Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Person:
Ralph
Peters:
The
Tragedy of the Arabs
March 30, 2003
TV networks in the Arab world gloat as they broadcast pictures of American prisoners
executed by Saddam's thugs. They report every Iraqi lie as if it contains unassailable
truth, while mocking each report of allied success. They promise their viewers Iraq is
winning the war.
They betray their own people by doing so, setting up Arabs for yet another
psychological catastrophe.
Our natural response to the Arab world's phenomenal lies is anger: We resent their
indecency in glorifying murder and war crimes. We cannot understand how anyone can believe
these gruesome fairy tales for adults.
My advice is to ignore the Arabs. Hand-wringing about Arab TV disinformation or about
the rage of the Arab street is a waste of our time. We cannot convince them and we cannot
force them to change.
The best we can do - even for the Arabs - is to get on with America's agenda of
liberation.
The most important thing for Americans to grasp about the impotent fury
of the Arab world is that it isn't really about us. It's about their own internal demons.
The absurdities broadcast and printed throughout the Arab world are
symptoms of a once-great culture's moral desolation, of the comprehensiveness of Arab
failure. The Arabian Nights have long since turned into the Arabian nightmare.
The inability of the Arab world to compete with the West in any field of
endeavor (even their efforts at terrorism ultimately fail) has been so devastating to the
Arab psychology that they are desperate for someone to blame for what they and their
grotesque leaders have done to their own culture.
Without the United States - and, of course, Israel - as excuses for Arab political
squalor, Arabs might have to engage in self-examination, to ask themselves, "How have
we failed so badly?"
They prefer to blame others, to sleepwalk through history,
and to cheer when tyrants and terrorists "avenge" them.
On one level, Arabs know that Saddam Hussein is a monster. They know he has killed more
Arabs than Israel ever could do. Saddam has been the worst thing to happen to Mesopotamia
since the Mongols razed Baghdad. But Arabs are so jealous and discouraged that they need
to inflate even Saddam into a hero. They have no one else.
Try to understand how broken the Arab world must be, how pitiful, if the celebrated
Arab "triumph" of this war is the execution of prisoner's in cold blood and the
display of a few POWs on TV.
We would be foolish to descend to their level and gloat The world would be better off
were Arab civilization a success. We all should pray that the Arab world might, one day,
be better governed and more equitable, that Arab peoples might join us in the march of
human progress, instead of fleeing into reveries of bygone glories.
But the obstacles Arabs have erected for themselves are enormous. For all of the oil
revenue that has flowed into the wealthier Arab countries, consider the overall state of
the Arab world:
- * It does not produce a single manufactured product of
sufficient quality to sell on world markets.
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- * Arab productivity is the lowest in the world.
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- * It contains not a single world-class university.
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- * The once-great tradition of Arab science has degenerated
into a few research programs in the fields of chemical and biological warfare.
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- * No Arab state is a true democracy.
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- * No Arab state genuinely respects human rights.
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- * No Arab state hosts a responsible media.
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- * No Arab society fully respects the rights of women or
minorities.
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- * No Arab government has ever accepted public responsibility
for its own shortcomings.
This is a self-help world. We can't force Arab states to better themselves. If Arabs
prefer to dream of imaginary triumphs while engaging in fits of very real savagery,
they're their own ultimate victims.
Is there any hope? Yes: Iraq.
While building the Iraq of tomorrow must be done by the Iraqis
themselves, we would be foolish not to give them every reasonable assistance.
With their oil reserves, a comparatively educated population and their
traditionally sophisticated (compared to other Arabs) outlook, the Iraqis are the best
hope the region has of building a healthy modem state.
It isn't going to be easy, and it is going to take years, not months. But
the Iraqis have the chance to begin the long-overdue transformation of Arab civilization.
For all the shouting and hand-waving in the Arab world, the truth is that
Arabs have a deep inferiority complex. They're afraid they really might not be able to
build a successful modern state - to say nothing of a postmodern, information-based
society.
If Iraq could do even a fair job of developing a prosperous Arab democracy
that respected human rights, it could be an inspiration to the rest of the states in the
region - and beyond.
The Arab world desperately needs a success story. Let us hope, for the
sake of hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings in the Middle East, that Iraq
provides that example.
In the short term, though, the Arab world is in for a shock. By lying
about Saddam's atrocities and promising an Arab victory, those Arab media outlets are
doing all Arabs a cruel disservice.
Imagine the impact on the Arab world when Saddam lies dead and the oppression-stunned
people of Iraq begin to tell their stories of suffering under his regime. What will Arabs
do when their own fellow Arabs tell them Saddam's glory was all a big lie?
My prediction: They will turn on the Iraqis and accuse them of being tools of the
United States.
But be patient. The cliché is absolutely true: Nothing succeeds like success.
- Baghdad was once the center of Arab culture, of science and
the arts, and a beacon of human progress. It should be our sincere hope that Baghdad one
day might play that role again.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author of "Fighting For The
Future: Will America Triumph?"
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