they thought a very quick war or they thought we would never have even gone into war. 1/6 said yes they believed the war lasted this long.