And that's why the Arab leaders need to talk to their sons and daughters. If the Arabs miss yet another decade of reform, because Iraq spins out of control while the world speeds ahead, they will find themselves outside the world system and dealing with plenty of their own Fallujas. Talk to Arab youth today and you will find so many of them utterly despondent at the complete drift in their societies. They are stuck in a sandstorm, where opportunities for young people to realize their potential are fading.
What a strange thing for Friedman, who should know better, to say.
He should recognize that Arab countries have been in the rear-guard of cultural and economic life for centuries. The Arab young have been left behind just as surely as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were during their times.
The culture of failure is deeply ingrained in the Arab psyche. It has not gotten any better since tiny Israel was established and beat them like a drum militarily every time a direct confrontation took place.
Bush's war is in a very ironic way a helping hand to the Arabs, an attempt to break the cycle of abject failure by replacing it with a modern democratic society where the Arabs' cultural, economic, and political shortcomings of the past few centuries can be surpassed. And it is being done in a place that has the resources to pay for profund change for the better.
Instead of welcoming this life-ring, they are doing their level best to puncture it, not realizing that they'll drown themselves in the process.
Oh, well, growth is always painful. |
