The conservative take on Arab development
Yesterday we brought you the liberal understanding of the conclusions of the U.N.s recent Arab Human Development Report, courtesy of Tom Friedman at The New York Times. While all agree that the social conditions of the Arab world -- the economic stagnation, cultural decay, rampant poverty in the face of staggering oil wealth -- have worsened since the U.N. first took up the subject earlier this decade, Friedman saw a bright spot on the horizon, and in the West Bank of all places. The moral of that story? The incorruptability and transparency of the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, showed the way to a new, better kind of Arab politics.
In today's Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami gives a different perspective of the U.N. report. Echoing the neocon line, Ajami diagnoses the problem in the Arab world as a deficit of democracy and free-wheeling capitalism. Arabs have put their faith in the state, "and the states have failed." Despots control the Middle East due to "the absence of the countervailing power of property and the private sector."
But Ajami's most interesting contribution to what is sure to be a wave of self-satisfied commentary from the West about the failures of the East, is his unmasking of the supposed anti-Americanism that "suffuses" the report and his indictment of the Obama administration, which he says is intent on undertaking a more accomodating stance towards the autocratic Arabs, backing away from Bush's freedom agenda:
There is cruelty and plunder aplenty in the Arab world, but these writers are particularly exercised about Iraq. “This intervention polarized the country,” they say of Iraq. This is a myth of the Arabs who are yet to grant the Iraqis the right to their own history: There had been a secular culture under the Baath, they insist, but the American war begot the sectarianism. To go by this report, Iraq is a place of mayhem and plunder, a land where militias rule uncontested.
For decades, it was the standard argument of the Arabs that America had cast its power in the region on the side of the autocrats. In Iraq in 2003, and then in Lebanon, an American president bet on the freedom of the Arabs. George W. Bush’s freedom agenda broke with a long history and insisted that the Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA. A despotism in Baghdad was toppled, a Syrian regime that had all but erased its border with Lebanon was pushed out of its smaller neighbor, bringing an end to three decades of brutal occupation. The “Cedar Revolution” that erupted in the streets of Beirut was but a child of Bush’s diplomacy of freedom.
Arabs know this history even as they say otherwise, even as they tell the pollsters the obligatory things about America the pollsters expect them to say. True, Mr. Bush’s wager on elections in the Palestinian territories rebounded to the benefit of Hamas. But the ballot is not infallible, and the verdict of that election was a statement on the malignancies of Palestinian politics. It was no fault of American diplomacy that the Palestinians, who needed to break with a history of maximalist demands, gave in yet again to radical temptations.
Now the Arabs are face to face with their own history. Instead of George W. Bush there is Barack Hussein Obama, an American leader pledged to a foreign policy of “realism.” The Arabs express fondness for the new American president. In his fashion (and in the fashion of their world and their leaders, it has to be said) President Obama gave the Arabs a speech in Cairo two months ago. It was a moment of theater and therapy. The speech delivered, the foreign visitor was gone. He had put another marker on the globe, another place to which he had taken his astounding belief in his biography and his conviction that another foreign population had been wooed by his oratory and weaned away from anti-Americanism.
The crowd could tell itself that the new standard-bearer of the Pax Americana was a man who understood its concerns, but the embattled modernists and the critics of autocracy knew better. There is no mistaking the animating drive of the new American policy in that Greater Middle East: realism and benign neglect, the safety of the status quo rather than the risks of liberty. (If in doubt, the Arabs could check with their Iranian neighbors. The Persians would tell them of the new mood in Washington.)
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Ajami has been pathetic for some time. And Kinyonga, whatever a Kinyonga is, read your pathetic statement and substitute Palestinian for Jewish. Your views are clearly not worthy of respect by civilized humans. You are a morally bankrupt person trying to make antisemites out of antizionists. You are also intellectually dishonest for trying to do so.
