How War Will Open Arab Eyes.(Brief Article)

Even a full-scale American propaganda blitz couldn't convince the Arab "street" that overthrowing Saddam Hussein is just or logical. Some Arabs are proud that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and plans to build more. So the more the Bush administration attacks those plans, the further it gets from achieving its goal of winning Islamic converts to its cause. This is due mainly to the fact that Arabs live in a political dream world, where popular anti-American tendencies are stirred by Arab intellectuals who eagerly seize and twist the latest Bush comments on Saddam.

So should Bush retreat? Not at all. The irony is that only the overthrow of Saddam would change Arab opinion and the delusional terms of public debate. The leaders of the Arab world are afraid to dispel Arab dreams, since they have no way to justify their own ineffective governments. They don't dare confront the street, and have to employ doublespeak instead. In the current crisis, this means publicly rejecting a strike against Iraq while privately supporting a decisive and final blow to a regime they all despise.

The Arabs need a shock to wake them up. Egypt's loss in the 1967 war against Israel undermined the nationalist slogans that had prevailed since Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in 1952. Unfortunately, the defeat laid the ground for the spread of Islamism as an alternative to nationalism, trading one dream for another. Now the potential shock of Saddam's fall might be what is needed to launch an era of pragmatism.

There are signs that this era is emerging. The Islamist call to arms over the U.S. war in Afghanistan inspired only a few brief demonstrations. As soon as Arab regimes began to respond to American demands that they examine all groups with ties to Al Qaeda, Islamic movements such as the Salafi groups and the Muslim Brotherhood got busy trying to moderate their image and prove that they were in no way connected to terrorism. These moderate leaders have since been condemned by their own rank and file as well as more ...