A Little More Conversation

Tom Friedman's op/ed in the NYTimes (free subscription required) cites a half-dozen recent essays by leading Arab thinkers that suggest there is a new conversation going on in the Middle East. Friedman attributes this to the U.S. ouster of Saddam. One of the most interesting quotes is the following:

The other day the always thoughtful Osama al-Ghazali Harb, a top figure at Egypt's semiofficial Al Ahram center for strategic studies, the most important think tank in Egypt, published an article in the country's leading political quarterly, Al Siyassa Al Dawliya, in which he chastised those Arab commentators who argue that the way in which the U.S. captured Saddam was meant to humiliate Arabs.

"What we, as Arabs, should truly feel humiliated about are the prevailing political and social conditions in the Arab world — especially in Iraq — which allowed someone such as Saddam Hussein to . . . assume the presidency. We should feel humiliated that Saddam was able . . . to single-handedly initiate a number of catastrophic policies that transformed Iraq, relatively rich in natural, human and financial resources, into the poorest, most debt-ridden country in the Arab world, not to mention the hundreds of thousands killed and displaced. We should feel humiliated that some of our intellectuals, supposedly the representatives of our nations' consciences and the defenders of their liberty and dignity, not only dealt with Saddam, but also supported him. . . . The Arabs should have been the ones to bring down Saddam, in defense of their own dignity and their own true interests."

Whether or not the war was justified, it remains the case that a toe-hold for democracy in Iraq could transform not just the middle-east, but the entire world. Here's to hoping the Iraqi's can make a successful go of it!