I travel...a lot. Over the past five years, I have been to over 40 countries on 4 continents (to include the UAE and Dubai on over 30 occasions), and never, ever, have I seen such a highly educated citizenry (allegedly so, anyway) of a first world country like America attempt to speak so authoritatively on so many subjects while displaying such utter ignorance of the facts. The stunning self-righteousness which drives so many of these logically devoid views of so many of our fellow American citizens is just staggering. The Dubai ports deal is just one example. Our reasons for going into Iraq are another. So, for all of you fellow citizens who have recently succumbed to this American epidemic of ignorance (and, unfortunately, there have been way to many of you) when it comes to Middle East policy and politics (and numerous other things for that matter), let me suggest some reading, something that many of you told me you do not have "time" to do. Well, both pieces are short and to the point, so you have no excuse.
Thomas Friedman hits one out of the park with his Dubai and Dunces piece (Just omit the second paragraph. He is misinformed.) and then follows it up with a perfect take on our current Iraq/Iran policy with America's Iran Policy: Iraq piece. (See the comments section of this post for the two article sif you do not have access to the NY Times online edition.)
Both should be required reading for all Americans who claim to have an informed, nuanced opinion on Middle East policy.
Let me put it another way...
Apply some analytical rigor to your positions, research them, and then back them up with facts. Parroted, partisan arguments do nothing but show your intellectual laziness and immense stupidity.
Unless you do your homework and bring something substantive to the table, stay out of the discussion. Making yourself look alarmingly ignorant does nothing, needless to say, to further your cause.
4 comments:
Since some may not have a subscription to the NY Times online edition, I have posted the two articles by Friedman here:
Dubai and Dunces
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
When it came to the Dubai ports issue, the facts never really had a chance — not in this political season. Still, it's hard to imagine a more ignorant, bogus, xenophobic, reckless debate than the one indulged in by both Republicans and Democrats around this question of whether an Arab-owned company might oversee loading and unloading services in some U.S. ports. If you had any doubts before, have none now: 9/11 has made us stupid.
We don't need any more pre-9/11 commissions. We need a post-9/11 commission, one that looks at all the big and little things we are doing — from sanctioning torture to warrantless wiretaps to turning our embassies abroad into fortresses — that over time could eat away at the core DNA of America.
What is so crazy about the Dubai ports issue is that Dubai is precisely the sort of decent, modernizing model we should be trying to nurture in the Arab-Muslim world. But we've never really had an honest discussion about either the real problems out there or the real solutions, have we?
The real problem was recently spelled out by an Arab-American psychiatrist, Dr. Wafa Sultan, in a stunning interview with Al Jazeera. Speaking about the Arab-Muslim world, Dr. Sultan said: "The clash we are witnessing ... is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings."
The Jazeera host then asked: "I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?"
Dr. Sultan: "Yes, that is what I mean."
Dr. Sultan voiced truths that many Muslims know: their civilization is, in many places, in turmoil, falling further and further behind the world in science, education, industry and innovation, while falling deeper and deeper into the grip of crackpot clerics, tin-pot dictators, violent mobs and madmen like bin Laden and Saddam.
President Bush keeps talking about Iraq and the Arab world as if democracy alone is the cure and all we need to do is get rid of a few bad apples. The problem is much deeper — we're dealing with a civilization that is still highly tribalized and is struggling with modernity. Mr. Bush was right in thinking it is important to help Iraq become a model where Arab Muslims could freely discuss their real problems, the ones identified by Dr. Sultan, and chart new courses. His crime was thinking it would be easy.
I don't know how Iraq will end, but I sure know that we aren't going to repeat the Iraq invasion elsewhere anytime soon. Yet the need for reform in this region still cries out. Is there another way? Yes — nurturing internally generated Arab models for evolutionary reform, and one of the best is Dubai, the Arab Singapore.
Dubai is not a democracy, and it is not without warts. But it is a bridge of decency that leads away from the failing civilization described by Dr. Sultan to a much more optimistic, open and self-confident society. Dubaians are building a future based on butter not guns, private property not caprice, services more than oil, and globally competitive companies, not terror networks. Dubai is about nurturing Arab dignity through success not suicide. As a result, its people want to embrace the future, not blow it up.
What's ironic is that if Democrats who hate the Bush war in Iraq actually had a peaceful alternative policy for promoting transformation in the Arab-Muslim world, it would be called "the Dubai policy": supporting internally driven Arab engines of change.
