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ESCAPING ARAB FAILURE
WE shouldnât be discouraged by the recent round of violence in Iraq. It was predictable. But there were two disheartening signs: * We should be troubled that, in this bloody month, none of the insurgents waved an alternative constitution - unless we count their perversion of the Koran. None of those violent men is fighting for freedom - theyâre fighting to strangle liberty in the cradle. They are, without exception, forces of reaction, not liberation, no matter how madly al-Jazeera twists the facts. * Nor did the general Arab population or its leaders take a public stand against those who would renew their oppression. And those who will not defend their own freedom do not deserve to be defended by others. Operation Iraqi Freedom has been, among other things, an attempt to give Arabs hope for a better future. The ultimate outcome wonât be known for years, but we must prepare ourselves for the possibility that the Arabs are going to fail themselves again. With sufficient troops, we can force Iraqâs Arabs to behave. But we canât force them to succeed. Ultimately, Iraq is not a test of the limits of American power. When necessary, we can do whatever must be done for our security and prosperity. Our use of force, in Iraq and elsewhere, has been remarkably - even foolishly - restrained. If Iraq collapses into medieval fantasies and blood feuds, we still may be proud of having given this crippled civilization a last, great chance to heal itself. Weâve made mistakes, but their impact is minor compared to the unwillingness of Iraqâs Arabs, Sunni or Shiâa, to build a free and civil society of their own. In the United States, campus-generated political correctness was never more than a joke - capable of turning somber conservatives purple but unable to alter anything that matters. The far more dangerous form of political correctness is that which prevails in the dream-world of diplomacy: We pretend that all civilizations have equal merit. But they donât. Itâs time to face up to the functional and moral collapse of the Arab world - if we canât describe the problem honestly, we shall never deal with it effectively. Arab civilization has failed. Disguised in part by the trappings of oil wealth, the Middle East has become humanityâs sinkhole, less promising, if richer, than Africa. But no facade of garish hotels in the hollow states that line the Persian Gulf, and no amount of full-page advertisements funded by the Saudi government, can hide the truth any longer: The Arab Middle East has become the worldâs first entirely parasitical culture; all it does is to imitate poorly, consume voraciously, spit hatred, export death and create nothing. Arab civilization offers its people no promising future, only rhetoric about a past whose achievements have been as exaggerated as they were impermanent. The present is a bloody, heartless muddle. For all the oil wealth and expatriate university degrees, for all the hired-in expertise and Western "engagement," Arab civilization has degenerated to a point where it provides the rest of humanity nothing useful of its own design - while offering its own citizens only a culture of blame, corruption and lethargy. Itâs a matter of culture, not race. In the free atmosphere of America, Arabs do as well as anyone else. All populations have their share of talent - but the oppressive environment of the Middle East enervates those individuals it does not crush entirely. Iraq has been given a chance to break free of the thrall of a bankrupt culture, to establish a rule-of-law democratic government observant of human rights. But the chances are increasingly good that Iraqâs Arabs will fail to achieve and maintain even minimal standards of good governance. The time has not yet come, but, contrary to the sort of diplomatic wisdom that so long protected Saddam, we can walk away if Iraqâs Arabs refuse to help themselves. And we can break up the country to protect the Kurds - a far better solution than turning Iraq over to the venal brokers of the United Nations. The failure of Arab civilization in our time is the greatest such disaster in mankindâs history. And, bitter though we find the proposition, the failure is so colossal that it cannot be neatly contained. Whether in Iraq today or elsewhere tomorrow, we cannot fully extract ourselves from this problem simply because our enemies wonât let go. If Iraq chooses failure, we can leave. But weâll be back, somewhere in the Middle East. Because, as we saw on 9/11, the Middle East will continue to come to us. Blame is the opium of the Arabs, and the sweetest blame for their failures is that directed at the United States (and, of course, Israel). It is our power itself, not its uses, that enrages Arabs trapped in their self-made weakness. The oft-cited examples of the Arab worldâs problems, from a lack of interest in secular education and a poor work ethic to staggering corruption and the oppression of women, are symptoms, not root causes, of Arab failure. Past a certain analytical point, we come up against the wall of our own taboos - we cannot admit that the psychological premises of an entire civilization might be dysfunctional. Arab failure isnât about that which has been done to the Middle East, but that which the Middle East has done to itself. Iraq still has a chance, if a slimmer one than we had hoped. But even if Iraqâs Arabs disappoint our ambitions, our efforts will have been worthy and our losses not in vain. Intervention was unavoidable, whatever the critics say. Continued passivity in the face of the Middle Eastâs implosion would only have made the price higher in the end. We all would be better off were the Arabs to surprise us by building healthy, prosperous, modern societies. We would be foolish not to wish them well. But we would be equally foolish not to prepare ourselves for the consequences of their accelerating failure. Ralph Peters Posted by: tipper 2004-04-26 |
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