TRAGEDY OF THE ARABS

By RALPH PETERS


March 30, 2003 -- TV networks in the Arab world
gloat as they broadcast pictures of American
prisoners executed by Saddam´s thugs. They report
every Iraqi lie as if it contains unassailable
truth, while mocking each report of allied
success. They promise their viewers Iraq is
winning the war.
They betray their own people by doing so, setting
up Arabs for yet another psychological
catastrophe.

Our natural response to the Arab world´s
phenomenal lies is anger: We resent their
indecency in glorifying murder and war crimes. We
cannot understand how anyone can believe these
gruesome fairy tales for adults.

My advice is to ignore the Arabs. Hand-wringing
about Arab TV disinformation or about the rage of
the Arab street is a waste of our time. We cannot
convince them and we cannot force them to change.

The best we can do - even for the Arabs - is to
get on with America´s agenda of liberation.

The most important thing for Americans to grasp
about the impotent fury of the Arab world is that
it isn´t really about us. It´s about their own
internal demons.

The absurdities broadcast and printed throughout
the Arab world are symptoms of a once-great
culture´s moral desolation, of the
comprehensiveness of Arab failure. The Arabian
Nights have long since turned into the Arabian
nightmare.

The inability of the Arab world to compete with
the West in any field of endeavor (even their
efforts at terrorism ultimately fail) has been so
devastating to the Arab psychology that they are
desperate for someone to blame for what they and
their grotesque leaders have done to their own
culture.

Without the United States - and, of course, Israel
- as excuses for Arab political squalor, Arabs
might have to engage in self-examination, to ask
themselves, "How have we failed so badly?"

They prefer to blame others, to sleepwalk through
history, and to cheer when tyrants and terrorists
"avenge" them.

On one level, Arabs know that Saddam Hussein is a
monster. They know he has killed more Arabs than
Israel ever could do. Saddam has been the worst
thing to happen to Mesopotamia since the Mongols
razed Baghdad. But Arabs are so jealous and
discouraged that they need to inflate even Saddam
into a hero. They have no one else.

Try to understand how broken the Arab world must
be, how pitiful, if the celebrated Arab "triumph"
of this war is the execution of prisoners in cold
blood and the display of a few POWs on TV.

We would be foolish to descend to their level and
gloat. The world would be better off were Arab
civilization a success. We all should pray that
the Arab world might, one day, be better governed
and more equitable, that Arab peoples might join
us in the march of human progress, instead of
fleeing into reveries of bygone glories.

But the obstacles Arabs have erected for
themselves are enormous. For all of the oil
revenue that has flowed into the wealthier Arab
countries, consider the overall state of the Arab
world:

* It does not produce a single manufactured
product of sufficient quality to sell on world
markets.

* Arab productivity is the lowest in the world.

* It contains not a single world-class university.


* The once-great tradition of Arab science has
degenerated into a few research programs in the
fields of chemical and biological warfare.

* No Arab state is a true democracy.

* No Arab state genuinely respects human rights.

* No Arab state hosts a responsible media.

* No Arab society fully respects the rights of
women or minorities.

* No Arab government has ever accepted public
responsibility for its own shortcomings.

This is a self-help world. We can´t force Arab
states to better themselves. If Arabs prefer to
dream of imaginary triumphs while engaging in fits
of very real savagery, they´re their own ultimate
victims.

Is there any hope? Yes: Iraq.....""

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