I haven’t been much of a fan of Tom Friedman, ever since he started using his column to endless hawk his books and cheerlead for the Iraq war. But this dispatch from Damascus is one of the best things he’s written in years. I’m quoting it at length, for those of you without TimesSelect.
Condoleezza Rice must have been severely jet-lagged when she said that whats going on in Lebanon and Iraq today were the birth pangs of a new Middle East. Oh, I wish it were so. What we are actually seeing are the rebirth pangs of the old Middle East, only fueled now by oil and more destructive weaponry.
Some of the most primordial, tribal passions, which always lurk beneath the surface here Sunnis versus Shiites, Jews versus Muslims, Lebanese versus Syrians but are usually held in check by modern states or bonds of civilization, are exploding to the top.
There is nothing that you cant do to someone in the Middle East today, and there is no leader or movement no Nelson Mandela and no million-mom march coming out of this region, or into this region, to put a stop to the madness.
And I mean madness. Weve seen Sunni Muslims in Iraq suicide-bomb a Shiite mosque on Ramadan; weve seen Shiite militiamen torture Sunnis in Iraq by drilling holes in their heads with power tools; weve seen Jordanian Islamist parliamentarians mourning the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, even though he once blew up a Jordanian wedding; weve seen hundreds of Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli cafes and buses; and weve seen Israel retaliating by, at times, leveling whole buildings, with the guilty and the innocent inside.
Now weve seen the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, take all of Lebanon into a devastating, unprovoked war with Israel, just to improve his political standing and take pressure off Iran.
America should be galvanizing the forces of order Europe, Russia, China and India into a coalition against these trends. But we cant. Why? In part, its because our president and secretary of state, although they speak with great moral clarity, have no moral authority. Thats been shattered by their performance in Iraq.
The world hates George Bush more than any U.S. president in my lifetime. He is radioactive and so caught up in his own ideological bubble that he is incapable of imagining or forging alternative strategies.
In part, it is also because China, Europe and Russia have become freeloaders off U.S. power. They reap enormous profits from the post-cold-war order that America has shaped, but rather than become real stakeholders in that order, helping to draw and defend redlines, they duck, mumble, waffle or cut their own deals.
This does not bode well for global stability. A religious militia that calls itself the party of God takes over a state and drags it into war, using high-tech rockets mullahs with drones and the world is paralyzed. Those who ignore this madness will one day see it come to a theater near them.
In part, though, this madness is home-grown. I sat at a swank rooftop restaurant the other night with some young Syrian writers and listened to a discussion between a young woman dressed in trendy clothes, talking about how she would prefer to see Israel disappear, another writer who argued that Nasrallah was an Arab disaster, and an Arab journalist who described the pride and dignity every Arab felt at seeing Hezbollah fight Israel to a standstill. [Apparently, he’s not the only one; Arabs that were cool to Hezbollah early in this conflict have now warmed to the terrorist group — ed.]
When will the Arab-Muslim world stop getting its pride from fighting Israel and start getting it from constructing a society that others would envy, an economy others would respect, and inventions and medical breakthroughs from which others would benefit?
There will be no new Middle East not as long as the New Middle Easterners, like Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, get gunned down; not as long as Old Middle Easterners, like Nasrallah, use all their wits and resources to start a new Arab-Israeli war rather than build a new Arab university; and not as long as Arab media and intellectuals refuse to speak out clearly against those who encourage their youth to embrace martyrdom with religious zeal rather than meld modernity with Arab culture.
Without that, we are wasting our time and the Arab world is wasting its future.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Spend a little less time hating Bush and looking at reality. If this is so old why haven’t the Arab nations (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi) thrown support behind Hebullah? Why aren’t they condemning Israel? Why have they condemned Israel.
Your short-sightedness prevents you from seeing the big picture. Things are becoming different in the Mid East…We live in a 24 hour news cycle so you won’t see large changes overnite. Get over the Bush hatred.
“America should be galvanizing the forces of order
The religious wars in Britain had much to do with the changes that make such less likely today. And those old tribal divides for you short sited people effect the Old School Islamic Radicals a lot more than the Moderate westernized Muslims. Those old divides being brought back will weaken the radicals power (divide and conquer) while the moderates will be able to take advantage of a weakened radical enemy.
And for the
Old School Middle East?
How about the failure of the US to accept large numbers of Jewish refugees after WWII, opting instead to displace Palestinians by force in order to create a Jewish state?
How about the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that installed Reza Shah after democratically elected Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh and the Iranian Parliment decided to nationalize oil?
How about the training, arming and financing of Mujahideen (and Bin Laden) in Afghanistan in the 1980′s?
How about the billions in oil revenue provided to Saudi Royals who stay in power only by financing fundamentalists?
Israel even funded Islamic Fundamentalists in an ill-advised (and CIA inspired?) attempt to destbilize Arab regimes …
“Old school” is what got us where we are today.
Mr. Friedman seems to have forgotten to get a clue. Iran provides predominately sunni Syria something that the u.s. will never willingly provide; regime security for the Alawati Shia overlords. Syria is a secular nation, where top positions in the government are reserved in the government for the 20% christian population and for a sizeable chunk sunni muslism majority that are secular not because this gives are warm fuzzy feeling to the alawati ruling oligarchy. Rather secularism is the tool by which syria’s often persecuted Alawatis are able to maintain their rule; very much like holding onto a tiger by it’s tail. The last time this was seriously challenged, the syrians had to level their 4th largest city to ensure the death of the syrian branch of the sunni muslim brotherhood; their motto was something along the lines of majority rules and minority mass graves. Fortunately for syria, Iran’s ultra shia government has offered to ensure that alawti rule in syria becomes a permanent fixture of the region. Is the u.s. willing to make the same guarentee? that if it gets hot, heated and tribal in syria that they’ll be able to match iran’s commitment of dozens of revolutionary guard battle groups for a good ole fashion sectarian massacre to ensure the alawati minority with it’s druze, christian and secular sunni collaborators hold onto power? I didn’t think so.
Syria can be bought off a la Libya, golan + an economic deal would probably make them into poodles willing to sign onto a sadat typ peace, but trying to force them to adopt democracy ( majority rule) or turn their back on iran ( their insurance policy ) will be non-starters from the viewpoint of damascus.