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| 2005-08-20 |
| Rather critical in its review of the US strategy (as to be expected from a lebanese pundit?), but gets a good point on arab intellectuals. Why the Arab world roots for American failure in Iraq. BY MICHAEL YOUNG As the U.S. stumbles in Iraq, many in the Arab world (but also in the American academic left and isolationist right) have solemnly, at times pleasurably, described the situation as fitting retribution for "neocolonialism." The debate on America's imperial calling, particularly in the Middle East, is surely absorbing; yet from an Arab perspective, particularly that of the region's liberals, far more essential than how a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq might smash the Bush administration's hubris is the misfortune it will visit on Arabs striving for change. Even assuming that carelessness long ago derailed American democratization ambitions in Iraq, failure will, at the very least, push democracy to a far lower rung of regional priorities. This will be a boon to the security-minded Arab regimes that most feared a regional democratic transformation in the first place. And those of the Iraq war's critics who, legitimately, bemoaned Washington's coddling of Arab dictators (but then refused to endorse the exception to the rule in Iraq) may one day see this or a subsequent administration again prefer the steadiness of tyrants to the wishy-washiness of Arab societies that seem to hate the U.S. far more dependably than they do their own lack of liberty. Conceptually and politically, the Iraqi situation has shown the Arab world and its intellectuals at their stalemated worse. As an idea, the "neocolonial" paradigm is intriguing, because, rhetorically, it goes back decades to when Arab nationalism was at its peak. In holding to a storyline that the Iraqi conflict reflects an Arab desire for release from American hegemony, Arab critics are resurrecting an intellectual phantom. As Iraqis have fallen back on sect, tribe or ethnic loyalties, they have further demolished the myth of an all-encompassing Arab identity that, everywhere in the region, must dissolve primary identities. What the critics won't admit is that Iraq is yet another graveyard of Arab nationalism, not its avatar. But even with respect to Iraqi nationalism, Arabs have little to cling to. Iraqi displeasure with the U.S. may be genuine, but has largely been framed parochially, not by a desire to re-create a broad Iraqi national self--though the impulse may yet be alive in some quarters. Is that letdown surprising? After all, Saddam Hussein's Baathist Iraq, like Hafez Assad's Syria, blended symbols of nationalism with the counterfeit comprehensiveness of Arab nationalism, all to burnish systems that were--are--duplicitous facades for minority rule. It is politically, however, that Arab societies, specifically liberals, failed to see the advantages in the removal of Saddam, regardless of their antipathy to the Bush administration. Here was an opportunity to cheer on the emergence of an Arab democracy, with deep implications for democracy at home, and it was missed. More disturbing was that this need never have contradicted Iraqi sovereignty. Washington could have been repeatedly reminded by Arab democrats keen to see the Iraq project succeed for their own good, that true democracy meant, after a period of stabilization, allowing Iraq to be free of foreign interference. Yet other than from the Iraqis themselves, the argument was rarely heard in the Arab world; advantageous pragmatism was supplanted by stubborn attachment to principle--"principle" that, in yearning for American failure, ignored how Iraqis suffered from the ensuing carnage. Saddam's fall was welcomed by shamefully few Arabs (I recall how, on the day of his capture, a liberal Arab intellectual living in the U.S. mainly regretted that this would bolster George W. Bush's popularity ratings): The "humiliation" of seeing an Arab leader toppled by Western armies far outweighed that of seeing one of the most talented of Arab societies, the Middle East's Germany, subjected to a ferocious despotism responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Nor was there much interest regionally in the discovery of the Baath's mass graves. One reason was the secondary concern that many Arab societies have for Saddam's foremost victims--the Shiites and Kurds; but the main cause of indifference was that Saddam's crimes, if acknowledged, threatened to imply the Arabs' inability to responsibly manage their own emancipation. In other words, applauding his ouster meant admitting that the Arab world could produce no better, and deserved no better than Western armies in its midst. This rationale was nonsense, but spawned a cliché that Arab intellectuals routinely peddle: that Arab reform must come "from within"--though the notion would have been laughable in Baathist Iraq. Arab societies must indeed open up from inside, but absent an echo, sometimes a determining one, from outside--including the option of foreign military action--little will change. Arab rejection of the Iraqi project rested on another foundation: sympathy for the Palestinians. Here again, Iraq offered opportunities never considered. How could the U.S. be serious about Iraqi democracy, the critics muttered, when Palestinians still suffered? The statement was a non sequitur, but it undercut efforts to draw on what was best in Iraq to advance Arab liberty and Palestinian self-determination. Some neocons indeed argued that victory in Iraq, by sounding the death knell of terrorism, would oblige Palestinians to accept a settlement with Israel. This was incredibly simplistic, but no less so is the widely held view in the Arab world that Iraq was mainly done to help Israel. There is little evidence of even a consensus in Israel over Iraq, let alone that the alligator-skinned Ariel Sharon seriously bought into a plan positing Arab democracy. But again, that is less important than another question: Could Arabs have used Iraq to help the Palestinians? The answer seems evident. From the Arab side, encouragement of a democratic Iraq, and its fulfillment, would have proved the viability of an Arab democracy, denting Israel's presumption that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East." By becoming a dominant cornerstone of U.S. policy, Iraq would have relativized Israel's paramountcy; and a truly representative Iraq would have highlighted Israel's denial of Palestinian representativeness in the occupied territories. For all these reasons, American achievement in Iraq could have been looked on with greater self-interested approval and imagination by the Arab publics. It never was. How the U.S. adventure in Iraq ends is anybody's guess. However, its repercussions will be felt, first, by the Arabs themselves. By refusing to profit from the prospective democratic upheaval that Saddam's removal ushered in; by never looking beyond the American messenger in Iraq to the message itself; by lamenting external hegemony while doing nothing to render it pointless, Arabs merely affirmed their impotence. The self-pitying Arab reaction to the Iraq war showed the terrible sway of the status quo in the Middle East. An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds. Mr. Young, a Lebanese national, is opinion editor at the Daily Star in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #2 This is interesting in that he hits on the true nature of the problem, BDS compounded by USDS in the Arab world, on top of the lack of a desire among the elites for anything resembling freedom. The idea that the U.S. has stumbled in Iraq is only really true if your expectation and measurement is perfection. The "Iraq as Denmark in 90 days" metaphor. His "Even assuming that carelessness long ago derailed American democratization ambitions in Iraq...." implies that it was NOT carelessness on our part that has caused the problem. The problem is that, apparently, the people don't really care about freedom. His ending sentence sums it all up well. "An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds." Arab liberals aren't, at least in the Western sense. They have no particular committment to abstract principles like freedom and individual worth, so they blew their best chance. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-08-20 09:51 |
| #1 Well, if I believe this guy, there might be some good that could've come out of it, but it wasn't accomplished they way *I* wanted it, and have been preaching it, and *I* can't be *wrong*, so anyway, it's all about oiloiloiloil. How else could Amerika have gotten that cheap $64 a barrel oiloiloiloil? Not to mention that $2.75 a gallon gasoiloiloil. |
| Posted by: Al Lefti Dumbo 2005-08-20 08:18 |