Why I'm hopeful about the Middle East uprisings

I am often asked why so many Israelis are worried by the popular rebellions rocking the Middle East and why I'm so hopeful. My response is that just as their worry is tempered by hope, my hope is tempered by worry.

The worried among us fear the possibility of long-term chaos and/or the emergence of regimes even more repressive than those that are crumbling. ...

For decades, the free world's policy toward the Middle East was based on the desire for stability, purchased by deals struck with leaders. That the leaders were corrupt autocrats mattered little. To the contrary, tyranny was seen as guaranteeing stability, corruption as guaranteeing that tyranny's friendship could be bought.

This was rationalized by considerations of realpolitik and the comforting assertion that we had no right to judge the moral standards of societies different from our own.

That pact, however, has been definitively exposed as a sham, yielding not stability but its opposite. And it has been broken - not by us or the autocrats but by the peoples of the region. Their great awakening has shattered the truism that, unlike "us," they have no real desire for freedom. With tremendous courage, they have risked their lives to declare otherwise. ad_icon Quantcast

In that stirring spectacle lies the first, elemental reason for my hope that a historical page has at last begun to turn. But the window is only so wide, and many forces aim to shut it.

...

Back then, we dissidents had no Internet, no CNN. The free world, for its part, had little leverage over Kremlin dictators. Today, communications are easy and instantaneous. Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood is not yet strong enough to seize control and foreclose on genuine reform.

Overall my perception would be worry and very little hope. Forcing Mubarak from Egypt and Ben Ali from Tunisia should result in bad outcomes, and be the pattern for Middle East unrest as it spreads to Libya and elsewhere. The demise of these dictators precipitate political wildernesses resembling the lesson ignored 32 years ago when Carter discarded the Shah of Iran. The Obama Administration and other media sources encouraged, and applaud the passing of these oligarchies, but studiously ignore evidence of attendant brittle economic, social, and political environments. In the Middle East the most violent aspiring Islamic and secular totalitarians should exploit these strains to follow traditional malevolent roads to power energized with lethal political intrigues and religious heresies.

About 1100 AD Hassan bin Sabah, who inherited the Assassin’s Guild, enlightened Islamist societies to terrorism as foundational statecraft for political prosperity. Philosophical and religious lawyers retained their lives, and obtained support for dictators by backwards engineering the Koran into useful totalitarian heterodoxies. Concurrently, foundational thought including Jews, Christians and Muslims as ‘People of the Book” became hazardous. Concurrently, Saladin’s Sufism stressing individual relationship with God, and exalting individuals in society became marginalized. Concurrently, extraordinary Arab achievements in mathematics, philosophy, science, and medicine submerged within authoritarian and feral societies. Omar Khayyam, Ibn al-Haytham, and Abu Ali al-Hussain Ibn Sina had no successors for uncompromising, independent thought. Such simultaneous extinctions provide compelling evidence of a pervasive contagion subverting the Middle East.

What remained was bloody electioneering among aspiring totalitarians causing them to grasp and retain their power by crafting superior alliances of human cunning and animal brutality. For them dazzling spectacle and mercurial oratory belie principled commitment to a continuum where politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed. Once acquired these skills easily replicate through the generations for managing philosophies from Democracy to Communism. The natural result in our present time establishes “The Democratic (or) Islamic Peoples Republic of Whatever”.

Contrary to what media sources insist, Glenn Beck does not indulge in paranoid fantasy concerning the Muslim Brotherhood. He relates caution consistent with its history since founding in 1928 for notable events such as allying with Hitler, planning the assassination of Nasser, and supporting Hamas, notwithstanding its ongoing involvement with terrorism. His analysis points up the question of why this would and organizations like Ai Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and successors ever abandon strategies proven throughout a millennium?

T. E. Lawrence provides valuable insights about Arab countries, because though he was clearly an intellectual, his education was tempered by extensive travels from 1909 to 1914 away from the colonial community, even before he lead the Arab revolt in WW I. In the Seven Pillars of Wisdom he says, “They are a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place the material world has been and God would move upon the face of those waters”.

I believe The United States, as a super power and the beneficiary of an anomalous revolution resulting in personal liberty, has a moral responsibility to bear any burden to spread the ideals to which we aspire, not only in Egypt and Tunisia, but throughout the Middle East. Notwithstanding the necessity for real politick, our country should offer moral leadership by seeking out and supporting the yet anonymous, selfless individuals and constituencies willing to endanger their lives and those of their families to establish durable economic models and representative governments. With our help such people and constituencies might not be broken by the granite of secular totalitarianism or Islamic Fundamentalism.

The United States should be considered a dependable, if difficult ally or enemy. Unfortunately with recent administration, I think there seems little chance this country will base foreign relations on the intangibles which define the best aspects of our character, and move on to real politick reluctantly. More likely the U.S. will prosecute national interests by making deals for access to economic resources with the ruling elite of the ascendant tribe for a generation until the next revolution comes along.

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