re: Taking Arabs Seriously
by Marc Lynch
An interesting paper, but my first reaction was, what is Al Jazeera paying this guy? Sheesh, what an encomium to Al Jazeera!
The emergence of this new public debate has been obscured by the Arab media's less-than-glorious past track record...During the second half of the 1990s, however, a genuinely new kind of Arab public sphere emerged, as satellite television brought disparate local debates in the various Arab countries and the Arab diaspora together in a remarkably coherent, common, and ongoing public argument accessible to almost everyone...transnational media emerged as an alternative location of vibrant and open political debate...It is easy to be skeptical about claims for the revolutionary impact of al Jazeera and its counterparts, but in this case the excitement is not misplaced. Unlike earlier stations, which focused on belly dancing and soap operas, from its launch in 1996 al Jazeera put politics first. Its talk shows pointedly included representatives from across the spectrum, promoting sharp arguments that made for good television and shocked audiences unaccustomed to such fireworks. Such a transnational media outlet naturally focused on issues of broad Arab concern, transforming Arab political culture in the process.
Might it have been apropos to mention that Al Jazeera was pro-Saddam first, last and always, a fact not entirely surprising since the director of Al Jazeera has been discovered to be a long-time member of Saddam's payroll? Lynch admits that Al Jazeera controls the framework of the news, even says that anti-Saddam figures appeared on TV as the unpopular guys to be shouted down:
These new Arab media increasingly construct the dominant narrative frames through which people understand events. In some ways, the absence of real democracy in the region makes the new media outlets even more powerful, since they face few real rivals in setting the public agenda...In spite of all this, however, Arab opinion toward the recent war was not predetermined. Arabs have long been deeply divided in their views about Saddam Hussein's regime. Debate has raged on the pages of the elite press and in the al Jazeera studios over the extent of Saddam's responsibility for the suffering of the Iraqi people. Iraqi opposition figures regularly get heard, if only because their unpopular positions guarantee good television.
Lynch even describes how the framework of the Iraq War was was uniformly anti-American, not to mention perfectly indifferent to Arab suffering unless caused by Americans:
The sudden fall of Baghdad deflated the furor, but few Arabs had ever really believed that Iraq would win. The toppling of Saddam's statue, meanwhile -- an iconic moment that virtually shut down debate over the war in the United States -- received much less attention in the Arab media, which viewed it as a stunt stage-managed by the American military with few authentic Iraqi participants. And then the narrative segued quickly from a "tough fight" story to one of a quagmire of American and British mismanagement, Iraqi hostility, and rising guerrilla resistance
Yet still he maintains that if the US had only talked "like equals" to the Arabs, it could have changed their minds about the narrative. How? And what the hell does he mean by "few Arabs thought Saddam would win"? LOTS of Arabs thought Saddam would win - dig in, cause the Americans lots of casualties, make them turn tail and run. And why did they think this? Because Al Jazeera told them so, that's why! That's why the sudden fall of Baghdad was such a shock in the Arab world!
Nothing in his recommendation:
What it should press for is a fundamentally different approach to the United States' interactions with the region -- one that speaks with Arabs rather than at them and tries to engage rather than manipulate.
even hints that there might be a little problem finding an appropriate forum to do this talking to equals among today's Arab media outlets, where US officials practically appear on stage with a sign reading "Imperialist Crusading Liar" above their heads, and three-quarters of the programming is an open incitement to rage at the US and Israel, with gory corpse shots a perennial favorite.
Nor does Lynch ever address the fundamental problem here - that the Arab narrative of the world, which Al Jazeera is aiding and abetting, is deeply, fundamentally, at odds with reality on certain major points.
The West does not spend its time inventing and implementing conspiracies against the Arabs. Israel is not the cause of all Arab problems, and if it dropped into the Mediterranean tomorrow those problems would still exist. Nor did Colonialism cause all the Arab problems; Colonialism ended over fifty years ago, and is getting rather old as an excuse. The US did not impose rotten tyrants on the Arabs, they managed to do that all by themselves. Neither the CIA nor the Mossad did 9/11; when Osama bin Laden claimed credit for it, he was telling the truth.
In short, America's problem dialoguing with the Arabs is not that they feel they are talking to children but that they feel they are talking to lunatics. No outsider can pierce the comforting wall of conspiratorial lies that the Arabs have surrounded themselves with; they must do it themselves. They must provide fora for liberal voices, which are really few and far between today. The Arab intelligentsia have not been very effective, to say the least, in hindering the spread of what Thomas Friedman called "Global Village Idiocy".
I don't know how to pierce the Arab wall of lies either, but I would lay higher odds of success on the good swift reality check of a lost war and a freed Iraqi people and press, than on telling the Arab intelligentsia once again, more nicely this time, that their theories really do not make a lot of sense. |
