http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-000093988nov25.story
What Went Wrong in the Arab World? Ask Yourself
By Hussein Ibish
L.A. Times
November 25 2001
Hussein Ibish is communications director of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee
A growing chorus of American and Israeli voices is demanding that the
Arab world engage in some serious introspection. Such self-criticism
is clearly warranted. However, those handing down this prescription
may not care for the results, and they are badly in need of a dose of
the same medicine themselves.
There is no doubt that the state of political, social and economic
malaise and stagnation in the Arab world generally demands
self-examination. For decades, the Arab world has been dominated by
repressive and parochial regimes that have failed to mine the region's
only great resource, its people. Public discourse all too often is
stultified. Dissent is regarded as treason. Education is reduced to a
third-rate patronage racket. And religious bullying is tolerated, even
encouraged.
Under such circumstances, social and national consciousness withers.
Politics becomes the art of back-room manipulation, and political
discourse becomes paranoid and given to the most absurd conspiracy
theories. Worst of all, absent a functional political process, people
seeking change are easily driven to various forms of extremism.
Westerners demanding Arab introspection seem to expect that this will
mean the adoption of their perspectives. However, a truly empowered
and dynamic Arab public would surely demand not only stronger and more
direct support for the Palestinians but also would raise serious
questions about the level and role of American military and corporate
presence.
It would insist on using the region's natural resources in a very
different manner. It would mean the assertion of Arab national
interests in a manner not seen in many decades and which has been
regarded as threatening in the past. It would not, and could not, mean
greater subordination to the interests of others.
Israelis and their supporters, who lead the calls for Arab
introspection, are in no position to do so. Israeli society is engaged
in an extended exercise in neurotic denial about the basic facts of
its own brief history, which remain a largely repressed scene of
national trauma.
Israel proceeds as if it had not violently wrested control and
ownership of all its territory from the Palestinians. Worse, it is
utterly blind to the nature of its relationship with the Palestinians
living under Israeli military rule and the effects its actions have on
the people it is abusing and killing.
In truth, Israel acts as a predatory, 19th century-style colonial
power toward the Palestinians, and yet it insists on seeing itself as
democratic and equitable.
Never, for the sake of its own future, was a society more desperately
in need of introspection, not to mention a simple reality check.
Which brings us to the United States.
The whole world has a stake in American introspection, but we seem to
be perfect postmodern subjects, incapable of even the most basic kind
of historical memory.
Each international crisis is treated as if it had no context whatever,
at least no context involving ourselves, which prevents us from
learning any lessons from the past. Our current bout of willful
amnesia involves forgetting the role we played in promoting right-wing
Muslim extremism in Afghanistan and throughout the Islamic world over
many decades.
Americans denounce the "foreign invaders" in Afghanistan, but who sent
them there? Who launched the first great global jihad? Whose massive
covert war resulted in the collapse of all forms of civil society in
Afghanistan, which led to the rise of the Taliban?
The most dreaded word in Washington is "blowback."
What we in the U.S. are forgetting is the long history of American and
British promotion of the most right-wing Muslim politics as a counter
to socialism and nationalism in the Arab world. We call for democracy
and openness in the Arab world, but our government steadfastly opposes
everything that tends in that direction. We seem unaware that the
contemporary Middle East is as much the product of our own meddling,
and that of France and Britain, as it is of any local forces.
"I'm amazed that people would hate us," remarked President Bush,
"because I know how good we are." A discourse that casts the American
role in the world as simply "good" and acknowledges none of our own
self-interested brutalities and exploitations is profoundly dangerous
to the entire planet.
Arab introspection is urgently required, but given the current state
of affairs, everybody needs a hard look in the mirror.
