Excellent op-ed by Bret Stephens, with a courteous but firm put-down of Tom Friedman's sloppiness:
Eye on the Media: More Humiliation Please
By BRET STEPHENS
I'd been meaning to write a piece responding to Tom Friedman's November 9 column, "The Humiliation Factor," and now that Saddam Hussein's been captured I have a peg. My difference with Friedman is this: He focuses on the downside of humiliation. I focus on the upside.
Here's Friedman:
"Why have the US forces never gotten the ovation they expected for liberating Iraq from Saddam's tyranny? In part, it is because many Iraqis feel humiliated that they didn't liberate themselves, and America's presence, even its aid, reminds them of that. Add the daily slights and miscommunications that come with any occupation, and even the best-intended liberators will wear out their welcome over time."
Friedman then applies this insight to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"One reason Yasir Arafat rejected the Clinton plan for a Palestinian state was that he and many followers didn't want a state handed to them by the US or Israel. That would be 'humiliating.' They wanted to win it with blood and fire. Hezbollah TV had bombarded Palestinians with stories of how the Lebanese drove the Israelis out. Palestinian militants wanted the 'dignity' of doing the same....
"Which is why the Palestinians need both their own state and a new leadership able to build their dignity on achievements, not resistance."
I'LL GIVE this much to Friedman: He isn't completely wrong. The notion that beneficiaries don't necessarily adore their benefactors goes back to Aristotle. Feelings of humiliation really are a motivating force in world history, particularly in the Middle East. Henry Kissinger places great stock in "the humiliation factor" in assessing Anwar Sadat's motives for war in 1973. Also, the opposition of dignity and humiliation marks an intellectual leap forward from yesteryear's cliche about hope and despair, so often deployed by news analysts to rationalize suicide bombing.
Still, one has to wonder whether humiliation is really such a terrible thing if the sight of a bedraggled and meek Saddam being manhandled by a US Army doctor brought Iraqis into the streets to honk their horns and fire their guns in the air. It caused women to faint for joy. It caused one Iraqi to exclaim: "I don't know what to say... I am confused... no... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy... I am very happy...."
And so on. Which raises some doubts about Friedman's explanation for why "the US forces never got the ovation they expected for liberating Iraq."
Apparently, it wasn't the shame of having been liberated by Americans. It was that they didn't consider the job done until Saddam was dead or – what's better – humiliated.
Friedman's understanding of Arafat's motives is equally curious. Did Arafat really turn down the Clinton plan because it was "humiliating" to accept this kind of charity? If so, why did he agree to Oslo, an American-Israeli gift if ever there was one? Well, because it was tactically advantageous.
Then again, so is the current path of "blood and fire," which has succeeded in bringing a Likud government and a Republican administration around to the idea of Palestinian state – even as it has imprisoned Arafat in his compound and brought one thousand new daily humiliations upon the Palestinian people.
In other words, Arafat did not launch his war to regain lost dignity. He did it to achieve a political objective. But this isn't the only way in which Friedman is wrong. For him, concepts of dignity and humiliation are not only facts of Arab life, they are also prescriptions for it. "The more we empower Iraqis," he concludes, "the less humiliated they will feel, the more time we will have to help them and the less they will need our help."
Friedman is right, of course, that empowering Iraqis is a good thing. But this is a non-sequitur. The opposite of humiliation isn't empowerment. It's pride. The opposite of empowerment isn't humiliation. It's powerlessness. Humiliation and powerlessness, like pride and empowerment, might be related, but they are distinct. Friedman misses this nuance, and this leads him astray.
Thus, according to a December 16 report by Samia Nakhoul or Reuters, Saddam's capture was seen throughout the Arab world as "a total humiliation." "I wish it was a Hollywood movie, the wishful thinking of an American director," says Palestinian Salah Ahmed.
"The scene of him being examined by American doctors was the most painful since his statues were destroyed."
Got that? The most painful. Ahmed's pride is not invested in the possibility that, with the tyrant's fall, the Iraqi people may now be empowered. It is invested in the prestige of the tyrant himself, whose humiliation is Ahmed's as well.
Other reports from across the Arab world convey a similar impression. "I feel extremely humiliated," Egyptian writer Sayyid Nassar tells al-Jazeera. "By shaving his beard, a symbol of virility in Iraq and in the Arab world, the Americans committed an act that symbolizes humiliation in our region, where getting shaved by one's enemy means robbing him of his will."
Presumably, Nassar thinks that robbing Saddam of his will is a bad thing, if only because it's humiliating. But surely not every kind of humiliation is wrong. On Wall Street, US district attorneys specialize in something called the perp walk, which involves barging into some Ivan Boesky's executive suite, handcuffing him before the staff, parading him across the trading floor, and inviting the media to tag along. The purpose of this little ritual is twofold: humiliation and example-setting.
I think there is something broadly salutary about this. True, we are dealing here with a Western context. But why shouldn't it apply in a Middle Eastern one? Because, we are told, Arabs place great stock in concepts and rituals of honor, to which one must be sensitive. Hence Friedman's column.
Yet many of the problems that beset the Middle East have precisely to do with its concepts and rituals of honor. Should Westerners indulge with sensitivity the tradition of honor killings of "fallen women"? Presumably not. The same goes for the exaggerated Middle Eastern emphasis on saving face. Democracy depends, above all, on the willingness of its citizens to abide by results they may not always like. It depends on people being graceful losers. In America, de Tocqueville wrote, "men have glimpses of the rules of honor, but they seldom have time to fix attention upon them." Anything more that that would be a throwback to feudalism.
The task of a democratizing power, which is what the US is in Iraq, isn't to pay obeisance to prevailing notions of honor. It's to tear those notions down. Arabs who feel "humiliated" by the capture of Saddam require re-education at a minimum, not mollycoddling. Ditto for Palestinians who eschew compromise in favor of blood and fire. This is precisely what the US did as an occupying power in postwar Japan, another feudalistic society obsessed with honor. It worked.
Another point needs to be made here. Even as the media jumped on the humiliation story, it could do nothing to downplay the obvious joy felt by most Iraqis. Nor could it ignore their expressions of gratitude. "This is the end of tyranny," wrote the Iraqi I quoted above for being "very happy." "Congratulations... a great day... for Iraqi and all the good people... share us our great day.... I can't express my feelings.... thanks to the coalition forces and all the honest people who helped in that great operation... thank you thank you thousand times."
This is the sort of reaction that many of us would consider normal. It is also one which, we were solemnly told by legions of Mideast experts, the US could never hope for because Iraqis were said to be incapable of seeing past the veil of their cultural prejudices toward the West, including their highly refined sense of "humiliation." But perhaps this tells us more about the mentality of these experts than it does about the mentality of the average Iraqi.
BUT ENOUGH bashing Tom Friedman. In his column yesterday, Friedman writes:
"Freedom is about limits, compromise and accepting responsibility. Freedom is the opportunity to assert your interests and the obligation to hear and compromise with the interests of others. How well Iraqis absorb that kind of freedom will determine whether the capture of Saddam is the high point of this drama – and it's all downhill from here – or just a necessary first chapter in the most revolutionary democracy-building project ever undertaken in the Arab world."
Just so, Tom. Indeed, it's about time we all stop treating Iraqis, and Arabs generally, as anything but what they are: Human beings, capable of making rational choices, who, like the rest of us, are accountable for their own successes, their own failures, and their own fates.
bret@jpost.com
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