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Fouad Ajami Gives Up On Iraqis
From a New York Times opinion article written by Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University, author of Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generationâs Odyssey.... most of us recognized that a culture of terror had taken root in the Arab world. We struck, first at Afghanistan and then at the Iraqi regime, out of a broader determination to purge Arab radicalism. ... Letâs face it: Iraq is not going to be Americaâs showcase in the Arab-Muslim world. The presidentâs insistence that he had sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, "not to make them American" is now â painfully â beside the point. ... We ... expected a fairly secular society in Iraq (I myself wrote in that vein at the time). Yet it turned out that the radical faith â among the Sunnis as well as the Shiites â rose to fill the void left by the collapse of the old despotism. In the decade that preceded the Iraq expedition, we had had our fill with the Arab anger in the streets of Ramallah and Cairo and Amman. We had wearied of the willful anti-Americanism. Now we find that anger, at even greater intensity, in the streets of Falluja. .... Once the administration talked of a "Greater Middle East" where the "deficits" of freedom, knowledge and womenâs empowerment would be tackled, where our power would be used to erode the entrenched despotisms in the Arab-Muslim world. As of Monday night, we have grown more sober about the ways of the Arabs. It seems that we have returned to our accommodation with the established order of power in the Arab world. ... In their fashion, Iraqis had come to see their recent history as a passage from the rule of the tyrant to the rule of the foreigners. We had occupied the rulerâs palaces and the rulerâs prisons. It was logistics and necessity, of course â but that sort of shift in their world acquitted the Iraqi people, absolved them of the burden of their own history, left them on the sidelines as foreign soldiers and technicians and pollsters and advocates of "civic society" took control of their country. ... Iraq is treacherous territory, but Mr. Brahimi gives us a promise of precision. The Iraqis shall have a president, two vice presidents, a prime minister and 26 ministers who will run the country. We take our victories where we can. In Falluja, the purveyors of terrorism â nowadays they go by the honored name of mujahedeen â are applying the whip in public to vendors of wine and liquor and pornographic videos. ... Imperial expeditions in distant, difficult lands are never easy. And an Arab-Islamic world loaded with deadly means of destruction was destined to test our souls and our patience. ... In its modern history, Iraq has not been kind or gentle to its people. Perhaps it was folly to think that it was under any obligation to be kinder to strangers. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-26 |
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