Tom Friedman, who introduced globalism to the popular mind with his book, “The World is Flat,” first came on the intellectual scene with penetrating analysis of the struggle between Israel and the Arab nations.
He remains one of the most readable and knowledgeable students of the Middle East.
When the U.S. and England invaded Iraq with a few other token allies, Friedman was his usual optimistic self. What the world needed most was a modern democracy in the Middle East which could offer an operating alternative to the despotic theocracies, which were denying so many of the Arab peoples a full participation in the 21st century, he said.
He agreed with President Bush that it would be possible to transform Iraq into a modern industrial nation that would give its people political and social freedom, give wom-en an equal role in society, dispel the anti-science prejudices that had done so much to hold the region back and foment bottom-up revolutionary change.
Friedman soon was disillusioned, but his reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden shows that his hopes for an Arab enlightenment can be revived in a flash. He wrote:
“ . . . We did our part. We killed bin Laden with a bullet. Now the Arab and Muslim people have a chance to do their part — kill bin Ladenism with a ballot — that is, with real elections, with real constitutions, real political parties and real progressive politics.
“Yes, the bad guys have been dealt a blow across the Arab world in the last few months — not only al-Qaida, but the whole rogues’ gallery of dictators, whose soft bigotry of low expectations for their people had kept the Arab world behind. The question now, though, is: Can the forces of decency get organized, elected and start building a different Arab future? That is the most important question. Everything else is noise. To understand that challenge, we need to recall, again, where bin Ladenism came from. It emerged from a devil’s bargain between oil-consuming countries and Arab dictators. We all — Europe, America, India, China — treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations, and all of us sent the same basic message to the petro-dictators: Keep the oil flowing, the prices low and don’t bother Israel too much and you can treat your people however you like, out back, where we won’t look. Bin Laden and his followers were a product of all the pathologies that were allowed to grow in the dark out back — crippling deficits of freedom, women’s empowerment and education across the Arab world.
“These deficits nurtured a profound sense of humiliation among Arabs at how far behind they had fallen, a profound hunger to control their own futures and a pervasive sense of injustice in their daily lives. That is what is most striking about the Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia in particular. They were almost apolitical. They were not about any ideology. They were propelled by the most basic human longings for dignity, justice and to control one’s own life. Remember, one of the first things Egyptians did was attack their own police stations — the instruments of regime injustice. And since millions of Arabs share these longings for dignity, justice and freedom, these revolutions are not going to go away.
“ … While the Chinese autocrats said to their people, ‘We’ll take away your freedom and, in return, we’ll give you a steadily rising education and standard of living,’ the Arab autocrats said, ‘We’ll take away your freedom and give you the Arab-Israel conflict.’
“ … In that void, with no hope of anyone else riding to their rescue, it seems — in the totally unpredictable way these things happen — that the Arab publics in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere shucked off their fears and decided that they themselves would change what was going on out back by taking over what was going on out front.
“And, most impressively, they decided to do it under the banner of one word that you hear most often today among Syrian rebels: ‘Silmiyyah.’ It means peaceful. … It is just the opposite of bin Ladenism. It is Arabs saying in their own way: We don’t want to be martyrs for bin Laden or pawns for Mubarak, Assad, Gadhafi, Ben Ali and all the rest. We want to be ‘citizens.’ Not all do, of course. Some prefer more religious identities and sectarian ones. This is where the struggle will be.
“We cannot predict the outcome. All we can hope for is that this time there really will be a struggle of ideas — that in a region where extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away, this time will be different. The moderates will be as passionate and committed as the extremists. If that happens, both bin Laden and bin Ladenism will be resting at the bottom of the ocean.”
Tom Friedman’s analysis of hope for Arab world
