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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: KLP who wrote (93381)4/14/2003 9:53:43 AM
From: paul_philp  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Confronting the Myth
By Lee Harris 04/14/2003


It is one of the most difficult things for us to understand about those who are in the grips of a collective fantasy—how even the most powerful, the most irrefutable evidence will be ignored and suppressed in order to keep the fantasy intact.

And this is the greatest danger confronting the American mission to bring sanity to the Arab world—it may not want it.

This is why the next couple of days and weeks will be so critical for us and for the world.

If the collective Arab mind decides that the fall of Baghdad came about because a corrupt dictator had lost the loyalty of the people whom he had brutalized for thirty years, then sanity may begin to emerge. But if, on the other hand, this same collective mind begins to look for another consoling myth, it is sure to find one readily available. And if you doubt this, simply recall the Arab theories of 9/11.

The Bush administration has done all that it could humanly do in order to topple Saddam Hussein in the collective imagination of the Arab mind. It has defeated him, and—even more astonishingly—it has discredited him; and it will continue to discredit him during the following weeks and months as more and more evidence of his brutality and cupidity are broadcast to the world. But the question must be squarely faced, Will this be enough?

The answer is, No, it will not be enough. For what feeds the tendency to fantasy is the fact of failure. And if the Second Iraqi war ends merely in yet another instance of Arab failure, then there is a grave fear that such failure will in fact breed even more fantasy.

And this is precisely why the Bush administration must be permitted to follow through on the second part of its program—namely, the reconstruction of Iraq. For the administration understands perfectly well that the only cure for the Arab mind's penchant for fantasy is to provide it with a real and genuine achievement—and what greater achievement could there be then an Iraq that was free and stable and prosperous?
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