...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

How to Khouri favour: Rami Khouri, a Palestinian Jordanian journalist who lives in the U.S., regales us every so often with his reflections on American relations with the Arab world. Generally speaking, his opinion amounts to this: America should lay off and let the Arabs do whatever the heck they want because, man, the U.S. is really pissing them off.

Of course, he says it in a much more polished way than that. For example, he are some reasons he gives in today's L.A. Times for why America is so despised in the Arab world.

•  Context. The Arab states suffer massive internal pressures from issues of population, identity, demography, economy, environment, ideology, crises of citizenship rights versus lstatehood obligations and secularism versus religiosity, and the perpetual pressure from foreign armies. In this wider context, the issues of freedom and democracy are dwarfed by the more pressing imperatives of stable statehood, liberation from foreign occupation, meeting basic human needs, and stopping foreign armies.

•  Legitimacy. There is no global consensus that the United States is mandated to promote freedom and democracy, or that this is the divinely ordained destiny of the United States. There is such a mandate, though, in the charter of the United Nations, in Security Council resolutions to end foreign occupations and international legal conventions — most of which the U.S. resists, ignores or applies very selectively.

No surprise then that virtually the whole world resists the United States.

•  Militarism. The American use of preemptive war for regime change creates more problems than it solves. Promoting freedom and democracy through the guns of the Marines doesn't work for many people outside of Republican and neoconservative Washington circles.

•  Relevance. The value of individual freedom as defined in American culture runs counter to how freedom is understood in most of the Middle East and the developing world. There, people sacrifice individual liberties for the protection and the communal expression of belonging to a bigger group — the family, tribe, religion or ethnic or national group.

One is tempted to send Mr. Khouri an authographed copy of Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy with the appropriate passages underlined, but it would likely be a futile gesture. It's clear that the "wider context" he's talking about is one in which America takes its marching orders from the UN, which in turn takes its marching orders from the tyrannical, despotic majority which make it up. Ideal for thwarting freedom, democracy and American power, perhaps, but not so hotsy totsy for those who prefer not to live under the grinding oppression of sharia law and secular totalitarianism. Give me "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" over "the communal expression of belonging to a bigger group" any day, in fact, every day, of the week; it's the single most effective way to attend to all those "pressing imperitives" Mr. Khouri mentions.

Update: Victor Davis Hanson rebuts Rami Khouri's contention that the Arabs must be allowed to fester in their own cesspools, because, dagnabit, they're their cesspools. Here's how VDH responded to a question from a Saudi journalist about how he sees the Arab world 50 years hence:

I have great hope. I think it will follow the course of Latin America and Asia and embrace democracy and open markets, take a hard look at persistent problems such as religious intolerance, polygamy, and near gender apartheid in places, and allow the Arab masses the same level of free expression that is now increasingly found elsewhere.

Democratization we think is critical since many autocratic governments use state-controlled media to deflect popular angst over their own failures to provide decent housing, jobs, education and infrastructure onto the bogey-man America—often in an insidious relationship with terrorists like al Qaeda that were given tacit support and sometimes money as a sort of blackmail on the promises their fury would be directed at the West and not Arab monarchies, autocracies, and dictatorship.

Only democracy can end that harmful calculus. Remember also that millions of wonderful Arab people have found tolerance, religious freedom, and economic prosperity in America, without the ghettoization of Europe and without the worry of state coercion at home. We believe only freedom in all its manifestations can solve our differences, and thus many of us in the United States are working to ensure our government supports reform and democracy in the Middle East and ends the old realpolitik.

I for one would  pray for a strong Arab world, fully democratic and free, proud, a partner with America on an equal basis in all areas that gives and takes advice and works shoulder to shoulder with us. But as along as there is not one truly free election in some 20 countries I see little chance of that happening.

Posted by: scaramouche at 19:53 | link | comments

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