Posted on 12/23/2003 9:17:43 AM PST by knighthawk
The Arab and Muslim world stands at a crossroad. One direction indicates dictatorship. A mixed bag of absolute rulers and Islamists have different aims, but a common belief in their right to be wielding power and killing anyone in their way, with weapons of mass destruction if they can acquire them.
Taken together, they are condemning their own and other people to permanent violence and regression.
And in the other direction, reform. A different mixed bag of Arab and Muslim oppositionists, intellectuals, dissidents and exiles are trying to devise the sort of pluralist or open society that alone is able to liberate the energies of all.
September 11 was an aggression typical of dictatorial power. Unexpected by everybody, it has had the effect of entwining the US in the destiny of Arabs and Muslims everywhere to make sure that no such aggressions take place again, and certainly not with weapons of mass destruction. The US is giving local reformers a helping hand - or, more exactly, a push hard enough to send dictatorships, both of the political and the Islamist kind, reeling. Freed from the Taliban by the US military, Afghanistan - historically more an assortment of ethnicities, sects and tribes than a country - is in the process of adopting a constitution. Iraq has always been divided between Arabs and Kurds, and further between Sunni and Shia Arabs. Freed from Saddam Hussein by the US military, Iraq is due to start self-government next June.
Supporters of Saddamite or Islamist dictatorship are clinging to their guns to sabotage any move towards democracy. Still, nobody can doubt that efforts are being made for the first time in history to allow Sunnis, Shias and Kurds to have fair political representation.
The 20th century may have seen the end of imperialism, but the new century has brought Westerners and unbelievers back to control the streets of Baghdad, capital of the great Abbasid rulers of the Middle Ages to whom Arabs look back with pride. Of course the Arab and Muslim world is in turmoil at the sight, but it is a creative turmoil. If the disparate elements in a country such as Iraq can't create an open society for themselves, then only the Americans, it is understood, can stand guarantee for such an epochal experiment. The capture of Hussein did not spark a single protest or riot against the US in any Arab or Muslim capital. True, some commentators in the Arab media lament that he did not have the courage to die gun in hand or to put a bullet into his head, as cornered dictators are supposed to do. But many more are pointing out that Arabs have only themselves to blame for the dictatorships that oppress them and the remedy lies in their own hands.
The knock-on effects of the US response to September 11 have been quickening. Turkey has an Islamist government, but it nonetheless condemned the attack and has subsequently been the target of al-Qa'ida bombs. Pakistan also condemned it. Most astonishingly, here comes Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan President, offering to voluntarily surrender his weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear bomb still in development. Gaddafi seized power in a coup in 1969, and has treated Libya as his fiefdom ever since. His heir apparent is his son Seif, a chip off the old block. Gaddafi has sponsored terrorism internationally, as a result of which sanctions were imposed on Libya. Internally, he has made sure that any opponents, including a popular Shia cleric, disappear without trace.
When the campaign in Iraq opened in March, Gaddafi tellingly admitted he felt afraid. No doubt he would like sanctions to be lifted, but he also wants to make quite sure his weapons of mass destruction will not lead him to end up in a hole in the ground, like his fellow dictator Hussein.
Hemmed in by US forces across their frontiers with Iraq and Afghanistan, the ayatollahs of Iran similarly seem to be deciding to permit international supervision of their nuclear program, generally suspected to have military purposes that threaten not just the Middle East but also Russia and Europe. Syria, Iran's ally, is also under pressure on account of its chemical and biological weapons. A classic Arab dictatorship, Syria has a President, Bashar Assad, who inherited absolute power without the least legitimacy from his father. He, too, sponsors terrorism on a wide scale and eliminates all critics.
George W. Bush's recent move to legislate against Syria is causing panic there. Baghdad and Damascus are historic rivals, and the freedom of the former is already humiliatingly exposing the backwardness of the latter.
It's the same in Cairo, where popular opinion is turning against President Husni Mubarak, who has ruled by emergency decree for more than two decades and hopes to put his son in as his successor. In Saudi Arabia, the huge royal family exercises the most complicated and complete of dictatorships, and even there civil rights groups are springing up and the first tentative protests have hit the streets. Municipal elections are to be held in that country for the first time.
Arab and Muslim dictatorships aren't what they were. The Americans are making their point about democracy faster than anyone could have imagined.
David Pryce-Jones is author of The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs.
Surely Walter Croncrite, Michael Moore, Coward Howard Dean, Jeanenne God-aweful-hoe and International ANSWER are not wrong huh?
If we take a WMD hit we're betting it came from Libya.
The trick is to lower expectations enough so as to allow Americans to get on with it and leave, but not so low that the incipient nation reverts to form.
Iran.
BUMP!
Always good to read something by David Pryce-Jones.
I highly recommend reading his book.
Best thing written on the nature of Arab culture.
L
Made in Pakistan, paid for by Saudis, delivered by Iranians.
Just kill'em all.
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