The most important Middle Eastern message in President Bush's State of the Union address dealt with teenage driving. The President came before Congress and announced a $1.2 billion federal investment in hydrogen-operated cars that will permit Detroit to bring watermobiles from the "laboratory to the showroom" in time to be "the first car driven by a child born today." That's roughly 16 years.
Bush's initiative came with a double rationale: It will cleanse the air and make the U.S. "much less dependent on foreign sources of oil."
The entire Arab economy is one big oil field. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf, more than 150 million people produce practically nothing. They live off what God put in the ground. Take away oil, and the main Arab contributions to the world economy are figs and carpets.
Hydrocars may sound like a cool futuristic innovation to the Sierra Club, but to the Arab League they are a cheap ride back to the 11th century. A petroleum-free Detroit represents a far greater assault on Arab interests than a Saddam Hussein-less Baghdad. There are many tyrants in the Middle East, but only one Profit.
Bush's State of the Union was full of promises that the Arab world rightly takes as threats. For example: "If the U.S. goes to war, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies and freedom."
This line got a big hand in Congress. But in the Arab world, it was greeted with sullen silence. Ruling elites see American-style freedom as a direct challenge; the masses have been taught to regard it as a perversion of nature.
From the Arab point of view, freedom undermines traditional values and authority. It invites social chaos by putting the individual before family and clan and tribe. It brings with it an intellectual openness that leads to blasphemy and wanton behavior.
The kind of freedom Bush is offering Iraq - and, by implication, the rest of the Arab world - is about as welcome as whisky in the food packages or birth-control pills in the medical supplies.
Another of Bush's State of the Union promises was a "democratic Palestine." More subversion. There's no such thing as an Arab constitutional democracy. A constitution requires acknowledging a law greater than the Koran - something Arabs do only when bludgeoned into it by so-called secular regimes. Democracy means granting political equality to creatures made unequal by God - women, infidels, homosexuals and strangers. If constitutional democracy is America's condition for sovereignty - in Palestine or elsewhere - then the Arabs might as well start turning in their UN parking permits.
In his speech, Bush grandly assured the people of Iraq that "your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country." The day Saddam falls "will be the day of your liberation."
I hope Bush is right, but I think he is wrong. Getting rid of Saddam is a vital and urgent American interest. Most Iraqis, too, probably want to see Saddam gone, because they are sick of him. But there is precious little evidence that Iraqis - or other Arab peoples - long for an open society.
Someday they might, but only as the result of an internal intellectual and spiritual awakening. Until then, America needs to protect itself without apologies or illusions. And illusion No. 1 is that American-style freedom will be any more attractive to the Arab world than water-powered automobiles.