That's why Arab progressives are stunned by our behavior. As an Arab businessman friend said to me of the Dubai saga: "This deal has left a real bad taste in many mouths. I mean this was Dubai, for God's sake! You could not have a better friend and more of a symbol of globalization and openness. If they are a security danger to the U.S., then who is not?"
So whatever happens with the Iraq experiment — but especially if it fails — we need Dubai to succeed. Dubai is where we should want the Arab world to go. Unfortunately, we just told Dubai to go to hell.
America's Iran Policy: Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The Bush White House issued its latest national security strategy doctrine yesterday, and it identifies Iran as the "single country" that poses the greatest danger to the U.S. today. The report, however, doesn't say what exactly we should do about Iran. But here's what I think: The most frightening, scary, terrifying thing we could do to Iran today — short of an outright attack — is to get out of Iraq.
The second most frightening, scary, terrifying thing we could do to Iran is to succeed in Iraq. The worst thing we could do, though, the thing that would make Iranians the happiest, is to continue bleeding in Iraq and baby-sitting a stalemate there. In sum, since we are not going to invade Iran, the best way we can influence it is by what we do in Iraq.
Let me explain: I am not in favor of withdrawing from Iraq now — not while there is still a chance for a decent outcome. But if we did pull out of Iraq, it would make life incredibly complicated for Tehran. There's a lot of cheap talk that Iran was the big winner from the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Don't be so sure. Hundreds of years of Mesopotamian history teach us that Arabs and Persians do not play well together.
Right now, the natural antipathy and competition between Iraqi Arabs and Iranian Persians — even though large numbers of both are Shiite Muslims — have been muted because of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Both sides can focus their anger on us.
But as soon as we leave — and you can bet the house and kids on this — the natural rivalry between Iraqi Arabs and Iranian Persians will surface. Culture, history and nationalism matter. Iran and Iraq did not fight a war for eight years by mistake, or just because Saddam was in power. Once America is out of Iraq, it will not be a winning political strategy for any Iraqi politician to be known as "pro-Iranian" or, even worse, as an instrument of Tehran's.
If we were out of Iraq today and Iran had to manage the chaos there, on its border, it would be a huge, energy-draining problem for Tehran. Iraqis, in case you haven't noticed, have a rather violent, independent streak. Anyone who thinks Iraq is some overripe fruit that will fall into Iran's lap as soon as we leave, and obediently stay there, doesn't know Iraq or Iran. Iraqi Arab Shiites did not wait for centuries to rule Iraq in order to turn it over to Iranian Persian Shiites. Not a chance.
In their superb, must-read, military history of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "Cobra II," Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor explain why Saddam always wanted to keep the world in doubt about his W.M.D., even when his cupboard was bare: it was to deter Iran. Remember, Iraq and Iran each used poison gas against the other in their war. The last thing Saddam wanted was to let Iran know he was out of gas. Gordon and Trainor quote the Iraqi military intelligence director as telling U.S. interrogators after the war: "What did we think was going to happen with the coalition invasion? We were more interested in Turkey and Iran." All geopolitics is local.
Also, if the U.S. were out of Iraq and the U.S. attacked Iran's nuclear facilities with airstrikes, Iran would not be able to retaliate with its missiles against any large concentrations of U.S. military forces nearby. That, too, would give the U.S. a freer hand to deal with Iran's nuclear threat.
The only thing more frightening to the Iranians than the U.S. leaving Iraq, would be — and this is my preference — the U.S. succeeding in Iraq. Iraq has already held two elections in which anyone could run and vote. This stands in sharp contrast with the elections in Iran, where only conservatives approved by the ayatollahs can run. Iraq has a flourishing free press. Iran's insecure ayatollahs have shut down their critics.
The more Iraqi Shiites are empowered in a democratic Iraq, the more Iranian Shiites will ask why they don't have the same rights as the folks next door. Also, the major spiritual centers of Shiite Islam aren't in Iran, but in Iraq. The more the Iraqi Shiite religious centers are revived — with their particular Iraqi Shiite strain, represented by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which says clerics should stay out of politics — the more the Iranian mullahs will see their influence diminished.
So getting out of Iraq would be a good anti-Iran strategy. Succeeding in Iraq would be even better. The one strategy that won't work for us, but would be ideal for Iran, would be for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq as bleeding sitting ducks, baby-sitting a stalemate and absorbing everyone's wrath — including the wrath that would naturally be directed at Tehran.
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