After last night's show, journalist and author Rula Jabreal continued the conversation with Lawrence O'Donnell about the recent turmoil in the Arab world, and we thought it was a good idea to film it so you could see it, too.
Presented with a Gallup poll showing a 54 percent approval rating of U.S. leadership, Jabreal quickly added, "Probably in Egypt it will be 60 percent. In Tunisia it will probably be 55 percent. Look, the Arab world is big and vast, and no doubt this administration has turned some things around." She suggested the protests in Africa and the Middle East are reflections of internal conflicts in countries not used to the ways of democracy.
Extremest groups, she said, use Islamic derision, such as that seen in the film "Innocence of Muslims," to incite mobs and make political points.
"They always did it before," Jabreal said. "We didn't know about it because...the regimes, the dictators, they would hammer them and kill probably hundreds of them, and we wouldn't know about it. Today, we know about it because you have an elected government that react to the mob in a different way."
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Lawrence, what a great guess to have on yesterday's program, I just finished watching the end of discussion that you had with Rula Jabreal. Awesome interview, learned a lot!
I've been thinking, always a dangerous thing to do.
What does the Arab world offer the rest of the world that should make us concerned with them?
Goods: Oil and gas. Period. They manufacture or produce nothing else we want or need.
Services: Terrorists. Cheap, union-busting labor for Europe. Nothing else I can think of.
So, why should we bust our assets being all concerned with them? Program:
1. Help protect Israel.
2. Keep any and all countries that don't have them from getting nuclear weapons.
3. Be courteous to the oil sheiks, so we continue getting their oil, until we find other sources, such as in North America, to replace it with. Then, politely ignore them.
The Arab world: who needs it?
Discuss.
Two post topics back to back on the same subject and the same personality. Just filling space now in your desperate attempt to keep distracting from the failures of the Obama Administration both at home and abroad, O'Donnell! Why not get some backbone, and meet the issues head on that need to be discussed before the election?