To the AIPAC fool who babbled that Zionists have to point out to people in power in Washington how similar Americans are to Israelis, we are not at all similar to the murdering Zionists who think nothing of killing an Arab child in order to grab more land. Decent Americans are not that disgusting. Why don’t you move to Israel if you think it’s so wonderful?
Thoroughly Disgusting, why don’t you crawl back into the sewer which vomited you out in disgust. Your antisemitic hysterical lie, worthy of a Goebbels, a Luther or a Haj al-Husseini put you beyond the pale of civilised discourse. Jews do no kill children or civilians and the best proof of that is that no nation on earth, certainly not your USAF which murdered Serbian civilians, has warned a civilian population by phone and leaflet drops of attacks. No other nation has sent in troops to clean out filthy terrorist nests like Jenin; most nations would have bombed the place to dust. Israel deals with matters legally even when the post-Zionist judiciary hands down uunfair ideological rulings. The Arabs on the other hand invent laws and demand that others respect their non-negotiable absolutist demands. They are supremicists who seek refuge in the most repressive interpretation of the world’s most repressive excuse for a religion. They simply cannot abide the thought of a Jew as their equal. And they will not progress because they are a bunch of promitive clans where corruption is the rule and lying is sanctioned by the word of their paedophile prophet.
Well, let’s get history right. A group of influential people in the Bush administration “claimed” they wanted to bring freedom to the Arab world and they believed you set that in motion by setting up a Democracy in Iraq. There are many who believe Iraqi oil was the main motivation of the Bush administration to invade a weakened Iraq and that is bolstered by administrative efforts to secure oil contracts for US and British oil companies and the planning and building of large, long term military bases in Iraq. It is possible both views are correct and the oil men like Cheney and Bush used people like Wolfowitz and Rice to help justify the need for the invasion for their own purposes.
Regarding the Obama foreign policy versus the Bush foreign policy, the difference is extreme. Bush practiced a policy initially of cowboy diplomacy which involves shooting first and asking questions later. It was based primarily on telling others what they needed to do if they wanted to be on “OUR SIDE”. Only toward the end did Bush realize that policy doesn’t work and then started to change it. The Obama foreign policy is based on “mutual cooperation” and the first step in that policy is reaching out and offering to be cooperative. What many people seem unable to realize is cooperation is a two way street. If people do not reciprocate you don’t keep offering more.
The US must show a willingness to be the first to reach out to others because of our status in the world and past actions. However, anyone who thinks the Obama policy is a “one sided” affair aimed solely to appease Arab nations has absolutely no clue what “mutual cooperation” implies. Try to remember, Obama was a community organizer who had to resolve conflicts between groups with different interests. He clearly understands the solution to conflict is not achieved by having one side give away the store. It resides in getting all sides to recognize why cooperation is to everyone’s benefit and why conflict is not. Pressure is applied by various means to encourage all sides to recognize the downside of not cooperating. Israel may feel some pressure now, but believe me, so will the Arabs and Palestinians if they are foolish enough to think “mutual cooperation” means you get something for nothing. Obama has already put an upper limit of 1 year on the clock for reciprocal behavior.
Great, Paul You said well about this sewer vomit. Your really smashed him in old public toilet were he belongs.
This Peter the Welmessed speaking about history that he know nothing about.
Just read Mark Twain or Wilky Collins books about their travelling in Palestine, see declaration of Lord Balfur. Then get familiar with ‘48 year war for existance.
Now you’d have right to open mouth.
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Kinyonga Tisa
08/06/09 06:03 PM
Nothing Worthwhile Can Be Built On A False Foundation. “. . . the economic stagnation, cultural decay, rampant poverty in the face of staggering wealth in the Arab world . . .” is because their lies and hypocrisy has riveted them onto a false foundation; and they are encouraged to remain in that rut by their lieing, hypocritical supporters. Anyone who honors a person who makes anti-Jewish ramarks and murders innocent Jewish men, women, and children is not worthy of respect by civilized humans.
Kinyonga